IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) /> ^ ,f ^ 1/ 4^^^ 1.0 I.I 11.25 no ^^ ■■■ ■ 2.2 m m ^ m us IS US WWb M U 11.6 V ^Sciences Corporation 33 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716)872-4503 SJ \ iV sS k ^*^^ <^^ ^ vx f^^^ Z ^ CIHM/ICMH Microfiche Series. CIHM/ICMH Collection de microfiches. Canadian Institute for Historical Microreproductions / Institut Canadian de microreproductions historiques V^Q Technical and Bibliographic Not^a/Notas tachniquaa at bibliographiquaa Tha Inatituta haa attamptad to obtain tha baat original copy availabia for filming. Faaturaa of thia co|,>y which may ba bibliographically uniqua. which may altar any of tha imagaa in tha raproduction, or which may aignificantly changa tha uaual mathod of filming, ara chackad balow. □ Colourad covara/ Couvartura da coulaur r~n Covara damagod/ Couvartura andommagia □ Covara raatorad and/or iaminatad/ Couvartura raatauria at/ou paliiculAa D D D D D Covar titia miaaing/ La titra da couvartura manqua nn Colourad mapa/ Cartaa giographiquaa wt coulaur Colourad ink (i.a. othar than blua or black)/ Encra da coulaur {\.9. autra qua biaua ou noirat r~n Colourad plataa and/or illuatrationa/ Planchaa at/ou illuatrationa tt coulaur Bound with othar matariai/ Rail* avac d'autraa documants Tight binding may cauaa ahadowa or diatortion along intarior margin/ La r« liura frr^ paut cauaar da I'ombra ou da la diatoraion la long da la marga intiriaura Blank laavaa addad during raatoration may appaar within tha taxt. Whanavar poaaibla. thaaa hava baan omittad from filming/ II aa paut qua cartainaa pagaa blanchaa ajoutiaa lora d'una raatauration apparaiaaant dana ia taxta. mala, loraqua cala itait poaaibla. caa pagaa n'ont pas M filmtea. Additional commants:/ Commantairaa suppl^mantairaa: Various paglngs. L'tnatitut a microfilm* la maiilaur axampiaira qu'il lui a 4ti poaaibla da sa procurar. Las details da cat axampiaira qui sont paut-4tra uniquas du point da vua bibliographiqua, qui pauvant modifier una imaga raproduita. ou qui pauvant axigar una modification dana la mithoda normaia da fiimaga aont indiqute ci-daasous. Thai toth r~| Colourad pagas/ Pagaa da coulaur Pagaa damaged/ Pagaa andom magmas Pagaa raatorad and/oi Pagaa reataur^as at/ou pailicuiies Pagaa diacolourad, stained or foxei Pagaa dteolorias, tachetAea ou piqutes Pagaa detached/ Pagaa ditachias Showthrough/ Tranaparance Quality of prir Qualiti in^gaia da ('impression Includes supplementary materii Comprend du metiriel supplAmentaire Only edition available/ Seule Mition disponibie pn Pagaa damaged/ r~l Pagaa raatorad and/or laminated/ r~~1 Pagaa diacolourad, stained or foxed/ I I Pagaa detached/ r^ Showthrough/ r^ Quality of print variea/ |~n Inciudea supplementary material/ |~n Only edition available/ The poaa of th filmi Origi bagii the aion, othai firat alon, or nil D Pagaa wholly or partially obscured by errata s'ips, tissues, etc.. have been refiimed to enaure the best possible image/ Lee pagaa totalement ou partiellament obacurciea par un fauillet d'errata, une pelure, etc.. ont it* fiimies d nouveau da fa longer be said that this kind of ignorance is common among those edu- cated at Roman Catholic seminaries. But pleasantry aside, we firmly believe that what is not known and taught about the Church of Christ and her constitutions in our Catholic sem- inaries is not worth knowing, and after the divine constitution of the Church embodied in the revealed Word of God, the Church of Christ has no constitutions, ancient or modern, but such as have been framed and indited by Popes in re- scripts, bulls, decretals, etc., or found in canonical enact- ments and ecclesiastical laws formulated by the bishops of the Church in diocesan synods, provincial, national, plenary or oecumenical councils, confirmed and approved by the supreme authority of the Sovereign Pontiffs, the Popes of Rome, Peter and his successors in the Holy See. ^ Stephen Vincent Ryan, Bishop of Buffalo. Buffalo, Feast of the Help of Christians^ May z^th, A. D, 1880. CLAIMS OF A PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL BISHOP TO APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION AND VALID ORDERS DISPROVED. I. ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. IN the early part of the year 1874, at the request of a number of Catholic gentlemen of Buffalo, I deliv- ered a lecture in our Cathedral in reply to a sermon preached by Dr. Coxe, at Erie, Pa., on occasion of the consecration of John Franklin Spaulding, D. D., and published in full in one of our city papers. The leading points of the "Sermon" and " Reply," may be gathered from the following extracts: " If a corporation of men still exists on the earth, bearing that identical commission given by Christ to his Apostles after his resurrection, by historical trans- mission, their existence as such a corporation of wit- nesses is irrefragable proof of the fact that Christ rose. Now, nobody can deny that from the time of Pontius I i . , 1 1, ' \ 2 ORIGIN OF OVii LITTLE TREAliSE. Pilate until now a continuous line of men has been found in divers parts of the world, perpetuated by the laying on of hands of those who were before them." — {The Corporate Witness. A Sermon by A. Cleveland Coxe^ preached Dec. ^.st, 1873, in St. Paul's Church, Erie, Pa.) This is perfectly true; this is orthodox Catholic doc trine. It is plain from sacred Scripture, and known to every Catholic child instructed in the rudiments of Christian Doctrine that the risen Saviour organized a ministry, instituted a commission that was to be perpetuated to the end of time ; but that Dr. Coxe, or the ministers and bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States bear that identical Apos- tolical commission : by historical transmission, the learned divine does not prove, or even attempt to prove ; and whilst nobody can deny that from the time ot Pontius Pilate until now a continuous line of men has been lound perpetuated by the laying on j^f hands and the empowering of the Holy Ghost ; that the line comes down continuous and unbroken from the Apostles to the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Western New York, we, with the immense mass of Christians, beg most respectfuUy to question — nay, em- phatically to deny. Apostolical^ succession, we av t, is one of the leading doctrines of the Christian Church ; but we hold it to be a gratuitous assumption that the Protestant Episcopal communion is that Church, or can prove her identity with that Church by uninterrupted succession from the Apostles. It will not do to say: " We are profoundly convinced of the reality of our Apostolic commission," iorwe can, with equal positive- ness and depth of conviction aver, you have not the ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 3 slightest claim to it ; you cannot prove your title. If you cannot prove it satisfactorily, incontrovertibly and beyond the shadow of reasonable doubt, is it not tri- fling with men, is it not a mocking of God, this pre- tended empowering under the" same charter and same promises" as " the original Apostles?" And until we have this clear and incontestible and convincing proof, may we not rally the Protestant Episcopalian as he did his Methodist Episcopal brother, when John Wesley attempted to consecrate Coke a bishop : " Our John on Coke his hands has laid, But who laid hands on him?" {Bishop Ryatis Reply, delivered in St. Joseph^ s Cathe- dral, Buffalo, Feb. 22, 18J4.) "The Apostolic ministry is sent forth geographically around the circumference of the globe, chronologically to the end of time. So far, and so long, * ye shall be witnesses,' but who shall be witnesses? Ye, Apostles. Is there anything in Scripture more clear, then, than the perpetuity of the Apostolic office ? Those whom our Lord thus addressed personally were not to bear their personal witness here in our part of the earth, yet, said the Master, 'ye shall be witnesses unto me, unto the uttermost part of the earth.* Ajain, they were not to survive the ordinary limit of human life, yet, he says, ' Lo ! I am with you always, even to the end of the wor'r. ..ould any language be more ex- plicit? We assi it lat the Apostolic order and office still exist. No ingenuity can make void this evidence that our Lord designed to perpetuate its corporate identity until his coming again." — {The Corporate Witness) Here we again tread Catholic ground. With this m ■ I I f It 4 :iUGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. doctrine, this line of argument, and even this language, barring perhaps some peculiarity of style and phrase- ology, you, my Catholic friends, are familiar. You have often heard it before from this pulpit. Neither the doctrine nor the argument is new, and I quote it at such length only to exhibit the strange, and, to me, in- explicable phenomenon, so often displayed, especially among our estimable and cultivated Episcopal brethren, of a man holding principles and professing doctrines that must, if logically followed up, inevitably land him in the Catholic Church ; yet, turning his back upon her, closing his eyes to the light of reason, his intellect to the plainest truths of revelation, the most evident declarations of sacred Scripture. Of course, the Apostolic order and office still exist ; of course, our Lord designed to perpetuate its cor- porate identity till his coming again. His divine word is pledged for it ; his veracity is at stake ; his Godhead and divine mission guarantee it : As the Father sent me, I also send you;" "Go teach all nations; I am with you all days till the end of time." But neither Christ our Lord nor his revealed word declare that the Apostlic order and office exist in the Protestant Epis- copal Church, or are transmitted by the mutilated, and oft modified form of consecration used in the Anglican or Protestant Episcopal ordination service. Nowhere in Scripture are we told that this corporate identity was designed to be perpetuated or reproduced in a communion that had no existence until some fifteen hundred years after the Apostolic age. Here again is a grave assumption, which we cannot take on credit; we demand proof ; we find bare assertion ; grand but unproven claims. But hold ! yes, here is an attempt OAjO/A uJ uLh LI i t LL TKLA'l lah. s at proving legitimate descent from the Apostles, by way of illustration, in answer to the objection that "the original Apostles were extraordinary in iheir gifts and functions and hence in the nature of things could have no successors." The preacher very justly argues : " The first President of this Republic had extraordi* nary functions and relations in his high office ; it was his to plant, to lay foundations, to be the father of his country. In all these things he can have no successor. Such were his extraordinary and personal distinctions. Do we argue, therefore, that the American Presidents are not the successors of Washington?" The illustra- tion is excellent, the argument unanswerable in tJie mouth of a Catholic bishop, who holds his commission immediately from a Pontiff who traces his succession in unbroken line to the Apostles — a Catholic bishop deriving his orders and his mission, his authority, right to rule and govern the Church over which the Holy Ghost hath placed hinj a bishop, by the personal and direct authorization of the legitimate successor of him to whom Christ committed the care of his whole flock, and who can furnish the clearest historical evidence of his legitimate descent. Abraham Lincoln or Ulysses S. Grant can claim to be successors of Washington. Could Jefferson Davis do the same ? who rebelled against the old legitimate government and set up an establish- ment of his own. He declared that the powers at Washington had violated the constitution and broken the compact between the States, just the plea made by the reformers to justify their revolt against the author- ity of the See of Rome. The argument, then, that is conclusive in the Catho- lic Church, from the fact that every Catholic layman 6 OKIGIN OF OUR LITTLE THE A TISE. knows that the pastor who ministers to him and teaches him has his orders and authority by the laying on of hands and the grace of ordination from a superior pastor or bishop of a diocese, who, in turn, is directly authorized and commissioned by the Pope, or the supreme pastor, the supreme head of Christ's Church on earth, who again comes down from Peter by one continuous unbroken chain, of which we can count every link from Pius to Peter, is absolutely without force in a Church which has thrown off the authority of Rome, and cannot trace its lineage to the Apostles. This succession of chief pastors is*the main, if not the only guarantee, as well of our Apostolical commission as of the Apostolicity of your faith and doctrine. It is to the chair of P,eter and the regular succession of incumbents in that time-honored and divinely-guarded See, that the early fathers and saints and doctors, in every age, appealed, against unauthorized teachers and the innovations of heretics, and rebellious schismatics. Thus St. Augustine confounds the Donatists : "Come to us, brethren (he writes), if you wish to be engrafted in the vine. We are afflicted at seeing you cut off from its trunk. Count over the bishops in the very See of Peter, and behold in that list of fathers how one succeeded to the other. This is the rock against which the proud 'gates of hell do not prevail.'" Again he says: "I am kept in this Church by the succession of prelates from St. Peter, to whom the Lord committed the care of his sheep, down to the present bishop." (This was, remember, in the 5th century.) And St. Optatus, against the same heretics, enumerates all the Popes from St. Peter to the then reigning Pontiff, Siricius ; " with whom we and all the world," he says, ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE, "are united in communion. Do you, now, Donatists, give the history of your episcopal ministry." Tertul- lian, before, did the same, and challenged th«, heretics of his time to produce the origin of their Church, to dis- play the succession of their bishops, so that the first of them may appear to have been ordained by an Apostolic man who persevered in their communion ; and giving a list of the Pontiffs in the Roman see he says; " Let the heretics feign anything like this." St. Irenaeus, illustrious bishop of Lyons, disciple of St. Polycarp, who was himself a disciple of St. John the Apostle, names all the Popes to St. Eleutherius, then living, and says, " it would be tedious to enumerate the succession of bishops in the different churches; we refer you to that greatest, most ancient and universally known Church founded at Rome by St. Peter and St. Paul, and which has been preserved there through the succession of its bishops down to the present time." St. Jerome knew no other sure way of settling the disputed rights of bishops, and writes to Pope Damasus in regard to the heated controversy between St. Mele- tius and Paulinus, rival claimants of the see of Antioch : "I am joined in communion with your Holiness; that is, with the chair of Peter; upon that rock I know the Church is built. I do not know Vitalis; I <^o not communicate with Miletius; Paulinus is a stranger to me. Whoever is united to the chair of Peter, he is mine." So, also, St. Athanasius, whose illustrious name is dishonored by being coupled with the " Reformers," appeals to the Pope against the heretical intruders into his see of Alexandria, and the violence to which he was subjected by the imperial power, and is protected ill 8 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. in his episcopal character, and his episcopal rights vindicated by Pope Julius I., who wrote thus in the year 342 to the Eastern bishops, who sustained by the power of the State, had driven Athanasius from his see : " Know you not that the canonical rule was to recur first to our authority, and that the decisions must pro- ceed from it ? Such is the tradition that we have re- ceived from the blessed Apostle Peter, and I believe it to be so universally acknowledged, that I should not recall it here if these deplorable circumstances did not constrain me to proclaim it." I dwell so long on this point, although a little beside my purpose, because it shows us a Pope in 342 very similar to our own Pope in 1874, as to this claim and exercise of jurisdiction over the whole Church East and West, and it shows us the great Athanasius ap- pealing to the Pope against the Emperor's violence and his servile, heretical, courtly bishops to be anywhere but in the same boat with the martyred " reformers," who denied the authority of the Pope, acknowledged the spiritual supremacy of the king, and were by his authority intruded into the sees of lawful prelates. *' Christ said we should have such witnesses that they should bear their testimony till the consummation of ages. We believe his promises, we accept them in their plain meaning. And as they are able to demonstrate that their commission is identical with that which was left upon he Mouwt of Olives, your bishops claim, hovvever unworthy, to be the successors of the Apos- tles." — [T/ic Corporate Witness.) Now here again we demur, and deny in toto the wholQ claim of the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America and the bishops of their mother ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. 9 Church of England to Apostolical succession, or that the Apostolical commission has been preserved and transmitted in their communion, or sect, or church, as you may be pleased to call it, for the reasons which I will now give, as briefly and summarily as possible. If the bishops of the American Protestant Episcopal Church have this apostolical succession, or this com- mission identical with that which Christ our Lord gave his Apostles, they derive it from the established Church of England, which they recognize as the mother Church ; but if the Anglican bishops have no title to this claim, they cannot give it to others. There is an old axiom, Nemo dat quod non habet. Now, the Anglican Church has no part in the Apostolical com- mission, unless it can trace its orders and its mission regularly from the Apostles through the Catholic bishops. But this it can hardly consistently attempt to do, as it declared in one of its Homilies the Catholic Church to have been " drowned in abominable idolatry, most detested of God and damnable to man, for the space of eight hundred ye't-s," and in one of the thirty-nine articles " that all the Apostolical sees erred in matters of faith." Could Matthew Parker, the first Anglican bishop, whilst denying the authority of the Pope, and in open revolt against the Apostolical See, claim to hold his authority and his commission from the Church whose corruptions he denounced, and not ©ne of whose bishops would impose hands on him ? In the early Church, bishops appealed for their legitimacy, for their rights and power, for their Apostolical suc- cession, to the Roman Pontiff; his see was styled eminently and emphatically the Apostolical See; he was the trunk to which all the branches should be united. 10 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. But the Church of England revolted against his au- thority, severed itself from his communion, renounced it on account of its " idolatry," and was denounced by it, in turn, as heretical. It is a universally admitted principle of Church government, recognized here in our own country by the practice of every Church, and by decisions of the courts of justice, that a clergyman from whom authority is withdrawn according to the rules and law? of the Church to which he may have been attached, who is no longer recognized as a minister by his proper ecclesi- astical superior, can no longer claim to act for that Church ; his ministrations are not regarded, his minis- terial functions are no longer lawful. (I wonder if Bishop Cheney is recognized as a legitimate bishop and successor of the Apostles by Bishop Coxe? We know not what action the Episcopal body may have taken in this matter, but we do know that he cannot be so recognized, unless at the cost of consistency, authority and unity.) We also know from the history of the Christian Church in all ages, that when a bishop or a priest, or bishops and priests, revolted against the Church in which they were ordained and commissioned, they were by the very fact deprived of all authority to act in the name and by the authority of the Church ; they were silenced or suspended, deprived of their faculties and deposed from their sees. This was the case with the early heretics, the Donatists, Eutychians, the Arians, and others, who had validly ordained bishops; but surely no orthodox Anglican or Episcopalian will aver that these heretical bishops were successors of the Apostles. Something more than val'd ordination or ORIGIN pF OUR LITTLE TREATISE, II the laying on of hands is necessary to perpetuate the Apostolical commission. On these principles, held and acted on by all religious denominations in the govern- ment of their respective societies, we maintain that Matthew Parker, first Anglican bishop, even if validly ordained by the laying on of hands, with due form of prayers and solemnities, and a lawful ordainer, could not transmit jurisdiction, or a share of Apostolical commission, or right to minister in the Church, because he himself did not possess it. But we absolutely deny the validity of his consecra- tion, and thus strike at the very root of all pretensions in the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Church of America to Apostolical succession. We can only sum- marily state the grounds of our positive unconditional denial. It is very doubtful, and can never be proved that he was ever consecrated at all, or that there was anything more than the farce of the " Nag's Head." The Lambeth Register is probably a forgery. Even if it be genuine, and the consecration took place as as- serted, at the hands of Barlow, an apostate monk, it is very doubtful that Barlow himself was ever consecrated, or ever anything m'ore than a bishop elect. Even if Barlow was a regularly consecrated bishop, and went through the form of consecrating Parker, the form used, namely, that devised, as the act has it, by Edward, was notoriously insufificient and invalid, so that acts of Par- liament were deemed necessary to supply defects, in this wise : — "And all persons that have been or shall be made, ordered or consecrated archbishops, bishops, priests, ministers of God's Word and sacraments, or deacons, after the form and order prescribed, be in very deed, i i 12 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. and also by authority hereof, declared and enacted to be, and shall be archbishops, bishops, priests, ministers, and deacons, and rightly made, ordered, and conse- crated." Thus there is some ground for styling them " Parlia- ment bishops," as they were commonly styled; and at least it is evident that there was doubt as to the validity of the form devised by Edward, to which this statute of Elizabeth (1566) refers. In Harding's controversy with the Anglican Bishop Jewel, he asks : " You bear yourself as the legitimate bishop of Salisbury, but how can you prove your vocation ? Who hath laid hands on you; how, and by whom were you consecrated?" and, in reply to the declaration of the latter, that he was consecrated by Parker, Harding subjoins, " How, I pray you, was your archbishop himself consecrated ? Your metropolitan, who should give authority to all your consecrations, had himself no lawful consecration. There were, indeed, some lawful bishops in the king- dom who either were not required to impose hands on you, or who, being required, refused to do so." And again, rallying him on the statute of Parliament making good and valid defective forms of consecration: "If you will needs have your matters seem to depend of your Parliament, let us not be blamed, if we call it a Parlianent religion, Parliament gospel. Parliament faith." Learned divines from the very beginning reproached the bishops of the establishment with invalidity of their orders. Sanders, regius professor of canon law at Oxford, in the time of Elizabeth, says : " For being destitute of all lawful ordination, they were constrained to crave the assistance of the secular power, by au- llili! ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. n thority whereof, if anything were done amiss and not according to the prescript of the law, or omitted and left undone in the former inauguration, it might be pardoned them, and that after they had enjoyed the episcopal office and chair many years without any episcopal consecration." Bristow, another divine of the same period, who died in 1582, says: '- In England the King, yea the Queen, may give their letters patent to whom they will, and they thenceforward may bear themselves as bishops and may begin to ordain minis- ters." ' And of Parker and others who had been Catholic priests, he %2 '•:., "they were deemed, without a new ordination, to be not only priests, but bishops and archbishops, either by virtue of the royal letters, or by a certain ridiculous consecration of those who had re- ceived no power to conseciate, except what the Queen had given them." Whatever opinion we may form ?s to the question whether Parker was consecrated at Lambeth or not, and as to whether Barlow, his pre- tended consecrator, was a bishop or not (for these are matters of opinion to be determined by historical re- search), yet it is absolutely certain, that, on account of the form used, Ansjlican, and consequently Protestant Episcopal, orders are vitiated and invalidated ; and hence, though the Church has acknowledged the validity of ordination in the Greek Church, and even the validity of the consecration of the Jansenist bishops of Holland, and, in fact, of all who preserved the regular ancient form, yet she never would recognize as bishops or priests, those ordained by the forms devised by Edward VI.; and Dr. Milner expresses the mind of the Catholic Church ^vhenhe says, " that the form used in the English Church previous to 1662 is just as proper 14 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. ; l!!i!! r ■ i !.■.[ lii!! 1 1 for the ceremony of confirming, or laying hands on children, as it is for conferring the powers of the epis- copacy." The Church established by law seems to have felt this herself, for, in that year (1662), just one hundred and three years too late to save Anglican orders, convocation changed the form, evidently with the aim of supplying the defect pointed out by Catho- lic divines. Macaulay, in his history of England, af- firms that, in 1661 Episcopal ordination was /....j.v-;-.tolical and unwarrantal:)le preiension. and thus forcibly and miser- ai)ly tearing aw.iy the English Cluirch from the parent stock, forcing her into rebellion, cutting oft" all com- munication witii the main trunk and seat aixi source of Apostolical jurisdiction, the only see in the whole of Chi-istendom through which it is an}' w;i}' possible to trace A]")oslo!ical succession ? lUsliop Ryan' s Reply I0 till' Corporate Witiicss. To this rcplw \^\■. Coxe published a rejoinde*'. •• Catho- lics and Roman ( 'atl/olics, /y an old Latliolio," which in turn was re\'ie\\ed in a series of articles in the ■' Catho- lic Uiiioir" published in Buffalo. The substance of these articles we are now induced to republish in a more permanent iorm. in the hope that the discussion i8 ORIGIN OF OUR LITTLE TREATISE. of the question of Apostolical succession may prove interesting and instructive, especially to our worthy and esteemed Episcopalian friends, who believe with Dr. Coxe that, " from the time of Pontius Pilate until now, a continuous line of men has been found perpetu- ated by the laying on of hands and the empowering of the Holy Ghost," and who, in good faith, and with un- questioning docility, accept the claims of their bishops to be successors of the Apostles, with " commissions identical with that left on the Mount of Olives." As this is no personal controversy, but one on which we enter solely in the interest of Truth, and with a view of promoting the salvation of souls, we shall refrain as much as possible from personal allusions, and as we purpose to confitiei ourselves ^o the question of Apos- tolical succession, we will allow ourselves to be carried away by side issues, or to the discussion of other mat- ters, only in as far as they may have a bearing on the question at issue, or may be forced on us. ,.,i.. — APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL. 19 II. APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL TU iiiECilRlS- TIAN CHURCH — IT IS NOT FOUND LITIIER IN THE ANGLICAN CHURCH, AS-BY-LAW-ESTABLJSHED, OR THE PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL CHURCH OF AMERICA. WE deny then /"« toto that Apostolical succession has been preserved or transmitted in the Protes- tant Episcopal Church of America, or in the Anglican establishment. Let it, moreover, be borne in mind that there can be here no question as to Apostolical succes- sion being an essential doctrine of the Christian Church. It is well demonstrated from Holy Writ, that our Lord founded a corporate order of witnesses, who should be an extension of Himself, a prolonging of His personal mission, and nobody can deny that from the time of Pontius. Pilate until now, a continuous line of men has been found in divers parts of the world, perpetuated by the laying or of hands of those who were before them. It is evident from sacred Scripture, it is known to all who read their Bible, ♦■hat the risen Saviour organized a ministry, a body of teachers, and sent them to teach all nations, promising to be with them to the end of ages, and hence their commission was to continue, they were to be perpetuated to the end of ages. Continu- ous and unbroken succession from the Apostles is, then, 20 APOHTOLICAI. SLCCEHmOX tSSENT/AL unquestionably, a fundamental doctrine, an essential note of the Christian Church. \Vc arc willing to allow that, " onh* in the perpetuated historic identity of the Apostf)lic commission can \vc Hnd monumental evidence of the fact of the resurrection," .'i d conseciucnti)' of the truth of Christianity; and ag.iin : "the canon of Scripture itself dc[)ends on it : you cannot prove your liihle authentic without it." Only those who can satis- factoril)' and certainl)' trace the historic identity of their ministry with, and their legitimate descent from, the Apostles, cm iuivc any certainty of the; reality of th e rcsurrt^tion, o f ihc truth of Christianity, of the canonicity and aiitlienticity of the sacred Scriptures But this identity and Apostolic succession, confessedly essential to the true Church of Christ, the Epi.^copal Church cannot shbw, and therefore the Episcoiial Church cannot prove herself the true Church of Chr.st. Nay, more, only in the Catholic Church, in communio-i with the See of Rome, t/ie Apostolical See. cm tl.is identity be found and clearly demonstrated, and t'aere- forc ail who liold this identity, this succession from th.e Apostles as a necessary char.icteri.-tic, ami i.ii>t:!ic- tive mark of the Christian Church, Ui Ur if lo'ncal and consistent, !i(^ o\'er are plaiph > t^ to I ^^omc, tow;;i(ls w hicii .sC t. Woe betide them if t' le OO ir tacc. ^. l-,.,.o Unfortunatelw L ol s w if. is not a solit.;r\- i: th le terrible jULlgiuent aw.utnig lh;).-e wli'. c i J - e iCi , n e C\'e: to the liiiiu of truth, and harden tli ei! th e inspirations 'race, who through und it a rt- to tlach- ment to the things of earth, or over-mucli affection to family and friends, love of lucre or piieie of intellect, th roui want ot moral courasje to b ear no\•ert^'■ and humility of the cross, stifle the \ i">i 1. (/ O I e on -(?:(■ 'ce TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 21 essential to allow ty of the evidence lently of canon of ove your can satis- entity of ;nt from, reality of V, of the :riptures. nfessedlv L[iiscopal L,pi.scoi)al 3f Christ. pnu:nin-i cai ■' tile re c:;>t:nc- :ical nnd ir faces t- ,1 . : baciv. ... - ' \.>\.V. 1 ) , e their e..rl- t'.) atlach- ction to ntcllect, no\ert)'' is(?i(';u"e halt in their search for truth, and turn back when on the very point of escaping from the Babel of confusion. Many such in our experience we have met, monuments of the justice of God, beacons of warning to those who close their hearts to grace, their eyes to truth, real pillars of salt, their lives produce only dead sea fruit; notwithstanding outside deceitful appearances they are tilled with ashes and wormwood. As to the value to be attached to assertions like these: "The succession in the Church of England is more demonstrably canonical and regular, in all par- ticulars, than any other succession in Christendom," or •* It may be shown that nobody competent to form an opinion, and who has taken the pains to investigate the matter, has ever professed a doubt concerning Anglican succession;" our readers will be able to judge presently. Apostolical succession requires, as those making the above assertions admit, something more than valid ordination. We may admit not only the fact, but also the validity of a bishop's consecration, and yet deny him, even though validly consecrated, any participation in the divine commission given by Christ to His Apostles, any claim to Apostolical suc- cession. Valid ordination is essential to, but insuffi- cient for, legitimate succession. In the whole history of the Christian Church, there is nothing more evident than this, that when a bishop or priest, or bishops and priests, revolted against ecclesiastical authority, or con- tumaciously erred against faith, they were silenced, sus- pended, deprived of their faculties, deposed from their sees. The Church, which had commissioned them and given them authoiity, jurisdiction, a right to teach, and assigned them a mission in which to exercise their Ill !l 1 i m 32 APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION ESSENTIAL ministry, simply revoked their commission, recalled her grant of powers, and annuUe*^ all license to act for her, in her name, or by her authority. Thus she acted towards the validly ordained and rightly consecrated heretical Donatist, Eutychian and Arian bishops ; and who among our orthodox Anglicans or Episcopalians will recognize such excommunicated, deposed and deprived heretical bishops as successors of the Apostles. She holds the same principles to-day; schismatical and heretical bishops such as the bishops of the Greek Church, the Jansenist bishops of Holland, and even Reinkens, the itin>.rant Old Catholic bishop of Germany, even if validly ordained, have no share in the Apos- tolical commission, have no jurisdiction, they are not sent, and how shall they preach? They are thus cut off from communion with the Church, broken off from the chain of Apostolical succession. Again, it is equally certain, and the history of the Church from the days c( the Apostles bears witness, that bishops appealed in proof of their legitimacy, their right and authority to take and hold and govern their respective sees, to the See of Rome, the See of Peter, because from the very beginning of the Church the bishops of the whole Christian world acknowledged the primacy of the See of Peter, the universal jurisdiction and supreme au- thority of the successors of Peter, whom Christ Him- self commissioned to feed and govern his whole flock. This primacy of jurisdiction was necessary to maintain in unity of faith, a Church destined to spread over and embrace the habitable globe, from ocean to ocean, and from pole to pole. This supreme authority vested in the Apostolic See, not by the canons, but by the Lord Jesus Himself in founding His Church, the bishops in TO THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 23 every age admitted, and none perhaps more unequiv- ocally than the great Bossuet, whom " Old Catholic" loves to quote. " All," says the eloquent bishop of Meaux, "are subject to tiie keys of Peter, kings and people, prelates and priests; we own it with joy, for we love unity, and glory in obedience." Communion with the See of Rome, recognition of spiritual supremacy, and primacy of jurisdiction in the See of Peter, was not only the test of orthodoxy, but the proof of legitimacy and the guaranty of Apos- tolic succession. Now the Anglican bishops in the time of Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth dis- owned all allegiance in spiritual matters to the Sovereign Pontiffs, revolted against Peter's authority, and re- nounced his spiritual supremacy, and thus was brought about that change in the religious system " under which," says Rev. Mr. Waterworth, in his historical lectures on the Reformation, " our forefathers during more than a thousand years lived and died. It was Henry's lustful revenge and rapacity that removed the key-stone of the arch, the principle of unity, by which under one head appointed by Jesus Christ, there was formed of all the nations and kingdoms of the earth, one Catholic or universal kingdom, believing in one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one Church." The historian, Dr. Hcylin, in the preface to his" His- tory of the Reformation," acknowledges "that Henry, finding the Pope the greatest obstacle to his desires, divested him by degrees of that supremacy, which had been challenged and enjoyed by his predecessors for some ages past, and finally extinguished his authority in the realm of Enp;]and." The king's authority \\as subs.iLi.itcd tor the Pope's, the king's spiritual suprcm- 24 APOS TOIJCAf. S['CCF.SSICh\' r.SSF.jVT/AL w TC obliucd to swear tliat acy, ami not the Pope's, was now im-oked, and tlie king \\as declared to be the fountain of all jurisdiction, both temporal and spiritual. In the oath of supremac}' exacted froni all^ archbishops and bishops in the reign of Elizabeth, the pi-elats their right and mission to i)!-e;icli and to minister were derived from the civil power duW. and before conse- cration the bisho[) elect was made to " acknowledge and confess that he holds his bishopric as ^\■e]l in spirituals as temporals from her alone, and the crown royal." Not from the Apostles, then, to whom it was said "go and teach all nations," etc., but from a vin- dictive, lustful king, a sickly boy, and a bad woman, do the Anglican bishops derive their commission and jurisdiction, and \eiy correct!}- does Dr. Milncr, whom Id no one acquainted with, the man or his writings won call ignorant, argue that "the acknowledgment of royal ecclesiastical supremacy ' in all spriritual and ec- clesiastical things or causes' is decidedlv.a renunciation of Christ's commission given to Ilis Apostles, and pre- served by their successors in tlie Catholic Apostolic Church." Hence it clearl}^ appears that there is, and can be, no Apostolical succession of ministr}' in the established Church.. The line of Apostolical succession in the Church of Encrland was then broken in thcreit^n of 1 lcnr\- VIII., the breach widened under Edward VI., IIk" rupture partially liealctl under Mar}-, was re-opened under Elizabeth, \\hen the chain reaching from Augustine and tiirough h.im fi-om the .Apostles (for he was sent and commissioned in* Pope Grcgor)), down to Cardinal Pole, was ruthlessl}' and hopelessly severed by Parker's intrusion into the See of Canterburx', Parker held his 'I'll I' TO TIIK Clii:iS ii.lX LirCRClI. 2% commission, and acknowledged on oath that he held his commission and jurisdiction, his rij^ht and authority to preacli. teach, and admiiiistor sicranients from the crown, from her majesty, and her majesty's pliant Parliament. X, 26 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER III. COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER THE TEST OF LEGITIMATE SUCCESSION. ARBITRARY and tyrannical rulers, aided by servile Parliaments, and an intimidated clergy, dissevered the Church of England from what was known through- out Christendom, East and West, as emphatically and pre-eminently the Apostolic See, the See of Rome, the only See to whic^ it is possible to-day for the Chris- tian Church to appeal, to prove with certainty her Apostolical origin, to attest the historic transmission of the Apostolic commission, to vouch for the corporate identity of her bishops with the original witnesses. To this Roman See, centre and source of unity, because vested with supreme authority and universal jurisdic- t'ion, and to the unbroken succession of Sovereign Pontiffs, in the same, the primitive Church, the early fathers, saints and doctors ever appealed against un- authorized teachers, innovating heretics, and rebellious schismatics. Whosoever were not united to the chair of Peter, were not regarded as successors of the Apos- tles ; nay, by the fact of their not belonging to that leading succession, they were, as St. Irenneus tells us, to be suspected as heretics and schismatics. A bishop, then, even when rightly ordained or validly consecrated, if he apostatize from the faith, rebel against the recog- MII9iF«iJ'-JJ'lliJiJ.I THE TEST OF LEG/ TIM A TE SUCCESSION. IE TEST OF nized authority of the Church, and be cut off from her communion, cannot pretend to any share in the com- mission which comes down by historical transmission from the Apostles ; hence, though Matthew Parker suc- ceeded Warham and Pole in the See of Canterbury, even allowing that he were actually and validly conse- Tated, would no more be a successor of the Apostles than Jeff. Davis was a successor of Washington. This Dr. Kenrick thus expresses: "As well might Crom- well be considered one of the Stuart kings of England, or Napoleon Bonaparte one of the Bourbon race, as Matthew Parker, even if validly ordained — be regarded as a link added to the chain of Catholic archbishops of Canterbury, reaching down from St. Augustine to Cardinal Pole, in whom that illustrious series of Pon- tiffs finally ceased." We moreover assert that full communion with the See of Rome was the test of orthodoxy and legitimacy, not only in the primitive Church, but was the test of the orthodoxy and legitimacy of the bishops of Eng- land, down to the time of Henry VIII. To the testi- mony already adduced from Rev. Mr. Waterworth, and Dr. Heylin, in his " History of the Reformation," we will only add the following. Dodd, in his " Churcli History of England," quotes a remarkable speech which some, says the historian, ascribe to Bishop Fisher. "Whoever the person was, he takes the liberty to say that the cause (the royal supremacy) was of the greatest consequence, that he could wish the king were capable of that power he aimed at ; that it was an at- tempt directly opposite to the practice of the English nation, in all former ages ; that it was depriving the ecclesiastical body of a spiritual head, m.uch more 28 COMMLW'/UX IViri! rilK SLE OF I'.i-.IER necessary than in temporal affairs; that no spiritual jurisdiction was ever looked upon as valid, without the approbation of the See of Rome ; that the See of Rome was the centre of unity, by v/hose authority heresy had always been suppressetl, and princes reconciled by submitting to her decisions and arbitration ; in fine, Rome was a kind of court of chancery to all nations that professed Christianity; and those that were divided from her, would be like branches cut off from the tree of life." ' Please to mark well the words that the " attojipt of Henry zvas directly opposite to the practiit cj the Eug/ish nation in all former ages: that no spiritual jurisdiction was looked upon as valid without approbation of the See of Rome, a>id that those divided from Rome would be like branches cut of f?om the tree of life.'' This certainly does not tally with what the claimant of Anglican succession asserts on this subject : "• Henry s supremacy was based on ancient rights of the crown which he merely re-assumed ;" and, ''gradually by unlazvful cn- croachmoit the Papacy was formed in JVestern Europe, and so, gradually, its usurpation extended to England^ And again: "Queen Mary, the bloody, created the Roman hierarchy b\- law, while Henry VIII. never did anything of the kind ; but merely continued the Church as he found it," anci "to suppose that Elizabeth estab- lished the Church Oi I\,n<'!and in anv sense other than that in which it was the law of the land under the Plantagenets and the Papacy, is a very ignorant mis- take," etc., etc. We must remark that in refuting these assertions, made with all the recklessness, effrontery, and disregard to historic truth, usual with certain parties, we do little more than condense and summarize Till: TJ-.sr Of LLGITIMATE SLCCtSSlON. 29 the facts of history touching this matter, admirably brought together by the learned Cardinal \\'isen\an, whom, no doubt, these gentlemen would write down an ignoramus, who has dither never investigated the mat- ter, or is incompetent to form an opinion. Venerable Hede informs us tjiat Pope Eicutheriussent over missionaries to the Britons, and converted them. And when the Pelagian heresy had inf^^stedthe Island, Pope Celestine sent St. Germanus to correct and purify it. A Pope then, not a king, commissioned the missionaries and bishops of the early Pricish Church. Again, that slaves might become sons, that Angli might be made Angcli, Pope St. Gregory sent .Vugustine from his in(Mi i. tor\- on theCieHan hill, wh ) reconverted the Lsland under the .\nglo-Saxons, and established the legitimate succession of the Episcoi-'ac}", nhicli con- tinued until the aicroaclnncnts and 7isurpalio!:s of spir- itual supremacy by Iicnr}\ and his worthy daughter Elizabetii. Is ii vrith ;t design to mislead, that v,e are told . " When the Patriarch Gregor\', Pishop (jf Rome," (though the same writer sa\'s. it was impossible for the Pope to assert even a patriarchal authorit\' over England^ sent .\ugustinc to convert the Saxons, the missionar\- fouiul there an existing British. Church dating fi-oni 'lie Apostolic times." He might as well ha\e added fr. )ni the Venerable Bede. to whoni he re- fers, that.it wa--. as we said above, a I'ope of Rome who ga\e autlioritx". mission and jurisdiction to the hishojjs of the British (Jliiirch. Again we are told, " .Augustine was consecrateiop.s, whereby the court of Rome uV.cd vacant bciKtices wilh struniicrs : until the time oi llenr\- \'lil., we never read of any denial of the Pope's authority to confirm arclibishop.s, or of his jurisdiction over them ; he had ever a legate in England who took precedence and passctl judgment in their causes, and until the time of Henry VIII., the privileges and rights of the Holy See were never impugned or disputed,. recent declar.i- tions to the contrary notwithstanding. The conclusion so pertinent to our argument, which the eminent and learned Cardinal Wiseman logically f orces tl om tne mi )uth of Anelicans fond of ipp bal- ing to ancient canons and customs and privileges of patriarchal sees, is — "That the bishops now ex- isting in England, even supposing the validity of their orders, were instituted and appointed, the Bishop of Rome not only not consentient, but repugnant thereto, and vehemently condemning the '"-hurch of England was never a Roman C'atholic Church. Let: us hear what the Church of England herself aas i-.o say THE TEST OF LEGITJMA TE SUCCESSION. 33 had. ■chical what- y are i the ■e in s and I be thaf- )ased I I re h ) say on this point. In the year 1534, Parliament, under orders from a despotic King, declared that the Bishop of Rome had no jurisdiction over the Church of Eng- land, and that the king was rightfully her supreme head. In the year 1536 the Church of England, in con- vocation at York, declared : " We think the king's highness, nor any temporal man, may not be the head of the Church by the laws of God, * * * and we think by the law of the Church, general councils, interpreta- tions of approved doctors, and consent of Christian people, the Pope of Rome hath been taken for the head of the Church and Vicar of Christ, and so ought to be taken." Again, in the first year of Elizabeth's reign, both houses of convocation, and the two Universities, declared it to be the faith of the Church of England : " That the supreme power of feeding and governing the militant Church of Christ and confirming their brethren is given to Peter, the Apostle, and his lawful successors in the See Apostolic, as unto the vicars of Christ." Our readers may perhaps like to hear what Henry himself says on this subject, in his defence of the Sacraments against Martin Luther : " Luther cannot deny but that all the faithful Christian Churches, at this day, do acknowledge and reverence the holy See of Rome as their mother and primate. * * * And if this acknowledgment is grounded neither on divine nor human right, how hath it taken so great and gen- eral root ? how was it admitted so universally by all Christendom ? how began it ? how came it to be so great ? yea, and the Greek Church also, though the empire was passed to that part, we shall find that she acknowledged the primacy of the same Roman Church. i III II 11 34 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER Uil ''} # # * Whereas Luther so impudently doth affirm that the Pope hath his primacy by no right, neither divine nor human, but only by force and tyranny, I do wonder how the mad fellow could hope to find his readers so simple, or blockish as to believe that the Bishop of Rome, being a priest, unarmed, alone, with- out temporal force, or right, either divine or human (as he supposed) should be able to get authority over so many bishops his equals throughout so many dif- ferent nations. *•»<•* Or that so many people, cities, kingdoms, commonwealths, provinces and nations would be so prodigal of their own liberty, as to sub- ject themselves to a foreign priest (as now so many ages they have done), or to give him such auth< , ity over themselves, if lie had no right thereunto at all." Perhaps, too, it might be interesting to recall what Dr. Lingard says in regard to this assumption by Henry of spiritual supremacy. ** Henry had now obtained the great object of his ambition. His supremacy in religious matters had been established by act of Par- liament. * * * Still the extent of his ecclesiastical pretensions remained subject to doubt and dissension. That he intended to exclude the authority hitherto exercised by the Pontiffs, was sufficiently evident. * * * Henry himself did not clearly explain, perhaps he knew not how to explain, his own sentiments. If on the one hand, he was willing to push his ecclesias- tical prerogative to its utmost limits, on the other he was checked by the contrary tendency of those princi- ples, which he had published And maintained in his treatise against Luther." But he did push this pre- tended prerogative of the crown to extreme limits, when he made Cromwell his vicar-general, allowed THE TEST OF LEGITIMA TE SUCCESSION. 35 him precedenc I'ch before all the lords spiritual and temporal, jx. only made him sit in Parliament before the archbishop of Canterbury, but made him supersede that prelate in the presidency of the convo- cation. The degradation of the bishops was, however, not yet deep enough. It was resolved "to extort from them a practical acknowledgment that they derived no authority from Christ, but were merely the occa- sional delegates of the crown. He suspended the powers of all the Ordinaries of the realm, and by making them petition for the restoration of the same, made them acknowledge the crown to be the real foun- tain of spiritual jurisdiction. When they submitted with abject servility, and petitioned for the restoration of their suspended powers, a commission was issued to each bishop separately, authorizing him during the king's pleasure, and as the king's deputy, to orda n* etc. The same assumption and arbitrary exercise of the prerogative of the crown, and spiritual supremacy were continued under Edward and Elizabeth, with this difference, that under Henry the bishops, brow-beaten, intimidated and demoralized, yielded, with the excep- tion of the heroic bishop of Rochester, and thus in some sense appeared'' lend the sanction of the Church to Henry's tyrannical usurpations, whereas under Eliza- beth they atoned for their pusillanimity and cowardice, redeemed the honor of the episcopc.cy, and, with the solitary exception of Kitchen of Llandaff, spurned the oath of supremacy, and without even one excep- tion they refused to be madt the tools of the royal popess by conferring a fraudulent illegitimate conse- cration on her appointees. All this we have detailed so lengthily to show that 36 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER in the Church of England (and the same may be shown of rvery Church in Christendom), from her earliest es- tablishment, and especially since the introduction of Christianity among the Saxons by St. Augustine, down through every age, even to the time of Henry and Elizabeth, the supremacy of the Pope in things spiritual was acknowledged. The Pope exercised jurisdiction over the island, and the bishops, archbishops and primates, down to Parker's illegitimate intrusion by the civil power, held their commissions from the Apostolic See, and thus were linked on to the unbroken Apostolic chain, the legitimate succession of their bishops thus coming down from the Apostles. How clearly and conclusively is this shown by Arch- bishop Heath of York, in the eloquent and forcible \ speech, which he delivered in the House of Lords, against the spiritual supremacy of the crown in the year 1559. His able speech may be found in full in "Dodd's Church History of England ; Appendix 35.," from which we quote the following extracts : " By relinquishing and forsaking the Church or See of Rome, we must forsake and fly, first, from all general councils; secondly, from all canonical and ecclesiasti- cal laws of the Church of Christ ; thirdly, from the judg- ment of all other Christian princes ; fourthly, and lastly, we must forsake and fly from the holy unity of Christ's Church. -5^ * * First, touching the general councils, I shall name unto you these four: the Nicene Council, the Constantinopolitan Council, the Ephesine, and the Chalcedon. * * * At the Nicene Council, the first of the four, the bishops did write their epistle to Sylves- ter, then Bishop of Rome, that their decrees then made, might be confirmed by his authority. At the council THE TEST OF LEGITIMA TE SUCCESSION. n kept at Constantinople, all the bishops there were obe- dient to Damasus, then Bishop of Rome. * * * At the Ephrsine Council, Nestorius, the heretic, was con- demned by Celestine» the Bishop of Rome, he being chief judge there. At the Chalcedon Council, all the bishops there assembled, did write their humble sub- mission unto Leo, then Bishop of Rome ; wherein they did acknowledge him there, to be their chief head, six hundred and thirty bishops of them. Therefore to deny the See Apostolic and its authority, were to con- temn and set at naught, the authority and decrees of these noble councils. * * * Fourthly, and lastly, we must (by forsaking the See of Rome) forsake and fly from the holy unity of Christ's Church, seeing that St. Cyprian, that holy martyr and great clerk, doth say that the unity of the Church of Christ doth depend upon Peter's authority, and his successor's. * * * And by this our forsaking and flying from the unity of the Church of Rome, this inconveniency, among many, must consequently follow: that either we must grant the Church of Rome to be the true Church of God, or else a malignant Church. If you answer that it is a true Church of God, where Jesus Christ is trulytaught and his sacraments rightly administered, how can we disburthen ourselves of our forsaking and flying from that Church, which we do acknowledge to be of God? If you answer that the Church of Rome is not of God, but a malignant Church, then it will follow that we, the inhabitants of this realm, have not as yet received any benefit of Christ ; seeing we have received no gospel, or other doctrine, nor no other sacraments, but what was sent to us from the Church of Rome — first, in King Lucius, his days, at whose humble epistle, 38 COMMUNION WITH THE SEE OF PETER the holy martyr Eleutherius, then Bishop of Rome, did send into this realm two holy monks, Fugatius and Damianus, by whose doctrine and preaching we were first brought to the knowledge of the faith of Jesus Christ, of his holy gospel and his most holy sacraments ; then, secondly, holy St. Gregory, being Bishop of Rome, did send into this realm two other holy monks, St. Augustine, called the Apostle of England, and Meletius, to preach the self-same faith planted here, in this realm in the days of King Lucius; thirdly, and last of all, Paul III.,*being Bishop of Rome, did send hither the Lord Cardinal Pole, his grace (by birth a nobleman of this land), his legate to restore us unto the same faith, which the martyr, St. Eleutherius, and St. Gregory, had planted here many years before. If, therefore, the Church of Rome be not of God, but a false and malig- nant Church, then have we been deceived all this while ; seeing the gospel, the doctrine, the faith and the sacra- ments must be of the same nature as that Church is from whence it and they came." This disposes of the ludicrous assertion, made with so much apparent self-complacency and assurance, that : " The first archbishop of Canterbury was consecrated at Aries, in France (597) and thus introduced the Eph- esine succession from St. John, through Irenaeus and Photinus." This assertion is moreover too childish for any one who pretends to know anything about primi- tive Christianity. Must we teach again the first ele- ments of Christian Doctrine, the first principles of Church organizatien, and government? must we repeat the plain distinction between orders and mission ? must we go about proving what has already been acknowl" edged, what the Episcopal Church teaches and acts Julius 111., he doubtless meant. THE TEST OF LEGITIMA TE SUCCESSION. 39 upon, viz. : that something more than a vaMd conse- cration is necessary to confer jurisdiction, a share in the commission and apostolate instituted by Christ to evangelize the nations and convert the world? Aries could consecrate, only Rome could send Augustine with Apostolic authority to England, to preach the faith and transmit Apostolic succession to the English hierarchy. 40 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN IV. PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN SUCCESSION REPUDIATED. WE cannot, perhaps, offer anything cii the subject of the pretended legitimacy, jurisdiction, and con- sequently Apopt jlic succession of the Protestant Episco- pal prelates of the United States, more conclusive and clear than the earnest words of the lamented and estim- able Dr. Ives, late bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church in North Carolina : " The real character of the Episcopal authority and mission of the Protestant Episcopal Church in America must depend upon the character of the source from which they are derived.. '* So that any defect which the Mother Church of England may have inherited from the system of Eliza- beth, seemed to me clearly entailed upon the daughter in the United States. " Now then, I entreat my old friends to allow me to call to their minds that view of the mission and juris- diction of the English Church, as established by Eliza- beth, which destroyed my confidence in her claim to my submission. I asked myself — not as a Catholic, not as a controversialist — but as one deeply anxious to know the will of Gody and to know, if possible, that that will would sustain me in my Protestant position — I asked myself, who sent Archbishop Parker? 'For how can he preach except he be sent ?' Who put the SUCCESSION REPUDIATFD. 41., Gospel into his hand? told him. what it contained? what was the depositum of faith and sacraments and worship of the ' one, holy, Catholic Church' com- mitted to him, and commissioned him to teach that faith, dispense those sacraments, and conduct that worship, and, when death should come to terminate his Apostolic work, to hand on that * depositum to the successors of the Apostles yet to arise ? I made this appeal to my conscience again and again. ' Who thus sent the first archbishop of Elizabeth, gave him his mission to act in this or that way for God ?' ** When Elizabeth ascended the throne, I saw two powers only, who even claimed the right of spiritual jurisdiction of England, and thence the right of pving mission to exercise ' the office of a bishop in the Church of God !' the Pope and the queen ! The Pope sus- tained in his authority by the whole Church in England ;- the queen sustained by her Parliament only. The Churchy therefore, in England, could not have com- missioned and sent this archbishop. She was utterly against him. Against him in her faith, her sacraments, her worship, her judgment, her authority ! she stood forth, with the successor of St. Peter at her head, pro- fessing the Catholic faith, dispensing the Catholic sacraments, and enforcing the Catholic ritual, and re- quiring all who went out under her authority to defend this faith, guard these sacraments, and observe this ritual ! The archbishop of Elizabeth appears, in defi- ance of the successor of St. Peter, professedly bearing another faith, othersacraments,and commissioned under another ritual I Who ^^«/ him ? Whence derived he the authority to execute the office of a bishop in the mystical body of Christ — the one, holy, and Apostolic 42 PHOTESTANT EPISCOPAL A.VD ANGLICAN . { , I I IR i I Church. Really, 1 could discern no authority earlier than the queen and Parliament of England ! And, therefore, that mj/ own commission to act for Christ had its origin in man /" Convinced by such conclusive and unanswerable arguments, drawn from a profound and conscientious study of the whole question in all its aspects and bearings, with the pages of Church history lying open before them, and the doctrine and canons and usages of the early Christian Church thoroughly sifted and scrutini^''d, many of the purest, most gifted and scholarly minds in the Anglican establishment in Eng- land, and the Episcopal Church in America have not only doubted the Anglican succession, but finding it to be a myth, have laid down their lucrative livings, to enter the Catholic Church as simple laymen, and re- ceived orders in the Church from bishops possessing Apostolic succession, or else, like Dr. Ives, have lived and died in the ranks of the laity, in the midst of the world, shining out as' bright exemplars of heroic Christian virtue. Such in England are the Mannings, the Newmans, the Wilberforces, the Fabers, the Allies, and many others ; those in our own country we will forbear to mention ; they are too well known, men whose massive intellectual build, comprehensive, culti- vated minds, logical acumen, vast and varied learning overshadow and completely dwarf, in our opinion, at least, those who have the hardihood to asset t/iai no one competent to form an opinion, and who ^'ns taken the pains to investigate the matter, has ever professed a doubt concerning the Anglican succession, and that it is more demonstrably canonical and regular in all particulars than any other succession in Christendom. SUC&ESSION REPUDIATED. 43 No one has doubted the Anglican succession ! ! The whole Catholic Church doubts it, or rather posi- tively denies it, the Greek Church disowns it, the Prot- estant world ridicules the pretension, the whole of Christendom outside the Anglican and American Episcopal Church denies and rejects the unwarrantable claim. Yet outside of that comparatively small com- munion there must be some thoughtful men, cofHpe- tent to form an opinion. Nay, on this point, as well as every other fundamental Christian tenet, there is divi- sion, even in the little body of the Anglican Church herself, and I am sure I need not reiterate that iii the Protestant Episcopal Church in America, many not only doubt it, but scout the very notion. An Angli- can bishop, not many years ago, preaching on a solemn public occasion at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, de- nied it in strongest language, and the only reprimand he received was, that he was not asked to print his sermon ! Where were the Apostolic witnesses of the faith? were they all sleeping sentinels on the watch towers of Sion ? no one to give the alarm ? no one to protest ? If Apostolical succession can be thus publicly denied by a bishop of the Church of England, are we not justified in placing credence in what a learned English writer, now happily a Catholic, author — among other genial productions — of " My Clerical Friends," which we would advise our Episcopal readers to peruse thoughtfully, says : " The mass of our coun- try-men have so little esteem for the doctrines of the Christian priesthood and the Apostolical succession that they can hardly be persuaded to treat them seri- ously." The same thoughtful Writer, who certainly has thoroughly studied and dispassionately investigated 44 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN ! ! the matter, though perhaps some would declare him incompetent to form an opinion, again says : " The modern English assertors of Apostolical succession know that the men who formed the Church of England and composed both its ritual and its theology, detested the very doctrines which ///ryhave learned to approve, and would have destroyed even that semblance of a hierarchy which they have preserved, if the Tudor sovereigns would have suffered them to do so." Nay, even Hooker, so often quoted as authority, did actually teach that, it was quite possible to do without bishops ; that there may be sometimes very just and sufficient rea- son to allow ordination made without a bishop, when, for- sooth, the exigence of necessity doth constrain to leave the usual ways of the Church, or when the Church must needs have some ordained, and neither hath, nor can have a bishop to ordain. The terse and well-informed English writer above referred to says of Hooker, " No one knew better than he that the first link in the Anglican hierarchy was forged, not by an Apostle Or Patriarch, but by the masculine hand of Elizabeth Tudor, and therefore too prudent to expose the new hierarchy to a strain which it could not bear, he thought it good policy to say, ' We are not simply without exception to urge a lineal descent from the Apostles by continued succession of bishops in every effectual ordination.' In life he had denied the Apostolical succession whenever the ' exigence of neccessity' made it superfluous, in death he uttered a still more energetic protest against it, without any necessity at all, by sending for, not an Anglican minister,* but Saravia, who had never received or Jjretended to receive Episcopal or- dination." Not only then Cranmer and Barlow, but SUCCESSION KEPUDIA TED. 45 even the favorite Hooker ('* wise in his generation and rightly styled by posterity, the judicious Hooker") thought lightly of Apostolical succession in the Angli- can Church, which, nevertheless, we are told was never doubted by any one capable of forming an opinion, and rests on the same evidence as the Scripture itself. But the reason given as an apology for the low views of these Reformers concerning the episcopate is too amusing: " How could they have known better while they were under the Papacy. Popes had taught them that bishops were only presbyters, in order to magnify themselves as the only and universal bishops." This we pronounce a positive and unqualified falsehood, but granting that, " such was the common teaching of school divines before the Reformation," how does it help the Anglican's case ? Anglicans themselves admit that a church in schism forfeits all right to the lawful exercise of hierarchical powers or jurisdiction ; that bishops of a schismatical communion could not lawfully, though they might validly, exercise ecclesiastical functions ; could not be admitted to a voice in a general council, or communi- cate with other bishops, until they retract their errors or schismatical principles, and then when returning to the unity of the Church, they should be formally rec- ognized by ecclesiastical authority and reinstated in their sees, or removed to others, or else remain sus- pended. Anglicans themselves admit that Apostolical succession cannot exist outside the true Church of God, and St. Augustine most positively declares that even those who maintained the integrity of faith, but fell from unity, were outside the pale of the Church. "You are with us," he says, "in baptism, in the creed. 46 PROTESTANT EPISCOPAL AND ANGLICAN in the other sacraments of the Lord, but in the spirit of unity, in the bond of peace — in fine in the Catholic Church itself — you are not with us." But like the Donatists and' early heretics, Anglicans and Episcopa- lians justify their separation from the Church, their breach of unity, by urging the corruptions of the Church, the usurpations of the papacy. " England in rejecting a usurping papacy fell back on her ancient Catholic rights, and began to renew and to regain, as her old law, all her primitive relations with all the Apostolic Sees." But they forget that one of the pleas for setting up a new establishment was that " all the Apostolic Sees had erred in faith." " England," we are told, " is not in communion with Pius IX., for his new dogma rends him from communion with all his own predecessors and with all antiquity." But at her very setting out in life, the Church of England had solemnly declared that for upwards of eight hundred years the whole Church was sunk in damnable idolatry. We may paraphrase the answer given to a similar charge of the Donatists by the early doctors, thus : " Either the Church was so corrupted as to be no longer the Church of Christ, or it was not ; if it was, then the promises of Christ had failed, and His Church had ceased, the gates of hell had prevailed. He was no longer with His Church, the Spirit of Truth, the Holy Ghost, no longer dwelt with her; there is then no suc- cession, no historical transmission of powers from the Apostles. But if the Church was still the Church of Christ, if Christ's promises did not fail, and if His plighted word was made good, that He should be with those whom He sent to the end of ages, then those who went out from her on pretence that she had erred il !■ SUCCESSION REPUDIATED. 4; and had become corrupt, and that the corruptions of the Church rendered it impossible for them to remain in communion with her, simply condemn themselves, and render their claim to succession from the Apostles preposterous in the extreme. If their charge of apos- tacy and idolatry be true, how are they going to make connection with the pure primitive Church ? how over- leap that fearful chasm of upwards of eight hundred years of abominable corruptions, idolatry, heresy and crime? how stretch the chain of succession across that foul and reeking abyss ? Why Pius IX. has by one new error " rent his communion with all antiquity, and Bishop Ryan, by the errors of his Church since the Vatican Council, or even since the Council of Trent, has lost all right to the name of Catholic, all claim to Apostolical succession," how then could the Anglican Church, after eight hundred years of such dreadful crimes and errors in even every Apostolic See, have been able to recover and transmit legitimate descent down to the reformers ? This, says a spicy English writer, is " as if a man should contend proudly for a pedigree derived through countless generations of felons. What ! call the whole Catholic priesthood the spawn of Antichrist, and then attempt to prove that your orders are manifestly divine because you can trace them to that source ; revile the whole Catholic Church as ' the harlot of Babylon,' as twenty generations of Anglican bishops and clergy did, and then claim her as your mother ; sepa- rate from the Catholic Church on the ground that she was ' Antichristian,' and claim to be the legitimate des- cendants of Antichrist ?" But if the Church did not thus err, apostatize, adul- I I i J 48 ANGLIC^IN SUCCESS/ON REP JDIA TED, terate the pure truths of Christianity, and become artti- christian, which most certainly she did not, for to as- sert that she did, in the face of Christ's own plighted word, *' that the gates of hell should not prevail against her," "that He himself would be \Vith her all days," " that the Holy Spirit should abide with her forever, and teach her all truth," is blasphemous impiety ; then the Reformers broke olY from the Church of Christ, severed the bonds of unity, and as schismatics and heretics the reformed bishops never had, as we said before, with Cardinal Wiseman, "any eccleFiastical, hierarchical or Apostolical succession, authority, or jurisdiction whatever, and are in the eyes of the Church illegitimate intruders and usurpers." iy.lS .^r AT THE IV P.-iA'A'EA COXSECKATRDt 49 V. WAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? IF Parker was not validly consecrated, the chain of Apostolical succession in the Anglican Church, and, in consequence, in the Episcopal Church of America, is broken, the very first link is wanting, for as Water- worth remarks, "The episcopal sees, and, eventually, the cures throughout England, were supplied by men ordained and consecrated by Parker, and if Parker were not a consecrated bishop, then neither were the Anglican clergy and prelacy episcopally ordained nor consecrated." To realize more fully how the whole episcopate of the Anglican Church hangs on the valid- ity of Parker's consecration, and how true it is that he is the connecting link between the old and new hier- archy of England, wie must remember that at the time of Parker's real or supposed consecration, December 17th, 1559, there was but one lawful titular bishop throughout the realm ; every see but one, that of Llandaff, was vacant. Dr. Heylin, a Protestant histor- ian, informs us that there were no more than fifteen living of that sacred order, and that they all, but Kitchen of Llandaff, whom another Protestant historian calls the calamity of his see, refused the oath of supremacy, and were in consequence deprived of their sees. There were twenty-six sees within the realm; two of them were archbishoprics. Of these, one archbishopric, that of 50 IFAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? Canterbury, and nine episcopal sees were vacant by death ; the other archbishop and bishops, Dr. Heylin s.iys, " being called in the beginning of July, 1559, t>y certain of the lords of the council commissi.on.ated thereunto in due form of law, were then and there re- quired to take the oath of suprem^y according to the law made in that behalf. Kitchen of LlandafT alone takes it. * * * By all the rest it was refused." After giving the names of every Catholic prelate in the realm who refused, they were not, he says, all de- prived u:itil the end of September. " But now," he continues, " they had hardened one another to a reso- lution of standing out unto the last, and were there- upon deprived of their several bishoprics, as the law required. A punishment which came not on them all at once, some of therh being borne withal (in hope of their conformity and submission) till the end of Sep- tember." " The civil power," says Waterworth, " armed with the oath of supremacy, had destroyed the hierarchy of the Church. The Parliament had thrown down, but how was it to build up ? Was the queen or the gov- ernment to use the same authority which had un- bishoped the Church, to create a hierarchy." This scrap of English history lets in a world 01 light on the cradle of the Anglican establishment, and shows that its legal title, "<-he Church of England by law and Parliament established," belies the claim to Apostolical ■ origin, stamps it as a mil foundation, and shows, more- over, how ridiculous and absurd the pretence, that at the Reformation a return was made to ancient rules, and that the Church of England only fell back on her ancient rights. " Let those who pretend such rever- ence fof ancient canons show," — as Cardinal Wiseman ! j Nil H^'A S MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? 51 replies to the assertion, that : ** On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, the true successors of the Apostles in the English Church were reinstated in their righte," " the'Xianons whereby the deprivation of bishops,- aijd the appointment of new ones by letters rnissive.air^, granted to the civil rulers. If they allow the authority of Elizabeth to act as she did, then let them be con- sistent and admit that of Mary to act similarly ; and moreover, let them give us their warrant lor such authority, in the ancient Church to which they appeal. If they consider it to have been usurpation in Eliza- beth, * of the iron hand and of the iron maw,' as some of them have called her, then is their entire hierarchy based upon an unjustifiable and tyrannical act of power, and they who compose it are intruders." Who deposed, the same learned cardinal asks, these sixteen bishops, that then formed the hierarchy of the English Church? who reinstated the others? and who were reinstated? We will await reply to these queries, and in the mean- time, we beg to call the attention of that impartial secular authority who thinks " that there is a perfect legal and historical identity, so to speak, of person, between the Church of England before the Reforma- tion, and the Church of England after the Reforma- tion," to the historical fact that in the beginning of the month of December, 1559, the Church of England had but one lawful, canonically instituted bishop, and he died in 1563, without attemptmg to canonically fill the vacant sees or provide for the transmission of the episcopal order, or the legitimate succession of any cor- porate witness to the identity of the faith and Church of England, nay, absolutely refusing to lend himself to every attempt to keep up sych identity and transmit 52 'VJS .\IATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? such episcopal succession. " The supremacy, of the Pope had been rejected ; in the queen had been in- vested the supreme government of the Church." We q'lote again Rov. Mr. Watcrworth : " Every bond be- tween the crown and the hierarchy had been broken. England is without a hierarchy, and even if the chain of episcopal succession could be preserved unbroken, what hand could unite the severed link of episcopal jurisdiction ? But something must be done ; it was an emergency in which ordinary difficulties, if they could not be removed, must be beaten down or passed over; and though the more observing and learn :d miglit note the flaw in the episcopal blazonry, the glitter of that dignity, and the actual possession of sees, to which authority had for centuries been attached, would no doubt conceal the defect from the eyes of the mul- titude." Parker was elected to fill the vacant see of Canter- bury, August 1st, 1559, but w^o ^^^ ^o consecrate him ? The bishops of the realm were obstinate. They were not to be brow-beaten or intimidated ; the oath of supremacy had been tendered and refused, the Eng- lish episcopate had retrieved its honor, redeemed it- self from the degrading cowardice and mean servility shown in Henry's reign ; many had already been de- posed, and pent to the Fleet. Some, as Heylin notes. " were borne withal in hope of their conformity and submission until the end of September." It was all important to the Reformers to have Parker consecrated by some Catholic prelates in order to maintain a sem- blance at least of episcopal succession and identity with the old Church. The severity exercised towards some would, it was hoped, have its influence on the i I H^AS MA TTHEVV PARKER CONSECRA TED? 53 others, and make them more pliant and submissive to the queen's commands. A commission was con- sequently issued on the 9th of September to Tonstall of Durham, Bourne of Bath and Wells, Pole of Peter- borough, and Kitchen of Llandaff, and to these were joined Barlow and Scorey, returned refugees, legally de- prived under the prev. jus reign, who not being then elected to any see were simply styled bishops. This commission failed ; doubtless because the Catholic bishops refused to hccom^ participcs critninis by assis- ting to consecrate Parker. Mackintosh, in his " His- tory of England," says: " These prelates, who must have considered such an act a profanation, conscien- tiously refused." Canon Estcourt remarks, "It is dif- ficult now to understand how . any one could expect that a commission would be executed which bore so gross an insult on the face of it. Not merely to require them to consecrate a married priest, notoriously sus- pected of heresy, but to join with them two suspended excommunicated ecclesiastics, calling themselves bishops, relapsed heretics, and apostate religious, was sufficient of itself to prevent the execution of the mandate." Shortly after, and most probably in con- sequence or in punishment of this refusal, Tonstall, Bourne and Pole were deprived, leaving, as we before mentioned, only one see in the whole realm, with a legitimate incumbent, one legal titular bishop in the whole English Church, Kitchen of Llandaff, and he, presumably, because, it was hoped, as he had owned the queen's supremacy, he would yet yield obedience to her commands and consecrate her newly appointed archbishop. This brief chapter in the history of the Anglican cstablisliiner.t wc doem important, as showing 54 f^-i S MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED ? • \ If !' the straits to which the queen and Parliament were reduced to secure a legitimate episcopate in the nascent royal establishment, and how long and pain- fully Elizabeth and her ministers travailed in giving birth to the new hierarchy. It may also help us to understand the importance attached to question of fact, and the legitimacy and validity of the consecra- tion of the first of the new-born Church, the first link in a new line of prelates, the parent stock to which the clergy of the Anglican and Episcopal Churches must trace their pedigree, and from which alone they can prove their legitimacy, their mission, or orders. One attempt to get a lawful bishop for the Reformed Church, to weld on to the old, venerable chain of Apostolical succession, in the see of Canterbury, this new link forged by the masculine hand of a T^udor queen, to engraft this suckling scion of royalty on the original Catholic stock, from which alone it could draw sao, vitality, fecundity, failed, proved an utter abortion. Whether the next attempt succeeded better we will examine presently. We come now to the facts regarding Parker's con- secration and the validity of the act, but we wish it distinctly understood that this is a secondary question, as far as the Catholic Church and her doctrine are con- cerned, for on the principles on which the primitive Church has always acted, and which are so clearly and distinctly enunciated by her in the early and Apostolic ages, and which are in fact recognized by Anglicans and acted on by all religious denominations, the An- glican Church, and therefore tkj Episcopal Church of America, have, and can have, no connecting link with the Apostolic Church, no Apostolic succession. This IVAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? 55 being the case, we need go no further, to disprove the claim of Anglican succession. But we are willing to go further, and absolutely deny the vpMdity of Parker's consecration, and thus " strike at the very root of all pretensions in the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Church of America to Apostolical succession." Pre- mising again, what we have already said, that the val- idity of consecration and the Apostolical succession of the Anglican bishops are quite different questions, we will now carefully and dispassionately examine and dis- cuss the vexed question of the validity of Parker's con- secration, a question of vital importance to Anglican orders, a question of life or death to the Episcopate of the Protestant Episcopal Church of America. For though Catholics may refute and disprove Anglican and Episcopalian pretensions to Apostolical succession, even conceding valid consecration of' their bishops, the case of the latter is hopeless, their position untenable, unless they can prove to a demonstration, and show be- yond the shadow of reasonable doubt, that the first Anglican bishops under Elizabeth were actually and validly consecrated. All the Catholic bishops, as we have seen, refused to participate in the sacrilege, refused to lay hands on the would-be prelate ; and now in the whole realm there is but one bishop with jurisdiction, but one bishop holding a see, and him, Camden styles the calamity of his see. Surely, then, the succession is in imminent peril ; 'tis a critical juncture for the royal establishment of the English Church. How was the crisis got over? We are naturally a little curious on this subject, and we can well imagine the state of suspense and anxiety of those whose whole religious t.-*i 56 I FAS MA TTIIE IV PARKER CvNSLCRA Tf.D? ■ \ system, orders, mission, prelacy and priesthood liang in the balance, depend on the satisfactory solution of the question, Was Parker validly consecrated? For Anglicanism and Episcopalianism the issue is life or death. Our strenuous advocate of Anglican succession concedes as much, for although he demurs somewhat to the assertion that if Parker was not consecrated, and validly consecrated, the Anglican succession fails, yet he is willing to let it be assumed, " for if Parker was not duly consecrated, it is certain no bishop in Christendom can prove his orders." This is a strange proposition. What does it mean ? surely all the bishops in Christen- dom do not derive their orders from Parker. All the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal prelates do, and it may most truly be said, that if Parker was not duly consecrated, it is certain no bishop in the Anglican Church or Episcopal Church can prove his orders, or rather, that there is no such thing as a bishop in these denominations. This we assert, notwithstanding the puerile claim made by some Anglican writers, that the apostate De Dominis, or a pretended Irish archbishop assisting at a consecration of some Anglican bishop in the 17th century would suffice to restore the broken line of succession in the Anglican Church. Can they really be serious in making such assertions, or is it not trifling with the intelligence and conscience of those who look up to them for instruction in Christian faith and church or^^anism ? Does it not seem puerile trifling to assert that "the Pope sent Archbishop Bedini to America to remedy the first defective succession?" and again, " tlie succes- sion communicated to us, in two instances, by De Dominis, archbishop of Spolato in Delmatia, in the PVAS MA TTI/h IV PARKER CON SEC R A TED? 57 "the medy cces- De the seventeenth century, transmits of itself, a better and more valid succession than the Nuncio Bedini conferred on Dr. Bayley, the present Roman Catholic metro- politan." To Catholics this is simply ludicrous. In the year 1853, three new sees were regularly and canonically erected in the province of New York, viz. : Newark, N. J., Burlington, Vt., and Brooklyn, N. Y., and Bishops Bayley, De Goesbriand and Loughlin were regularly and canonically appointtd by the Holy See to fill the same. The usual rescript for the consecration, empowering any duly consecrated bishop in communion with the Holy See to consecrate them, was forwarded to the metropoli- tan, Archbishop Hughes, of New York. Availing him- self of the presence of the illustrious Archbishop Bedini, who happened to be in New York, haviiig come to this country on a special mission having absolutely no reference to the consecration of bishops or the intro- ducing of a new succession. Archbishop Hughes re- quested him to officiate at the consecration of the new bishops, much in the same way as Dr. Brownell had commissioned Dr. De Lancey to act for him in the case of Dr. Coxe's promotion to the see of Western New York. Yet this, we are gravely told, was all designed by the Pope ij introduce a new succession, and remedy a defective one, when every one knows that the Pope had nothing to do with the matter, and presumably knew nothing of the nuncio officiating and consecrating until after the consecration had actually taken place. And so little idea had the American hierarchy of any need of an amended succession to be derived from this illustrious prelate that although since the year 1853, many new bishops have been consecrated in the United States, and among them the present bishop of 58 pyAS MA TTHEW PARKER CONSECRA TED? Buffalo, until very recently not one of the bishops con- secrated by Mons. Bedini was called upon to transmit the new succession. In the year 1 873, indeed Archbishop Bayley, as metropolitan of the see of Baltimore, to which he- had been transferred from Newark in 1872, did con- secrate Bishop Grossof Savannah, so that we must con- gratulate our esteemed friend and brother of Savannah that he has at length resurrected the amended succes- sion, after it had lain dead or dormant for nearly twenty years. Yet with characteristic hardihood we are referred to the Civilta Catolica as authority for this absurd and puerile statement. The Civilta Catolica^ an able and generally very correct periodical, edited by Jesuits, naturally took notice ,of the very solemn ceremony which took place in the Cathedral of New York, but that it gives any ground for these inferences and absurd assertions that tJie first consecration was so de- fective that the Pope tried to mend it by a second succes- sion, or that by the second or Bedini consecration a second Roman Catholic succession started in New York, we absolutely deny. But when a church dignitary out- rages common decency by echoing the gross calumnies of infidel revolutionists, and maligns the character of one of the most amiable, gentle and gentlemanly of men, an illustrious and estimable prelate, now gone to his reward, by calling him a butcher and virtual murderer, and when those publicly and triumphantly re- futed charges and lying assertions against the character, {or 9,0 ot\\, from zvhich the second Roman Catholic succes- sion started in Neiv York, are rehashed and served up ninifcstly for the purpose of damaging and vilifying I'.ic Catholic episcopate, may we not retort in his own PFAS XI AT THE'" PARKER CONSECRATED^ 59 language, and ask, where is the morality of throivingoiit such monstrous, not blunders, but downright falsehoods, in assaulting the spiritual character of others ? But to return. Was Matthew Parker, then, ever validly consecrated ? What was the issue of subsequent attempts after the first failure? This, as we have seen, is the all-important question for our Anglican* friends. On its solution hangs the at' of the whole Anglican system, for on Parker's val.^- consecration depends the validity of orders in the Anglican Church ; and without valid orders there can be no shadow of a claim to Apostolical succession, or legitimate descent from the Apostles, or corporate identity with the primitive Church of Christ. Please to remember, dear readers, what we have already de- monstrated, that this question, so vital to Anglicanism and Episcopalianism and to all their vaunted claims, is of little consequence to the Catholic Church, and in no wise affects the Catholic argument against the pretensions and claims made by them to Apos- tolical succession, or identity with the Church of the Apostles. We discuss this question, then, not through any necessity to make good our argument, or to refute their claims, but to meet them in their last trench, and entirely cut the ground from beneath their feet ; to take .away the last shadow of a claim to Apos- tolicity. To prove this, without going over the whole ground again, to show that, even with valid orders, they have no mission, no legitimate authority to teach, because they themselves are not sent, it is only neces- sary to remember that there was in the whole realm of England only one legitimate bishop, occupying a see, exercising a jurisdiction, and he refused to par- II 6o f^^S ^'/^ Tr//£ IV PAKA'EK CO A' SEC A' A TED ? ticipate m the ceremony of Parker's consecration. Not one of those who are said to have consecrated him, and who are named in the Lambeth Re^dster, had any jurisdiction. Barlow, Scorey, Coverdale, and Hodgkins are designated without any title, even in the register, and such of them as were afterwards con- firmed and appointed to sees, were so confirmed by Parker himself, showing that they had no juris- diction until after Parker's consecration, and could give none, nemo dat quod nan habct. But how could Parker give to them, or any others, what no one gave to him? What a miserable subterfuge, then, it is to trace through Bauchier, Neville, and Chicheley, suc- cession to a Roman Pontiff, when nobody denies that the Church of England had valid orders and legiti- mate succession, down to the time of the Reformation. In the see of Canterbury from Augustine, sent, con- firmed and commissioned by Gregory, down to Cardi- nal Pole, sent, commissioned and legitimately appointed to that venerable archiepiscopal see, by the Sovereign Pontiff, Julius III., there was a continuous line, an un- broken succession of corporate witnesses, succesors of the Apostles. The whole difficulty, then, is in Parker's succession. How has he been linked on to the chain coming down from the Apostles? No Catholic bishop would consecrate him, no bishop exercising, or pos- sessing authority, mission, jurisdiction, or a see, would lay hands on him ; there is not only no concurrence of the sovereign Pontiff, of the Patriarch, which con- currence the canons of the Council of Nice make essential to a canonical consecration ; there is not only no confirmation of a metropolitan, or approbation of the bishops of the province, nay, the pretended conse- IV^ S MA T THE W PA RKRK CONSE CRA TED ? 6 1 cration was in direct opposition to the Sovereign Pontiff and every legitimate bishop in the realm ; so that the at- tempt to preserve Episcopal succession violates every precedent, and every canonical regulation of the Christian Church, and as Rev. Mr. VVaterworth, whose valuable lectures we have freely used and made our own, says, the new bishops of the Anglican establish- ment separated themselves, not only in faith, from the episcopacy of Christendom, but broke through those ordinances which their predecessors had for centuries regarded as Apostolical, authoritative and binding. This, moreover, shows how consistent they are in their appeals to the canons and the ancient councils, when in order to get an archbishop, or the first link in the new episcopal chain, they had to violate all ec- clesiastical law, run counter to Apostolical precedents, and cast to the winds the canons of Nice. Yet. though they have hopelessly lost Apostolical succession, they have valid orders, if Parker was validly consecrated. Before this can be positively, and with certainty asserted, it must be proved beyond the possibility of doubt or cavil, (i), that the consecration of Lambeth chapel ar^-ually took place, and as the chief proof of this is the Lambeth register, its authenticity, or genuineness must be demonstrated ; (2), that Barlow was himself consecrated; and (3), that he used a valid form in Parker's consecration. The learned Dr. Kenrick, in his exhaustive treatise on Anglican ordinations, to which we have before referre.l, and from which we have freely borrowed, states the whole question so intelli- gently and clearly, that we make no apology for the length of the following quotation : " Matthew Parker was chosen to be the first Protes- 62 ty^S MA TTHE W PARKER CO N SEC R A TED f tant archbishop of Canterbury. It is net pretended th^t he was consecrated by any of the Catholic bishops. According to the advocates of Anglicin orders, he received episcopal consecration from Barlov, who had been made bishop by Henry VIII., and who, on this occasion, is said to have used the form of ordination known as King Edward's form, in whose reign it had been introduced. "With regard to this important fact, there are three questions — all of which must be satisfactorily answered in the affirmative, before those who trace their orders to Matthew Par » can conclude that they are validly ordained. First, Was Parker, truly consecrated by Barlow, in the manner declared ? Second, Was Barlow himself consecra :ed ? Third, Was King Edward's form a valid form ? "If these three questions can be satisfactorily an- swered, then the ordinations of the English Church are valid ; its bishops have the same episcopal character as the Catholic bishops ; its ministers are priests, equally as those who minister at Catholic altars ; in a word, the ecclesiastic.il hierarchy has been preserved in the Eng- lish Church, although, of course, being separated from the communion of the Catholic Church, they are with- ered branches, throufjh which the vivifying sap of Apos- tolical jurisdiction does not circulate, and which, con- sequently, instead of bearing fruit, impede the rays of light and. grace from reaching the delu ied people that repose under their scanty shade. " But if a single one of the above sthree facts be dis- proved ; if a single one of them be not absolutely cer- tain, although somewhat probable ; if positive and unsuspicious testimony be not at hand whereby PyA S MA TTHE IV PAR/CER CONSECRA TED? 63 Eng- i from with- Apos- con- ays of e that )e dis- lly eer- ie and lereby all three can be established ; then the vaUdity of the Anghcan ordinations is either positively dis- proved, or not absolutely certain ; and consequently, there can be no obligation to listen to men, who c.-.r- not prove that they have received a participation of the Apostolic ministry, whereby they are empowered to preach the Gospel, and minister at the altar. Noth- ing short of certainty on this point, can, in such a case, justify priest or people in admitting the v.-^.lidity of such ordinations." Parker's and Barlow's consecration are questions of fact, and not of doctrine, questions of history, matters of opinion to be determined by historical research, and on such evidence as would sufifice in any other question or fact of history. " But whatever opinion we may form on either or both these questions it is absolutely certain that, on account of the form said to be used in the consecration of Parker, that devised by Edward VI., Anglican, and consequently Protestant Episcopal orders, are vitiated and invalidated." This, after all, is the only impctant point : Anglican orders are invalid on account of the invalidity of the form invented by Cranmer, or, as the act has it, devised by Edward VI., aftd used, if any was used, or if there was anything more than the Nag's Head farce, in the consecration of Parker. To this point we would prefer to confine ourselves, as it would simplify the whole controversy, as Canon Raynal intimates in his admirable little treatise on " The Ordinal of Edward VI.," to concede " that Barlow was a true bishop, and that he consecrated Parker on the seventeenth of De- cember, 1559." T'-ere is no necessity for us, and can be little advantaj in following Drs. Mason, Lee, and i" 1 I 64 WAS MA TTHEW PARKER CONSECRA TED? Other Anglican writers, in their laborious attempts to prove the reality of Barlow's and Parker's consecra- tion. With them failure to prove either is fatal to their cause, whilst the most complete and satisfactory demonstration of both will avail absolutely nothing towa: Js the solution of the real question at issue, for without a valid form no sacrament can be conferred, and if the form used in the consecration of the first Anglican bishop, on wnom confessedly the AngHcan hierarchy depends, from whom Anglican orders are ad- mitted, to be derived, was radically defective or invalid, then there are no orders, no priesthood, no hierarchy in the Anglican or Episcopal Church. We feel then that it is only to entangle and complicate matters, to discuss these historical questions, which, from the nature of the subject and the contradictory testimonies of opposing and interested witnesses, can never be satisfactorily and conclusively settled. Yet as such stress has been laid on these comparatively unimportant points, and so much cavil over some statements, we must turn aside again from the main issue, and after correcting some misrepresentations, we shall briefly notice some of the grounds on which Parker's consecration and the Lam- beth Register and Barlow's episcopal character have been questioned or impugned ; grounds which, even if the}' fail to persuade, will hardly fail to convince the reader that it grates harshly on believing ears, nay, sounds almost like blasphemy, to assert that " the canon of Scripture rests on no better evidence" than the con- secration of Barlow or Parker. And yet this, by im- plication, at least, is asserted by those who assume that the succession in the Church of England " rests on the s?.me kind of proof by which we receive the canon ! i Mi ir' I IVAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? 65 of holy Scripture." We maintain that even if the Lambeth Register be genuine, and the consecration of Parker took place, as asserted, at the hands of Barlow, an apostate monk, it is very doubtful that Barlow himself was ever consecrated, or anything more than bishop elect. And even if Barlow was a regularly con- secrated bishop, and went through the form of con- secrating Parker, the form used, viz.: that devised, as the act has it, by Edward, was notoriously insufiicient and invalid. But what will you, what can you think, of the honesty, or truthfulness, or morality, of any person who quoting freely from Dr. Lingard, and presumably with Dr. Lin- gard before him, makes that author testify to the validity of Parker's consecration ! " Dr. Lingard," we are told, " shows that this act of itself proves the consecration of Parker to have been in all respects regular and validly performed, according to the reformed Ordinal." Now, Dr. Lingard in the very correspondence referred to, expressly says, that he confines himself to the fact of Parker's consecration, but whether it was valid or invalid was a question with which, as a writer of his- tory, he had no concern. Dr. Lingard, like many other Catholic writers, investigated the fact of Parker's con- secration, and hesitated not to acknowledge his belief therein, but Dr. Lingard did not, and no Catholic can, without rashness, acknowledge its validity. Though Dr. Lingard, and some other respectable Catholic authors concede the reality of Parker's con- secration, and believe Barlow was a bishop, and ac- knowledge the Lambeth Register as a genuine docu- ment; and although we, for argument's sake, and to eliminate unimportant side issues, that serve only to nM 1 i '!i! ' I I li I I I I i i I 1 I ^ WAS MA TTHEW PARKER CON SEC R A TED? complicate, embarrass, and obscure the main question, would .prefer to concede the same, yet in order to prove that " somebody has not cruelly imposed on us, in the matter of the Nag's Head fable/' and that '' all respectable Roman Catholics do not dismiss the story of the ' Nag's Head' with contempt," we shall cite names as respectable, perhaps, as even these of Dr. Lingard, and the Anglican defenders of the Lam- beth consecration : and authorities, perhaps, as grave and trustworthy as those produced by them, disowning and disproving, or what in our case is equivalent to that, seriously questioning, and thiowing grave doubts upon, (i), the fact of Parker's consecration at Lam- beth ; (2), the register on which the jjr(;of mainly rests ; (3), and especially on Barlow's tv, ;; consecration. Yet we do not pretend to settle these questions ; proofs pro and con, must be weighed, and each one must decide for himself; to us, and to our argument, and our cause, the decision is immaterial, for we hold, and think we can prove, that even conceding all these points, the consecration of Parker was certainly invalid, for reasons to be given hereafter, showin*:^ that a legi- timate, and recognized sacramental form, as well as a due intention in the minister, are requisite for the valid administration of orders. Now,, as to the Nag's Head story, which we are told, "all respectable Catholic writ^^fs dismiss with contempt," Dr. Kenrick, "a respectable prelate," ad- duces quite an array of respectable Catholic names., not only not dismissingthe story with contemp*:, but vouching for its trutli. \Vc are iiideea told that the late Hugh Davey Evans, j^profound ;uid learned ornament of the Maryland bar, " has not left a shred PFAS MA TTHEW PARKER CONSECRA TED? 67 of Dr. Kenrick's cause untwisted or unrent," but we beg to be excused for not accepting this bare assertion, for, although we have not been able to pro- cure a copy of Mr. Evans' able essay, we have seen the second edition of Dr. Kenrick's valuable work, revised and augmented, in which he replies to Mr. Evans' criti- cisms, in a most masterly manner, and we still find untzuisted and unrent, intact and unimpaired, every sub- stantial link, every strand in his chain of unanswerable arguments against the " Validity of Anglican Ordina- tions and Anglican claims to Apostolical succession." We may, moreover, unhesitatingly affirm that the pe- rusal of Mr. Evans' essay will not '* force on any can- did mind the conviction that so respectable a man as Dr. Kenrick could hardly have undertaken such a task, except under some compulsion of superiors to which, as in the later matter of infallibility, he pros- tituted his own convictions, under the remorseless dic- tation of Jesuits." We are satisfied, in the second place, that no profound and learned ornament of the Maryland bar, or a7iy other bar, in fact very few besides the writer whom we are reviewing, would have the im- pertinence to charge a respectable prelate, a high-toned gentleman, with such cringing servility and baseness of soul, as to prostitute his talents, at the dictation of any man, or set of men, to disseminate error, or write in any cause against his own convictions. We are satis- fied, in the third place, that the independence of charac- ter, uncomproinising firmness, and stubborn self-asser-_ tion born of conscious intellectual endowments, which may at times carry a man to extremes, or -it least make him appear to occupy a false position, and which, unless safe-guarded by genuine humility, and rare Christian / V;*,:*"^ >'•'•*.■-* >««(«*ir ; I 11 , (il nih >'■{ ill 68 IV^lS MA TTHEIV PARKER CONSECRA TED f piety, may be perilous to faith, are at the same time surest guaraiitees against sycophancy, and servile pros- titution of talents or mean pandering to human power. Such chaiacteristics belong to those who rebel against a divine authority, 3r refuse submission to a divinely authorized and infallible teacher. An " Old Catholic" bishop, like Reinkens, may pro- fess absolute dependence on. and unreserved submis- sion to civil rulers, and the will, and good pleasure of those in power, for the hireling, whose own the sheep arc not, fleeth when the wolf cometh to snatch, and scatter, and devour the sheep, bccmise hcu a hireling, and Jiath no car: for the sheep ; as an able eloquent Catholic deputy m the Reichsrath said, commenting on Rein- kens's first would-be charge to an -unknown, and unde- termined flock ; but the Catholic prelate will not betray his trust, or compromise his conscience, or degrade his manhood, at the bidding or dictation of any man, or any merely human authority, whilst he freely submits to God, and vindicates his God-given freedom and manhood, by the mo.st implicit and unreserved sub- mission of himself, his intellect, and will, to the au- thority and lavi/ of God. Some cannot understand this, and hence, whilst they wonder at our not accepting the dictum of our ozvii Catholic historian, Dr. Lingard, they are indignant and even abusive, because a Catho- lic bishop acknowledges an infallible Church, and an infallible Pope, and bows a willing and cheerful obedi- ence to the decisions of an infallible oecumenical council. We are moreover satisfied, that howsoever a lawyer may, by special pleading, assail the arguments of Dr. Ken rick, or differ with him, in regard to the true interpretation and force -of legal documents, or M^AS MATTHLl^^ PAl.KER CONSECRATED? 69 demur to some of his principles or criteria for deter- mining what records are genuine, and what spurious, ot even controvert some of his particular conclusions, yet any unbiassed man, who reads his " Anglican Or- dinations," and ponders seriously his replies to objec- tions urged by Anglicans against the so-called Nag's Kead fabrication, and his answer, paragraph by para- graph, to Dr. Lingard's arguments, must admit that he has vindicated, as he proposed to do, the old English Catholic divines, who, according to Dr. Husenbeth, for, at least, upiuards of tivo centuries, regarded the Nag' s Head consecration as a fact, the certainty "/t-' .'. ivas sustained by stubborn evidence, from the c'.i.irg blind credulity, or a determined will to deny the bc^i. authenticated facts. He did not undertake — he tells us himself, and we say the same for ourselves — " to es- tablish the truth of the Nag's Head consecration ; but merely to exam ^e wherher it be so enth'ely destitute of probability ' pro.-^f, as has been pretenrled ; and whether the v' ..cators of Catholic faith, who publicly avowed their belief in its reality, at a period when tiiey had better opporti'.'"i..'L "es of asceitaining the truth than we now can possibly be supposed to have, were imposed on by an a.jsurd tale." Among those distinguished divines is Dr. Talbot, archbishop of Dublin, who in a treatise on "The Nul- lity of the Prelate clergy in England," says: "It is now a century of years since the Nag's Head story happened. It has constantl}' been related, and cred- ited by w\st men, as c" tain trutli, ever since the year 1559 (the year it wa. _ted in): it wa-^; never contra- dicted by any. until it was imagincil by our adversa- lics that the new registers (Mason's), might contest ■m ^i i il! 70 IVAS MA TTHE W PARKER CONSECRA TED? with our ancient tradition, and make the Nag's Head story seem improbable in the year 161 3, of which no man doubted, for the space of fifty-two years before. The Catholic bishops and doctors of Queen Mary's time were sober and wise men ; they believed the stcry ; and recounted it to Parsons, Fitzherbert, Dr. Kellison, Holiwood, Dr. Champney, Fitzsimmons, etc. Parsons believed it, Fitzherbert and the rest above named, gave so much credit to it, that they published it in print." We find in an appendix to "Dodd's Church History of England," a dissertation containing a sum- mary of the arguments employed to support both sides of the controversy concerning the Nag's Head ordina- tion. Dodd cites Dr. Champney, who, after a lengthy account of the whole transaction, how they met at the Nag's Head ; how tlie old man Kitchen of Llandaff, feigning blindness, refused to consecrate ; how they then turned upon him as an old fool who imagined that they could not be bishops unless greased; how Scorey took the Bible, and laying it on their shoulders and saying, "take authority to preach the word of God sincerely," they rose up bishops, concludes thus: "This whole narration, without adding or detracting any word pertaining to the substance of the matter, I have heard, oftener than once, of Mr. Thomas Bluet, a grave learned, and judicioas }->ricst ; he having received it of Mr. Neal, a man of good sort aiul rjnvitation. * * * Again, Mr. Bluet had other good means to be informed of this matter, being a long time prisoner with Dr. Watson, bishop of Lincoln, and divers other men of mark, of the ancient clergy, in whose time, and in whose sight, as a man may say, this matter was done. Of this narration there are, I think, as many witnesses s i; (IH; ^VAS MATTHEW PARKER CONSECRATED? 71 yet living, as there are priests remaining alive, that have been prisoners with Mr. Bluet, in Wisbeach Castle ; where I also heard it of hinn." The historian then gives the names and dates, and works of the authors, who have handed down to posterity and pub- lished the Nag's Head consecration ; and referring to Dr. Talbot's " Nullity of the Prelate clergy," anno 1659, he says: "Wherein the learned author produces sev- eral proofs, in confirmation of the account given by Champney." Again, after giving the opposite vicwn of writers of the Church of England at considerable length, he subjoins: "It would exceed my designed brevity to make a distinct reply to these exceptions Protestant writers have made against the Nag's Head story. But Dr. Talbot, the Catholic archbishop of Dublin, having considered them very fully and learn- edly, in his treatise on the Nullity^ etc., I remit the reader to that work, where he may be more fully in- formed of all the particulars belonging to this contro- versy." " From which," says Rev. Mr. Tierney, F.R.S., F.S.A., " it is evident that Dodd was inclined to favor the story of the Nag's Head consecration," though he (Mr. Tierney) felt compelled to adopt the opposite opinion. Champney, in his treatise, Dc vocatione minis- trorttin, positively asserts: " That not only Catholics of unquestionable integrity, who were eye-witnesses of the affair, testify to the solemn meetinj^ at the Nag's Head ; but also John Stowe, that most famous chrono- grapher of England, a professor of the reformed re- ligion, is witness of the same, who diligently inquired into all circumstances of this action, though he feared to relate them in his chronicle." It is evident that Dr. Milner, F.S.A., who is not an ignorant man, nor one . \ 72 IVAS MAT THE IV PARKER CONSECRATED? that would write hastily, or without consideration, on so important a subject, as Dr. Lingard charges, had no faith in the Lambeth consecration; and with these names, and these authorities, may we not venture to hold an opinion concerning an historical fact contrary to that of Dr. Lingard, able and reliable though he be, as a Catholic historian, especially when, as Dr. Kenrick remarks: "The arguments brought forward by him on this subject were derived from authorities, the authen- ticity of which had been long and publicly questioned, and he was urging the objections which Couraycr had, more than a century ago, put forward, and which had been triumphantly refuted at the time by the learned Hardouin, and in the celebrated woi-k of Father Le Ouien." But encusih, and more than enoufjh, about the Nag's Head. We must hasten to conclude what we have to say on the Lambeth Register, and the conse- cration of Barlow, so as to come to what we regard as the point on which the whole question of the validity of Anglican and Episcopalian orders hinge, viz.: the invalid form devised by Edward VL, including the probable absence of due intention in the consecrating would-be prelates. i t THE LAMBETH REGISTEK. 73 VI. THE LAMBETH REGISTER. HAVING now sufficiently discussed the historical question of Parker's consecration, and shown that it was questioned and positively denied by re- spectable, learned, and distinguished writers and divines, and that from the year 1 55c until 1613 the first bishops of the reformed Church had been repeatedly taunted with the Nag's Head story, w'thout any attempt being made, for upwards of fifty years, to produce any documentary evidence of a regular consecration, or 'AWy public refer- ence to the Lambeth Register, we must now, as briefly as possible, examine the authenticity of this Register on which Anglicans mainly, if not entirely, rest their proof of Parker's consecration at Lambeth ; to whom, consequently, clearest evidence of its authenticity is of paramount importance. We must again, however, remind our readers that this is a historical question, not materially affecting the main issue of Anglican succession or Anglican orders, so that, whether, after a careful weighing of authorities and documentary evidence we regard the Register as authentic, or spurious, we must not, as Canon Raynal warns us. "attach undue importance to a mere historical fact, and overlook the main point of the controversy, viz. : the invalidity of the forms in- I I hi t '\ 1 • i 1 ii 74 T//£ LAMJiETH REGISTER. vented by Cranmer and inserted into the Ri.e, which is said to have been used at the consecration of Parker." Dr. Lingard and other Catholic writers may declare " they see no reason for pronouncing the Register a forgery," whilst disavowing any intention of deciding the question of the validity of the act, nay, expressly and openly flouting Anglican claims to valid orders or a legitimate episcopacy. For ourselves, we would not even stop to consider this point at all, were it not to convince certain writers that the charge of forgery is not a desperate artifice gotten up by Jesuits to im- j)ugn the Anglican succession, and to show that, nut- withstanding the "' proverbial purity of law and legal pro- cesses in Jingland, and the care taken of public records and facts made historical in printed pages, and thrown open to the eyes and inquiries of the most intelligent and truth-loving nation of the worlds' the public records are not above suspicion, or to be accepted with unques- tioning credulity, that forgery was not uncommon, and that the Lambeth Register, if not a forgery, is at least a very suspicious document, and that, as Canon Est- court admits, " there are grave doubts with regard to the authenticity of the Register itself, as an original and contemporaneous document, or record of the facts as they occurred." This Register, then publicly re- ferred to for the first time, in a work published in the year 1613, by Francis Mason, chaplain of Abbot, arch- bishop of Canterbury, testifies that Matthew Parker was consecrated on the 17th of December, 1559, by Barlow, Scorey, Coverdale and Hodgkins. It was at once de- nounced as a fabrication by Catholic writers. Fitz- herbert. "a man of great learning and holy life," hear- ing with astonishment that one Mr. Mason was at- : 1 if^^l THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 75 tempting to prove the consecration of the first Protest- ant bishops in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, by a register testifying that four bishops consecrated Mr. Parker, writes : " This is not a new quarrel, lately raised, but vehemently urged, divers times heretofore, by Catholics many years ago, yea, in the very begin- ning of the queen's reign, as namely, by the learned Doctors Harding and Stapleton, against Mr. Jewel and Mr. Horn, urging iheni to show how and by whom they were made bishop;. ' And he continues : " What trow ye was answered thereto ? Were there any bishops named who consecrated them ? Were there any wit- nesses alleged of their consecration ? Was Mr. Mason's register, or any authentic document, produced either by Jewel or Horn?" Kellison, with a like feeling of wonderment at the in- explicable silence of the Protestant clergy, during more than half a century, during which they were re- peatedly and tauntingly told that their bishops, Parker, Horn, etc., had not been consecrated, thus ex- pressed himself: "But as for your registers, I know not whence you have exhumed them ; they are at least on many accounts suspected by us. For, first, when in the beginning of the new Church of England, it was objected that these ministers and bishops were neither truly nor lawfully ordained, they would have easily silenced them (those objecting), and yet they dared not bring forward those acts or refer to them. This much increases our suspicion t!iat they were so late produced after having remained hid so long; al- though they had been so often called for by our doc- tors." With the learned and critical author of " An- glican Ordinations," from whom we have borrowed the =1 i;8 ^ \^ ^ IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) II I.I 11.25 UiUl 12.5 |io ■^" M^H ■^ 1^ 12.2 u m lit U 1.4 6" Hiotographic Sciences Corporation s /^A<^ ■fA^ z <^ •^ \ ^\ ,'*^. [v ^ >. '^kN "-^^^ ^^^ 23 WEST MAIN STREET WEBSTER, N.Y. 14580 (716) 872-4503 I/.. THE LAMBETH REGISTER. above extracts, slightly abbreviated, we repeat: Whatever explanation may be given of the non-pro- d'"Ction ofthe Register before the year 1613, it is evident that the fact is calculated to awaken suspicion ; and, therefore, those Catholic divines who called its authen- ticity into question, may have been influenced by other motives than those assigned by their adversaries." 'The authenticity of the Lambeth or Parker's Regis- ter," says Rev. Mr. Waterworth, in a note to his sixth historical lecture, "has been ever since the time of James I. matter of dispute. This is not the place to enter into any details on the question ; and I will merely add, that not having met with, or discovered any solid reasons for denying its genuineness, I shall appeal to it in the jtext as a document, which, though I see no reason to believe it spurious, others may not choose to admit as evidence." To this his American editor appends the following note : " The author of these valuable Lectures, with that spirit of liberality which distinguishes his work, has followed, in the text, the view most favorable to the Anglican ordinations. His authoi'ties will be found below. With every wish to be equally impartial, we confess that, to our mind, the authenticity of the Lambeth, or Parker's Register is more than suspicious — its fabrication is next to a certainty. To discuss the subject in a brief note is not our intention ; it would moreover be foreign from the character of these Lec- tures, intended, as they are, to be historical and not controversial. Viewing the question, then, merely as a debated point of iiistorj'-, the following are some of the heads of argument which have led us to the con- cV.i>^"on that the Lambeth Register ^^///z^/ be admitted THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 77 as evidence of Parker's consecration, and that the Anglican ordinations are null. " 1st. The Anglican ordinations were contested from the very infancy of the established Church, and by several of the most distinguished of the Catholic writers that the i6th century produced. The very title of Mason's work, published in 1613, himself a Protes- tant, places this fact beyond a doubt. " 2d. Fifty-three years passed away between the sup- posed consecration of Parker, and the first public reference by Mason to the Lambeth Register. If the Register existed before, why were the Protestant clergy silent for half a century, amid the taunts of their Catholic adversaries — that these ministers and bishops, although mitred, were not truly nor lawfully ordained? This silence, considering the importance of the ques- tion, and the religious excitement of the times, is al- most conclusive evidence that no such register then existed. " 3d. Had Parker been consecrated in the chapel at Lambeth, according to the form prescribed by the ritual of Edward VL, and as described in the Register itself, the affair must have been notorious. How then, again, shall we account for the repeated public denial, not only of the validity, but of t\itfact of his consecra- tion, by the earliest Catholic writers, and for the sus- picious silence of Protestants ? " 4th. It is not true that the Protestants appealed to the Register, on the first publication by Sacrobosco. in 1603, of the story of Parker's consecration, etc., at the Nag's Head tavern. It was only ten years after- wards, in 161 3, that the world was informed of the existence of such a document. 78 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. II! I " 5th. Had the Register been referred to before — had its existence been a matter of public notoriety, would six bishops, with Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, at their head, have thought it worth their time to assem- ble, for the purpose of showing it to a few Catholic priests, brought from their prisons to look at it ? and when from their prisons they asked for a second look at the Register, why was it refused them ? Was it, indeed, from fear they might destroy the document ? their manacles might have been easily tightened. To us this so-called " examination ' is almost proot positive that the Register was a forgery. " 6th. The wording of the record in the Register is suspicious, in as much as it is different from that of all the entries that prfccede and follow it : its circumstan- tiahty, so uncalled for in such documents, is scarcely less suspicious. ** 7th. Mason was chaplain to the archbishop of Can- terbury ; as such, it was both in his power to falsify the records at Lambeth, and his interest to do so ; two cir- cumstances, considering the temper of those times, which greatly invalidate his evidence ; especially when such evidence was so long and so vainly called for, be- fore, by the Catholic writers. " Goodwin's work, Dc Praesulibus Angliae, appeared first in English, in i6oi, and afterwards in Latin, in 1615. The first edition, published before the appearance of Mason's work, says not a word about Parker's conse- cration at Lambeth ; the second, published two years afterwards, repeats Mason's tale. Such being the case, it would be safer for Episcopalians to let Goodwin pass; his previous silence is again almost conclusive evidence that he knew nothing of the Lam- THE LAMBETH REGISTER, 79 beth Register, nor of Parker's pretended consecration. •' Camden s Annals also appeared in 1615, two years after Mason's work: to copy Mason was no difficult task, ?nd was tl: e most likely course to please the court and his patron, James I. "As for the work on the antiqnities of the British Church, ascribed to Parker himself, it is in the same predicament, and has altogether too much the air of testimony "got up for the occasion," to outweigh the serious objections, suspicions, etc., which on every side beset the question of Anglican ordinations. In- deed, the more we study this subject, the more decided is our conviction that the Lambeth Register of Parker's consecration will find its proper place among the mass of documents to which the Protestant historian, Whitaker, refers in the following candid, though pain- ful acknowledgement : ' Forgery — I blush for the honor of Protestantism, while I write it — seems to have been peculiar to the reformed.' " This Protesuaiit divine repeats the same more than once in his vindication of Mary, the murdered queen of Scots : " Forge'-y appears to have been the peculiar disease ol Protestantism," and again, "I look in vain for one of these accursed outrages of imposition among the disciples of Popery." We beg, moreover, to direct the attention ot our friends who extol with so much pride and apparent self-complacency the stainless and unimpeachable public records of England, and the proverlnal purity of lazv and legal processes of the most intelligent and truth-loving nation of the world, to the evidence furnished by a clause in a general pardon granted by James I., in the first year of his reign, that public documents even in that model truth-lodng 80 THE LAMBETH REGISTER land, were not only liable to falsification, but that frequent forgeries and interpolations had been per- petrated in his own reign, and that of his immediate predecessor : " We also pardon, remit and release by these presents, to the aforesaid A. B., all and every offences and transgressions, by erasing and underlining of any rolls, records, briefs, warrants, recognitions or other documents of ours, or any of our -predecessors, or progenitors whatsoever, in any court or courts of ours, or of any of our predecessors, or our progenitors, done or perpetrated before the aforesaid 20th day of March." But is it not playing on the ignorance or credulity of his readers, when a controversialist not only so boldly refers to the sacrosanct, untainted English records, bujt says that " any flaw in the titles and legislative rights of Anglican bishops, would un- doubtedly have been challenged by statesmen, on ac- count of the jealousy with which, for three centuries, every step in the Anglican communion was watched by active enemies?" thereby insinuating that no flaw was found, that the titles and legislative rights of the Parliament bishops were unchallenged, when he knows, and the fact is patent on the open page of history, that at the commencement of the reign of James L, after the death of Elizabeth, the tradition of the or- dination made at the Nag's Head tavern in Cheapside, was loudly invoked by Catholics and Presbyterians. " The Presbyterians said that the pretended bishops were mere priests like themselves, having only been ordained by the imposition of Parker's hands, who him- self had received it from a simple priest, Scorey, at the tavern, and consequently if they had seats in Parlia- ment, the Presbyterians should not be excluded from THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 8l them." For the same reason the Catholics maintained that, "the episcopacy and priesthood had ceased in England." And he can hardly be ignorant, that among the pleas put forth by Bishop Bonner, of London, in answer to the indictment by Horn, for refusing the oath of the queen's supremacy, was the following: " That the said Mr. Robert Home,* not being lawful bishop, of Winchester, but an usurper, intruder and unlawful possessor thereof, for that, according to the laws of the Catholike Churche, and the statutes and ordinances of this realme, the said Mr. Robert Home was not elected, consecrated, etc." Which plea of Bonner, says Canon Estcourt, seems to have caused no little alarm and excitement among the Anglican party ; and Randolph wrote from Edinburgh to Cecil, March 30th, 1 565 : " The tale is, that Bonner in his defence at his arraignment said that there was never a lawful bishop in England, which so astonished a great number of the best learned, that yet they knew not what answer to give him ; and when it was determined he should have suffered, he is remitted to the place from whence he came, and no more said to him." *' Bonner's objections," says Rev. Mr. Waterworth, "were both statutable and canonical. He denied Horn's right to administer the oath, because Horr^ had been conse- crated by a form not legally established, and by a metropolitan who was himself no bishop. And this latter assertion he defended on these two grounds: first, Parker was consecrated by King Edward's ordinal ; and secondly, that Parker's consecrators were both legally and canonically disqualified from ofTficiating at that consecration, being deprived of their benefices." We call attention then, again, to the glaring reckless- 82 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. ness of assertion, insincerity or ignorance, whichever it may be, manifested by those maintaining that " no imaginable flaw could be found in the title of the Anglican bishops, that their rights as bishops were un- challenged, thai the law requiring the consecration of bishops to be absolutely conformed to the Anglican Ordinal, and the fact that in perpetuating the Anglican succession, nothing was done in a corner, rendered the succession in the Church of England more demonstra- bly canonical aad regular, in all particulars, than any other succession in Christendom." This is indeed amusing; and we cannot help applying to these writers what Dr. Champney says of Mr. Mason : " He doth well to be bold in afifirming, for a good face sometimes helpeth out an ill game." But we are quite willing to take the Register from Mr. Mason's hands, and still maintain that it is not an original, trustworthy, truthful, contemporaneous record of Parker's consecration. For proof of this, we refer to Canon Estcourt's valuable treatise on " Anglican Ordinations," which we recommend particularly to those liable to be imposed on by our Buffalo defender of Anglican orders, or his implicitly trusted authorities, Courayer, Mason, Haddan and Lee. We now proceed to give a brief statement of the opin- ions of Catholic writers, who admit the consecration of Parker, by Barlow & Co., and the Register as genuine, if you will, though evidently not the original record, truth- fully detailing the transaction, but a document framed and cunningly devised for a purpose, to meet an exi- gency, to forestall anticipated difficulties, and answer Catholic objections. This short historical view may per- haps throw light on some of the most salient points of ^aamiBam^mmmmm THE LAMBETH REGISTER. 83 the controversy, and show how little comfort the de- fenders of Anglican orders can derive from the most favorable view of the question, and the most liberal interpretation of disputed records. The Princess Elizabeth was proclaimed Queen of England, Novem- ber 17th, 1558. January 14th was fixed for her corona- tion, but Heath, the archbishop of York, and all the Catholic bishops refused to crown her, or lend the sanction of their presence to the ceremony, "until with much ado they obtained che bishop of Carlisle (Oglethorpe), the inferior almost of ail the rest, to do that ceremony." (Allen's answer to English justice.) In the same year, 1559, the first of Elizabeth, all the bishops of the realm in convocation declared, "The supreme power of feeding and governing the militant Church of Christ is given to Peter, the Apostle, and to his lawful successors in the See Apostolic, as unto the vicars of Chris*^" (Heylin) ; and all except LlandafT refused to take the oath of supremacy : " Only one bishop conformed himself to the queen's commands, and vas continued in his place, viz. : Anthony Kitchen, alias Dunstan, of Llandaff" (Fuller) ; and before the end of the same year they were all deprived. (Dodd.) Elizabeth and her advisers are not blind to the exigency of the occasion. A hierarchy obsequious to the queen and favorable to the new doctrines must be created. Matthew Parker, a priest, who had been chaplain to Anne Boleyn, the queen's mother, and was on terms of intimacy with her c^ief advisers, Cecil and Bacon, and who — notwithstanding his priestly vow of celibacy, in violation of the law of God and of the realm, ** that priests, after the order of priesthood, as afore, may not mrrry, by law of God" (31 Hen. viii. cap. 14), THE LAMBETH REGISTER. w \ m jj,mifl i i IIIP and before the act (2 and 3 Ed. vi. c. 21) legalizing the marriage of the clergy — had taken to himself a wife, was selected by Elizabeth to be her first bishop. The vacant archicpiscopal sec of Canterbury was offered to him, and a peremptory orJor from the queen decided^ his acceptance of the proffered, but not coveted dig- nity, and brought him to London in the beginning of June, 1559. Although cathedral chapters had been deprived in the reign of Edward VI. of the right to elect their bishops, and the right of appointment of the same had been vested exclusively in the king, " from henceforth no conge iVelirc, shall be granted, nor election of any archbishop or bishop by the dean or chapter made" (i Ed. vi. c. 2), a conge iVclirc, is said to have been is'jued to the chapter of Canterbury, July 1 8th, of the same year. Tht^re was one vacancy in the chapter, and of the eleven prebendaries, only four, with Dean Nicholas Walton, answered the citation and put in an appearance. The election was by way of compromise left with the dean, whose choice, as was fully understood, was the choice or nominee of the q'.'een. This singular conge iVelire and election by the chapter were deemed sufficient for Parker to assume the epis- copal style and title, which he does in a letter to the council, dated August 27th, 1559. I' rom this date until the 17th of December, the date assigned in the Register for his consecration, there is great confusion and even contradiction in the official documents. In some, the full title of bishop is given to him, in others he is des- ignated bishop " elect." A commission dated October 20th, is addressed to Parker, Grindal and Coxe with their full titles as bishops, and on the 26th of the same THE L^iMBET// A'EG/STER. 85 month, October, we find among the State papers an official document issued by the queen, asi^erting that, "The archbishop elect of Canterbury, and the other elect bishops of London, Ely, Hereford and Chichester remain unconsecrated." If any weight is attached to this document, then Scorey and Barlow, the elect of Hereford and Chichester, arc on 26th of Ooctober, 1559, unconsccrntcd. Yet we know tliat Barlow was bishop elect of St. Asaph's and St. David's in Henry's reign, and afterwards of Bath and Wells, though there is stroner reason to doubt that he was ever consecrated, as we shall sec in the oquel, and Scorey was conse- crated by Cranmcr according to King Edward's Ordinal, and unlawfully thrust into the see of Chichester, from which Bishop Day had been deposed, because he re- fused to exchange the altar for the communion table, the sacrifice of the Mass, for the Lord's Supper. If it be by mistake that Parker gets at one time his full title of bishop, and afterwards is styled archbishop "elect," and declared to be unconsecrated, and if, as Canon Estcourt is willing to allow, it be by a clerical error that Scorey, whose register of consecration is ex- tant, is put on the same footing with Parker, Grindal and Coxe, who are certainly unconsecrated, and Barlow, of whose consecration there is ereat reason to doubt, we at least are justified in concluding that the public records of England were not so carefully kept, and so trustworthy, as some would have us believe. But to proceed. The so-called election of Parker by Dean Walton occurred on the ist of August, and "on the 9th of September, the great seal was put to a warrant for his consecration, directed to the bishops of Duresme 86 THE LAM BET Ji REGISTER. (Tonstall), Bath and Wells (Bourne), Peterborough (Pole), Llandaff (Kitchen), and to Barlow and Scorcy (styled only bishops, not being then elected to any sees), requiring thiem to consecrate him." (Bennct.) This commission failed, most probably because the Catholic prelates, " who," as Sir Mackintosh in his " His- tory ot England" owns, "must have considered such an act a profanation, conscientiously refused ;" just as the Catholic prebendaries of the chapter of Canterbury had refused to take part in his election. We are cer- tainly justified in believing Mackintosh, that the Catholic prelates, refused, through conscientious motives, to unite with such men as Barlow and Scorey. apostates from the faith and their religious vows, in consecrating Parker, who himself had broken his priestly vow of celibacy, and joined the so-called reformed party, and who, irregularly elected, at the bidding of the queen, had been forced into the episcopal dignity by the civil ruler, and secular power, in contravention of canon law, in defiance of all the spiritual authority and ecclesiastical powers, as well of the universal Church, as of the Church of England ; had been named a bishop despite the Pope, despite the patriarch, despite the metropolitan, despite all the laws and tra- ditions of the Church hitherto held sacred. Our be- lief is strengthened when we find three of these four Catholic prelates suffering the penalty of their non-compliance with t le royal wishes in the depriva- tion of their sees — Tonstall before the i6th of the same month of September, Pole before the nth of November, and Bourne, on his refusal to take the oath, tendered by a commission issued October i8th. Yet, a hierarchy must be created for the royal foun- THE LAMBETH REGISTER, elation, the new or reformed Church ; Elizabeth must have bishops, Parker must be consecrated. The bish- ops refuse to consecrate him, and they are all, save one, in consequence deprived of their sees. The law requires (25 Henry, viii.) for the confirmation and con secration of an archbishop, another archbishop, or four bishops within the king s dominions. Now, there is no archbishop, and only one bi.ihop, who answers the de- scription of a bishop within the realm. Cecil, the chief adviser of the queen, is sorely puzzled and in a mar- ginal note in his own handwriting to a state paper de- tailing the legal steps to be taken for Parker's conse- cration, he states: "There is no archbishop nor IlII. bishops now to be had. Whereupon, Querendum." Ac- cordingly eminent canonists, four clergymen; and two civilians arc consulted, and in accordance with their advice a second commission is issued, dated December 6th, " to the bishop of Llandaff ; Barlow, bishop elect of Chichester ; Scorey, bishop elect of Hereford ; Cover- dale, late bishop of Exeter. Hodgkins, bishop suffragan of Bedford ; John, suffragan of Witford ; and Bale, bishop of Ossory ; that they, or any four of them, should consecrate him." We may well repeat with the historian Mackintosh : " Whoever considers it import- ant to examine the above list, will perceive the per- plexities in which the Enrrlish Church was involved by a zeal to preserve unbroken the chain of Apostolical succession." That the perplexities were grave, indeed, may be inferred not only from the inspection of the nam^s and doubtful character of those mentioned in the commission, but also from the unusual and vcr)- strange clause inserted by these canonists, in this com- mission, with which they asserted, it could be lawfully ,! '-: I .1 mm mi lil i!i i: I illil; 88 r//£ LAMBETH REGISTER. acted on. By this clause the queen, by her supreme authority, dispenses with all disabilities, and supplies all irregularities and deficiencies in any of the persons to whom it is addressed, arising from " their condition, state or powers, from the laws of the Church, or the statutf^s of the realm, the urgency of the time and the necessity of circumstances requiring it." Here indeed is a stretch of the royal supremacy and spiritual pre- rogatives of th ,'crowr., but the exigency of the time de- manded it. Parker must be consecrated ; a new re- formed hierarchy must be created ; even though the parties had no canonical rights, jurisdiction or faculties to consecrate a bishop, Elizabeth surely can and docs supply the want ; though they may not possess the condition of bishops within the realm required by the law, the queen can dispense with that, nay, even if not bishops at all, the royal prerogative can supply the want of the episcopal character and ecclesiastical state; in fine, no laws of the Church or statutes of the realm must be a bar to the execution of the wishes of the queen,totheestablishment of an Anglican episcopate, to the consecration of Parkci", and the last forlorn hope is ordered out at this most critical jun^ are to save the imperilled hierarchy of the Anglican establishment. Yet strange, though thus armed and fortified by these extraordinary royal powers. Kitchen, the only bishop exercising jurisdiction and answering to the description of a bishop within the queen's realms, and Bale of Ossory, and the suffragan Telford, " either hindered by sickness," says the Protestant historian Heylin, "or by some other lawful impediment, were not in a con- dition to attend the service." Verily, perplexing difficulties thicken around poor THE l.AMRETH REGISTER. 89 Parker's path to the episcopacy, unlooked-for obstacles obstruct his way to Canterbury. The Fates, it would seem, oppose his elevation to a see rendered illustri- ous by a line of saintly prelates. However, she " of the iron hand and iron maw" is not to be foiled ; she has made up her mind to establish prelacy ; that the Church of England as by law, by queen and Parliament established, may have prelates, her iron will is deter- mined to place Parker in the see of Canterbury, and through him fill the other sees, which her despotic will had made vacant. As Kitchen a second time refused to become accessory to the crime and sacrilege of con- secrating a bishop without canonical warrant or ec- clesiastical authority, Barlow, the next mentioned on the commission, with his worthy compeers, Scorey, Coverdale and Hodgkins, are said to have assembled at the church of St. Mary-le-bone on the 9th of De- cember, to confirm Parker's election, and on Sunday, 17th December, in the chapel of Lambeth house, to have gone through the ceremony of his consecration accord- ing to the ordinal of Edward VI., the service begin- ning "about five or six o'clock in the morning." This is the testimony of the Register, and as to its authen- ticity and the collateral proofs and authorities adduced in its support, we need say no more, though, as Mr. Waterworth remarks : "they appeared about the time that the forgery of documents is said to have been so prevalent as to be made a source of fiscal gain. Pardons were issued at a small charge and ran thus: '■ Pcrdon- amus falsas fabricationcs chartaruvi, scriptorum nion- uinentonun, ac piiblicationcs coruiny Though, then, with the American editor of Waterworth's lectures, we feel it to be "certainly somewhat perplexing, that the ■ i 90 THE LAMBETH REGISTER. commission dated December 6th, 1559, in consequence of which the consecration of December I7tii took place, should have no mark by which Rymer could distin- guish it from a spurious document," we must again remind our readers that this is a subject which they must examine and decide for themselves on its own merits, and the documentary evidence adduced. Canon Estcourt hesitates not to say : " We may indeed believe the alleged facts — viz., of the ceremony having taken place at Lambeth on the 17th of December ; of Parker and the other persons named having taken their several parts in it, and of the Rite in the book of 1552 having been followed, except in one particular — to be as certain as any other facts in English history. But this belief will not lead us to accept the existing Register as an authentic and contemporaneous record of the facts as they occurred. On the contrary, there are circumstances of considerable suspicion attached to it." Again he says: " The other copies which a»-e constantly referred to as evidence in support of the Register, so far from adding to its credit, rather de- tract from it." He then points out the discrepancies between the Register and the two principal documents, usually styled copies or transcripts of the Register, but which are rather original drafts, viz., that of the State Paper Office, and that kept in Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, and which is said have been given to the college by Parker himself. The learned canon proves that " the Register as it stands is a remark- able departure from the usual form," and whilst at- testing that Edward's ordinal was used, records an im- portant deviation from its prescription. He refers to an important document among Foxe's THE LAMBETH REGISTER. ^> MSS. in the British Museum, and placing it side by side in parallel columns with Parker's Register, asserts : " This MS. to be in the writing of a contemporary, and not an unfriendly hand, and preserved among contem- porary papers, of which a part is taken exactly from the Register as it standsv and another part is widely different." How he accounts for this difference we shall see presently, when we speak of Barlow, whom it seems the early Anglicans were ashamed to acknowl- edge as the consecrator of their first archbishop, the root and stem of the Anglican hierarchy. In fact, as we said before, it is very doubtful that Barlow himself was ever consecrated, was ever anything more than bishop " elect," and even if the defender of Anglican succession could have an absolute certainty— which after what we have said he cannot have — of Parker's consecration and of the authenticity and trustworthiness of the Lambeth Register, the validity of the consecration would still be doubtful. 92 ^^ S BARLOW E VEK CONSECRA TED BISHOP ? VII. WAS B..RLOW EVER CONSECRATED BISHOP? TO be certain of the validity of Parker's consecra- tion, we must have an absolute certainty of Bar- low's episcopal character. We propose now to show that his friends have not cleared up the doubts thrown around Barlow's consecration, and that no positive, con- clusive proofs thereof can be adduced. "All are agreed," says Dr. Kenrick, " that Barlow's consecration cannot be established hy 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.'' We asserted in our lecture, " Even if the Lambeth Register be genuine, and if the conse- cration took place, as asserted, at the hands of Barlow, an apostate monk, it is very doubtful whether Barlow himself was ever consecrated, or ever anything more than a bishop elect." In reply to which Dr. Lingard is cited as testifying the direct reverse, thus: " Is there any positive proof that he (Barlow) was no bishop? None in the world. Why should we doubt the conse- cration of Barlow and not that of Gardiner? I fear that the only reason is this : Gardiner did not conse- crate Parker, but Barlow did." This is put down as directly the reverse of what we affirmed, }'et we never asserted or pretended that there was ^ny positive proof ■gw WASBAULO W E VER CONSECRA TED BISHOP? 93 nsecra- of Bar- 3 show thrown ve, con- /\.ll are jcration may, at history, cording orders " Even : conse- arlow, IBarlow more |gard is there jishop? conse- I fear Iconse- [wn as never proof that he was no bishop. What we asserted, and re^assert is, that there is v\o positive proof that he was a bishop,, or anything more than a bishop elect. This is all that is necessary for our thesis, that his consecration is doubtful ; doubtful, then, too, is the validity of Parker's consecration, and consequently, there can fee no abso- lute certainty of the transmission, not only of legiti- mate succession, but even of valid orders through the Anglican episcopate, or the bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church of the United States. It is then not only rash, but a mockery of truth, and an insult to an intelligent public to aver and publish that, " Succes- sion in the Church of England is more demonstrably canonical and regular, in all particulars, than any other succession in Christendom," and — we reluctantly re- peat what must grate so harshly on Christian ears — " the canon of Scripture rests on no evidence more explicit." This putting of the succession in the Church of England on the same footing with holy^ Scripture, or comparing and identifying the evidence on which both rest, strikes us as grossly irreverent to God's Holy Word, and as an unintentional indeed, but most unkind and dangerous thrust at the authenticity, and unimpeachable, absolutely certain, and infallible authority of the inspired Scriptures. We are quite willing to accept the following test of legitimate suc- cession and share in the corporate witness, and apply- ing it to Barlow and Parker we find them wanting "In any given case," says our Episcopalian divine, "a bishop must be able to prove his own succession by the highest moral evidence. In doing this he must show that his consecrator" derived their episcopal order from some ancient Apostolic line. If he can do this !il III :|!!l If J" liiiii !' 94 IVA S BAKLO IV E VER CONSECR/I TED BISHOP? by undoubted registers, known and read of all men like other legal documents, by which the succession is carried up to a period antecedent to modern contro- versy," etc. Now, let Barlow or Parker prove by undoubted registers, known and read of all men, that his consecra- tors derived their episcopal order from some ancient Apostolic line. We challenge our Buffalo divine to apply this test-in Barlow's case. He knows well that this would be fatal to Barlow's claims to a share in the corporate ■witness or the episcopal character and yet he attempts to throw dust in the eyes of the public by boldly set- ting forth what every Catholic would acknowledge as full and ample evidence of a legitimate title, and thus unfairly insinuating, without a shadow of proof, that the title of the first archbishop and his consecrator rests on such evidence. Again, Dr. Lingard asks: " Why should we doubt the consecration of Barlow and not of Gardiner?" We answer, first, because Gardiner's consecration was never questioned, whereas that of Barlow was openly doubted, and denied ; and secondly, because in Gardiner's case, and in every other case, but Barlow's, where the register of a dio- cesan bishop is wanting, collateral evidence of the consecration is supplied, as Professor Stubs shows in his " Registrum Anglicanum," from the diocesan registers, from Rymer, or elsewhere. But in Barlow's case, there is no such collateral evidence, either from diocesan record* from the calendars of the Church books in which the dates of the entrance and death of successive bishops were kept, or from chapter books, for none of these, strange as it may seem, are to be found at St. David's. Dr. I.ingard says again, " I fear IP'AS BAKLOW EVER CONSECRA TED BISHOP? 95 that the only reason (for denying Barlow's and not Gardiner's consecration) is this : Gardiner did not consecrate Parker, but Barlow did." This is no doubt partially true, for whether Gardiner or Cardinal Pole, or " the other bishops," as Dr. Kenrick justly remarks, " whose record of consecration no longer appears, were, or were not, consecrated is a matter of compara- tively minor importance ; but it is of most serious im- portance for the Anglicans to establish, by positive proof, that the man through whom they claim orders, had himself received them." It is no doubt, then, true that Catholics weighed and examined so carefully the question of Barlow's consecration, and not finding suffi- cient . ouchers or positive proofs thereof, denied the same, because on Barlow, ai: Mr. Ward declares, " ?//7^.f/ be built as on a foundation, the whole episcopacy and priesthood of the Church of England." Our Buffalo divine will of course demur to this, for he says : " It must be remembered that it is of no real consequence whether Barlow was or was not a bishop, as he was only one of four bishops, who laid hands, all pronounc- ing together the formula of ordination." Of the worth and theological soundness of this opinion we will speak hereafter, but we really do not blame Angli- cans for being reluctaiit to own Barlow as the father of their hierarchy, or the laying on of his soiled hands the means of communicating the ecclesiastical spirit and Apostolical commission to their Church. " Of all the bishops," says an Anglican writer, " who were created from the date, of 1533 to the end of Edward VI. 's reign. Barlow is perhaps entitled to the palm for abject servility. He seems to have been a mere weathercock, changing perpetually. He was retained m. i 96 WA S HAA'J.OIV K VRR CON SEC A' A 7 ED BISHOP C 1 in the service of Anne Boleyn as early as 1530, and was soon employed as an agent whom she, the king, and Cromwell, might be sure of to do their pleasure. He had lie facto contracted a marriage in spite of his pro- fessio.. as a religioiuj." On the accession of Queen Mary he made a submission which was equivalent to a recantation, resigned h s see, or was deprived, and fitd itito Germany. His sentiments regarding the neces- sity of episcopal consecration we have already recited. but not only on this subject were his sentiments lax and his expressions pro.'ane, but he was regarded by his contemporaries as a clerical buffoon and scoffer at holy things. Returning to England on Elizabeth's accession he was by her named to the see of Chichester. , It was whilst thus ordy bishop elect of Chichester, without any jurisdiction, he is said to have consecrated Parker on the 17th of December, and on the very next day he himself is confirmed and obtains episcopal jurisdiction from the hands of his grateful, new-born child, Matthew Parker, the episcopal fledgling of a day old, whom he presented the day before to Eli.:abeth and the English Church as the first fruit of the queen's supremacy, the first begotten of a new race of bishops, the first link of a new chain of corporate witnesses. Verily, the successiofi in the Church of England Is the most demonstrably canonical and regular in all Christen- dom ! Still his own personal unworthiness. moral deg- radation, uncanonical conduct, and lack of jurisdiction would not invalidate, though they would render illegiti- mate and irregular his conferring of orders, if he were himself a validly consecrated bishop, and with a proper intention used a valid form. Was then Barlow a con- MM S BARLO W E VER CONSECRA TED BISHOP ? 97 secrated bishop? Buffalo's divine says he was : " Bar- low wa? consecrated bishop of St. David's in the 28th year of Henry VIII." But would not the gentleman be kind enough to give us the date more precisely, the day and the month ? It would save us a world of trouble searching through historic records and dusty folios; be- sides it would be so satisfactory and withal so con- vincing. Would he not, too, condescend to tell us where he was consecrated, and who were his consecrat- ors? these are the tests which he himself — waiving, of course, the undoubted registers, which cannot be had — demands of every bishop in order to prove his epis- copal character. But no, he will deign no reply; but simply affirms Barlow ^vas consecrated in the 28th year of Henry VIII. That must suflfice ; his ipse dixit settles the question. As, then, he will not condescend to gratify our now awakened curiosity, or try to satisfy incredulous and irquiring minds, we must turn to others, we must prosecute our inquiries regarding Barlow's consecration elsewhere, in the pages of English history, and in doing so, we find that we have to tread our way through a mass of conflicting authorities and contradictory statements. At the outset we find that Courayer, the most earnest advocate of the validity of English orders, contradicts our friend, for he says. Barlow was confirmed by proxy, bishop of St. Asaph, on the 23rd of February, 1535, ^"d most probably consecrated in the country, by virtue of the archbishop's commission : " We know for certain that he was confirmed, and as it is reasonable to suppose, also consecrated, yet nothing further appears with regard to the see of St. Asaph." This again is contradicted by a royal act, dated May 29th, 1536, 98 irASBAA'lOlP ?A' CON SEC A' A TED BISHOP? allowing the chapter of St. Asaph to proceed to fill the see made vacant, " by the voluntary exchange of William Barlow, the last bishop elect of that place." This also is confirmed by a document found in an appendix to Courayer, in which it is said that, " Barlow was one of the only three bishops translated to new sees within the last two hundred years, without having been consecrated for those to which they were first elected." According to Godwin, he was consecrated on the 22d of February, 1535, whilst Wharton, in his " Fasti Ecclesia: Anglicana;," places his confirmation, which naturally precedes consecration, on the 23d of February, 1535. A mandate of King Henry to Cran- mer, dated 22d of February, 1636, empowers him to proceed to the consecration of Barlow, though accord- ing to Strype, he was confirmed the 15th of Septem- ber, 1535, and of course the ceremony of confirmation could not take place until the royal mandate for his consecration had been issued. "All these contradic- tions," as Dr. Kenrick, from whom we have condensed these facts, remarks, " are evidence that nothing cer- tain is known of the period of Barlow's consecration." Canon Estcourt, from data furnished mainly by Mr. Haddon., makes it, if not certain, at least most prob- able, that Barlow resigned the see of St. Asaph be- fore he was consecrated, and was elected bishop of St. David's on the loth of April, 1535-6, and took posses- sion of that see in person on the 1st of May. He also shows from authentic original documents that he was styled on the 12th of June, " the bishop elect of St. Asaph, now elect of St. Davyes," and on the 30th, in pursuance of a writ of summons issued on the 27th of April, in consequence of an exceptional and extraor- WAS BAA' LO ly EVER CO N SEC R A TED BISHOP? 99 dinary grant of the custody of temporalities made to him, not to " the said elect and confirmed," the usual form, but to " the same now bishop for his life," he as- sumed the style and title of bishop, and took his seat in the House of Lords. Referring our readers, who may wish to study this question more thoroughly, to Canon Estcourt's most valuable work on, ''Anglican Ordinations^'' we will now with the learned canon sum up Barlow's case. "All the a priori arguments used by Bramhall and Elrington, such as the prosmunire, the grant of temporalities, the .seat in the House of Lords, are shown to be eitlier groundless or contrary to the fact ; all the dates assigned for his consecration, viz., the 22d of February by Godwin, the 23d of April by Dr. Lee, and the nth of June by Mr. Hac* on, are con- tradicted by the testimony of records — 2 .id the whole time left for him to be consecrated in is reduced to a period of nineteen days, viz., between the 12th and 30th of June, exclusive. The author shows that Mason gave a wrong refer- ence to the record attesting the extraordinary grant of temporalities, and this fact does not enhance our opinion of Mason's honesty nor increase our confidence in registers, which it would be to his interest to tam- per with and falsify. '* An error in the reference would be of little consequence if he had given a correct de- scription of the document, or if he printed it so as to show its real nature and operation, instead of passing it off as the restitution usually made to a bishop after consecration, ani printing only so much as would not betray the deception he was practising." In the docu- ment found among Foxe's MSS., and referred to above we discover a note concerning Barlow, Scorey, and • 00 ^^'^S £A RL W E VER CONSECRA TED BISHOP t ■ ill ii* li'ii i 1 Coverdale, which seems greatly to strengthen the opin- ion that Barlow was never consecrated. The writer, evidently in the confidence of the Reformers, writ- ing in their favor, having access to registers, though he states when and by whom the other two were consecrated, is as dry and indefinite about Barlow as his Buffalo defender himself, merely stating, " William Barlow was consecrated in the time of Henry VIII." May we not reasonably conclude that he was unable to tell the date of the consecration, or the names of the bishops who consecrated him? We are, 'then, surely justified in the conclusion that, al- though we cannot establish with absolute certainty and by positive evidence, that Barlow was never con- secrated, the probabilities are against him, and "with f«o many circumstances of suspicion, arising from dif- ferent quarters, yet pointing the same way, it is impos- sible to admit the fact of his consecration without more direct proof of it." It is then and must remain very doubtful that Barlow was anything more than a bishop elect. Anglicans and Episcopalians can never be certain of their orders, not to speak of succession, un- less they can have an absolute certainty of Barlow's consecration, and yet it is boldly affirmed that the "canon of Scripture rests on no evidence more ex- plicit." BA/iLOlV'S DOUBTFUL CONSECRATION. lOI VIII. FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO BOLSTER UP OR SUPPLY FOR barlow's DEFICIENT OR DOUBTFUL CONSECRATION. WE will now examine what we nmst regard as a mere subterfuge, a last and very poor shift to escape the consequences of the very grave doubts con- cerning Barlow's episcopal character. " It must be remembered," says the Buffalo defender of Anglican succession, *' that it is of no real consequence, whether Barlow was or was not a bishop, as he was only one of four bishops, who laid hands, all pro- nouncing together the formula of consecration." In this he follows the lead of such Anglican writers as Mason and Bramhall, who taking it from the Register that all four imposed their hands and said the words of the Rite together, argue that all four were really consecrators, and, therefore, it would be sufficient if only one of the four had been a bishop. Mr. Haddon, too, declares that Barlow presided at Parker's conse- cration, but the position occupied by him does not answer to that of the consecrating bishop, for all joined throughout and equally, both in the imposition of hands and the words. All this we learn from Canon Estcourt, and it will, we think, be evident to any one who weighs carefully and without prejudice, all the documents and authorities he adduces, that I ;»!" ; 'Ml ! I02 FUTILE A TTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR '* the Anglican party finding out what a mistake they had made in allowing Barlow to act as consecrator," tampered with the Register, " had it wholly or partially rewritten so as to gloss over Barlow's being the prin- cipal in the function," with a view of meeting the damaging charges of laxity of faith and morals made by Catholics against Barlow himself, and the doubts and difficulties about his consecration. As we have already remarked, in this Register produced bv- Mason, there is ? remarkable departure from the usual form. In all other instances, the Register records the name, either of the archbishop or of some bishop commis- sioned by him, as taking the principal part, and two other bishops assisting him, but in Parker's case the Register makes no rnention of a consecrating bishop and assistants, stating simply that all four imposed hands, and said the words of the form, without saying that they, or any one of them, consecrated him, or that he was consecrated by them, and Mr. Haddon himself re- marks "that in ot!:er cases a distinction is made between the consecrating and assisting bishops, which is not made here." This exceptional form of registra- tion and singular deviation from the customary style of records, coupled with the fact that in the MSS. al- ready referred to, and found in the British Museum, Barlow is expressly named as consecrator, and the others as assistants, show that if Parker's Register be not an entire forgery, the original record has been falsi- fied, tampered with, for a purpose. That purpose we can easily conjecture from the labored attempts to sus- tain the opinJrMi which Mr. Haddon thus expresses: " The absence of Barlow's consecration, if it were so, would not invalidate that of Parker." An extreme HA RLO IV 'S DO UB TFUL CONSE CRA TION. 103 and hazardous op; .ion, indeed, but drowning men catch at straws, and the Anglicans secrr. ready to em- brace any opinion or broach any theory that may save them from the alternative of resting their orders and hierarchy on tlie doubly doubtful Barlow. But supposing the opinion tenable, that all four were consecrators, and that even if Barlow, the presiding prel- ate, were not a consecrated bishop, had no episcopal character, Parker would still be validly consecrated, because the three others joined with Barlow in impos- ing hands and reciting the form ; who are these others on whom we are forced to fall back ? Scorey, Coverdale and Hodgkins. Scorey and Coverdale were consecrated by the form devised by Edward VI., but that form is notoriously invalid and insufficient, as we shall see pres- ently, and therefore they were not bishops at all, and consequently will not help Anglicanism out of the. dilemma into which Barlow has brought it. Its last re- sort and only dependence are now on Hodgkins, the suffragan of Bedford. But so poor is this dependence, so weak and rickety this last prop, that Dr. Elrington himself admits that, " if Ward could prove that Scorey and Coverdale (in addition to Barlow) were not truly bishops it would then follow that Parker was not a bishop, and the succession of the English clergy would be destroyed." Yet Hodgkins, though only a suffragan and without jurisdiction, was a real bishop, having been validly consecrated, with a valid Catholic form, by Stokesly, bishop of London, in 1537, and hence, if the Register can be relied on as detailing the real facts as they occurred, and the opinion of certain Anglican writers such as Ma;;on, that all four were equally con- secrators, and that it would be sufficient if only one of ft 104 FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR I '■ !!. them were a bishop, can be maintained, Parker may still be a bishop, though Barlow most probably, and Scorey and Coverdale certainly, were not. We are, however, inclined to think that any one who will take the pains to examine this question, and study the con- temporaneous documents now within reach, will come to the conclusion that this presenting of all four as equally and individually consecrators is an after- thought, and that Barlow and the others using Edward's ordinal followed its prescriptions, and did not devise something new and exceptional. Now Edward's or- dinal and the rubric of the Pontifical, and the invariable and immemorial usage in England, as is evident from every register extant, except Parker's, suppose and pre- scribe that there shall be one consecrating bishop, and two assistants. Hodgkins was then most probably pres- ent, but took no part in the ceremony, just as now, and at all times in the Catholic Church, prelates come by their presence to add solemnity and ft:/«/ to the con- secration of a brother bishop, but only the officiating prelate, who really consecrates, and the two assistants, take any active part in the ceremony, so that we think Dr. Ellington was quite right in saying, that if Scorey and Coverdale, in addition to Barlow, were no bishops, then Parker was not a bishop. Now as to the theological soundness of the opinion that all are equally consecrators, certain Catholic theo- logians are quoted as maintaining that the bishops present are not only witnesses, but co-operators. ""Omncs qui adsunt cpiscopi non tantum testes, sed etiavi co-opera- tores esse citra omneiti dubitationis aleam asserendum est." (Martene.) This by no means implies that they con- secrate either separately from him or equally with him. BARLO W 'S DO UB TFUL COMSECRA TION. 105 but that they assist and co-operate with the conse- crator, and invariably in the rubrics one is called the cons fcraior, the others, assistants. The consecrator is spoken of as effecting and completing the whole conse- cration, the others as " aiding," " co-operating," " giving testimony and approval." Numerous grave authori- ties and learned theological writers might be adduced, asserting with Filliucius, " Although there are three who consecrate, one of them alone completes the con- secration, even though the others pronounce the words, for of one sacrament there is but one minister." We are quite willing to coincide with the very modest and moderate views of Canon Estcourt : " Without ventur- ing to express an opinion on either side of these dis- puted points — that is to say, whether the assistant bishops are only ' testes,' or also * co-operatorcs^ and if co-operatores in what sense they co-operate ; or whether the consecrator alone is the minister of the sacrament, and alone completes the consecration, or whether the others are joint consecrators with him, or whether it could be maintained, that all the bishops present are equally and separately and individually consecrators, — it is obvious that in a point touching the administra- tion of a sacrament, such a defect as the absence of the episcopal character on the part of the principal conse- crator would throw a very grave doubt on the validity of the consecration. It is quite sufificient to cause the doubt that various authorities should have taught that 'one bishop alone effects the whole consecration.'" Under no possible theory, then, can the episcopal character of Parker or the validity of his consecration be more than doubtful on the score of his consecrators, whilst on the score of the form used, as we shall soon *'i io6 FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR \ sec, there was most certainly no valid consecration, even on tlte supposition that everything was done as the register supposes, and. as the Anglicans themselves claim. As, however, some persons are not a little exer- cised over the number of bishops essential to a valid consecration, and seem not able to distinguish between canons of discipline, and doctrines of faith, declaring Roman Catholic succession in America and Ireland disfigured, and in some measure vitiated because the canonical munbcr of three bishops has been sometimes wanting, whilst owning that, " without this condition, the ordination may be valid, but it is irregular and defective," we purpose here to lay down from Van Espen the true Catholic doctrine, and the teaching and practice of the Christian Church on this subject. *' By the canons of the Nicene and other councils the dis- cipline was established, as well in the Greek as in the Latin Church, that besides the ordaining bishop, two others ought to attend at the consecration of a bishop, and personally assist him. " The reason of this discipline was assigned by Pope Innocent I., writing in his epistle to Victricius, that ' one bishop singly should not presume to ordain a bishop, lest the benefice seem to be conferred by stealth. For such was also the constitution defined in the Nicene Council !' As if he would say the council would not have a bishop to diSCcnA furtively, o: like a thief into the fold of Christ, but publicly, that is to say, with the universal Church, represented by the bishops of the province, approving and assenting. But neither by the Pope, nor by other authorities, is a consecration rejected as null and invalid, if done with- out the right number of bishops, but only censured as BARLOW'S DOUBTFUL CONSECRATION. 107 clandestine, and performed without legitimate ap- proval ; for the presence of those bishops is required, not so much for the substance and validity of the con- secration, as for having it well considered and ap- proved. And therefore, in case of necessity, the con- secration can be given by a single bishop, since the presence of three, or even of two, appears to belong to discipline, and not to the substance or essence of the consecration." We do not then deny that, "Ancient as well as modern canons prescribe that three bishops should be present at a consecration. But this is barely z. precept, not an essentiaf condition, and it appears by the form used in the Church of England, as well as in the Catholic Church, that only one prelate is con- sidered as the consecrator." (Dr. Kenrick.) We might even introduce our friend to a Pope who lived and governed the Church before the Council of Nicea, in the time of the Emperor Ti;ajan, who established this discipline, and decreed that a bishop should be conse- crated by not less than three bishops. This was Pope St. Anacletus. But surely this Apostolical authority and this venerable Catholic Church, which established these wise regulations, and disciplinary canons are competent to interpret them and carry them out in the spirit, and for the purposes that inspired them. She surely must be authorized to relax these her own laws when necessity requires it, in times of persecution, or in the conversion of pagan countries, and the evangeli- zation of nations. And most undoubtedly in the establishment of the American hierarchy, and the consecration of the first bishop of the American col- onics, to which our friend takes exception, there was nothing hostile or repugnant to the spirit of the Mil io8 FUTILE ATTEMPTS TO SUPPLY FOR Apostolical canons or the practice of the Christian Church, there was nothing done furtively or clandes- tinely, or without the knowledge, approval and assent of the clergy of the province and the universal Church. Dr. Carroll, " a most worthy prelate," (though, by the way, a Jesuit), was elected by his brethren of the clergy. Their choice was approved and confirmed by the Sovereign Pontiff, who in the usual form and style authorized him to receive the episcopal consecration from any Catholic bishop in communion with the Holy See. And if there was at that period no regular and canonical hierarchy in England, and if bishops were scarce and convened with difficulty in that once eminently Catholic island devoted to the Holy See and illustrated by saintly bishops, who is to blame, but the persecuting, apostate Church of England? And if Dr. Walmslcy, bishop of 'R.^imdiin partibns infidelium, and Vicar Apostolic of the district of London, cannot surround the solemn ceremony of the consecration of the first bishop of the American Church with all the eclat and pomp of a numerous attendance of his epis- copal brethren, the blame lies at the door of those who sought to crush out the Catholic hierarchy by fire and sword, by the most cruel and tyrannical persecution, and we think Anglicans ought not to force these mem- ories back upon us. The consecration was, however, in all other respects most solemn, regular and canonical, and no one ever dreamed of doubting its validity, or the legitimacy of the succession startmg from it, and only a fertile and imaginative, perhaps poetical, brain could invent the new succession from Archbishop Bedini. This we deem sufficient, in reply to the call made BARLO VV'S DO UB TFUL CONSECRA TJON. 109 See ty, or and [brain [shop ladc on us "to clear up the difficulties which hang about our . wn orders," and the strange assertions that " no- body involved in such a consecration is in a position to object to the order of others." But we can hardly forbear a smile, when we read — "But neither the Walmsley nor the Bedini ordination have {sic) any validity as establishing a canonical episcopate in this country. Our lawful bishops were already settled in their sees, according to the Catholic constitutions, having been duly elected by their dioceses, and no Italian prelate whatever could give any commission in this country without their consent, except in that de- fiance of all canons which for many years has been habitual with the Popedom." This is decidedly cool, some might call it cheeky. The bishops of the Prot- estant Episcopal Church are here. Then beware. Cath- olics, how you intrude ! Supreme Pontiff, Bishop of Rome, though the whole flock of Christ is committed to thy care, " Feed my lambs, feed my sheep ;" though thou art constituted to " confirm thy brethren," and to sustain as a solid rock and immovable founda- tion the whole Church of Christ, venture not to send thy emissaries to the free land of America, where " our lawful bishops have already settled their sees." How- ever, the papacy has been for a long time — for well nigh 1900 years — accustomed to disregard such insen- sate pretensions, and to send its missionaries, priests and prelates, in defiance of infidelity, heresy and error of every kind, to plant the standard of the Cross, to preach Christ crucified, to teach the faith of the gospel in all lands, and this mission it will continue to fulfil to the end of time. But this comes with a singularly bad grace from one who it will be remembered by all our 1 lO JiAA'/.on"S DOViiTI'UL CONSl-.CRA 7 JON. readers congratulated, in a note published in all our papers, Reinkens on his consecration, and reached out to him the hand of fellowship as an episcopal brother in full standing, though Bishop Reinkens had gone all the way to Holland to be consecrated hy one Jansenist bishop, and had come back with what might rightly be called a roving commission as universal " Old Catholic" bishop of Germany, or something of the kind, though the Catholic bishops were already established in their sees, and all refused to impose hands on him, or admit him to any share in their office, dignity or charge. Kaiser Wilhelm commissions him ; Prince Bismarck 5;igns his episcopal brevet ; he promises servile obedi- ence to the State. This is warrant enough; no men- tion of violated canons; of irregular and defective ordi- nation! O consistency, thou art a jewel! THE EDWARDliWE ORDINAL. HI IX. THE KDWARDINE ORDINAL, NOT THE SAME AS THE ROMAN rONTIFICAL— INVALIDITY OF FORM OF CON- SECRATION DEVISED HY EDWARD VI. HAVING seen how vain is the attempt to make Scorcy, Coverdalc and Hodgkins supply for Barlow's doubtful sufficiency to validly consecrate Parker, we come now to discuss the main question — is the form which Harlow is said to have used in the con- secration of Parker a valid form, capable of conferring a valid episcopal consecration ? We before affirmed that whatever opinion we may form of the question of fact of Parker's consecration, which, as a matter of opinion and history, is to be determined by historical research, " It is absolutely certain that on account of the form used, Anglican, and consequently Protest- ant Episcopal, orders are vitiated and invalidated." Again, " Even if Barlow were a regularly consecrated bishop, and went through the form of Parker's conse- cration, the form used, namely, that devised, as the act expresses it, by Edward, was notoriously insufficient and invalid." And again, " The Church established by law seems to have felt this herself, for, in the year 1662, just one hundred and three years too late to save Anglican orders (Parker's consecration, according to the Lambeth Register, was in 1559), convocation ii' li'l :i in 5 ' li 1 p i' 1 ■■,!' 1 1 2 THE ED IVARDI A'E OH DIN A /. NO T THE SA ME changed the form, evidently with the aim of supplying the defect pointed out by Catholic divines." In reply, we are told . "The Roman Pontifical differs from the Ordinal by which Parker was consecrated in nothing which any theologian has ever ventured to pronounce essential." Now, we think it hardly worth our while to waste words with any man who so boldly and un- blushinsilv sets truth at defiance, and contradicts all history. The fact is that every Catholic theologian, and every Catholic writer who has treated of the sub- ject, has denied the validity of all ordinations con- ferred according to the Ordinal of Edward, and surely that is making an essential difference between it and the Roman Pontifical. Such was the judgment of Cardinal Pole, legate of the Holy See, and archbishop of Canterbury, in the reign of Queen Mary, who, with his sub-delegates, theologians, counsellors, and ad- visers, investigated the question, when everything was fresh and information easily obtained, when nobody could have any interest in concealing the truth, and when all must have been more than willing to recog- nize orders conferred according to the new rites, if the orders were valid. How much trouble would have been saved ! how many won over by a favorable de- cision ! None knew better than they what discontent and trouble would ensue if men were to be disturbed in the possession of benefices and bishoprics, to which they had been promoted according to the laws of the realm and forms devised by the king, and sanctioned by Parliament. Yet judgment, a solemn and deliberate, disinterested, impartial judgment, was then pronounced against the validity of Anglican orders, and that judg- ment has never been reversed. The same has been the AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. "3 judgment of all Catholic theologians for -.hrec hundred years, and the same is the judgment of the Catholic Church to-day, and yet, here is a writer with some pre- tensions, too, to position and respectability, and ecclesi- astical knowledge, who not only insults truth and candor, but also the intelligence of his readers, by as- serting that the 'Roman Pontifical differs from the Ordinal by which Parker was consecrattcl in nothing which any theologian has ever ventured to pronounce essential." We might, perhaps, refer, not him, but his readers, to Dr. Milner(" Endof Religious Controversy"), Most Rev. Francis Patrick Kenrick (" 1 heologia Dogmatica"), Most Rev. Peter Richard Kenrick (" Anglican Ordinations"), Dom Wilfrid Raynal, O.S.B. (*' The Ordinal of Edward VI."), E. E. Estcourt, M.A., F.S.A. (" The Question of Anglican Ordinations"), as theologians whose works are probably the most accessible, and who, ex professo, show the essential difference between the Catholic and the Anglican form of consecration, between the Roman Pontifical and the Edwardine Ordinal, and learnedly and conclusively demonstrate in the language of an able writer in the Dublin Review for July, 1873, that "The orders conferred by the bishops who fell into heresy, and who used what is called the Edwardine Or- dinal, were held 'invalid, absolutely null, and unto this day there has been no change in the discipline of the Church." But our Buffalo divine appears to contradict himself, for, in speaking of the different pleas on which Catholics demur to the claim of Apostolic succes- sion in the Anglican Church, he says: "The more decent controvertist tries to prove that the form of words is defective." Who are these more decent con- '•N? .% M :'lil' 1 1 4 THE ED WA h'DlNE OR DIN A L NOT THE SA ME trovertists, unless theologians? And how do they try to prove the form defective, unless by proving the Edwardine form insuflficient and invalid, and conse- quently essentially different from the form of the Roman Pontifical? But we are taken to task, for as- serting what we have now affirmed, that Cardinal Pole and the Church positively and constantly refused to recognize the validity of Anglican orders, or the valid consecration of bishops, ordained according to the new rites devised by Edward, or the Ordinal which he published and forced on the English Church, as a substitute for the old English liturgies, thus: "Dr. Ryan again quarrels with history, when he asserts that the Popes never recognized as bishops those ordai.ned by the Ordinal of Edward. On the contrary, Pope Paul IV., his legate, Cardinal Pole, and all the papal bishops of England did this in Queen Mary's time, thus barrirrg forever such cavils as Dr. Ryan has col- lected. Rome never pretended to doubt the validity of the consecrations under the Reformed Ordinal till she lost hope of regaining the Anglican Church." Now, on this, as on many other points, the gentle- man has been imposed upon and misled by Dr. Lee who, himself following the lead of Bramhall, pretends to produce "Roman Catholic testimonies to the valid- ity of Anglican orclers." Canon Estcourt, who has entered into an elaborate and critical" examination of this point, tells us: " However ambiguous may be the statements of Catholic divines referring to Parker's con- secration, there is no doubt with regard to either their opinion or their practice, when they come to deal with ordinations given and received according to the form annexed to the Book of Common Prayer in 1552, nnd AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAI.. "5 afterwards confirmed by the act, 8 Eliz. cap. I." After producing copious extracts from Allen, who states the practice of the English College at Rheims, from Bristow, Parsons and the petitions presented to King Jameson behalf of his Catholic subjects, which declares : " Neither is the Protestant minister nor bishop, coming to our Catholicke fraternity (as many come of the first sort), reputed other than for mere laymen without orders," and bringing the tradition of the invalidity of the Edwardine orders down from the time of Cardinal Pole, he makes out an interesting list of Anglican ministers reconciled to the Catholic Church before the year 1704, and ordained in the Catholic Church after their reconciliation. He then takes up in detail Dr. Lee's list of Anglican clergymen, who, after having been received into the Church, were said to have declined being ordained, because they believed themselves true priests, and premising that, " it is of very little importance what opinions these persons may have entertained on the subject, having been bred up in heresy, and not having studied a course of Catholic theology, nor having even imbibed Catholic instincts, they were not qualified to form a sound judgment on the question," he shows that Dr. Lee has no foundation for many of his statements; is incorrect in regard to others, and that many of the cases have no bearing on the controversy, and sums up the whole as follows : *' On review of these several cases it may be confidently asserted that there is an unbroken tradition from the year 1554, to the present time, con- firmed by constant practice in France and Rome as well as this country (England), in accordance with which Anglican orders are looked upon as absolutely Km 'ii i'i 1 1 6 y HE ED WA KDINE ORDINA L NOT THE SA ME null and void ; and Anglican ministers are treated simply as laymen, so that those who wish to be- come priests have to be ordained unconditionally. Not a single instance to the contrary can be alleged. The only case in which any discussion appears to have arisen, is referred to by a contemporary writer as an illustration of the accustomed rule. And the state- ments made of objections having been raised by various converts to being ordained in the Catholic Church are shown either to be contradicted by the facts, or to have no theological importance, on account of the persons named being unknown, or married, or of an unsuitable character, or only recently converted, or possessing no clear and certain testimony as to their opinions on the subject." T\\c Dublin Revieiv, in the article already mentioned, written by one, in our estimation, fully as much of a theologian as our Buffalo divine, thus continues this subject: " Peoole may dis- pute if they like, but the fact remains, that in the Church the Anglican orders have never been received, never at any time. Besides, there never was any doubt about them. The Catholics left in England after the persecutions of Elizabeth, and during them, never hesi- tated ; they saw with their eyes and heard with their cars, and not one of them, learned or unlearned, seems to have imagined for a moment that any of the minis- ters made by Parker could say Mass. It might puzzle a profound theologian to say where the flaw is, but no theologian, whether profound or not, has done anything else but confess the flaw." Of Canon Estcourt, the 'e^.rncd reviewer says : " He has shown by most con- clusive proofs that the Anglican ordinations have, in no instance, been recognized ; tiiat the practice of the AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 117 ve, in )f the Church has been uniform and constant from the days of Cardinal Pole, under whose archiepiscopate the ques- tion was first discussed ; it could not have been discussed before. From that day to this, the Angli- can ordinations have been regarded as nullities, con- veying no spiritual power whatever, and leaving the recipients as much laymen as ever they were in their lives." Now, what can we think of a man who has the hardihood to assert publicly that no theo- logian has ever ventured to question the validity of orders conferred according to the Edvvardine Ordinal. or what is tantmount to that, namely, that the Roman Pontifical differs.in nothing that any theologian has ever ventured to pronounce essential from the Ordinal by which Parker was consecrated. What confidence can we place in a writer who, with these facts staring him in the face, boldly and unblushingly af^rms,, that Rome never pretended to doubt the validity of the consecrations under the reformed Ordinal, till she lost hope of regaining the Anglican Church? We cannot forbear branding here another similar, deceitful, asser- tion : " The Pope did not withdraw the Papists from the Church of England, until the tenth year of Queen Elizabeth, and till this all his adherents remained in communion with their proper Church, and also in his communion. This fact proves that the Anglican bishops and clergy were fully recognized at Rome, so long as the Popes had any hope of regaining power over them." He refers to the bull of excommunication, which, he tells us, Pius V. issued against Elizabeth in 1570, to which he evidently attaches little importance, as he is convinced of the nullity and impotence of the Pope's spiritual and temporal authority, but wiicn lie 1 1 8 THE ED IV A R DINE OR DIN A L NOT THE SAME talks of the Pope withdrawing the Papists from the Church of England in the tenth year of Elizabeth, and that, until then, his adherents remained in communion with their proper Church and in his communion, he talks silly nonsense, and, wishing to appeal to ignorant prejudices, he simply stultifies himself. But admire at least his logical acumen ! " This fact, viz. : — that the Pope did not withdraw the Papists from the Church of England until the tenth year of Elizabeth — proves that the Anglican bishops and clergy were fully recognized at Rome, so long as the Popes had any hope of regain- ing power over them." If you can't see it, so much the worse for you ; the fault lies in your dimness of vision, or dulness of per- ception, not in the argument, particularly when you know that all the bishops and clergy, who acknowl- edged the royal supremacy, were e?:communicated in the time of Henry. We wonder if the gentleman knew this when he elaborated the above argument ? We wonder if he ever read how the bishops and the clergy in Mary's reign sued for reconciliation with the Church, and obtained, from the Papal legate, absolution from the excommunication and spiritual censures incurred by various acts of schism and heresy, during the reigns of Henry and Edward^ and how the whole kingdom was publicly and solemnly reconciled to the Church, on the 30th of November, 1 554, by Cardinal Pole, legate of the Holy See ? Yes, he must at least have had some inkling of this. He must have read something of the legatine powers given by the Pope to Cardinal Pole, and the extraordinary faculties exercised by him, in reconciling and absolving and dispensing with the bishops and clergy in Mary's time, because it is from a ^S THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 119 icdom egate some of the Pole, im, in h the "rom a misunderstanding and misinterpretation of these facul- ties, and the cases in which they were exercised, that Bramhall, Elrington, Haddon and Lee erroneously con- cluded, as he does (for he only repeats, almost ver- batim, Bramhall's words), that : " King Edward's form of ordination was judged valid in Queen Mary's days by all Catholics, and particularly by Cardinal Pole, then Apostolic legate in England, and by the then Pope, Paul IV., and by all the clergy and Parliament of Eng- land." We shall soon show the true meaning of the powers and faculties granted to, and exercised by, the legate, and tha. they did not, and were never meant, to extend to the Edwardine clergy, and no one ordained by the Edwardine form was allowed to celebrate Mass or retain his benefice, unless after a new ordihatioji. " The fact is," says Canon Estcourt, " the Anglican orders were completely ignored, and those who had received them were, to all intents and purposes, looked upon as mere laymen." That there is, then, an essential difference between the form of the Roman Pontifical, and that of the Edwardine Ordinal, by which Parker is said to have been consecrated, we have shown, and we named, for the benefit of those wishing to know the truth, some Catholic theologians who wrote expressly and pro- fessedly to demonstrate a difference so essential as to make one form valid, and the other invalid, and some theological and popular works easily accessible giving not only the opinion of their authors, but collecting the testimony of a cloud of witnesses, theologians and scholars, all testifying to the unbroken Catliolid tradi- tion of the insufficiency and invalidity of a.11 orders conferred according to the new rites devised by Edward, t. =• 1 20 THE ED WARDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME •!::5l Cranmer, and their worthy compeers. That such has been CathoHc tradition and unanimous teaching of theologians since the question was first mooted in the reign of Mary, we confirmed from the invariable prac- tice of the Church in ordaining iinconditionally all Anglican prelates and presbyters who, returning to her bosom and the faith of their fathers, wished to exer- cise the holy ministry, and were found worthy to re- ceive the priestly character, and discharge the duties of the priestly ofifice. This incontrovertible fact is overwhelming evidence of the mind of the Church re- garding the validity of Anglican orders, and the Or- dinal by which Parker was consecrated. As, however, this is a vital point, we have thought proper to add to the authorities already given the testimony of Dodd, the historian, found in Appendix No. 42, " Dodd's Church Hi.story of England," by Canon Tierney, F*.R. S., F.S.A.: " Though the consecration of bishops and priests, in Henry VIII.'s reign (after the schism happened, and a general interdict and excommunication was pro- nounced against the whole ecclesiastical body), was esteemed uncanonical, and annulled as to jurisdiction, yet all the time during the said reign, the validity of these consecrations was never contested by the Catho- lic party. But, in the succeeding reign of Edward VI., a considerable alteration being made in doctrinal points, and, among other things, a new Ordinal estab- lished, their ordination was not only looked upon as uncanonical, but also as invalid, upon account of the errors and omissions, which declared the unsufificiency of their Ordinal. The refornlers not only struck out the article of obedience to the See of Rom'^ (wliicV. ylS THE ROM AX PONriFlCAf.. 121 rendered their consecration uncanonical, and deprived them of all spiritual jurisdiction), but the most of them renewed the error of Arius, and made no essential dif- ference between the episcopal and sacerdotal character." To these errors they added sev^eral others, which were directly incompatible with a valid ordination; that, ordination was not a sacrament instituted by Christ, but only a mere ceremony, to appoint a ministry in relig- ious performances; that, all power, both temporal and spiritual, was derived from the civil government, and, namely, from the king ; that, those of the episcopal character could perform nothing effectually towards the validity of their character, without the king's mandate or letters patent ; that, those of the sacerdotal character had no power to offer sacrifice,to consecrate the Holy Eucharist, or to au olve from sin. This was the constant belief of both the consecrators, and of those that were consecrated according to the new Ordinal, to which may be added, that though they had held the orthodox points above mentioned, they made use of a matter and form that was insufficient, and not capable of conferring that power, which essentially belongs to the episcopal and sacerdotal character ; and that, hav- ing at the same time no intention to confer any orders, but such as were conformable to their errors, which were destructive of Christ's institu*^Ion, their ordination was, ipso facto, null and invalid. These are the considerations Dr. Harding and others went upon, when they denied Jewel's character, and rep- resented the whole body of the reformed clergy to be no other than laymen, excepting such as were consecrated in Henry VHI 's reign, before the ncv/ Ordinal, or any other erroneous ceremony of ordination was made use I! 122 THE ED WAR DINE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME of. For the same considerations, the learned divines of Queen Mary's reign, nay, the convocation, and even the legislative power in Parliament, declared the afore- said bishops and inferior clergy to be irivalidly conse- crated ; and actually caused all those to be re-or- dained, in whom they found any essential defect. In the following reign of Queen Elizabeth, the divines of the Catholic party continued in the same opinion, con- cerning the invalidity of Protestant ordinations ; and all were re-ordained, that came over to them, notwith- standing any pretended consecration among them- selves — Parker's Register, and the account there given of the consecrators' qualifications, being insignificant in the case, where an essential defect was alleged in the matter, form, and intention of the persons deputed to perform the ceremony." Now, if to this we add the testimony of Perrone, whom no one will deny to be a theologian, we shall have gathered for our readers data enough to enable them to form their own judgment about the assertion, that no theologian ever ventured to reject, as essentially invalid, the form of consecra- tion used by Barlow in the consecration of Parker, al- lowing that he did go through the ceremony at all. ''Anglican orders are deemed ;///// and void, not because they are conferred by heretics and schismatics, but on account both of the interruption of episcopal succes- sion in that sect, and of their form having been essen- tially vitiated ; ob vitiatam essentialiter formaniy (Perrone, de ord., cap. iv.) And in this connection. Canon Raynal makes the important remark that the " Revised Ordinal was rejected by the Holy See some years before the alleged December consecration of Parker by Barlow." AS THE ROMAN' PONTIFICAL. 123 And Rev. Mr. Waterworth, in his historical lectures, thus refers to the same subject : " It is not here the place to enter into the validity of the orders conferred by the new Ordinal ; it will be sufficient to observe that it was composed principally by men who considered ordination an unnecessary rite ; and that in the ensuing reign, the statute authorizing the Ordinal was repealed, and the ordinations made, in conformity with it, reputed, both by the bishops and Parliament, invalid, principally because the anointing of the candidates, and the por- rection of instruments were omitted, and that no form of words %vas preserved significative of the orders con- ferred.'' Yet in spite of all this, our "Old Catholic," misled by false teachers, stoutly avers that in Queen Mary's time the Pope and his legate. Cardinal Pole, and all Catholics judged King Edward's form of ordination valid. As the pains-taking Canon Estcourt has proved this false, after thoroughly sifting the whole matter, and investigating every particular case, we refer to it again only to show from the t'-^^ character and tenor of the faculties granted to Cardinal Pole, how little those dispensations which he granted in virtue of those faculties, can be relied upon to prove that the cardinal recognized not only the ordinations celebrated in the schism under Henry VIII., but those also under Edward VI. The cardinal does, indeed, as seen in Statutes i and 2i^hiHp and Mary, cap. 8., dispense with and re- ceive in their orders and benefices those who should return to the unity of the Church. ''Omncs ecclesiasticas personas * * '*' qtioi aliqiias inipetrarnnt dispcnsationcs, * * * tain ordines quain bcncficia ccclesiastica, prieicKsa auctoritate sitpremitatis ccclcsice Anglicancz, licet mil liter et de facto obtimierint, et ad cor reverses ecclcsice nnitati M • !f '% 124 THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL NOT THE SAME rest it u tee ftierint, in sitis ordiiiHuis et beneficiis, miseri- corditer recipicntcs, sccum super his opportune in Domino dispensanius." Yet this proves nothing, as the same author shows, because only those arc or could be re- ceived back in their orders, who had orders, and this is apparent from the tenor of the faculties which he re- ceived, and which he distinctly explains and interprets himself. In exercising his faculties, as well as in grant- ing to the reconciled bishops the extraordinary powers which as legate he held, he expressly distinguishes two classes of persons, viz., those who had been ordained during the schism, even unduly, by heretical and schis- matical bishops, yet according to the ancient Catholic rite ; and, secondly, those who held benefices without being ordained. The former were allowed " to exer- cise the sacred orders' and the priesthood even, received as aforesaid from heretical and schismatical bishops, even unduly (minus rite), provided that the form and intention of the Church had been preserved ;" the latter might be ordained, if worthy, and retain the benefices if otherwise canonically conferred, whilst numerous instances are adduced to show that those latter were persons who had been ordained according to the new rites, and were acting as Anglican ministers. These, if unmarried and otherwise qualified, were to be ordained and retain their benefices. " And thus," remarks the canon, " Dr. Elrington, Mr. Haddon, Dr. Lee, and other Anglican writers, have been entirely mistaken in referring the words ' minus rite' to ordinations after the Edwardine form." The fact then remains, and cannot be controverted, or challenged, that the Pope and cardinal wishing to facilitate the return of the English Church to Catholic AS rilE ROMAN P0\ 1 .FI.'AL. 125 unity, from which a tyrannical, lustful king had vio- lently torn her, stretched indulgence to the utmost limit, condoned all violations of canonical law and Church discipline, sanctioned whatever was not posi- tively against the substance of Go«- ,holy institutions, dispensed with irregularities, and absolved from eccle- siastical censures incurred by receiving holy orders, ' minus rite,' without canonical sanction and approval of the Holy See, from prelates schismatical ai?d here- tical, if only what was essential to the validit} of the sacrament was observed ; and hence all the ordinations in Henry's time were recognized because the old form according to the Catholic Pontifical and the ancient English liturgies was used. But not a single instance can be adduced of the recognition or sanction of any ordinations performed in Edward's time, after the adoption of the new Ordinal, because they were abso- lutely intrinsically worthless, and no earthly power could give them force or value, because the sacramen- tal form was substantially destroyed, purposely and wickedly vitiated by men who sought to overturn the whole hierarchical order, by poisoning its very root, men who did not believe in the divine institution of the episcopate or priesthood, the sacrament of the Eucharist or the sacrifice of the Mass. Now, as we are not writ- ing a treatise de ordtne, or de sacravientis in gcnere, but reviewing and exposing sophistries and refuting false assertions, we must refer our readers, wishing further information on any of the points which we skim over, to the authors and works already named, or to any recognized hand-book of theological science to be found in our Catholic book-stores. Having shown that we did not quarrel with history when we asserted that Vm ! "«l ■, -« '■ S'^% -'•! ' !U 1 26 THE ED IVA RDINE OR DIN A L NO T THE SA ME the Popes never re:ognizcd as bishops those ordained by the Ordinal of Edward ; having nailed the false- hood : "that Pope I aul IV., his legate, Cardinal Pole, and all the Papal bishops of England, did this in Queen Mary's time," and this other : '* that Rome never pre- tended to doubt the validity cf the consecration under the Reformed Ordinal, till she lost hope of regaining the Anglican Church ;" and having, in our own opin- ion at least, shown that Popes, legates, bishops, theo- logians, the whole Church, constantly, unconditionally, without an exception, and with entire unanimity, in teaching and in practice, rejected as worthless the or- ders conferred by Edward's Ordinal, we may proceed to discuss our next point. "When Dr. Ryan presumes to object to the Angli- can formula of ordination, I have only to reply that it is the same which was used in England before the Ref- ormation, and is essentially the same on which his own orders depend — ' receive ye the Holy Ghost.' " Here are three distinct propositions, all equally false and untenable, (i) That the Anglican formula of conse- cration is the same that was used in England before the Reformation ; (2) That it is essentially the same as that on which Dr. Ryan's orders depend ; and, by im- plication, at least, (3) That, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," is the essential formula on which orders in the Catholic Church depend, or the essential sacramental form of ordination. Let us examine each of these propositions: (i) The Anglican formula of consecration is the same that was used in England before the Reformation. Did not Edward then appoint a commission composed of six bishops and six others learned in the law to draw up a AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 127 new Ordinal, to suit and accompany tho new liturgy, recently compiled and introduced, enforced by pains and penalties? Is there not on the statute book of England, an act that reads: " For as much as concord and unity to bo had within the king's majesty's domin- ions, it is requisite to have one uniform fashion and mariner of making and consecrating of bishops, priests, and deacons, or ministers of the Church, be it therefore enacted, by the king's highness, with the assent of the lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, that such form and manner of making and consecrating bishops, priests and deacons, and other ministers of the Church, as by six preb.tes, and six other men of this realm learned in God's law, by the king's majesty to be appointed and assigned, or by the most number of them, shall be devised for that purpose, shall, by virtue of this present act, be lawful'y exercised and used, and none other, any statute or law or usage to the contrary notwithstanding"? (3 and 4 Ed. vi.c. 12). Were not several Catholic bishops who saw the tendency and aim of this new Ordinal, and the purpose of its framers and compilers, and on that account re- fused to give their consent or approval to the same, deprived and sent to the Fleet ? Or, will any one dare to maintain, that the new Ordinal is the same as the old ? Why, then devise a new one ? Why did the Bishops, Tonstall, Aldrich, Heath, Day and Thirlby protest in Parliament against the commission appointed to compose it? Why did it require penal laws to force the bishops to use it ? Why was Heath punished with inprisonment ^ r refusing to approve it? But (2) can any one be bold enough to say that the Or- % 1 :| 1 28 Ti^i^ ED WAKDINE ORDINAL NO T THE SAME l''f ''■ m dinal, composed by Edward's mixed commission, is the same as the old Sarum Pontifical? or that the meagre, meaningless for ^ulaof episcopal consecration : " Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is in thee by the imposition of hands ; for God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love, and soberness," is the same as that found in the Gregorian Sacramentary, brought from Romeby St. Augustine? " The traditional forms," says Canon Raynal, " brought from Rome by St. Augustine in the Gregorian Sacramentary, are found in the Anglo- Saxon Pontificals of Ecgberht, and St. Dunstan, and can be traced from the Roman conquests to the very days of the impious Cranmer." Dr. Pusey, in his Eirenicon^ convicts somebody either of not knowing what he is talking about, or deliberately falsifying facts. " The form adopted at the consecration of Arch- bishop Parker was carefully framed on the old form used in the consecration of Archbishop Chichele a century before. * * * The tradition of that consecra- tion was then " only a century old." Then it was not the formula in use before the Reformation. It had not been used for a whole century. And Dr. Pusey says its use even then was exceptional, " having been resorted to at a time when the English Church did not acknowledge either of the claimants to the Papacy ;" and that the form was wholly different from that used in the consecration of the number of archbishops con- secrated in obedience to Papal Bulls. Dr. Pusey's testi- mony then proves clearly that the Anglican formula of ordination was not that used in England before the Reformation, but one whose use was exceptional, and he thinks, " it was of the providence of God that they '» AS THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL. 129 had that precedent to fall back upon." Now, we need not stop here to tell our readers that the only possible explanation of this assertion of Dr. Pusey is, as Canon Estcourt remarks, that Chichcle was consecrated ac- cording to the form in the Roman Pontifical, in which the words, Accipe Spiritiun Sanctum are found, and not according to the old English Sariim. Nor need we stop to remind Dr. Pusey that it was one of these claimants to the Papacy, viz., Gregory XII., who con- secrated Chichele, bishop of St. David, in the year 1408, and that afterwards, in 1414, when promoted to thearchiepiscopal see of Canterbury, he was confirmed by Pope John XXIII. This, by the way, to show how true it is that E gland did not recognize the authority of the Pope, and tliat the Pope did not exercise any jurisdiction within that kingdom. ■i:i ,ilS 130 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF X. THC INSUFFICIENCY OF 'I'HE EDWARDINE ORDINAL, CONTINUED. HAVING seen that the Anglican formula of ordina- tion is not the same as that used in England before the Reformation, is not the same as that found in the Sarum Pontifical, or the Gregorian Sacra- mentary brought from Rome by St. Augustine and "used until the time of the impious Cranmer,"we come to the second proposition that the " Anglican formula of ordination is essentially the same as that on which Dr. Ryan's own orders depend,' we must remark that our objections are to the formula of consecration said to have been used by Barlow in the consecration of Parker, that devised by Edward and found in the Ordinal composed by his mixed commission. We do not, however, wish to in- timate that the form now used in the Anglican ordina- tion rite, revised, corrected, and amended as it has been, especially by the addition made in 1662, is a sufficient or valid form, and we do not care to quarrel with the declaration • " the words added in 1662, while they add something to the dignity of the rite, were never supposed by any body in his senses to add any- thing to it J validity." We only wish to avoid confusion m a THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL. 131 by having it understood that in the proposition : *' The Anglican formula of ordijiation is essentially the same as that on which Dr. Ryan's own orders depend," the Edwardine form is meant, for to this alone exceptions are taken, and whether the other is or is not valid, is of nv consequence, since it came upwards of one hun- ' dred years too late to rehabilitate or give force or value to Anglican orders. Dr. Pusey is more candid and more correct than most Anglicans, when he ac- knowledges that the forms used when bishops were consecrated in obedience to Papal Bulls, were wholly different from that used at Parker's consecration. Now, as, not only all the bishops of England, from the in- troduction of Christianity into the island were always consecrated in obedience to Papal Bulls until Henry, bullying a weak and servile hierarchy and Parliament, ordained that bishops should be consecrated only in obedience to his royal Bulls, but also, we, and all the Catholic bishops of Christendom of the Latin rite have been consecrated in obedience to Papal Bulls and by the forms found in the Roman Pontifical, the form on which our orders depend, was, to say the least, even according to Dr. Pusey, very different from the Angli- can formula. Can they then be essentially the same ? We hold they are essentially different and precisely be- cause purposely, dc industria, Cranmer and his Cal- vinistic co-laborers, in framing the new Ordinal, modi- fied, altered and omitted what we regard as essential in the ancient rite, and thus made the new, reformed Ordinal, substantially and essentially at variance with the Roman Pontifical. We beg our friend to take the Mechlin edition of the Roman Pontifical, to which he in a foot-note refers, and which he presumably has, or :,! m MP 132 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF if not, we will cheerfully loan him the one now before us, and compare it with his own Ordinal. It would occupy too much of our space to show all the points wherein they differ, even all es- sential points, at least, what we deem essential points, and hence we can here only insist that a careful and. critical examination of the Anglican forms of making, ordaining and consecrating bishops, priests and dea- cons will reveal the fact which the " Question of An- glican Ordinations," draws out lengthily, conclusively, viz. : that they were framed purposely with a view of excluding the idea of sacramental efficacy, or a conse- crated character impressed on the soul. They recognize no divine gift of grace or power communicated through the rite, conferred by the sacrament ; that, alterations, omissions and novel additions to the liturgy and Pon- tificals have been made with set purpose and design to introduce the newly invented doctrine of the Reform- ers, to destroy the spirit and sacrarnental idea of the holy rite of ordination. Too late- the schismatical Bishops, Heath, Day and Tonstall perceived — what Gardiner and Bonner had realized from the start — that Cranmer was bent on the destruction of the English hierarchy, the divine institution of the priesthood and the holy sacrifice, by tampering with the form of the sacrament of the Holy Orders ; and they protested against the appointment of a commission to devise a new form of consecrating and ordaining bishops, priests, deacons and other ministers. "The commission, how- ever," says Canon Raynal, " obtained the sanction of the Great Seal for their newly devised forms, and with- out further trouble forced them upon the bishops. This was in sober truth "the dismantling of the fu- THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL. 133 ►efore • :e to ill es- >oints, il and. aking, d dea- )f An- sively, lew of conse- ognize tress." In the form of ordination to the priesthood : " there is no indication of looking for a gift of grace peculiar to the order, nor for any interior con- secration, nor for any special power of priesthood ; such a gift of grace as communicated through the imposition of hands, is unasked for, unrecog- nized, unknown ; it is completely ignored. Those parts of the ancient Catholic rite which indicated such grace are omitted, and the portions of the ceremony still retained are so changed as to exclude any such idea. The forms and phrases used are either new, or else applied in a sense quite different from that under- stood by the Catholic Church." In the Edwardine form of consecrating bishops, " the few slight phrases of the Pontifical that are preserved, show that the compilers had the ancient form before them, and that while keeping up a pretence of the same thing, they delib- erately altered it, in order to reduce it to the Lutheran and Zuinglian notions of a mere admission to an of- fice and a trial before a congregation." " There is no mention of the functions of a bishop, as in the Pontifi- cal, ^ Episcopum oportet judicare, interprctari consecrare, confirviare, or dinar e^ off err eetbaptizare^ The functions alluded to in the new Ordinal are, * to govern, to in- struct, to teach, and exnort, to convince gainsayers, to drive away erroneous doctrine, to correct ^nd punish' though in 1662, ' to ordain' was added. But as it stood at first, there was no allusion to administering any sac- rament, or to anything requiring the power of order." Again, as a proof that the Anglican form of conse- crating is not the .same as that of the Roman Pontifi- cal, please to note the very serious and essential omis- sion in the former of the two prayers of the Pontifical » . m I \i 134 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF having special reference to the grace of the episcopal order : '* Be propitious, O Lord, to our supplications, and turning over on this thy servant the horn (that is, abundance, or plenitude) of sacerdotal grace, pour out to him the power of thy b', ediction." "And therefore grant, we beseech Thee, O Lord, to this, thy servant, whom Thou hast chosen unto the ministry of the High Priesthood. * * * Complete, O Lord, in thy priest the sum (or perfection) of thy ministry." In fact, as Canon Estcourt rerr -ks, whilst " certain ex pressions are retained and tau-n from the prayer an- ciently called * Consecration every phrase that expresses a divine power, an authority coming from God, a sacramental efficacy, is studiously omitted. There is no prayer for the gift of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, nor of the power of binding and loosing, nor of the episcopal chair to rule the Church and people committed to him. Almighty God is not asked to be his authority, his power, his firmness. He is to be ready to preach the gospel and glad tidings of recon- cilement ; but the ministry of reconciliation is not given to him. He is to be the faithful and wise ser- vant giving the Lord's family meat in due season, but not one whom God sets over his family. Even ' the power which Thou dost bestow' (as the Pontifical has it), is changed into * the authority given him,' leaving the source of the authority untold. And when we look back in order to know what the authority is, we find only, * such authority as ye have by God's word, and as to you shall be committed by the ordinance of this realm.' Thus the prayer is only for grace to fulfil certain duties, and it does not ask for, nor recog- nize any sacramental gift whatever." And this is 'nm THE EDIVARDINR ORDINAL. 135 just what we might expect from the well known, and often and publicly avowed sentiments of the compil- ers of the Ordinal. This ought to be more than enough to show that the formula of ordination of the Edwardine Ordinal, on which hang the validity of Parker's consecration, and the orders of the Anglican Church, is not essentially the same as that of the Roman Pontifical, on which depend Catholic orders. But (3), as some seem to regard nothing as es- sential but the words : " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," we will now try to prove that this proposition is as false and untenable as the other two ; that " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," cannot be the sole essential form of episcopal consecration One simple syllogism should be enough to settle this point. That cannot be the sole essential form of consecration, which was not known in the Church, used in ordination of a bishop, or found in any Pontifical earlier than the 13th century. But the formula, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost" was not known in the rite of episcopal ordination, and is not found in any Pontifical or Sacramentary earlier than the 13th century, therefore it cannot be the sole essential form of consecration. Some one, then, has been again misled by his usual blind guides. Mason, an author- ity for our friend, admits the necessity of a sacramental form in Holy Order, and that, for the validity of this form, its words should denote the special order con- ferred and the power given. But the words, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," do not express the special office, order or power conferred, therefore they cannot be the sole sacramental form of episcopal consecration. Yet, with strange inconsistency, and a boldness of assertion and disregard of logic, worthy even of some one whom ■;t;t 41 M 136 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF we know, he gravely maintains, that: " If the imposi- tion of hands be the sole essential matter of the epis- copate (as ail theologians are agreed that the words which are pronounced whilst the matter is used, con- stitute the form), the v/ords ^Accipe Spiritum Sanc- tum,' (Receive the Holy Ghost) must be the sole essential form, and as these are found in the Edwardine form, the bishops of the Anglican Church must be true bishops." Hereupon Canon Raynal remarks : " Mason evidently did not know the fact that the words '■Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, were comparatively a recent ad- dition to the episcopal form, and being a recent addition, could not be the sole essential form. Otherwise the epis- copate was never validly conferred during a thousand years." And referri^ng to the illogical conclusion which Mason draws from his incorrect premises. Dr. Champ- ney says : " It is a marvel to me, that he should so peremptorily say, that their bishops are ordained with true matter and form. But he doth well to be bold in affirming, for a good face sometimes helpeth out an ill game." Many other reasons might be assigned why these words, '* Receive ye the Holy Ghost," as they are found in the Edwardine Ordinal, cannot be the sole essential or sufficient form of episcopal consecration. They do not indicate the order or express the distinctive char- acter or power of the episcopacy ; they are vague and indeterminate ; they are used alike, and with equal fitness in the ordination of a bishop, a priest and a deacon ; and in the form used in the Anglican Church until 1662, when Cosin and others thought fit to make the change, there was not a syllable in the form for consecrating bishops to determine which order it was THE EDWARDINE ORDINAL, ^17 intended to confer. In fact it is, as Dr. Milner observes, *' just as proper for the ceremony of confirming or lay- ing hands upon children as for conferring the powers of the episcopacy." But let us see how our Buffalo critic maintains the sufficiency of this form, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost." " As these were," he argues, " the only words used by Christ Himself in giving the Apostolic commission, it ma)? be well asked, what more can be needed to continue it?" Here, indeed, is some- thing to astonish us ! "As these were the only words used by Christ Himself in giving the ApostoKc com- mission" ! ! Surely, he must have written that sen- tence for us, poor benighted Papists, who are not al- lowed to read our Bibles ! or he could not have haz- arded such an assertion. However, not trusting our memory in opposition to so positive an affirmation, we turn to the holy gospel to verify what sounds strangely to us. Opening the gospel according to St. Matthew, we find no mention of these words, but we do find our Lord giving the Apostolical commission with authority to teach, and baptize,. and discharge all the functions consequent thereon in the well-known words: "All power is given to me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and teach all nations ; baptiz- ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the H6ly Ghost ; teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you : and behold lam with you all days, unto the end of the world." (Matt, xxviii. i8, et seq.) Most interpreters would take .iiese words as giving the Apostolic commission and assuring its perpetuity. Coming next to St. Mark's gospel, wc again search in. vain for the words, which, we are told, are the only , * Ml mi , :': ill i ' 'ksu Mil .Hill 138 THE INSUFFICIENCY OF ones used by Christ in giving the Apostolic commission. We do, indeed, find such words as these : " Go ye into the whole world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth, and is baptized, shall be saved, but he that believeth not, shall be condemned." (Mark xvi., 15, 16.) Once more we turn to St. Luke, and still find no trace of these words, though the risen Saviour declares to His 'Apostles that "penance and the remission of sins should be preached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem, and ye are" witnesses of these things. And I send the prom- ise of my Father upon you." (Luke xxiv., 47, 48, 49.) In the gospel according to St. John we find the world's Redeemer on the first day of the week entering where the disciples )vere gathered together: '• He said therefore to them again : Peace be to you : as the Father hath sent me, I also send you. When He had said this He breathed on them and said to them : Re- ceive ye the Holy Ghost. Whose sins ye shall forgive they are forgiven them, and whose sins ye shall retain they are retained." (John xx., 21, 22, 23.) Now how can the man say in the face of an intelligent Bible- reading community that, '* Receive ye the Holy Ghost," were the only words used by Christ, in giving the Apostolic commission? He gave his apostles their commission when he bade them go teach all nations, preach the gospel, and baptize in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. He gave them power and authority to fulfil this commis- sion, when He sent them, as He had been sent by His "Father ; He breathed into their souls the grace and power of the Holy Ghost to enr.ble them to execute and perpetuate the divine commission until the end of THE EDWARDJNE ORDINAL. 139 time, and He clearly intimates among the duties and powers contained in the commission, and communi- cated to them by the same, the duty and power of forgiving sin in His name, '' ivhose sins ye shall forgive^ they are forgiven them ; and whose sins ye shall retain they are retained'' Surely, no man with this page of the gospel open before him, can say that " Receive ye the Holy Ghost," were the only words spoken by our Lord when commissioning His Apostles, or that these, more than the other words spoken on the same occa- sion, were intended by the Saviour as the essential form of the sacrament of orders or the rite of ordina- tion by which that commission was to be continued. 140 \ THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND XI. 'J DISCREPANCIES BETWEEN THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD, CONTINUED. IN establishing our thesis that the form of consecra- tion by which Barlow is said to have consecrated Parker, was altogether a.n insufficient and invalid form, invalidating all the orders in the Anglican Church, we have had to meet and disprove the assertions: (i)that such was the form used in England before the Reforma- tion ; (2) that it is substantially identical with the form of the Pontifical by which we ourselves were con- recrated ; (3) that Receive ye the Holy Ghost is the es- sential and the only essential form of episcopal conse- cration : and that these were the only words used by Christ in giving the Apostolic commission. How very unwarranted and untenable these assertions are must be apparent to every reader who has followed up the dis- cussion, and what amazcb us .is tliat such totally groundless assertions could have been published by any one pretending to historical and ecclesiastical knowledge. But there is really no limit to boldness of assertion, and in the interest of truth, and for the sake of the simple and unwary who may have no chance of examining or ever seeing any Catholic authors, we must still further follow up and expose the errors, falsehoods, and fallacies of this writer, pub- THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 141 lished here, on the subject of the Ordinal of Edward and the Roman Pontifical. Thus he writes: • •' His (our) own Pontifical is certainly less explicit on this point (of the form) than the Ordinal of Edward ; for while in both we have the formula, Receive the Holy Ghost, there is nothing more in the Pontifical ; while the Ordinal goes on with the very ivords of the Holy Ghost to a bishop, thus defining the precise charisma bestowed by the laying on of hands." We are inclined to ask, at reading the above extracts, that, The Pontifical is less explicit than the Ordinal of Edward, and that : In the Pontifical there is nothing more than the bare words, Receive the Holy Ghost, has the gentleman ever seen or read the Pontifical published at Mechlin, to which he refers ? If he has, he either does not understand its language, and has merely copied second-hand statements of false teachers, or he is, in bad faith, trying to deceive chose who perhaps will never have an opportunity of seeing a Pontifical. Is that fair and honest in a minister of religion ? We are then tempted to quote here the most beautiful and appro- priate prayers of the Pontifical which immediately follow thQ'^Accipe Spiritnm Sanctum,'' ^^ Receive the Holy Ghost," prayers that really determine and express the order of the episcopacy, the plenitude of the priest- hood, the High Priesthood, the sum or completeness and perfection of the ministry, figured in the Levitical law by the priesthood of Aaron ; prayers which ac- tually and explicitly define — what the vague and un- meaning form of Edward's Ordinal positively does not — the special graces and precise charisma bestowed by the laying on of hands. Though somewhat lengthy, these beautiful prayers of the ordination service in the ■i.'fSijl d'! If 142 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND Pontifical will well repay a perusal, and, more forci- bly than any words of ours, they will evince how utterly unreliable is our Buffalo controversialist. " Be propitious, O Lord, to our supplications, and as the horn of sacerdotal grace is outpoured upon these Thy servants, do Thou send down upon them the strength of Thy blessing. Through," etc. •' O God of all honors, God of all dignities which in sacred Order minister to Thy glory; O God, in the secret and familiar converse with Thy servant, Moses, amongst other directions for Divine worship. Thou didst prescribe also the forms of the priestly attire, and didst command Aaron, Thy elect, to be vested in mystic robes when offering sacrifice ; in order that pos- terity might hereafter derive knowledge from the usages of the ancients, and the instruction of doctrine might not fail at any time. Mere symbolism won rever- ence amongst those of old, but to us realities were to be more familiar than mystic figures. Thus the attire of the ancient priesthood is a symbol of the adornment of our mind, and it is no longer the honor of garment, but beauty of soul, that renders Pontifical glory com- mendable unto us. Yea, even in former times, they looked more to the mystic significance of things than to the pleasure they gave the carnal sight. Where- fore, O Lord, we beseech Thee to bestow Thy grace upon these. Thy servants, whom Thou hast chosen to the ministry of the High Priesthood, that whatsoever was signified in those garments by the brightness of gold, the splendor of gems, and the variety of em- broidery, may shine forth in their lives and in their actions. Perfect in Thy priests the fulness of Thy ministry; clothe tlicnp- with every adornment of glory. THE 0^'D/A'AL OF EDIVAKD. 143 their Thy glory, and sanctify them with the outpouring of heavenly unguent. May it. O Lord, flow abundantly upon their heads, may it bedew their lips, and overspread their whole frame, that the strength of Thy Spirit may in- wardly replenish them, and clothe them outwardly. Let steadfast faith, pure love, and sincere peace abound in them. " Place them in the Episcopal Chair to rule Thy Church and the whole of Thy people. Be Thou unto them authoiity, power, and strength; multiply upon them Thv blessing and Thy grace, that, rendered worthy by Thy bounty to invoke Thy name, they may also be- come holy through Thy grace. Through," etc. These prayers of the Pontifical are identical with those of the Leonine Sacramentary, so called from Pope St. Leo the Great, who sat in the chair of Peter, A. D. 440-461, to whom they are attributed. Even if he be not the author, for some seem to question it, the Sacramentary that bears his name is the oldest liturgical work extant in the Church either East or West, and antedates by centuries the liturgies con- taining the words, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost;" which, though now an integral part of the form of con- secration, are comparatively of recent origin. Courayer himself admits that the form '^Receive the Holy Ghost was not observed for many ages in the primitive Church." It is strange, then, but true, as a contem- porary author remarks, that "the Reformers, pretend- ing to go back to ancient rites, were misled by a blind adherence to their Popish doctors, the mediaeval schoolmen, who taught that the imperative form of ordination, and the delivery of the instruments were essential and of more importance than the prayers 0, ■.'! •1 1 'Lis.! li 144 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND from the ancient Sacramentaries. This seems like a retribution for their unauthorized and sacrilegious ' meddling with the sacred traditions of the Church." But as we have transcribed the prayers of the Pontifi- cal which are most commonly regarded as the form of episcopal consecration, and as we have been speaking of the Anglican form devised by Edward VI., and re- vised and augmented in the reign of Charles II., we will now place the latter in juxtaposition before our readers, that they may compare them with one another, and with the prayers of the Pontifical given above : Form of consecrating Bishops Form of consecration amended devised by Edrvard VI., in 1549. "Take the Holy Ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God, by convocation in 1662. " Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the Church which is in thee by the • of God, committed unto imposition of hands; for thee by the imposition of God has not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love and sober- ness. our hands; in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is given thee, by this imposition of our hands ; for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love and soberness." "But the Ordinal," says the writer, "goes on with the very words of the Holy Ghost to a bishop." Tliis again is disingenuous and deceitful. These words <- ;o THE ORDINAL OF ED WARD. 145 simply the admonition of St. Paul to Timothy, to stir up the grace of God which he had already received, and though they prove, as Catholic divines teach, that grace is conferred in the sacrament of orders, and that, consequently, it has one of the necessary conditions or requisites of a sacrament of the new law, viz.: the con- ferring of grace, they do not define the precise charisma bestowed by the laying on of hands j they do not indicate the communication of the episcopal character, the con- ferring of the episcopal order; they are consequently insufficient, and the form is still, in spite of them, an invalid form. "Do these words, then," we are asked, " detract from grace ?" Not at all. Who ever said or even insinuated that they did ? But he continues : "The words added in 1662, while they add something to the dignity of the rite, were never supposed by anybody in his senses to add any- thing to its validity." Transeat, we are certainly under no obligation to defend the validity of the new rite, but mark now the sophisty : *' If the lack of them (the words added in 1662) deprives the older Ordinal of validity, then the same lack must deprive Catholic con- secration of validity." That there was a lack of some- thing essential in the Edwardine form was apparent from the commencement to all who believed in the divine institution of the episcopate and the sacra- mental character of Holy Orders. The reformers were upbraided' by the Catholics and Puritans alike with the insufficiency of the new rite to establish episcopacy. The Catholics openly accused the compilers of a design to blot out the episcopacy as a divine vocation con- ferring, fure divino, special powers, and imparting special graces, of making bishops merely " ecclesastical . I! 1 1 'I ::i' 146 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND sheriffs," subject to the orders and bidding of the king, levelling down all the different orders of the hierarchy, thus abolishing all distinction . ctvveen bishops and priests by making no essential difference in the form of ordaining both. " In nothing," says Dr. Milner, " does Cranmer's spirit of Presbyterianism appear so plain as in his form of consecrating bishops." Thus, we see the Edwardine form, by the express design of its framers, actually did what the Pope and Catholic divines are falsely accused of doing, viz. : it destroyed the epis- copal order, and the Presbyterians of the 17th century protested against Anglican bishops being admitted into the House of Lords, to which they had no more right, they maintained, than their own ministers, and they called on the Anglican Church to disavow all episcopal rights and privileges, " shice in the ordination of her clergy, she invariably used forms which established no distinction between the episcopate and the priesthood." The Kirk of Scotland openly asserted the existence of bishops in the Anglican Church to be incompatible with the use of forms destructive of the episcopate. Bishop Burnet acknowledges in his " History of the Reforma- tion," that in Edward's Ordinal " there was no express mention made in the ordination of a priest and a bishop of any words to determine that it was to the one or the other office the person was ordained, and that this having been made use of to prove both functions the same, and that the Church esteemed them one order, the form was altered of late years as it is now," There was then felt to be a lack of something in the Edwardine form, and Bishop Cosin and his associates in convocation in 1662 undertook to supply what was lacking. Whether it was with a view to silence the clamors of THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. H7 the Dissenters, or to meet the objections of the Catho- lics, or to quiet the scruples of Anglican bishops of the Laudian school, who, after the restoration of the Stuart king, and after having been brought during a foreign exile in contact with Catholic bishops, had conceived other and truer notions of their own dubious orders, is of little consequence to us or to our argument, though it looks a little suspicious, that convocation regarded the change as something more than merely adding to the dignity of the rite. All the circumstances of that change taken together and duly considered, there is no doubt in our mind that convocation aimed at supplying essential defects in- validating the form, pointed out by Catholic divines, and especially by a learned convert from Protestantism, Rev. John Lewgar, in a polemical work styled ''Erastjis Senior'' published precisely at the time of the sitting of convocation. We conclude then with Dr. Kenrick that, '* If the forms devised by Edward VI. were suflFi- cient, the convocation of 1662, by changing them, es- pecially in those points in which their validity had been assailed, inflicted a wound on the character of English orders, which it will be extremely difficult to heal or remove. If the forms of Edward VI. were not suffi- cient, the change came one hundred and three years too late ! Hence, whichever opinion be adopted, the validity of English orders has been most seriously com- promised by those who should have maintained it." But now, please to note this style of argumentation : " If the lack of these words deprives the older Ordinal of validity, then the same lack must deprive Catholic consecration of validity." What wonderful logical acu- men. Who would ever think of asserting that it was n Riji n* ::li 148 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND the lack of these words, added in 1662, which rendered the older Ordinal insufficient, and theEdwardine form invalid ; and that because these precise words, which Bishop Cosin and his brethren in convocation devised to remedy the defects of their jejune form of conse- cration, are not found in the Roman Pontifical, there- fore, all consecrated by that old and venerable liturgy which dates back for centuries before Cosin lived, or Cranmer apostatized, or king and Pirliament arrogated to themselves the right or power to establish the " manner of making antl consecrating of bishops, priests," etc., are not validly consecrated. There was indeed a lack, and a patent and fatal lack, in the form of Edward's Ordinal, but that lack originated precisely because Cranmer and his co-laborers, appointed ajid au- thorized by act of . Parliament to establish " a uniform fashion and manner of making and consecrating bishops," changed and modified and adulterated the form of the Pontifical, and the old English liturgies, of Sarum, York, Lincoln and Bangor, and omitted in their new Ordinal the prayers and form of the Roman Pontifical, already cited, containing what all Catholic antiquity regarded as essential to valid or- dination. It is indeed too funny for anything, to be told that we, with the traditional forms and liturgies of the Christian Church from the earliest ages, cannot have what is essential to a valid ordination, and what is lacking in Cranmer'^ forms, because, forsootl', we have not inserted in our Pontifical, Cosin's corrected and en- larged forms, or the words added in 1662 to the Angli- can Ordinal. We are again asked, whether we are ig- norant that " the Roman Pontifical is modern in many particulars, and has been often changed?" m THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 149 The Roman Pontifical is that of Clement VIII. and Urban VIII., revised, as we read on its title page, and corrected by the illustrious and learned Benedict XIV.,. with additions approved by the Sacred Congregation of Rites. Benedict XIV. was born in 1685, and elected Pope in 1740, and consequently the authorized edition of the Roman Pontificalis comparatively modern. But we also know that if a*^ times the Church authorities a new edition of her pontifical and liturgical works, and adds some words, and prayers, such as, for instance, ** Receive the Holy Ghost," which we have shown to be a comparatively modern addition, authorized, and made by the sanction and approval of the Church an integral part of the form, or, if she omits some prayers and forms -rf blessing that have fallen into desuetude, and thus adapts her ritual to the wants and present discipline of the Church, it is not at the dictation of a boy-king, or in obedience to a Somerset and a War- wick ; it is not in virtue of an act 'of Parliament en- forced by pains and penalties, or through an acknowl- edged necessity, because her liturgy was deemed in- sufficient for the valid administration of the sacra- ments, rendering her orders doubtful, her ministrations unsafe, her hierarchy insecure. We know, and this lets out the venom of the charge, that, wh-'tever changes, additions or om.issions have thus been made by her in virtue of her own divine riglvt, under- warrant and sanction of her God-given authority, as a perfect spir- itual society having power to regulate her own disci- pline, manage her own internal affairs, and to enact her own laws, they have never afTected the substance of the sacraments, have never materially or substantially altered the sacramental forms. We hold with Benedict 1:51 i ■^u.^ :' -ily ii] ill IB 150 THE KOMAN PONTIFICAL AND XIV., and the Council of Trent, that Christ has given to his Church power to ordain or change any rites or ceremonies in the dispensation of the sacraments that do not affect their substance, salva illorain substantia, but that may contribute to the edification of the peo- ple, the utiUty of the recipient, or the veneration and dignity of the sacraments themselves. The matter and form appertain to the substance of the sacraments, and therefore the matter and form are invariable, and the Roman Pontifical of to-day is substantially iden- tical, as to the matter and form of Holy Orders, with the Leonine, Gelasian and Gregorian Sacramentaries, with the old English 'Pontificals, and with the Orien- tal liturgies. King Edward's Ordinal on the contrary is substantially different from all these, and therefore we say : Please, dear sir, to redeem the pledge given in these bantering terms : " His (our) most learned Cath- olic authors can construct no argument in behalf of the Pontifical's present form, which does not equally cover our case. This I am prepared to show him at large when he presents me with such an argument." We flatter ourselves that we have presented such an argument, but we beg the gentleman not to refer us, as he seems inclined to do, to his ordinary authorities for reasons already stated, and which may be found more at large in chap, viii., " Ordinal of Edward VI.," by Dom. Wilfrid Raynal, O.S.B. We want facts, argu- ments and historic documents, and if we refer to and use freely, both with and without acknowledgment, Catholic authors, particularly Kenrick, Estcourt and Raynal, we wish our readers to attach importance or weight to their writings only as they find their argu- ments convincing, their reasonings conclusive, their con- THE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. 151 chisions irresistible, their assertions warranted by the records of history, tjieir facts undeniable. We have, perhaps, spun out too lengthily this point of the inade- quacy of the Edwardine Ordinal, and invalidity of An- glican orders, but the vital importance of the subject must be our apology. We are anxious to conclude this question of Ang- lican orders, on which we have expatiated at much greater length than we originally designed, but the subject grew on us insensibly, especially as we were in some sort forced into the discussion of several questions in order to expose and refute theological blunderings, historical inaccuracies, erroneous statements »nd unscrupulous falsifications of facts, connected with the matter in dispute. We need hardly notice again what we find again so positively, yet so falsely asserted and reiterated : *' The words added in our Ordinal in 1660 ('62 ?) make the old formula more explicit, not a whit more sufficient, for the formula itself remains as it was in the old Ordinals ; and as it is still in the Romish Pontifical." The falsehood of this assertion is already proved and patent, but its reiteration is something amazing, as anyone who will take the trouble to com- pare any of the old, ante-Reformation Sacramentaries, and the present Roman Pontifical with the unrevised Edwardine Ordinal, will at once see its glaring falsehood. "The words. Receive the Holy Ghost," he continues, "are used in both (the Roman Pontifical and Edward's Ordinal) as sufficient to complete a solemnity which preceding words have defined to be the consecration of a bisb ip." Now let us remember that, as we before declared, the words, " Receive the Holy Ghost," were not at all in the older Ordinals, and in t^e Roman I ■1 I 152 THE ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND Pontifical they were not used as sufficient to complete the consecration of a bishop. These words now used in the consecration of a bishop constitute an integral part of the fo.-m, and the Council of Trent has defined tb: *'he holy Ghost is given in Holy Orders, and that the ' . 1.0 .. say not in vain " Receive the Holy Ghost," but li.o Co.;/ oil has not defined or insinuated that these words are the form of the sacrament of orders, nor does the Pontifical teach that these words are suf- ficent for the consecration of a bishop. The Church has not defined what precise words do consititute the sacramental form of Holy Orders and are positively essential to its valid administration, and theologiaua have held different opinions on the subject, but all hold that in orders, as in baptism, the sacramental form is contained in the words or prayers used in the application of the matter, and that there must be at least a moral union between them, so that whilst the minister pronounces the words of the form, he may be morally supposed to perform the act denoting the special nature of the sacrament which he confers, and signifying the special effects produced, and determining the special character impressed on the soul, or sacra- mental grace infused. It will not do, then, for any one following Courayer and other Anglicai: writers, to say that words preced- ing the form sufficiently determine the meaning of the form, and define the solemnity to be the consecration of a bishop. Would he acknowledge, for instance, the validity of a baptism in which the determining words, *' I baptize thee," were omitted, on the plea that the preliminary interrr'gatories, and ceremonies, and prayers, sufificiently indicated that it was the sacra- .m TnE ORDINAL OF EDWARD. ining 153 ment of baptism which the minister intended to confer ? We think not ; at least Catholics would not, and Pope Alexander III. has pronounced invalid, baptism in which these words '* I baptize thee" were omitted, and merely the words " in the name of the Fat.ier," etc., said whilst the water was poured ; not, as a learned canonist remarks, because these precise words were omitted, for the G reeks do not use these identical words, in his late work, " cer- tain difficulties, which, it must be frankly allowed, have always been felt by learned Roman Catholics and Orien- tals, with regard to the fact of Parker's consecration and which must be duly faced and removed, before any re- cognition of the validity of English ordinations can be reasonably expected from the Eastern or Western Churches. Anglicans must not remain contented with assertions, which appear to satisfy themselves, but be prepared with arguments and conclusions, which will convince their opponents." (Vol. i. p. 99). "The modern Easterns," continues the same frank and able writer, "though personally civil and polite enough, frequently repudiate our ordinations with scorn. The late archbishop of Syros and Tenos, even more civil than some of his brethren, reordained absolutely the Rev. James Chrystal, an American clergyman of the Protestant Episcopal Church; while the Servian archi- mandrete, who once gave Holy Communion to a London clergyman, the Rev. Wm. Denton, who had rendered good service to the Servian Church, was most severely reprimanded by authority, and made to give a promise in writing, that he would never repeat that, his canonical offense ; and this in a formal document, which described the Church of England as * unortho- dox,' and Protestant, and the clergyman in question as ' without the priesthood.'" We are not alone, then, in questioning Anglican and Protestant Episcopal ordeis. Nor is it owing to the gross ignorance of Roman "f-m. ii n m It] I . I i i 164 r//£ ROMAN PONTIFICAL AND Catholic theologians, that succession and orders in the Anglican establishment are rejected, for Dr. Lee, with praiseworthy candor, asserts : "At Rome every care is talcen to arrive at the truth, so that the inadequate defences regarded tis sullicieiit and satisfactory by some at home, will never pass muster, in presence of the skilled theologians of the eternal city. A huge assump- tion, as Roman Catholic theologians maintain, that all was right in Parker's case, is of course easily enough made ; but detailed proof of facts, and satisfactory re- plies to objections often give trouble, entail research, and yet remain insufficient for the purpose." ^ (Vol. i. p. 200.) And yet, in spite of his close study of facts and patient research, Dr. Lee is forced to fall back on what he styles the ///^r^?/ argument in favor of Anglican orders. But let us licar him further: " O/ course to any English churchman, of the Oxford school, the pro- ceedings in question will no doubt be read with some pain. It is no easy task to show that the revived doc- trines and Catholic practices, now so largely current in every diocese of our beloved country, and, many of them, so generally popular, were utterly repudiated by the dismal prelates, whose violent and heretical lan- guage is so awful in itself and so disquieting to dwell upon ; and whose destructive labors it is so distasteful to put on record. Men who in a spirit of self-sacrifice now repair churches, cleanse the font, rebuild the broken-down altar of the Lord, beautify His sanctuary, adorn with pictured pane and mosaic representation the chancel wall — who open the restored churches for the daily office, who — in the face of secular and sense- less 'judgments' — believe in baptismal regeneration, practise confession, pray for the departed, and have pecK posii argu evidi of t eithc the Nati brouj ing c state m • THE oa'd/jYal of ED IV a KD. 165 been led, step by step, to restore the Christian sacrifice and Eucharistic adoration ; and who, furthermore, look upon themselves, now clothed in sacerdotal ^^•lrments, and standinjT facing the crucifix at lighted altars, as sacrificing priests of the New Law— can surely have but little in common with the vulgar anti-Catholic bishops of Queen Eli/.alieth's day, whose profane and awful words, when re\d at a distance of three centuries or more, make a reverent person shudder; and the dark records of whose blasphemies and active wicked- ness, when calmly faced, sends a thrilling shiver through the heart of a Christian, and makes everv decent Eng- lishman — unparalyzed by indifference, and not choked by false science — blush for shame that such officials ever belonged to so moderate and respectable an in- stitution as the Church of England by law established now appears." (Vol. i. p. 272-4.) The above we have borrowed from an able article in the " Liverpool CatJiolic TiiiicsJ' and although somewhat lengthy we will allow the writer to continue his review of Dr. Lee's work in his own words: " From these data, Dr. I ,e, in several places, but es- pecially in his introductory essay on 'The present position of the Established Church,' draws a ' moral' argument in favor of Anglican Orders. ' It is self- evident,' he writes, ' that the moral argument in favor of their validity is very strong, perhaps stronger than either the theological or historical argument. When the frightful state of degradation into whrch the National Church during Elizabeth's reign had been brought, is honestly contemi)lated ; and when the strik- ing contrast between its position then and its altered state now is duly realized — the manner in which so ill I. u m'' S< 1^ i W m '^^t; * ll ^m 160 /7/A A(>ii/./.\- roxr/FiCAf. .ixn much that had been then cast away as vahicU'ss is now sought after and has been onco more sccurcti ; we may reasonably infer (though there be i\o exact precedent nor perfect parallels in past history for tiu> complex character and uni(pie position of the ICstablished t Ihurch of Kngland) that, as ilivine ^;race has never been with- drawn from her crippled rulers, so an inherent ami es- sential distinction between clergy and lail)' has beeji in the main consistently and corUinually remarked and admitted.' (Pp- 51 5--) •' We j;ive the arj^mnent in the writer's ow!i words, so as not to deprive it of any weight which may lej;iti- mately attach to it. Hut we cannot but think that Dr. Lee'sown volumes ;\re itscompletest refutation. Angli- cans are in the habit of assunniii; that tin* ' Kefi-rma- tion' in I'.njrland essential!)- differed from that oi\ the Continent and in Scotkuul incert-iin respects, ami, ///Ar aliay in the retei\lion of a belief in, .lud respect for, the grace of 1 1()1\' OnliMs ; and ///*v/ (^when 'Historical dilVj- cuitics are r.iised) they fall back upon the sentin»enl that (lod woidd iu«ver have permitted the lapse of sac- ramental grace through the accidei\t.ll oviMsight of any essential. Dr. Lee makes sluut work, however, of any such assumption. He shows the authius and abettors of the New Church as being to the full as blasphenvouj* and .sacrilegious, as coarse, as immoral, anti altogether as .Satanic, as the Continental ' Refoimers,' with the superadded malice of abominal)le and anti (llnistian subserviency to the crown. So far, then, tile nioral argument against Anglican onh;rs is as strong as against I'resbyterian or Lutheran ones. In other words, as, upon Anglican eciuaily as upon Catholic priruiples, we know that God permitted the Kirk of Scotland and rin< OKDINAL OF til) W A K IK 1 07 the Coittinriilal P'otrstaiil ('(UMiniiniitiiH to have* loNt tlu' uracc of orilcrs aiui sai raiuriils, there Is no reason (in the ahsenee ol «lircct prool) lo believe that lie ilealt otherwise with the etni.iliy miilly aiul saerile^jionH rulers of the Mli/,.»l»ethan ( hiireh. 'rhewei|;ht of prolia- bility is that (io|iy to be borne over Iwi at ( auduidp.c. and who euiled by lual kni! till- heaiiui.', or sin|;inp, of Mass a crime punish- able l)\' linr, impri';onment .nid di ath. " Uul the moral ar[Mimenl r/i;.«.v/.v/ Aupjiian (uder't Ik Htill stronjM'r when \\r ton-ider llic allilinle of the Kli/.abethan bishop 1 thtMniclve 1 low.irds juders. One ami all they repudiate any such bcli'f in (udinatiiui an oblaii\s annuji; Kitiialisis, or even amoui; moderate Anjjiieans. 'I'hey dcnoumcd the s.u rament of (uder as full)', as eonsislcnily, and ai vehi-mcnlly as they deno\ine<-d th< Mass, the Real Presence, or I'.slremc Unetion. A>;ainand aijain they admitted men to cure of soids who ha administer eillier Hiptiun or 'the Supper.' and w< re Known as ' \\n ',a( ramcnl ministers. il \vy w;rc i\W\\v lonteiil 1<» hold their ))osts solely from the (lueen, to I )(• ' hisli'ips by I III Parliament.' And when, later on, an .ithiiiiil was made tocl.iim for them !' !J ! I68 PONTIFICAL AND ORDINAL. some kind of spiritual jurisdiction as successors of the Apostles, they were promptly told that their jurisdiction was derived from the crown, and that any attempt to claim independent jurisdiction would lay them open to the penalties of /r^-wttz/m-. Even Hooker, whom \>x. Lee rightly praises as 'the first person among the English ministers who, by the general soundness of his principles/ the clearness of his thoughts, and the ability with which le set them forth, began t© stem the tide of confusion, innovation, and novelty,' never adopted the Catholic belief as to orders, and actually regarded Dr. Adrian de Saravia — 'ordained abroad by presbyters, if at all,' — as a fit and capable confessor, and so employed him upon his death-bed, receiving also the Communion at his hands. No doubt the CafOTine divines, like their successors of the Oxford school, succeeded in raising the standard of sacramental belief, but like the changes in the Ordinal, due, no doubt, to the influence of their teaching, such improve- ments came too late to affect the main question." , r..;.. corcLuaioN. 169 XII. CONCLUSION. WE have now come to the end of our little work, and it only remains for us to summarize the main points on which we touched, and the conclusions which we reached. We have endeavored to show, with what success our readers will judge, that the line oi Apostolical succession has been hopelessly broken be- tween the Primitive Church, and the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal Churches, and that every at- tempt to bridge the chasm between Catholic England under the supremacy of the Popes, and the Anglican es- tablishment under the Tudors, between Cardinal Pole, last Catholic archbishop of Canterbury, and Matthew Parker, the first link of the new line forged by the despotic iron hand of Elizabeth, has been vain. Suppos- ing the Lambeth Register to be a genuine, authentic document, the form used at Parker s consecration was conlessedly that of the Edwardine Ordinal, devised towards the end of the year 1549. The torm prescribed in the Roman Pontifical was abolished by act of Parlia- ment (3 Edward VI., c. 2) and the newly devised form made obligatory after April ist, 1550, and added to Book of Common Prayer by another act of Parliament in 1552 (5 and 6 Edward VI.). According to the Lambeth \ W' ■f'l -Ax M A*fiL IMAGE EVALUATION TEST TARGET (MT-3) ^/. % 1.0 I.I 11.25 ^ Bi 12.2 ^ 114 u 1^ u u^ cc ^Sdaices Corporation 23 WIST MAIN STRUT WIBSTeR,N.Y. 14529 (7l6}a72-4S03 ^ <^ •% .* z ^z^ ^4' ^ 170 CONCLUSION. Register, Parker was consecrated by this form, which was so plainly inadequate and invalid that acts of Parlia- ment were deemed necessary to supply its defects, and in the year 1662, one hundred years later, the form was again changed, obviously to remedy deficiencies pointed out by Catholics and Dissenters, and perhaps, too, to satisfy a reactionary movement inside the es- tablishment itself towards Catholic doctrine and prac- tices, though its defenders stoutly affirm that the change was not made to add to the validity, but to the dignity of the rite. Be that as it may, the form is intrinsically insufficient to confer valid consecration. Matthew Parker, therefore, never was a bishop, and consequently could not validly consecrate others. Be- sides, grave doubts and suspicions attach to the Lam- beth Register, and still graver doubts are entertained as to the fact of Barlow's consecration, and the slen- der thread on which Anglican orders rest must be pain- fully apparent to those who claim thac the assistant bishops at Parker's consecration, and at some subse- quent cons^'^ration, would even suffice to supply for Barlow's ncn-consecration. What thick mists and dark clouds of suspicions, doubts and uncertainties hang over the orders of the Church of England, even if it could be conceded — which it cannot consistently with the doctrinal teachings of the Chris- tian Church — that the form was a vaild one. But Apos- tolical succession requires not only valid orders but lawful mission ; this has been proved from the teaching and practice of the early Christian Church ; this is held by Anglicans and Episcopalians. This must, how- ever, be ever carefully borne in mind, that the power of order, and the right to exercise that order, jurisdiction, CONCLUSION. ■^ mission, the assignment of charge or people over which that power may be exercised, are very different things, and do not necessarily go together. A bishop from the time of his appointment, even before lus consecration, has jurisdiction over his diocese, thou^ he may exercise no exclusively episcopal functions,do no act requiring the episcopal order and character. He may govern his flock as a legitimate pastor, and administer his diocese and empower other bishops to ordain priests and officiate in episcopal functions. And a validly and lawfully consecrated bishop maybe* without episcopal jurisdiction, may have no charge, no diocese to govern. Auxiliary and co-adjutor bishops have only such limited jurisdiction as the titular bishop or ordinary of the diocese may grant them, and r.©£ unfrequently, in case of the absence or death of the titular bishop, the administration is in the hands of a priest, a vicar-general, for instance, and he gives jurisdiction to the lawfully consecrated auxiliaiy bishop. How often do I here ordain priests for other dioceses and confer on them all the powers of thdr piiestly order, but I cannot give them jurisdiction. That belongs to their own bishop. Only, then, a law- ful ecclesiastical superior can impart ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and only valid orders and jurisdiction, transmitted in an unbroken line irom the days of the Apostles to our own time, can constitute Apostolical succession. Granted, then, that Barlow was a regularly conse- crated bishop, and that he, in the Lambeth chapel, actually consecrated Parker with valid matter and form, even with the intention of the Church, and agree- ably to the Roman Pontifical, from whom does he \ » 172 CONCLUSION. (Parker) get jurisdiction? What ecclesiastical super- ior assigns him a charge? gives him the right to exer- cise the power of his episcopal order? who gives him charge of the diocese of Canterbury? Not. Barlow, nor Scorey, nor Coverdale, nor Hodgkins ; one, according to the Register, bishop elect of Chichester ; one, bishop elect of Hereford ; one, bishop elect of Exeter, and the fourth suffragan of Bedford. What right had they in the diocese of Canterbury ? How could they confer jurisdic- tion on the archbishop from whom they themselves were to be confirmed and to receive a mission and right to ex- ercise their episcopal orders ? Not from the Pope, who utterly rejects his pretensions, and excommunicates him as a schismatic and heretic. Not from the Pope, whose authority he repudiates and forswears. From Queen Elizabeth, then ? Yes, this is his only and last resource. Here, then, comes the claim of royal, spiritual suprem- acy or headship over the Church of England, started by her royal father, asserted by her royal brother, and now exercised by herself, and thus, in virtue of the powers conferred by queen and Parliament, is Parker first Anglican archbishop of the Church by law estab- lished, and thus from the commencement is the fatal defect, the disastrous break in the chain of Apostoli- cal succession. And it is well said : " that as original sin is not done away with by distance from Adam, so this original defect of jurisdiction cannot be supplied by length of time, quod ab initio nullum est, tractu tern- ptris non convalescit.'\. AG MISSTATEMENTS OF CATHOLIC FAITH AND NUMEROUS CHARGES AGAINST THE CHURCH AND HOLY CORRECTED AND REFUTED. BY ^ S. V. RYAN, BISHOP OF BUFFALO. ♦ PART II. CONTENTS. I.— Intpoductorv I II. — The Ephesine Succession 4 III.— Henry VIII.— To w:roM he 'jelongs. . . . ,11 IV.— The new Liturgy — Book of Common Prayer. . . 16 V. — New Anglican Ordinal. . . . . . .19 VI. — Clement's Dispensation to Henry ai VII. — Equivocation— Authority of Saints and Doctors of THE Church. ' . * • 23 VIII.— Papal Infallibility 3a IX. — Popes Liberius and Honorius 47 X. — H0NORIU8 Vindicated . , 5a XI. — St. Grec ory the Great claiming and exercising Papal Supremacy. 6a XII, — Catholic Bishops not Simple Presbyters or mere Vicars of the Pope. 74 XIII.— Teachings of the Ancient Fathers Vindicated . 81 XIV,— Canons of Nice and Ephesus. ..... 86 XV.— The Catholic Doctrine Regarding Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction ' ... 03 \ i irJ I i' \ MISSTATEMENTS OF CATHOLIC FAITH AND NUMEROUS CHARGES AGAINST THE CHURCH AND HOLY SEE. CORRECTED AND REFUTED. I. INTRODUCTORY. « I HAD fully resolved not to notice the many irrele- 'vant questions, groundless and false assertions pro- fusely scattered through the pages of the little pamphlet, " Catholics and Roman Catholics," by "An Old Catholic," to which the articles substantially re- produced in the preceding pages, and originally written for the " Catholic Union" were intended to reply. However, as the specious and misleading statements, put forward with a certain air of plausibility and con- fidence might, if left unchallenged, impose on those who have no access to original documents or works of reference, I have, on second thought, deemed it in- cumbent on me, in the interest of truth and Catholic faith, to rectify the principal misstatements of " Old Catholic," even at the risk of swelling this little publication to unexpected proportions. I //VTKODUCrONV. The discussion of these matters will, in my opinion, prove how easily people may be Imposed on by un- grounded statements, how cautious we sliould be iti giving credence to authorities cited at second-hand, and how sadly deficient in accurate information regarding the doctrines, traditions and history of the Church even intelligent and otherwise well-educated Churchmen often are whose reading and studies, ministerial labors and professional duties seem to be directed to the single point of obscuring the claims of the Catholic Church, or deterring others from the calm, dispassionate, thought- ful investigation of the same. Of such we can only say, in the language of one whom the grace of God and light of the Divine Spirit enabled to rise above the prejudices of 'his early education : " Prejudice is always obstinate, but no prejudice is so wilfully stub- born as that which is professional. It is bad enough, in any case, that the mind should be settled in op- position to the truth, but when a man has made it the special business of his life to oppose and controvert that truth, his intelligence becomes so fortified by his will, as to be almost inaccessible. The citadel of his heart is well nigh impregnable. * * * His mind is systematically warped. He is trained to reason from false principles. He becomes, perhaps, by sheer habit, the champion of untruth." (" The Invitation Heeded :" Dr. Kent Stone.) This may explain, and if not.excuse, h\ some degree extenuate the blind, u ireasoning pre- judices of men who are schooled into bitter hostility to the Catholic Church, and forced by their position and professional duties to repudiate her as the true and legitimate spouse of Christ, to reject herauthority and deny her identity with the Apostolic Church, simply INTRODVCTORY. 3 because these claims annihilate all their own titles, brand them as illegitimate, spurious, counterfeit. Yet we do not presume to judge how far chey are responsible for errors which they have inherited and prejudices which thoy have unconsciously imbibed, religious predilections and affinities naturally springing from circumstances over which they could have no control, and hence we disclaim any personal feeling, most sincerely profess to be actuated by motives of Christian charity and love of truth. And if in anything we say we appear to be pointed and personal, it is because of the necessity of meeting particular charges, or misleading and in- jurious insinuations against Catholic faith and practice. n! I t I THE EP HE SINE SUCCESSION. II. THE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. "" I ^HE first archbishop of Canterbury was conse- J- crated at Aries in France (597), and thus intro- duced the Ephesine succession from St. John, through Irenaeus and Photinus." (Note i. Catholics and non Catholics.) We have answered already that Augustine was consecrated bJshop at Aries by Virgilius, acting as legate and vicar of Pope St. Gregory, but the title and privileges and jurisdiction of archbishop were afterwards accorded to him by Gregory, Pope of Rome, no^ by Virgilius of Aries, who had, as we shall presently see, only sujh jurisdiction as Gregory granted him in Gaul. Lingard, in his "Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church," says : "Gregory, whose zeal already predict/"^ the entire conversion of the octarchy, commanded it to be divided into two ecclesiastical provinces, in each of which twelve suffragan bishops should obey the superior jurisdiction of their metropolitan." Again, as clear proof that not only the new Anglo-Saxon con- verts with their bishops and archbishops, but also the ancient British Church, acknowledged the authority of the same Roman Pontiff, Linga'*d says : " Gregory, treading in the footsteps of his predecessor, Celestine, who two certuries before had appointed the monk Palladius to the government of the Scottish Church, THE EPHESINE SUCCESS JV. 5 invested Augustine with an extensive jurisdiction over all the bishops of the Britons." To show still further what little truth there is in the assertion that the Pope " could never assert even a patriarchal authority over England," let us hear Dr. Lingard still further: "Au- gustine himself preferred Canterbury to London; and the metropolitical dignity was secured to the tormer by the rescripts of succeeding Pontiffs." Again, Pope Vitdlian placed Theodore, an aged monk, in the see of Canterbury, and " iiivested him with an extensive juris- diction, similar to that which Gregory had conferred on St. Augustine." But let us now see how the archbishop of Aries, who consecrated Augustine, ackno^wledged the authority and supreme jurisdiction of the Pope, Gregory the Great, over the churches of Gaul. In the year 595, two years before he consecrated Augustine, Virgilius wrote, and had King Childebert II, write, to Gregory, asking the pallium and the dignity of vicar of the Apostolic See, with which the greater part of his predecessors had been honored. In the month of August of the same year, Gregory writes to him (L. 5, Epist. liii.) granting his request, and among other things says : " I am very far from suspecting that in asking the use of the pal- lium and the vicarship of the Apostolic See, you thought only of procuring for yourself a passing power and an exterior decoration. I prefer to believe that knowing — for no one can ignore it — whence the faith was propagated over Gaul, you wished in addressing yourself to the Apostolic See, according to ancient custom, to act like a good son, who has recourse to the bosom of the Church, his mother." He concludes his letter thus:' "We establish your fratcrnitN- our X '■a 6 THE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. vicar in the churches of the kingdom of our most ex- cellent son,Childebert, without prejudice to the rights of the metropolitans. We send you also the pallium, ^ which you will make use of only in the church and during the Mass. If any bishop wishes to take a long journey, he will not do it without permission of your holiness. If any question of faith, or any other dififi- cult affair come up, you will assemble twelve bishops to take cognizance of it. If it cannot be decided, you will refer the judgment to us." He wrote at the same time, in the same sense, to the bishops, exhorting them to submit to the new vicar of the Apostolic See, as the Angels of Heaven, though without sin, are subordinate one to another ; and to King Childe- bert, begging him to support by his authority what he had regulated in favor of Virgilius, and for the sake of God and St. Peter to cause the decrees of the Apos- tolic See to be observed in his states. (Works of S. G., L. 5, Epist. liv. etlv.) This, I should say, would make the great St. Gregory, in the 6th century justly styled the Apostle of England, a good enough Pope of the 19th century. But of this we will have more to say hereafter. Now we are prepared to examine the ques- tion of the " Ephesine succession from St. John, through Irenaeusand Photinus." We should have said, through Photinus and Irenxus, for the latter succeeded the former in the see of Lyons, A. D. 177. Now, we would greatly desire to see any one trace the succession of Virgilius of Aries to St. Photinus of Lyons, and then trace St. Photinus to St. John, in or- der to bring the Ephesine succession down to the bishop of Western New York. It is simply ridiculous to talk abo'jt the Ephesine succession, and no one fa- THE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. y miliar with ecclesiastical history, or with those saintly and historic names of the ancient Church of France could commit himself to such an absurdity. The sec of Aries was founded by bishppssent directly from Rome. St. Trophimus, its first bishop, was sent, ac- cording to St. Gregory of Tours, from Rome to Aries in the year 250, during the reign of Dccius, and the Pontificate of Pope Fabian. Later French writers maintain that ho was sent by St. Peter himself, during the reign of the Fmperor Claudius, and in proof here- of, they cite a letter of nineteen bishops, written to Pope Leo, praying him to restore to the metropolitan see of Aries the privileges which had been wrested from it. " It is a matter well known," the letter goes on to say, " to all Gaul, and to the Holy Roman Church, that Aries, the first city of Gaul, has the honor of having received the faith from St. Peter through Bishop Trophimus, and that it spread thence to the other provinces of Gaul." These particulars we have taken from the excellent English translation of Alzog's " Universal Church History," by the lamented Dr. Pabisch and Rev. Thos. S. Byrne (vol. i., page 246). Whether the translator's learned observations will con- vince the reader that Aries owes its foundation to the Prince of the Apostles or nt)t, the discussion proves conclusively that Arle.^ does not derive its succession, its orders or its mission from Lyons or from Ephesus, but from Rome, and that Virgilius goes back through Trophimus to cither h'abian or Peter, and not through Irenfuus or Photinus to St. John. But now, suppose we get to Lyons, and to Irenteus, who succeeded St: Photinus, martyred in 177, 'how can we find our way to Ephesus and St. John? V II ii '^* ill II 8 THE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. Rev Alban Butler tells, us ®n the authority of St. Gregory of Tours, that Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, and disciple of St. John, and ordained by him, sent St. IreniEus to Lyons. But he was not yet a priest, but was ordained a priest of the Church of Lyons by St. Photinus, its first bishop, to whom he succeeded. Though a disciple of St. Polycarp, from whom he de- rived his doctrine, there is not the slightest proof or pretence that he exercised his orders, or his mission under other authority than that of Rome, and as an unanswerable proof that even then, in the second cen- tury, the Churches of Gaul, and the Church of Lyons in particular, acknowledged the supreme authority of the Bishop of Rome, St. Irenasus was actually sent by the Church of Lyons, as we learn from Eusebius and St. Jerome, to entreat Pope Eleutheriusnot to cut the Orientals off from communion with the Church on ac- count of their difference about the celebrntion of Easter. But does St. Irenajus himself appeal to the Ephesine succession to prove the truth of his doctrine and the Apostolicity of his faith and his lawful descent from the Apostles ? In his third book (Contra hereses, chap, iii.), he says that most assuredly the Apostles de- livered the truth and the mysteries of faith to their successors, and to them we must go to learn the same, but especially "to the greatest Church and most an- cient and known to all, founded at Rome by the two most glorious Apostles, Peter and Paul, which retains the traditions received from them and derived through a succession of bishops down to us. For with this •Church, on account of the more po\Verful principality, it is necessary that every Church, that is, the faithful who are in every direction, should agree." (S. Inn., L. 3, c. iii.) THE EPHESINE SUCCESSION. He then enumerates the Pontiffs from Peter to Eleutherius, then reigning, and to this succession in the See of Rome, and not to the Ephesine succession, does Irenaeus appeal. To the same did St. Augustine ap- peal. To the same Apostolic See do we appeal, repeat- ing again that the See of Rome is the only Apostolic See, whence it is at all pussible for Christian prelate or priest to trace his Apostolical pedigree and descent. Happy, then, for our episcopal claimant of Apostolical succession if he can " show his line going direct to Rome, by many points," even if, as he con- fesses, "it is just there that the greatest confusion occurs; so that we do not think much of it." LINKS OF ANGLICAN SUCCESSION OF UNSAVORY ODOR. Of course, since he must recur to the Popes for his suc- cession, it will be his business, not ours, to determine which of the three rival Popes w^as the true Pope when Gregory XH. consecrated Chichele. As he cannot again claim succession through Aries to Ephesus, he must go to Rome for all his right and title to be a " corporate witness," and in his desperate attempt to get there, vaulting with a bound the wide and deep chasm separating Parker from Pole, he goes through Scorey (throwing Barlow overboard) and Cranmer to Beaufort, of whom he says : " I have now reached the name of one of the worst characters in the Anglican succession." Strange that he should stop in this un- savory spot, yet he thinks that he ought not be expected to go further, '* for Beaufort was just the kind of a man to please a Pope," and hence I suppose a good enough man to transmit Anglican orders. As, how- ever, he mentions, and very earnestly, that : ** The suc- ■^{■'i m n\ lO THE EPIIRSINE SUCCESSION. cession by which Christ Himself 'came in the flesh,' is disfigured by many unworthy n^ynes, besides that of Rahab ; and tnt Scriptures have reached us through many unworthy hands," I am saved the trouble of defending or justifying those Popes " whose abominable lives," he tells us, " were the by-word of their times." Impartial history has done tardy justice to many of the maligned Pontiffs of the middle ages, but the subject matter under discussion debars me from entering more lengthily into the history of these ages and these Pon- tiffs, nor have I the slightest inclination to shield any of the very few unworthy occupants of the Pontifical throne from merited censure. But neither the Church nor the Papacy is responsible for their personal views, nor is the purity of Christian doctrines blackened or defiled by the unchristian lives of those who neglect the teachings of the Church, whether they be of high or low degree, whether simple faithful, or masters in Israel. "The Scribes and Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things, therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do, but according to their works, do ye not ; for they say and do not." (Matt. xxiii. i, 3.) At least after the admissions made above, objections of this kind will come with very bad grace from those who own descent from immoral char- acters, and from a line disgraced by Pontiffs " com- pared with whom Henry VIII. is almost pure." nUNKY VHL—TO WHOM HE BELONGS. [I III. HENRY VIII.— TO WHOM HE BELONGS. JUST here we may as well remark that " Old Catho- lic" is not in love with the first royal Head of the Anglican Church, and has*" no disposition to take him off of the hands of those to whom he exclusively be- longs — the Roman C tholics." Well, we confess he was once a Roman Catholic, and a staunch champion of the Papacy, and from a Tope received the title of "Defender of the Faith," and that " he never fully de- serted his faith ; but he allowed his passion to blind his eyes and impel him to the greatest of scandals." Then he severed himself from Rome, then he re- jected the authority of the Pope, then he started the "Church of England as by law established," and had himself proclaimed its head by a subservient Parlia- ment and a weak, servile clergy ; he threw off spiritual allegiance to the Pope, imposed the oath of royal supremacy on the English realm, and thus started what Edv/ard antl Elizabeth afterwards worked into shape ; and that impartial sicular authority in the '" Saturday Re- vieiv,'' who ventures to write that, "there is a perfect legal and historical identity, so to speak, of person, between the Church of England before the Reforma- tion and the Church of England after the Reformation," goes very near establishing in our minds his own t{\m 12 //E/VA'V VI 1 1. — TO iVHOM HE BELONGS. lit'l identity with the gentleman who quotes him, and who says, "that Henry merely continued the Church as he found it," and "as for her (Queen Elizabeth) estab- lishing the Church of England in any sense other than that in which it was the law of the land under the Plantagenets and the Papacy, is a very ignorant mis- take." In both, tbere is such assurance, such defiance of history, and implicit reliance on the ignorance of their readers, that we can hardly go wrong in tracing them to the same source, and assigning them the same paternity. Queen Mary, we are again told, " estab- lished the Roman hierarchy by law, ' by queen and Parliament,' while Henry never did anything of the kind." True, indeed, Henry never did anything of the kind, because he found the Roman hierarchy existing in England not only since Augustine came from Rome to convert the Angli, but ever since a Pope sent the first missionaries to convert the ancient Britons — a Roman hierarchy, exercising its authority under the jurisdiction and in the communion of the holy Roman See, until by legal enactment, by king and Parlia- ment, he and his son Edward severed that commun- ion cemented by the tradition of ages, by im- memorial usages, arrogating to themselves spiritual jurisdiction over the realm, and not only appointing, but confirming, empowering, and even by newly-devised forms consecrating a new hierarchy, thus establishing a New Church, whose very legal title, the name im- posed on it at its birth— not Church of England, which St. Gregory recognized, and of which he is justly styled the Apostle — but "Church of England by law established," belies its claim to Apostolical origin, stamps it as a royal and parliamentary founda- tion, a modern inxcntion, a sect. I HENRY VIII. ~rO WHOM HE BELONGS. n Mary's attempt was then, not to erect the Roman hier- archy by law, but to repeal the laws enacted in the two previous reigns, and to restore the Church of England to the condition in which it was before *' Henry's pasf ions blinded him and impelled him to the greatest of scandals." " Henry belonged to the Roman Catho- lics." True, so did Cranmer once, so did Calvin, so did Luther, so did Pelagius, so did Donatus, so did Arius, so did all the heretics of ancient times,but they fell away, they apostatized, they left the only ark of safety, the One, Holy, and Apostolic Church. The infamous traitor Judas was once a disciple, nay, even a chosen Apostle of our Lord, and you may as well charge our Lord and His Apostles and the Christian name with the infamy and fearful crime of that arch-traitor, as to make the Catholic Church responsible for the crimes of Henry after he severed himself from the communion of the Holy See, and had himself proclaimed Supreme in spirituals as well as temporals. It is true, and no Catholic, as far as we know, will deny what the late Welby Pugin asserts, that England presents " a fearful example of a Catholic nation betrayed by a corrupted Catholic hierarchy. Henry is declared the Siiprcmmn Caput oi England's Church ; not I'occ popiiii, hut by the voice of convocation; the Church i.. sacrificed, the people are sacrificed, and the actors in this vile surrender are the true and lawful bishops and clergy of England." It Is also true that, "all the terrible executions of Henry's dreadful reign were perpetrated before the externals of the old religion were altered," but it is not true that it was before the system of Protestantism was broached, or the essentials of the Catholic Church denied. For the wretched system was broached, and the Catholic faith in •1 M HENRY VI 1 1 — TO WHOM h '< LONGS. its essentials w.is rejected when the authority of the Church and the primacy of the I'ope were rejected and denied. It is also true that by his will he ordained that masses should be celebrated for his soul, for the exter- nals of the old religion, the ancient liturgy, the old (Cath- olic Missals and Pontificals were not yet altered, and the masses that were said by an Augustine, a Cuthbert, a Wilfrid, an Anselm, a Dunstan, a liede, and thousands of* saints of the Knglish Church, were still said in Henry's time, and even Cranmer himself, who is ap- plauded as a model reformer, offered Mass for the re- pose of the soul of I'Vancis 1., King of France, on the 19th of June, 1547. "The archbishop of Canterbury, Cranmer, with eight other bishops in their richest Pon- tifical habits, sung \\ mass of Requiem." (Collier ii., 229, as quoted by Dodd.) Let me quote the same historian, Dodd, in answer to the charge that Henry's evil conduct may be laid at the door of the Catholic Church. " To charge the scandalous part of Henry's life upon his popish educa- tion, is so groundless an aspersion, that it is inconsis- tent with every circumstance of the facts. While he lived like other princes, in due subjection to the See of Rome in all spiritual matters, no one had a better character; but as the first step of unfortunate children isdisobediencc to their parents, this seems to have been the origin of Henry's disorderly life; who no sooner had broke out of the pale of the Church, but he ranged without control through all the paths of vice. Per- haps Catholics will not recriminate so closely in their reflections, as to charge the monstrous crimes he was guilty of upon the reformers' principles, though some of his advisers, who put him on the method of Rcforniat'on, HENKY V ill.— TO Ill/OM HE ftEI.OXGS. IS were capable of clelivci'iii}; sucli lessons); yet it has always been an observation, both in private life, and in the fate of nations, that a defection from the Universal Church had tuo dismal consequences, free thinking as to religfon, and a boundless liberty as to morals." (Part i., Art. vi., p. 323). l6 THE NK\V LITUNQY IV. THE Ni:\V l.ri'UKCiY— H(K)K OK COMMON I'RAYER. BUT is it not stranj^e to hear tin- objection that Henry Ijelonj^ed to the Catholics because masses were saiii for him, when it is known that there was Jn MiiLjhind no otlier form of public worshi[), no other litur<;y. until theseconil year of l^,d\varcl W.'i Is it not known that the con>mission which he appointed hi the year 1554, ' prete.-dinj^^ to work on the plan of the four Rituals hitherto used in Enjjjlaml, viz., Sarum, York, Rangor and Lincoln, compiled the ' iiook of Common Prayer?" ' Is it not known that at this time the so-called reformers were fearfully mixed up and divided in re- gard to the holy Mass? " One while they were disposed to retain the names, sacrifice and ///« reprobatam). Hence a writer of Mechlin quoted by Dr. Newman, observes : " It is, therefore, clear that the approbation of the words of the holy bishop teaches not the truth of every proposition, adds nothing to them, nor even gives them by consequence a degree of intrinsic probability." So niuch then for the approbation of the writings of canonized saints. Now what about solemnly declared doctors of the Uni- versal Church? I borrow my answer from a well- informed writer in a late number of the " London Tablet." " The highest appreciation of the doctrine of doctors is in a quotation mtide by Benedict XIV. from a decree of Boniface VIII., where we read that for one to be raised to such rank, it should be verified that, by his doctrine the darkness of errors was dispersed, light thrown upon obscurities, doubts lesolved, the hard knots of Scripture unloosed." Be- DOCTORS OF THE CHURCH. ^\ sides, as the same writer remarks, does not St. Alfonso himself often impugn the opinions and controvert the teachings of other illustrious and sainted doctors, and among others A St. Thomas Aquinas himself, the great scholastic doctor and angel of the schools. And may not we say in regard to St. Liguori what the monk Nicholas is said to have answered, when charged with want of reverence to St. Bernard, who is stvled the most lovable of the doctors of the Church : '• We may not indeed doubt of his glory, but we may dispute his word." Nay, more, though we are firm believers in Papal infallibility, and always have been, even before its explicit definition and#formal promulgation by the Vatican Council, we do not hold that the canonization of a servant of God, or his elevation to the rank and title of doctor of the Universal Church, by the Holy See, invests his writings with infallible, or quasi-infalli- ble, or Papal authority, or decides the truth of every theological proposition which he maintains, though, as Benedict XIV. remarks: "We should speak of him with reverence and attack his opinions only with temper and modesty." More still. Catholic faith does not make the Pope, nor does he himself claim to be, infal- lible, when, as a private doctor or theologian, he dis- cusses theological questions or writes on disputed points of doctrine or morals. 32 P.APAL INFALLIBILITY, VIII. PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. " I "HIS brings us to the subject of papal infallibility, -■- so frequently mentioned and strangely misrepre- sentea in the pamphlet of an " Old Catholic," -eview- ing our lecture. I must of necessity be brief on this point, and must confine myself to a statement of the Catholic doctrine and the grounds on which it is based. This will suffice to correct the wrong views taV.:en of it, and the false impressions which unreflect- ing readers might take from the pamphlet in question. In the last session of the Vatican Council, on the 17th day of July, the following definition of Catholic faith was promulgated : "Therefore, faithfully adhering to the tradition re- ceived from the beginning of the Christian faith, for the glory of God our Saviour, the exaltation of the Catholic religion, and the salvation of the Christian people, the sa. red council approving, we teach and de- fine, that it ii a dogma divinely revealed: that the Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra — that is, I' i PAPAL INFALLIBILTY. 33 when in the discharge of the office of pastor and teacher of all Christians, by virtue of his supreme authority he defines a doctrine of faith or morals to be held by the Universal Church — is, by the divine as- sistance promised to him in Blessed Peter, possessed of that infallibility with which the Divine Redeemer willed that His Church should be endowed for de- fining doctrine regarding faith or morals ; and that therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irre- formable of themselves, and not from the consent of ihe Church." No novelty in doctrine then is here introduced, no new article of faith taught, but faithfully adhering to the traditions received from the beginning of the Chris- tian faith^ it is declared to be a dognta divinely revealed that when the Roman Pontiff, in his supreme official capacity of pastor and teacher of all Christians, speak- ing ex cathedra, defines a doctrine touching faith or morals to be held by all Christians, he cannot err in so defining, but through the divine assistance promised to Blessed Peter he is endowed with the infallible magis- terium or teaching authority, with which our Lord and Saviour was pleased to invest His Church. We recog- nize no authority on earth, in Pope or council, to make a new article of faith, to alter, add to, or take from the deposit of faith once committed to the saints ; we be- lieve in no new revelation. The question before the council was simply, has this doctrine been revealed ? is it clearly contained in the depositum fidei f The bishops of the Catholic world assembled in council under the presidency of the Sovereign Pontiff claimed no author, ity to make a new dogma, no right to impose a new article of faith on the consciences of their people. * mm 34 PAPAL IXFALLIBILITY. They were indeed judges and qualified witnesses of the faith and traditions of the churches " over which they were placed by the holy Ghost to rule." The revealed word of God, the holy Gospels,were reverently enthroned in the council chamber, and the Fathers asked them- selves, is this doctrine sustained by Scriptural proof? is it taught in the infallible word of God? is it conform- able to the revelation of Jesus Christ? what has been the faith of Christian Churches ? what traditions have been handed down ? It was only after the most con- clusive evidence, afforded by an elaborate and critical examination of Scriptural authorities, and a patient, thorough, searching investigation of the traditions of all the Christian, Churches, that, it was proclaimed a revealed dogma of Christian faith ; that, the above de- cree was formulated, with the sacred council approving ; that, the explicit formal decision of the question was defi- nitively and authoritatively pronounced. Did the Council of Nicea, in the year 325, under Pope St„ Sylvester, make a new article of faith when it defined the consubstantiality of Christ with the Father ? Did the Council of Ephesus, in the year 431, under Pope St. Celestine change the Christian faith when it defined that there was but one person in Christ, and that Mary was truly the Mother of God? Does our Supreme Court alter the Constitution of the United States, or add an amendment to the same, when it interprets of- ficially and authoritatively that honored instrument, which Americans love to z^\\t\\Q great palladuun of our liberties^ and decides grave legal rights and hotly con- tested questions to be within the purview of the Consti- tution of our fathers, or conformable to its provisions? This is all the Fathers of the Va-tican Council did, this is Il< PAPAL IXFALLIBILITY. 35 all that any Council ever did, or can do. Constituted a Supreme Tribunal of last resort, it decides not only definitively but with infallible authority what is of faith, what is conformable to the revealed word of God. This is all the Church has ever claimed, but this prerogative she has ever claimed and exercised, and it is absolutely necessary to her in the fulfilment of her divine conv mission to teach all nations, all truth, down to the end of time, absolutely necessary for the preservation of oneness of faith, absolutely necessary that we may know what is the faith, which we are bound to believe if we would be saved. And hence our Blessed Lord, in estab- lishing His Church, and requiring us to receive her teaching: " He that will not hear the Church let him be to thee as the heathen and publican," (Matt, xviii., 17), declaring, that " He that believeth not shall be condemned," (Mark xvi., 16), must of necessity have made her unerring, absolutely infallible in her teaching, as he did promising *' Himself to be with her for- ever," (Matt, xxviii., 20), and to send the Spirit of Truth to abide with her forever, to teach her all truth. Since the coming of our Saviour there has been no new revelation. The faith once delivered to the saijits is un- changeable, and hence with St. Paul we say, if any one, even an angel of Heaven, preach to you any other gospel sa%e that which you have received, let him be anathema. (Gal. i., 9.) The Church is then simply the witness among men of the original revelation. Her office is to declare what was contained in that original deposit, and in declaring this she is divinely assisted, and thus it is, by the divine assistance of the Spirit of Truth, the integrity and purity of faith, are divinely and infallibly preserved, and as 36 PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. may be seen by the decree itself, and by what may be called the preamble to the decree, the whole text of the fourth chapter of the first constitution of the Church of Christ, she goci back to the teaching of Scripture and tradition, councils and doctors of the Church, and expressly declares : *' The Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter, that by His revelation they might make known new doctrine, but that by His as- sistance, they might inviolably keep and faithfully ex- pound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles." Indeed I feel impelled to transfer to these pages the full text of that fourth chap- ter, " On the infallible magisterium, or teaching author- ity of the Roman Pontiff," and although somewhat lengthy it will well repay perusal, as it shows the mind of the council, the sources whence it drew the doctrine defined, and must forever set at rest the charge of novelty or innovation. " Moreover, that the supreme power of teaching is also included in the Apostolic primacy which the Ro- man Pontiff, as the successor of St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, possesses over the whole Church, this Holy See has always held, the perpetual practice of the Church confirms, and oecumenical councils also have declared, especially those in which the East with the West met in the union of faith and charity. For the fathers of the fourth council of Constantinople, follow- ing in the footsteps of their predecessors, gave forth this solemn profession : The first condition of salvation is to keep the rule of the true faith. And because the sentence of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot be passed by, who said : Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church (Matt. xvi. i8), these things PAPAL IXFALLIBILI TY. 37 which have been said are approved by events, because in the Apostolic -See the Catholic religion has always been kept undefiled. and her holv doctrine proclaimed. Desiring, therefore, not to be in the least degree separated fr6m the faith and doctrine of that See, we hope that we may deserve to be in the one commun- ion which the Apostolic See preaches, in whxh is the entire and true solidity of the Christian religion. (Formula of St. Hermisdas, subscribed by the fathers of the Eighth General Council [fourth Constantino- ple], A. D. 869.) And, with the approval of the second council of Lyons, the Greeks professed that the Holy Roman Church enjoys supreme and full primacy and pre-eminence over the whole Catholic Church, "which it truly and humbly acknowledges that it uas received with the plenitude of power from our Lord Himself in the person of the Blessed Peter, Prince or head of the Apostles, whose successor the Roman Pontiff is ; and as the Apostolic See is bound before all others to de- fend the truth of faith, so, also, if any questions regard- ing faith shall arise, they must be defined by its judg- ment. (Acts of Fourteenth General Council [second of Lyons], A. D. 1274.) Finally the Council of Florence defined : (Acts of Seventeenth General Council of Flor- ence, A. D. 1438) that the Roman Pontiff is tlie true vicar of Christ, snd the head of the whole Church, and the father and teacher of all Christians, and that to him, in Blessed Peter, was delivered by our Lord Jesus Christ the full power of feeding, ruling, and gov- erning the whole Church. John xxi. 15-17. To satisfy this pastoral duty our predecessors ever made unwearied efforts that the salutary doctrine of Christ might be propagated timong all the nations of 38 PAPAL IXFALLIBILITY. the earth, and with equal care watched that it might be preserved genuine and pure where it had been received. Therefore the bishops of the whole world, now singly, now assembled in synod, following the long-established custom of churches (Letter of St. Cyril of Alexandria to Pope St. Celestine I., A. D. 422, volvi., pt. II., p. 36, Paris Edit, of 1638), and the form of the ancient rule (Rescript of St. Innocent I. to Council of Milevis, A. D. 402) sent word to his Apos- tolic See of those dangc-s especially which sprang up in matters of faith, that there the losses of faith might be most effectually repaired where the faith cannot faiL (Letter of St. Bernard to Pope Innocent II., A. D. 1 1 30, Epist. 191, vol. iii., p. 433, Paris Edit, of 1742.) And the Roman Pontiffs, according to the exigencies of time and circumstance, sometimes assembling cecunxenical councils, or asking for the mind of the Church scattered throughout the world, sometimes by particular synods, sometimes using other helps which Divine Providence supplied, defined as to be held those things which with the help of God th^ had recognized as conformable with the sacred Scrip- tur'^ and Apostolic tradition. For the Holy Spirit was not promised to the successors of Peter that by His revelation they might make known new doct- rine, but that by His assistance they might inviol- ably keep and faithfully expound the revelation or deposit of faith delivered through the Apostles. And • indeed all the venerable fathers have embraced, and the holy orthodox doctors have venerated and followed their Apostolic doctrine ; knowing most fully that *-his See of holy Peter remains ever free from all blemish of error, according to the Divine promise of PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 39 the Lord our Saviour made to the Prince of His dis- ciples : I ha^'e prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not,, and when thou art converted confirm thy brethern., (Luke xxii., 32. See also acts of Sixth General Council, A. D. 680.) This gift, then, of truth and never-failing faith was> conferred by heaven upon Peter and his successors \rt this chair, that they might perform their high office: for the salvation of all ; that the whole flock of Christ., kept away by them from the poisonous food of error,, might be nourished with the pasture of heavenly doc- trine; that the occasion of schism being removed, the. whole Church might be kept one, and, resting on its foundation, might stand firm against the gates of helL But since, in this very age, in which the salutary efificacy of the Apostolic office is most of all required^ not a few are found who take away from its authority,, we judge it altogether necessary solemnly to assert the prerogative which the only-begotten Son of God vouchsafed to join with the supreme pastorrl office. "Therefore, continues the gouncil adhering to the tradition received from the beginning of the Christian faith," etc., as alcove. To demonstrate that this same tradition was held in the Church of England before the so-called Reformation, I will cite two distinguished arch- bishops of Canterbury, St. Thomas, in a letter to the bishop of Hereford : " Who doubts that the Church of Rome is ihe head of all the churches, and the fountaia of Catholic truth ? Who is ignorant that the keys of the kingdom of heaven were entrusted to Peter? Does, not the structure of the whole Church rise from the faith and doctrine of Peter?" And the illustrious St^ Anselm, who died in 1 107, writes to a Pope of his day r ' . 1 40 PAPAL INFALLIBLITY. ** For as much as the Providence of God has chosen your Holiness to commit to your custody the (guid- ance of the) life and faith of Christians, and the gov- ernment of the Church, to no other can reference be more rightly made, if so be, anything contrary to the Catholic faith arise in the Church, in order that it may be corrected by your authority." In further proof, if indeed that be needed, that the dogma is no novelty, I will take a short extract from a pastoral which seventeen of the archbishops and bishops of Germany addressed to their clergy and people from Fulda after the Vatican Council in 1870: "Wherefore, we hereby declare that the present Vatican Council is a legitimate General Council, and moreover that this council, as little as any other General Council, has pro- pounded or formed a new doctrine at variance with the ancient teaching; but that it has simply developed and thrown light upon the old and faithfully preserved truth, contained in the deposit of faith, and in opposition to the errors of the day has proposed it expressly to the belief of all the faithful ; and lastly, that these decrees have received a binding power on all the faithful by the fact of their final publication by the Supreme Head of the Church, in solemn form at the public session." Thus, what was always contained in the deposit of faith, by the formal explicit definition of the council, and solemn promulgation by the Sovereign Pontiff, became of binding force on all the faithful ; what was before matter of implicit faith became thenceforth of explicit faith. What then becomes of the objection of ^'Keenans Catechivn^' and Bossuet, of the want of unanimity in the council, etc. ' Before the final ruling of the Supreme Tribunal and PAPAL J.V FALLIBILITY. 41 the explicit decision of the question at issue, Catholics could take sides, and as the German prelates say : •' As long as the discussions lasted, the bishops, as their con- sciences demanded, and as became their office, e? ssed their views plainly and openly, and with all necessary freedom ; and as was only to be expected in an assem- bly of nearly 800 Fathers, many differences of opinion were manifested." That religious questions would arise, and differences of opinion, eighteen hundred years after Christ, as well as in the first age of the Christian Church, our Lord well knew, and he provided for the solution of these questions and the settlement of those differences, and thereby for the integrity and purity of Christian faith by establishing an ever-present, living, speaking author- ity in His Church, who would be His own mouthpiece, and make His people, the world over, and down through the ages, unius labii, and thus save them from the Babel- like confusion into which those sects necessarily fall who reject the authority of an infallible teacher. The Bible is the word of God, but without the living voice of an authorized teacher it is wrested to the destruction of faith and to the endless divisions of Christianity. What anarchy and endless disputes, and bitter, bloody feuds, to say nothing of wild revolu- tionary schemes, would have ensued before the first centennial of our independence, had the wise fathers and founders of the Republic left each man to judge for himself of the true meaning, scope and intent of the constitution, without a tribunal, whose decisions were to be final and possessed of a certain legal infallibility. And can we believe that our Lord, in giving a consti- tution to His Church, which was to spread over the 42 PAPAL INFALLI3L1TY. habitable globe, from ocean to ocean, and from pole to pole, and to continue to the consummation of ages, would have left us without some iuch resource, the hopeless victims of interminable divisions, doubt, un- certainty and error whilst, too, obliging us under pen- alty of exclusion from the kingdom, to believe His doc- trine, to be His disciples, and to observe all those things that he had commanded? But thanks to His in- finite love and mercy, He has not thus abandoned us. He has established a Church with authority to teach, and it is His own mystical body, which cannot exist without a head, and which, animated by the divine Spirit, becomes the organ of infallible truth and divine life to man United with that head must the members be, would they sharp that divine life ; around that head were the bishops of the Church of God gathered in love and reverence, and bearing witness to.the unfailing faith of ages ; through the voice; of Pius they proclaimed that the Sovereign Pontiffs were still the successors of blessed Peter, and by the divine assistance promised to that privileged Apostle, when defining faith or morals, ex cathedra^ as doctor of all Christians, are possessed of that infallibility with which our Divine Redeemer wished his Church to be endowed. Such, then, is the true doctrine uf Papal infallibility, to which at once all bow submission, and cry out with the Apostles of our Lord : " Lord, to whom shall we go but to thee? Thou hast the words of eternal life." (John vi., 69.) How different from the so-called Church o{ freedom, that dares not define its own belief, because conscious of no divine authority to teach, for how can they teach if they be not sent ? But how unjust and ungrounded the charge of crouching servility, made PAPAL INFALLIBILTY, 43 so recklessly against Prelates, ready to sacrifice lib- erty and life rather than compromise principles, who have shown themselves not only men of pure elevated characters, but intrepid heroes and martyrs in defence of religion, and the rights of conscience. If our own testimony on this subject be not taken, whose privilege it was to be present in the vene able council, and to have 'had an inside view of all its proceedings — and I will during my whole life cherish it as the greatest honor of my life, to have been thus brought into friendly, social, fraternal relations with many of the most estimable, highly cultured, and saintly men— :f the plain language of the learned and independent German Prelates be not enough to vindicate the honor of that council against the aspersions of an anonymous writer who, ashamed, as well he might be, to make himself known, concealed his identity under the title of " Janus," I beg to refer to "Anti-Janus," by Dr., now Car- dinal Hergenrother. or to the '*True Story of the Vat- ican Council," by Cardinal Manning. I have dwelt so long on this point, because of the misunderstanding and misconception, and either ignorant or wilful misrepre- sentation of the doctrine of Papal infallibility, and the so-called innovation in doctrine by the Vatican Council. This may show also how easily some people can say : "/ have shown that not even the Roman Church held this doctrine of infallibility four years ago ;" and: "/ Jiave shown\.\i2X Pius IX., on the i8th of July, 1870, taught a new doctrine," when they have shown no such thing, nor can they show anything more than that four years ago, from the time the person wrote, that is, on the iSth of July, 1870, there was not an explicit positive de- cision, or an official ruling of the Supreme Tribunal of 44 PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. God's Church, that the doctrine of Papal infallibility was actually contained in the deposit faith, revealed by Christ, and committed to the keeping of the Church. In civil affairs doubts arise as to the legality of cer- tain acts, or to the constitutionality of certain legisla- tive enactments, and men take sides and are free to hold different opinions, because as yet the case has not been authoritatively and definitively decided, but when the case has been submitted to the Supreme Court, and the decision has been handed down, there is no longer question. That decision is appealed to as a final settlement of the question, though no one in his senses would say that the fundamental laws of the country have been changed, or a new article added to the constitution fey such a decision. Now, there is just one more point in this connection to which I wish to call attention. I asserted in my lecture that in the ancient Church, communion with the See of Rome was a conclusive proof and crucial test, not only of legitim- acy of succession, but also of orthodoxy of faith, to which our ** Old Catholic" reviewer replies; '* This I frankly allow : nay, this I delight to show, zvhile the bishops of Rome ivere orthodox^ they were pillars of orthodoxy." But, he continues; '' When a Bishop of Rome became a heretic, it was no advantage to any one to be in communion with him." He then goes on to state that we are bound to exclaim in pious horror that such a thing is impossible, viz., that a Pope could be a heretic, and then attempts to prove by a quotation from " Bossuet, the greatest of all modern bishops," that such is the fact. Needless to say that the words of Bossuet prove nothing of the sort, and although we believe that no Bishop of Rome ever became a PAPAL INFALLIBILITY. 4$ heretic, we are not bound to believe that such a thing cannot be. We are bound to believe that no Bishop of Rome ever taught, or could teach, ex cathedra, in his official capacity of teacher of the Universal Church any- thing heretical, false, or immoral. Here is a distinction which some people do not see, or care to make, and no wonder that infallibility in this sense, personal infalli- bility, or that Catholics were bound to believe the Pope in himself to be infallible, was declared to be a Protestant itrjcntion. It is then a baseless fabrication, an " Old Catholic," invention, that we have made a God of the Pope, or believe him to be impeccable, and hence how vain and hopeless the task of combating Papal infallibility by charges of corruption, vice and wickedness made against certain Popes. The terms of the Vatican definition are too plain to be misconstrued in this way, and precisely to obviate this difficulty, to anticipate this objection, and pre- clude the possibility of this wrong interpretation, the title of the fourth chapter, which originally read : ** On the Infallibility of the Sovereign Pontiff," was changed to that of, "The infallible teaching authority of the Sovereign Pontiff." And is it not a very significant fact — a fact which may be said even to constitute a prima facie evidence in favor of the doctrine of the Pope's infallibility — that, although in every age from the beginning of Christianity, disputes and controver- sies concerning points of belief, doctrinal questions most grave, complicated and vital to the unity and integrity of the faith of Christ were referred to the Holy See from every quarter of the Christian world, were answered and decided by the Sovereign Pc.itiffs, not a single one of the long, unbroken line of Supreme 46 PAPAL 1NFALU31LITY, Pastors, from Peter down to Leo XIII., now gloriously reigning, can be cor 'icted of teaching ex cathedra — in his official ca-yacty — erroneous c-octrine or erring in his Pontifical decision of what was to be held as of faith by the Universal Church. When again we reflect that in the mass of official acts o^ Popes, Pontifical constitutions, bulls, decrees and encyclicals accumul- ating during nineteen centuries, ransacked, sifted, keenly scrutinized, carefully and searchingly examined in the disciission of a question now happily closed, nothing positive could be discovered in conflict with the infallible prerogative of the chair of Peter, is not the conviction forced upon us that the " finger of God is here," that this astounding fact can be reasonably and satisfactorily' accounted for only by the special assistance of the Holy Ghost, premised to His Church by Christ our Lord. With all this before us, what difficulty can we find in believing and professing that the same divine help, the same supernatural guidance, the same assistance of the Holy Spirit will ever be vouchsafed to the visible Head of t-ie Church in the discharge of the sadred and sublime duties of his Apostolical office of vicar of Christ and teacher of the Universal Church, especially in view of the promises made to Peter by our Lord, and of the absolute need that the truth of faith should be thus divinely guarded through the divinely appointed Supreme Pastor and shepherd of the whole flock of Christ : " Feed my lambs, feed my sheep." (John xxi., i6, 17.) POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORIUS. 47 IX. POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORIUS. ii NOW, we said above, that since the days of Peter, for whom our Lord prayed that his faith might not fail : " I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not," (Luke xxii., 32) nearly nineteen hundred years ago, nothing has been discovered in the ofificial acts o^ his successors in the See of Rome in conflict with the decree of the Vatican Council concerning the in- fallible teaching authority of the Sovereign Pontiff. In fact, of only two in that long Hne of Pontiffs has the orthodoxy been questioned, and even these two, Liberius, whose Pontificate extended from the year 352 to 366, and Honorius, who reigned from 625 to 638, rigid historical research has fully vindicated from the charge of teaching error. As these charges are again repeated in the pamphlet before me, and with so much confi- dence, I must beg my readers' pardon for detaining them by a brief refutation. A cursory review of these points of Church history may not prove uninteresting or un- instructive. Liberius was the immediate successor of Julius, who asserted the jurisdiction of his See over the whole Church, East and West, and severely rebuked the Eastern heretical bishops for daring to take decisive action in the case of Athanasius without his authority, and the immediate predecessor of Damasus, of whom 48 POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORIUS St. Jerome says : " Following no leader but Christ, I am associated in communion with thy Holiness, that is, with thechai'- of Peter; upon this rock I know that the Church has been built." Honorius was appealed to in the question of jurisdiction and precedence be- tween the sees of Canterbury and York, and although some people will say that England was never subject to Rome, or acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman Pontiff, this same Honorius gave the pallium to Honorius and Paulinus, archbishops of Canterbury and York, granting them the faculty, that whichever of them should survive migftt ordain the suc- cessor of the deceased. But now to the charges: "Liberius turned Arian," "Athanasius is condemned by the Bishop of i Rome for adhering to orthodoxy," "The holy and orthodox bishop of Poictiers says: 'Anathema to thee, Liberius, to thee, and to those who are with thee. I repeat — anathema ! Again, a third time, anathema to thee, thou prevaricator, Liberius.' " Now, it is certain Liberius never became an Arian, and never condemned St. Athanasius. The most that is said of him by his enemies is, that worn out by the sufferings of exile into which he had been sent by the Arian emperor, Constantius, on account of his uncon- querable firmness in sustaining the orthodox Catholic faith, he at length weakened and signed one of the specious and deceptive professions of faith, cunningly devised by the wily Arian tricksters, and thus pur- chased his release from banishment and return to Rome. It is doubtful that St. Hilarius ever wrote the words here ascribed to him ; many regard them, and with good reason, as an interpolation ; again, though there were three different formulas or professions of faith pur- to rote and ugh aith POPES LIBERIUS AND HONORlVS., 49> framed in three different Arian conferences- or gather^ ings at Sirmium, one of which Liberius is said to have subscribed, yet no one can determine which of them ; and lastly, if he did sign the most objectionable of. them, it militates not in the least against the doctrine of Papal infallibility, in as much as when under comr- pulsion and in exile, in a moment of weakness he sub- scribed a profession of faith which, though capable of an orthodox interpretation, might be construed as favoring Arianism and condemning St. Athanasius, the great champion of orthodoxy, he was not teaching the Church, was not, ex cathedra, deciding what should be held by the Universal Church. But with the great mass of authorities, we do not believe that he ever, subscribed any such doubtful formula, and it cannot be proved that he ever did. We do not believe that St. Hilarius ever pronounced the anathemas above, mentioned, and even if he did, it is no ways conclusive against the orthodoxy of Liberiu-s, for we can easily suppose him deceived by the lies of the Arians seek- ing to support their errors by the authority of the Bishop of Rome, or giving vent to overwrought feel- ings of indignation and holy zeal at what he conceived to be siding with the enemies of the faith. In concluding this question of Liberius, I can not do better than quote from a great and learned historian^ who after noting the different authorities making these charges against the Pontiff, and among them the frag- ments of Hilarius, says : " But considering the silence of Socrates, Theodoret, Cassiodorus and Sulpicius Severus, there is a strong suspicion that this pa.ssage was interpolated by the Arians, whose restless spirit stopped at nothing that might further their cause. so POPES LIBERWS AND HONOR I US. The passage has, moreover, no connection in the con- text either with what precedes or follows. This we find in a note on page 542, Alzog's "Church History," vol. i. (Pabisch and Byrne), and in the text the same author says: "Constantius yielding to the prayers of he most estimable ladies of Rome, granted permission to Pope Liberius to return to his See; but it is thought that the menacing conduct of the Roman people, who openly protested against the imperial decree authorizing a rival bishop, and cried \\. in the circus, that as there was but one God and ok- Christ, there should be but one bishop, contributed more than anything else to extort from the emperor this act of clemency." What becomes now of the ana- thema to Liberijjs? How unlikely that he ever turned Arian, or condemned St. Athanasins f But how evident, and demonstrably certain, that he never in any official document, or by any ^;r cathedra pronounce- ment, taught error, or promulgated anything unor- thodox, which would be necessary to constitute a valid objection to the doctrine of Papal infallibility. What additional strength does all this acquire when we find St. Jerome, who was not wont to fawn on or flatter either bishops or Popes, in the very next Pontificate, when he certainly could not have been ignorant of any- thing that occurred under the previous Pope, declaring communion with the See of Rome the test of ortho- doxy : " Whoever is not in communion with the Church of Rome is outside the Church, and therefore was one of the twelve set over all the others as the re- cognized Head, that all occasion of schism might be removed ;" and Pope Hormisdas, some time afterwards, in the beginning of the 6th century, declared : " The POPES LIBERIUS AND HONOKIUS. SI faith of the Apostolic See has always been inviolate ; it has preserved the Christian religion in its integrity and purity." Enough, then, about Liberius, whom we think we have fully vindicated from the charges brought against him. Can we do as much for Honorius? I 52 HON OKI US VINDICA TED. X. HONORIUS VINDICATED. WE think we can, at least as far as the charge of oflfi- cially teaching heresy goes, for all we pretend or care to do, is to show that the prerogative of Papal in- fallibility as defined in the Vatican Council has been in no wise impaired or obscured by the ex cathedra teaching of these two much maligned Pontiffs. Here, then, are the charges against him quoted from Bos- suet's " Defence of the Declaration of the Galilean Clergy :" " Honorius being duly interrogated concern- ing the faith by three Patriarchs, gave most wicked answers. He was condemned by the Sixth General Council under anathema. Previous to this anathema, he was sustained by the Roman Pontiffs, his successors ; but s'nce the supreme judgment of the council, the Pon- tiffs have condemned him under the same anathema." We are then asked by our ** Old Catholic" friend, " where infallibility was in those days, when one Bishop of Rome taught heresy from his throne, and of his suc- cessors some upheld him and others anathematized him as a heretic?" But as Bossuet, "the greatest of all modern bishops, who have lived and died in com- munion with the Pope, and who had no mind to be a mere worshipper of Popes," is cited against us, it is only fair to that illustrious bishop to tell our readers HONORIUS VINDICA TED, 53 that in the opinion of such men as de Maistre, the ** Defence of the Gallican Declaration" should not be taken as the expression of the true and permanent sentiments of Bossuet ; that it was a work wrung from on^e who, though a bishop, and, if you please, the " greatest of modern bishops," for we wish not to dim his glory or extenuate his fame, was forced to act the courtier to the royal despot who not only claimed to be the incarnation of all political or state power, *' V^tat c'est moiy' but would have all ecclesiastical and spiritual authority subject to his beck. It was a posthumous work, which he never wished to publish, for although he lived twenty-two years after the famous declaration of 1682, he never would publish its " Defence," and it is an insult to the memory of the immortal prelate to have published it under a title of which he seemed to be ashamed. The work itself, undertaken in obedience to a royal master, he altered and revised, and changed so often and so much that his historian declares that " no one can doubt, that it was his design to change his whole work, as he had actually changed the first three chapters." The work which we have under the title of the " Defence of the Declaration of the Gallican Clergy," does not then express Bossuet's real mind, and is deprived of all authority, as his purpose was to change it entirely, and his manuscripts show that he had nearly completed his design when death overtook him. With Count de Maistre we may say of Bossuet, that : " In the same man .here seemed to be two different characters, the Roman Catholic bishop and the French courtier: the bishop, who speaking the language of the Patriarchs, the Prophets, the Apostles and the Fathers belonged from the very bottom of his soul 54 HONORIUS VINDICATED. to the Roman Church ; the courtier, who to please his master, extends one hand to the centuriators of Magdeburg, and the other to Voltaire, the better to falsify history, to the prejudice of the Popes and the profit of kings." But how grandly and how eloquently does this " greatest of modern bishops, who is no worshipper of the Popes," when writing in his true character of a Catholic bishop, untrammelled by court influences or royal favors, speak of the See of Peter, the preroga- tives of the Roman Church, and the authority con- ferred on, and the obedience due to the successors of him to whom the keys of the kingdom of heaven were entrusted. We cannot forbear a short extract from the "Discourse on Universal History," revealing the lofty genius and true Catholic mind of the illustrious bishop of Meaux : " What consolation for the children of God, what conviction of truth ! when they see that from Innocent XI., who now (1681) fills so worthily the first See of the Church, we go back without break even to Peter, established by Jesus Christ Prince of the Apostles : and there taking up the Pontiffs who served under the law, we go back even to Aaron and to Moses ; and thence to the Patriarchs and the origin of the world. What a succession, what a tradition, what a marvellous connecting chain. If our mind, naturally uncertain, and by its incertitude become the sport of its own reasoning, has need, in questions where sal- vation is at stake, to be steadied and determined by some certain authority, what greater authority can there be than that of the Catholic Church, which com- bines in itself all the authority of past ages, all the ancient traditions of the human race up to its origin. HONORWS VINDICATED. 55 Thus the society which Jesus Christ in fine, after ages of expectancy, founded on the rock, and over which Peter and his successors should preside by His orders, is justified by its own continuity, and bears in its eternal duration the impress of the hand of God. It IS this succession, which no heresy, no sect, no other society but the Churchof Godcan claim. The founders of new sects among Christians, and the sects established by them, will be found to have been detached from this great body, from this ancient Church which Jesus Christ founded, and in which Peter and his successors held the first place." To this let us add what this " greatest of modern bishops, and no worshipper of Popes" says in the first part of his " Discourse on the Unity of the Church :" " What is intended to sustain an everlasting Church, can itself have no end. Peter will live in his successors ; Peter will always speak in his chair; this the Fathers assert; this six hundred and thirty bishops in the council of Chalcedon confirmed. * * * This is the Roman Church, which, taught by St. Peter and his successors, knows no heresy. * ■'«• * Thus the Roman Church is always a virgin Church, the Roman faith is always the faith of the Church; what has been believed, is believed still ; the same voice is heard everywhere ; and Peter remains in his successors, the corner-stone of the faithful. Jesus Christ Himself has said it, and heaven and earth shall pass away sooner than His word. But let us see the consequences of that word. Jesus Christ pursues His design and after having said to Peter, the eternal preacher of the faith: * Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build my Church ,' He adds : ' I will give to thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven.' Thou, who hast the preroga- 56 UONOKIUS VINDICA TED. tive of preaching the faith, thou shalt have also the keys, which designate the authority of government ; ♦ whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth, shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose o^\ earth, shall be loosed in heaven.' All are subjected to these keys ; all, my brethren, kings and people, pastors and flocks; we publish it with joy, for we love unity, and glory in our obedience. Peter was com- manded first * to love more than all the other Apostles,' and then' to feed' and govern all, * both the lambs and the sheep,' the little ones and their mothers, and the shepherds themselves ; shepherds towards the people, but sheep in regard to Peter." Thus does Bossuet, following the Patriarchs, the Prophets, and Apostles, proclaim aloud the infallible promises of God to his Church and her head. In justice to the great Bossuet, we deemed it a duty to say this much. We now return to Honorius, whose case, in our opinion, is correctly stated by Archbishop F. P. Kenrick in the brief notice of the Sovereign Pontiffs appended to the fourth volume of his " Dogmatic Theology," in these few words : '* That he was imposed on by Sergius of Constantinople and inopportunely commanded silence in relation to one or two wills in Christ, most authors admit ; but that he was guilty of heresy is de- void of every semblance of truth." But the gist of the charges against him, and his vindication may be at once discovered from words already quoted from the concluding words of cap. xxvii.. Lib. vii., " De- fensioDeclarationis cleri Gallicani." " Honorius being duly interrogated concerning the faith by three Patriarchs, gave most wicked answers." In the first place, we would ask, why was the Bishop of no NONIUS VINDICA TED. 57 Rome interrogated by these three Eastern Patriarchs? Is not this very fact an additional and undeniable evi- dence that in the East as in the West, by Patriarchs, as well as by bishops, and even by heretics the primacy of the Roman See and the supreme jurisdiction of the Roman Pontiff were acknowledged ? The three Patri- archs referred to are, Sergius of Constantinople and Cyrus of Alexandria, both tainted with the Monothelite heresy, and Sophronius, of Jerusalem, an able and learned champion of the Catholic faith. To these Honorius is said to have given wicked ansiucrs, and all the charges of heresy alleged against him are to be found in his letters to them, and particularly in his letters to Sergius. Is not this of itself sufficient to show that the case of Honorius offers no difficulty in regard to the doctrine of Papal infalli- bility, as we have already explained it, and as it has been defined in the famous Vatican decree of 1870? Where does he teach, or pretend to teach the Universal Church ? where does he define or pretend to define what must be held by the whole Church as of Catholic faith ? Suppose that in these letters some expressions are found not entirely consistent with orthodox Catho- lic faith, and grant that he was deceived and fell into the trap sprung upon him by the wily Sergius and wrote to suppress all discussion about one or two wills in Christ, can any one reasonably say that he taught heresy from his throne ? or made a dogmatic, ex cathedra definition in regard to faith or morals? But more than that. With the letters of Honorius before us, and after a careful study of the subject as presented by the clear, keen, argumentative mind of Bossuet himself, Honorius cannot, in our opinion, be convicted of i!'«l 58 HOiSOKJUS VINDICATED heresy, he wrote nothinjr but what is capable of a Catho- lic meaning. He repeatedly proclaimed Christ to bo perfect God and perfect man, thus condemning the errors of Nestoriusand Eutychcs, showing that though he expressed himself inaccurately, he thought correctly on the two operations in Christ. No wonder, then, that John IV., his second successor, declared, as we read in Alzog's "Church History," *' that Honorius mistook the question at issue to be, whether or not there were two conJlictt)ig human wills in Christ, the one of the spirit, and the other of the flesh, which, if such were the case, would necessarily imply the opposition of the human to the Divine will — an error of which Honorius wished to disabuse Sergius," In speaking of one will and one tJicandrie operation, he meant nothing more than the moral unity of the Divine and human wills. " Not having seized the real drift of the controversy, it was but natural that he should express himself obscurely, and with a lack of precision in his reply to the craftily worded letter of Sergius." (Alzog's" Church History," vol. i, p. 635.) From the same source we learn that not onlyn •n le i<. e s in the desert, and as our Lord associated with the Apostles other disciples and teachers of faith. The learned Hurter, in the work already mentioned (p. 428), lays down this thesis : " The rite by which bishops are consecrated is a true order, distinct from the: other orders and a true sacrament," in which he combats the teach- ing of the ancient scholastics that the episcopacy was only an extension of the priesthood, and maintains that it is now the common opinion, and the one by all means to be held, that the episcopate is an order dis- tinct not merely in grade or rank [gradv), but also in species {spcie) from the priesthood. We may with the same author sum up the teaching of the Church regarding the hierarchy in these three points : (i) The hierarchy is divided into three degrees ; (2) The origin of this division is divine ; (3) As priests are superior to deacons, so bishops are superior to presbyters. This surely were more than sufficient to vindicate the teaching of modern Roman theology on the point in question, and to show how ungrounded and false the assertion that we had abolished the episcopal order, and reduced bishops to the rank of mere presbyters. We need then take no further notice of such glar- ingly false charges as these : " Popes had taught them that bishops ^-ere only presbyters, in order to magnify themselves as the only and universal bishops." " Such was the common teaching of school divines before the Reformation :" " It is the Roman doctrine now. Yet as our good friend insists that these are dogmas of our own Church, established by infallible authority, and in proof hereof quotes in a foot-note " Liguori, who says some think the episcopate, probably, an order, torn, vi., p- 10," we beg our readers to bear with us a little 78 CA THOLIC BISHOPS NOT MERE longer, while we show what St. Liguori really does say, for although we do not regard him as in any respect an "infallible authority," we respect him as a saint and doctor of the Church, and certainly of higher au- thority on points of Christian doctrine and Catholic theology than the man who pretending to give tome and very page misquotes and travesties his statements. Leaving some one else to hunt up and verify the re- ference, torn. vi. p. lo; in the edition (Mechliniai MDCCCXLV.) of the works of St. Liguori now before me, we find (torn. 7, Lib. 6, Treat 5, de ordinc, p. 220) as follows : " The episcopate is an order, by which special power is conferred of confirming the faithful, and ordaining ministers of the sacraments, and of con- secrating things appertaining to the divine worship." And in the same freatise : (p. 223) " It is asked — Is the episcopate an order distinct from the priesthood ? St. Thomas, St. Bonaventure, and others deny, saying that it is an extension of the order of the priesthood. But more commonly theologians affirm t^-'at it is an order distinct from the priesthood, because in it a distinct character is communicated, and a special power re- garding the Eucharist is given, namely, that of conse- crating ministers of this sacrament ; also, because the order of the eniscopate is conferred by the laying on of hands and the form, receive ye the Holy Ghost, etc." To this let me add a short extract from a work by Rev. Aloysius Togni, entitled, " Instructio pro Sacris £cclesia; Ministris," which, we are told, is of the highest authority in Rome, being commonly used in the Roman seminaries. This we copy from note viii., in Appen- dix to " The Anglican Ministry," by Arthur W. Kutton, M. A, : :<>mif^mr '• ern Church. But it is not to these contradictions that I wish to call special attention, but to this following statement : "After Ephesus, they (the bishops of Britain) would have said, that England, with Cyprus and other islands, was canonically exempt from all such jurisdictions ; which was and is the fact." But even stranger than the statement itself is the bold at- tempt to sustain it by reference in a fooi-note to: " Canon vi., of Nicea, afterwards Canon vii., of Ephesus." Now, although we cannot be expected here to dis- cuss these canons, we affirm positively and categorically, that these canons do not exempt England, Cyprus or any other islands from the jurisdiction of the Holy See, and that there was no question of such exemp- tion in either the Council of Nicea or Ephesus. The question before the Fathers of the Nicene Council was in regard to the jurisdiction of the See of Alexandria, honored and privileged from earliest days because it was the See of St. Mark the Evangelist and disciple of St. Peter. The Meletian schism gave rise to this con- troversy, for after Meletius was condemned by St. Peter of Alexandria, and deposed from his see, he rebelled against the authority of the Apostolic See of Alex- andria, and this it was that caused the synod to define the rights and jurisdiction of that see over the prov- inces of Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis, which it does in these words : " Let the ancient custom throughout Egypt, Libya and Pentapolis be strictly adhered to, s© that the bishop of Alexandria shall have jurisdiction over all these ; since this is also the custom of the Bishop of Rome." Now, there has been some differ^ 88 CANO.\'S OF NICE AND EPHESUS. ence of opinion about this last clause, or about the true meaning and correct translation of the original Greek text, some, vyith Bellarmine, maintaining the true meaning of the cafion to be: "Let the bishop of Alexandria govern these provinces, because such was the custom of the Bishop of Rome ; that is, because the Roman Pontiff, prior to any definitions by councils, was used to permit the Alexandrian bishop to govern, or have jurisdiction, over these provinces," which would be a clear acknowledgment by the first general council of the primacy of Rome. Others say, with Phillips, that, " This canon does not demonstrate the primacy of the Pope, as the Council of Nicea did not speak of this primacy, simply because it had no need to be established or (Confirmed by it," and hence with Hefel^, they translate the clause ; " There is a similar •custom for the Roman Bishop," that is, jurisdiction over ■different provinces, a patriarchate is recognized in re- gard to Rome, and the same should hold for Alexandria. Now, we will not discuss this disputed point, though from the text the first is plainly the true meaning, but it is in any case undeniable that the Council of Nicea never dreamed of curtailing the jurisdiction of the Pope or exempting England, Cyprus, or other islands from his jurisdiction. So much then for Canon vi. of the Council of Nicea. What about Canon v\u of Ephesus? In the first place, with most authors who have written the history of this council, we hold that that council formulated but six canons. *' If in some codex ^' ?,^y^ Hef61^,(" History of the Councils," tom. T I., p. 389, French Ed. 1869), "eight canons are found, it is because the resolution passed by the council on the the motion of Charisius, is regarded as Canon vii., and CANONS OF NICE AND EPHESUS. \ the, decree concerning the bishops of Egypt is put down as Canon viii." This decree, then, passed in the council at its seventh session, is referred to by our learned divin'^ as Canon vii. of the Council of Ephesus, Those wishing to obtain full information regarding the nature and meaning of th.e decree of the council, I must refer to Hef«^l^'s History above cited, or to the au- thorities which he quotes, (ibid., pp. 386, 387.) Let me, however, briefly as possible, state the question pro* posed to, and acted on, by the council, in order to show that it has no connection at all with the jurisdiction or primacy of the Roman Pontiff, although, with an un- accountable assurance, evidencing either bad faith, or inexcusable reliance on second-hand, untrustworthy in- formation, we are told that : "After Ephesus, England, with Cyprus and other islands, was canonically exempt from such jurisdiction." The Apostolic See of Antioch, which the Apostle St. Peter himself founded, like that of Alexandria, claimed sp'^'cial privix^ges and an extensive jurisdic- tion, which the sixth canon of the Council of Nicea seemed to recognize and confirm, in these terms: " In like manner, regc rding Antioch and the other provinces, let the churches retain their special privileges." The bishop of Antioch claimed superior metropolitan or patriarchal rights over Cyprus, in particular the right of consecrating its bishops. As the metropolitan of Constantia died about the time of the convocation of the council, the proconsul of Antioch, at the suggestion of the Patriarch, forbade a new election to beheld until this disturbing question of jurisdiction should be finally adjudicated. In defiance of the prohibition, Rheginus was elected to the see of Constantia, and with two of 90 cajvons of nice and ephesus. his suffragans, Zeno and Evagrius, he appealed to the council against the pretensions of Antioch, and the question was warmly and lengthily discussed in the seventh session, and it was decreed, that: "The churches of Cyprus should continue to enjoy their in- dependence and the right, of consecrating their own bishops (and of electing them), and that the synod renew in general all the liberties of the ecclesiastical prov- inces, and forbid encroachments on foreign provinces." Thus a contest between local churches regarding ec- clesiastical privileges, and disciplinary canons regulat- ing the mutual relations of these churches, has been strangely twisted into a canonical exemption from the jurisdiction of the Bishop of Rome, and it is more than insinuated that such, forsooth, was the purpose and scope of these canons. Such contents and rivalries and disputes regarding jurisdiction have been not un- frequent in the Church, since the Apostolic ages; such existed between Canterbury and York in England, be- tween Aries and Vienne in Gaul, and such, in very possible contingencies, may yet exist between the metropolitan sees of Baltimore and New York. Voluminous are the canonical enactments adjudicat- ing such rival claims, deciding such controversies, and regulating and defending the limits and extent of diocesan, metropolitical, primatial and patriarchal jur- isdiction, yet what student of church history would assert that by such ecclesiastical legislation a blow was aimed at the supremacy of the Holy See, or the uni- versal jurisdiction of the Pope ? It is even still more astonishing that any one denying the primacy of the Pope, or claiming independence of his supreme pastoral authority, should make any reference to the Council of CANONS OF NICE AND EPHESUS. 9t Ephesus, held in the year 441, composed of two hun- dred bishops, mostly of the East. Cyril, of Jerusalem, opened the first session, on the the 226. of June, and presided, as the acts of the council state, in the name of the Pope. It proceeded to condemn Nestorius, who refused to the Blessed Virgin the title of Theotokos or Mother of God. " Forced," says the council, •' by the canons and by the letter of our most holy Father, and co-laborer, Celestine, Bishop of Rome;" it vindicated the divine maternity (if Mary, and originated the prayer so dear to Catholics, adding to the Angel's greeting the words: "Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now, and at the hour of our death." In the second session, held on the loth of July of the same year, Cyril is again expressly designated in the min- utes or proch verbal o[t\iQ session, as the representative of the Bishop of Rome. In time to assist at this session came three legates of the Pope, Arcadius and Projec- tus, bishops, and Philip, a priest, bringing a dogmatical letter from Celestine, which was read before the synod, first in the original Latin, and then in a Greek version, which was received with loud applause. The letter of the Pope declares that : " He sent three legates to assist at the deliberations of the synod, and to attend to the execution of what the Pope had previously concluded; and he doubted not, but that the assembled bishops would be in accord with these his decisions." The third session was held the following day, the nth of July. The legates of the Pope declared that they had read, in the interval, the acts of the first session, (at which they had not assisted) and had found the sentence against Nestorius entirely canonical and according to the discipline of the Church, but that, according to the 92 CANONS OF NICE AND EPHESUS. orders of the Pope, they should require the acts of the first session tc be read in their presence, which was immediately done. (Hef^l^, torn, ii., p. 379.) I'his, surely, does not look much like snubbing the Pope, or repudi- ating his- jurisdiction. Does Ephesus limit the Pope's jurisdiction .to LowQr Italy ? What gives Celestine, Bishop of Rome, the right to preside by his represen- tatives at the General Council of Ephesus and to im- pose his authority and his doctrinal decisions on the assembled bishops ? Can it be his dignity as Patriarch of the West ? How came Rome to have a " canonical primacy?" Where are the canons to be found conferring, formulating, or promulgating this primacy ? Is it not plain and undeniable that this primacy had its origin in a higher source, existed, and was acknowedged prior to councils and canons ? and that these, as Boniface I. writes to the bishops of Thessaly, " did not dare pa'ss laws regarding the Bishops of Rome, knowing that no act of man could confer additional power on one, who had received all power from the words of our Lord Himself." With the history of the Council of Ephesus before us, 'ts acts and its canons, how difficult it is to be patient on reading repeated ai?sertions of this kind : **Bj' the ancient canons (A.D. 431) it was impossible for him (the Pope) to assert even 2, patriarchal 2lW\\\Q)\' ity, in England, which enjoyed the insular privi- lege of entire self-dependence," giving as authority •* Third General Council, Ephesus," when there is nothing of the kind to be found in the Council of Ephesus, nothing more than what we have already mentioned, that the churches of che island of Cyprus are not subject to the see of Antioch,but should con- tinue to enjoy their independ'jnce in the election and •consecration of their bishops. ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION: 93 XV. THE CATHOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING ECCLESIASTI- CAL JURISDICTION. OUR opponents seem to have no idea oi Lhe power of jurisdiction as distinct from the power of order conferred in priestly and episcopal ordination, and hence much of their confusion, bewilderment, and erroneous inferences. We have already said that the power of order may exist without the power of jurisdiction, as in the case of a priest regularly 'ordained by any lawfully consecrated bishop, but who has not yet received facul- ties or a mission from his own ordinary ; or in the case of a bishop consecrated merely to perform certain special acts, such ?>s confirming, ordaining, etc., and these on this account are called in German, weihbischofs, and they perform acts which none but bishops, none but those having the episcopal character and order can do. So, too, jurisdiction may be exercised without orders, as when a simple cleric is appointed to a bene- fice, or when a priest has received from the Pope his appointment to a see, but has not yet been consecrated. This premised, we say we hold, with St. Jerome, that a bishop in Buffalo is the equal of a bishop in Rome as far as his episcopal order, and the power attached to and inherent in his order, are concerned, for the episco- pate is one, the 'Episcopal order is one and the same in 94 CA THOLIC DOCTRINE KEGARDLXG all bishops, wherever they may be placed, whether at Rome or Eugubium ; at Buffalo, or New York, though there are various grades or degrees of jurisdiction, as is clearly explained in the Catechism of the Council of Trent, Chap. VII., Question xxv., to which reference has already been made. Take an illustration. Our present revered metropolitan, lately, to the joy of Catho- lic and non-Catholic America, made by our late loved and saintly Holy Father, first American cardinal, be- fore his promotion to the archbishopric of New York, was the bishop of Albany, and then he and the bishop of Buffalo were on a perfect equality, each governing his respective diocese, and discharging the duties of his episcopal office with the same powers both of order and jurisdiction. Elcjvated to the archiepiscopal dig- nity, and installed in the archiepiscopal see, and in- vested by the Sovereign Pontiff with the pallium, things are somewhat changed. His episcopal order has undergone no change, no new character has been impressed on him, no new consecration conferred, but besides the ordinary jurisdiction which he has now over the diocese of New York, as he had before over the diocese of Albany, and as the bishop of Buffalo has over his own diocese, he now has an enlarged or ex- tended jurisdiction according to the canons and laws of the Church over a whole Province, embracing seven dioceses. Another illustration. Our present illustrious Pontiff, Leo XIII., was consecrated bishop in Rome on the 19th of February, 1843, with the title of arch- bishop of Damietta in partibus. He then received the full powers of the episcopal order, with only a nominal jurisdiction. He was sent as nuncio to Brussels, and for three years in the ECCLESIA STIlA L Ji 'RISDIC r/ON, '9J capital of Relgium, as bishop, was on a footing of equality with the bishops of that kingdom, though, except by special delegation, he could exercise in any of their dioceses no act of an Ordinary, no episcopal jurisdiction. Mis health somewhat impaired, he travelled, we are told, through Belgium and parts of Germany, visited Kngland, and on his way back to Italy, passed through Paris, Lyons, Marseilles as a simple bishop, as the equal of the bishops whom he met, everywhere esteemed and admired for his learning, ability and virtue. We find him then a simple bishop again in Rome, and as such the bishop of Buffalo, had there been one at the time, wv aid have been the equal of a bishop in Rome, nay, in some respect superior to him, for he would have jurisdiction as Ordinary over a diocese, and Bishop Pecci in Rome had not. But in 1846 Monsigncur Pecci was appointed to the see of Perugia ; on the 26th of the same year the new bishop took sol- emn possession of his see, and without any new consecra- tion or any addition to the power of the episcopal order, by the appointment of the Sovereign Pontiff, he was in- vested with the additional power of jurisdiction as ordi- nary of the see of Perugia and metropolitan of the Province of Umbria. On the 20th of February, 1878, Monsigneur Pecci, who on December igth, 1853, had been made cardinal, and on the 2 1st of September, 1877, camerlengo, was elected, and on the 3d of March solemnly crowned Pope, under the name and title of Leo XIIL He is now, not a bishop in Rome, but the Bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter and vicar of Christ. Though there has been no addition to, or extension of his power as a bishop, or more properly of his episcopal order, yet, on his legitimate 96 CATHOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDIXG and canonical elevation to the See of Rome, the chair of Peter, he has acquired by divine right, by the institution of Christ and the Divine constitution of the Christian Church, supreme and universal juris- diction over the Church, is made Supreme Pastor of the whole flock, and thus, as among the Apostles, who were all equal, " one was selected," as St. Jerome says, " that by the appointment of a Head, the occasion of schism may be taken away," so among bishops, though there is a solidarity, *' the episcopate is one and indivisible," according to St. Cyprian, and "each bishop can hold a part without division of the whole," yet "Christ gave the keys to Ptter as a token of unity," and for the preservation of that unity, He made the Roman ,Church, the chair of Peter, the radix and matrix of the Catholic Church, so that, though she "pours abroad her bountiful streams, yet there is one source, one Head, one Mother, abundant in the results of her fruitfulness." (St. Cyprian, De Unitate Ecclesiai.) Is not this just what we should expect in a Church founded by the Word and Wisdom of God, into which all were to be gathered that were to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth, that thus, as He Himself declared, there might be " one sheep-fold under one shepherd." Thus then, with St. jferome we agree that a bishop in Buffalo is, as to his episcopal order and the power of order, not only the equal of a bishop at Rome, but the equal oL a Bishop of Rome, and Pope Leo XHI., in this respect possesses no higher or greater power, is no more a bishop in the sense ex- plained than was simple Monsigneur Pecci after his consecration on the Viminal hill, in Rome, in the year ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. 97 )f a rher ex- his ^ear 1843, though as to jurisdiction we now own him as Bishop of bishops, holding a primacy of honor and jurisdiction over the %vhole Church, and we hesitate not to repeat in regard to Leo XIII., what, when spoken in 1874 of Pius IX., of saintly memory, so much riled certain parties here: "As One man, we all, bishops, priests and people, lay at the feet of his Holiness all the devotion, love, reverence and submission due to the Supreme Head of the Church and vicar of Christ." This is probably more than enough to ex- plain the twofold power of order and jurisdiction, and our relations as bishops governing our respective dio- ceses in communion with, and subordination to, the Holy See. Are Catholic bishops then simply vicars of the Popt\ holding their ofifice and their powers * at his nodf The episcopacy is of divine institution; it belongs to the organic constitution of the Church as founded by Christ. The titular bishoo is the Ordinary of his diocese, governing it not by vicarious or delegated powers, but " placed there by the Holy Ghost, to rule the Church of God." (Acts xx. 28). His power both of order and jurisdiction over his flock, is from God, there- fore, he is styled Ordinary, exercises ordinary jurisdic- tion, which he delegates to others. Here we see the necessity of the distinction, which we have already brought out at some length, between the power of order and jurisdiction, and between the divine institu- tion of the episcopate and the appointment of individ- ual bishops. Bishops are successors of the Apostles, but each individual bishop is not the successor of some <)ne Apostle, as the Bishop of Romp is the successor of St. Peter. The mission of the Apostles was " to teach all nations," " to preach the gospel to every creature." No «98 CA THOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING 4>ounds were assigned to them for the exercise of their Jurisdiction ; the jurisdiction of a bishop is limited by 4he diocese to. which he is appointed. The power of order in all bishops is, as we have seen, eijual ; so is, it essential, inamissible, indestructi- *.ble. In spite of Popes and councils, in spite of canon- ical prohibitions, excommunication, and even deposi- tion, a true bishop can validly perform all. the acts ^proper to his episcopal order, because, not from the Church, not from the Pope, not from canons or coun- cils, but directly and immediately from God, is his power of order, and it is conferred by consecration. Not so the power of jurisdiction ; it is conferred by his appointment, ai)d before consecration is possessed in all its fulness and extent. It is not equal in all bishops, for then there could not be metropolitans, primates, patriarchs, any more than Popes, and yet these have ex- isted in the Christian Church from the earliest ages, and are irterwoven into the texture of her constituent laws. Nothing is more clear in the history of the 'Church, and of the Church of England in particular, than that the jurisdiction of bishops has bee*, modi fied, changed, enlarged or curtailed by canonical en- actments and the actions of Popes. The history of the Pontificate of Gregory the Great, and the sees of 'Canterbury and York, affords ample proof of this, whilst it is superiluous to say that the Holy See has •erected new sees, divided and subdivided dioceses and provinces, and even, though rarely, abolished sees. Wit- ness the Church of France after the French revolution, the establishment q/ the American Church, the re-es- tablishment of the English and Scotch hierarchy. The power of jurisdiction, then, in the episcopacy is divine ECCLESIASTICAL JTRISDICTION. 99 and from God, but indirectly, and through the Pope, Christ our Lord so organizing and constituting His Church, giving to Peter the full power of the keys and the feeding and government of the whole flock, lambs and sheep. (Matt, xvi., 19. Johnxxi., 15, 16, 17.) " The episcopal power of jurisdiction is therefore not de- rived immediately from Christ, in so far as it exists in individuals; i** has been established by Christ, but is not conferred immediately by Kim upon individual bishops ; ft is imparted to them by the Head of the Church, or bishops whom he has authorized. Thus the unity of the episcopate, so much insisted on by the Fathers, is fully upheld ; the Holy See is head, root, spring, origin of the spiritual authority." (Hergenrother, " Church and State," vol. i., p. 177.) This is sufficient explanation of the formula used in the appointment of bishops, " In virtue of the power of God, of fhe Prince of the Apostles, and of the Rul- ing Pope ;" and also of that used by bishops themselves, " By the grace of God and of the Holy See," for even those who maintain with Thomassin that bishops obtain their jurisdiction immediately from Christ, acknowl- ^6.gQ that : " They have not received immediately from him their particular territory or peculiar diocese, since this partition has been made in the course of ages by the Church, nor could it be made or perpetu- ated unless with the consent of the Head, in whom is the pivot and centre of the ecclesiastical unity." (Thomassin, cited by Hergenrother, as above.) More clearly and correctly does the learned Gerdile, quoted in the same place by the same author, express the Catholic doctrine on this point, thus : " For jurisdic- tion, the assignment of a people as subjects is requisite, 100 CA tul'Lic doctrixe regarding and this is done by human, not divine right. Though the form and manner of this assignment may vary in different places and times according to the diversity of discipHne, yet none could be lawful unless approved by the Holy See, from whose consent it receives force and strength, according to the plenitude of power shed over the universal Church." That is, by the positive act of the Holy See assigning a diocese, and determin- ing its limits, the subjects of a bishop are determined and actual jurisdiction over the same is conferred, which jurisdiction is from God, though not in medi- ately, but through the vicar of Christ, it is ordinary, not delegated or vicarious, and hence he can delegate the same to others, which he could not do, were it a delegated power. And though the manner of making appointments to episcopal sees has varied at different times, no appointment could ever have been lawful, if the Holy See rejected it, or if the Sovereign Pontiff did not expressly or tacitly consent to it. This a Bishop of Rome who was faithful and exact in the observance of the canons, St. Gregory the Great, explicitly declares; writing to the empress of Constantinople, he says in regard to the conse- cration of Maximus, elevated to the episcopate against his wish : "A ♦•hing was done vv^hich never happened under previous princes." (L. 5, Epist. xxi.) And to Maximus himself, he writes : " An unheard of wicked- ness is added, that after our interdict, excommunicating yourself and those ordaining you, you are said," etc. (L. 4, Epist. XX.) Rightly then do we *' object to any ordination not proceeding under warrant from Rome." Nor does this *' overthrow the orders of St. Chrysostom, St. Augustine and St. Ambrose," as ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. lOT any student of history knows that these illustrious saints and doctors of the Church acknowledged the supremacy of the See of Rome and were in turn ac- knowleged by the Sovereign Pontiff. How false, then, and misleading the assertion, that because the Papacy is the source and centre of all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, in the Catholic sense now explained. Catholic bishops are "not true bishops, have no power at all." I almost deem it beneath me, especially after all we have already said, to notice the insulting remark ; "They are not permitted to bear any corporate witness whatever; and when summoned to meet the Pope in council, it is only to tremble around his throne, accept his oracles, and renounce their own convictions at his com- mand, or submit to be stripped of their dignities, such as they are." Catholic bishops are, by divine right, witnesses and judges of the faith, and they can neither abdicate their rights, nor be despoiled of them by any earthly power. It is precisely when assembled in council under the presidency of the Pope, that they represent, and are successors of the College of the Apostles, and in their corporate capacity speak with the full, supreme and in- fallible authority, vested by Christ our Lord in His holy Church. Are judges in our courts not true judges, void of all power and authority, because there are ' judges of higher courts to whom appeal may be taken, who have a wider jurisdiction, and who are empowered to review, confirm or reverse their decisions? Have bishops no power, because by our Lord's divine ordi- nances their power in the Church is subordinated to that of him whom He appointed as Supreme Judge in faith and morals, and Supreme Ruler and Pastor of his lo; CA THOLIC DOCTRINE REGARDING whole flock ? Does not the Council of the Vatican clearly and emphatically state that its decrees do not curtail, weaken, or in any way belittle episcopal authority; that the universal and supreme jurisdiction of the Sov- ereign Pontiff does not conflict with that of the bishop in his own diocese? ** But so far is this power of the Supreme Pontiff from being any prejudice to the ordi- nary ?iX\^ immediate power of episcopal jurisdiction, by which bishops who have been sent by the Holy Ghost to succeed and hold the place of the Apostles, (Coun. of Trent, Sess. xxiii., chap. iv. ) feed and govern, each his own flock, as true pastors, that this their episco- pal authority is really asserted, strengthened and vin- dicated by the Supreme and Universal Pastor." (Dog- matic Constitution o^ the Church of Christ, chap, iii.) Thus, while thanking our friends for the great inter- est they take in the maintenance of our rights as bishops, as against the so-called overshadowing and all-absorbing power of the Pope of Rome, we see how jealously the Church guards the original divine con- stitution given to her by her divine Founder. The Church is to-day as the Redeemer of the world consti- tuted and organized her, holding all her powers from Him, and wonderfully, divinely equipped to do His work, and to do His work unfailingly to the end of ages. To her keeping the fruits of redemption, the merits of the passion and death of a God-man, were to be committed, through her to be dispensed to the souls of men. She was to guard the deposit of faith, and teach it to all nations, and He Himself was to be with her all days, to the end of time, and the Holy Ghost was to abide with her forever to teach her all truth. Her ministers to-day can say with St. Paul, " Let a man so ECCLESIASTICAL JURISDICTION. 103 be of ch all to ■ler so look upon us as ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God," (I Cor., iv. i.)and because sent by FJim, delegated and empowered by Him, He says : *' He that hears you hears me." (Luke x. 16.) But they have no arbitrary powers, they can exercise no usurped authority, and nothing is plainer in Holy Writ, than that our Lord chose his own ministers : " I have chosen you, not you me ;" (John xv. 16.) and appointed them to do His own work, and " I have appointed you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain." (ibid.> The Church is God's own work. He founded it, and " other foundation no man can lay but that which is laid." (I Cor., iii. 2.) " Built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner-stone." (Eph., ii. 20.) His own mystical body, moulded into perfect shape and form by His own hands, living a divine life breathed into it on the day of Pentecost, it is destined to gather into one fold, un- der one shepherd, all mankind, for, as St. Cyprian teaches, there is " one God, one Christ, one Church," and St. Paul, " one Lord, one faith, one baptism," and doe's this not imply one Head, one Supreme Author- ity, one Universal Pastor? Can the smallest meeting be organized without a chairman ? Can any society ex- ist without a presiding officer ? Can any city success- fully conduct its municipal affairs without a mayor? Would any rational man dream of a state without a governor, or a nation without a ruler? How long would our union hold together without a president, and does not the setting up of rival presidents involve the disintegration of the nation ? Could any of our parishes or congregations ever remain one, united and 104 CATHOLIC DOCTA'IAE REGARDING prosperous without a spiritual guide and pastor, hav- ing authority to teach and to govern ? How preserve in agreement of discipline and faith the priests and people of a diocese without a bishop invested with superior jurisdiction, recognized higher pastoral authority, and how maintain "one faith," •' one Church," "onefold," embracing all the world, all the bishops, all the priests, and all the faithful people of Christendom, without one Supreme Head, one sovereign authority, one divinely constituted. Universal and Infallible Pastor ? Did not our Lord provide for this in selecting one among all His Apostles, giving him the name of Peter, establishing him as the rock on which His Church was to be built, pledging His infallible word that the gates of hell should never prevail against it, praying with a prayer of divine efficacy that his faith fail not, for he was to confirm his brethren, and finally, actually giving him the full charge of feeding and governing his whole fi'ock, lambs and sheep, pastors and people ? ^ The episcopate and the priesthood are necessary constituent elements in the Church, and can never be absorbed or abolished, but they are, by the very nature and constitution of the Church, subordinated to the Supreme Pastor, the Sov- ereign Pontiff. Nor does it follow, because a sovereign ruler, or ex- ecutive of a nation, may appoint, and, for cause, re-_ move inferior officers, or veto the acts of a co-ordinate branch of the go .crnment, that therefore he may abol- ish such offices, bi-anches, or departments of govern- ment, or usurp i; hts, privileges, and powers^ equally valid with his c >, and derived from the same source ; even though by rhe iaw of the land, and the constitu- tion of the state, ibordinate to his. In like manner ECCLESIA SriCA L JURISDICTION. 105 in the Church, by her divuic constitution, a master-piece, by the way, of divine wisdom, there is, and it is of faith that there is, besides the Papacy, with its primacy of honor and jurisdiction over the Universal Church, a sacred hierarchy consisting of bishops, priests and minis- ters ; with rights, privileges and powers, as valid as those of the Papacy, reposing on the same foundation, se- cured by the same charter, a hierarchy therefore that never can be abolished by Papal power, absorbed or con- founded in the prerogatives of the Holy See, but without jangle or clashing of any kind, bishops, priests and ministers are ordained of Christ to co-exist and effect- ually co-operate even to the end of ages, with the supreme p» Vv-er with which He has been pleased to invest the successor of St. Peter, the Prince of the Apostles and first Bishop of Rome. 1 must now finish what I have perhaps drawn out with perhaps un- necessary prolixity, but I was anxious to elucidate this point of Catholic faith, which has been so much obscured and misrepresented, in the hope that those large numbers of our esteemed and most worthy fellow-Chris- tians who admire the beauty, and strength, and indes- tructibility of what they call the Catholic system or Papal polity, may atlength see that all this beauty, un- conquerable strength, and indestructible vitality are de- rived from her Divine Founder. Of them, or at least of many of them, whom we sincerely believe to be uncon- sciously and innocently, outside the true Church, our loving Saviour says : " Other sheep I have, that are not of this fold ; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice and there shall be one sheep-fold and one Shepherd." (John x. 16). Fiat! Fiat! THE END.