LICAN OKDEES : 
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 
 
 , f din is n Jmito. 
 
 J. D. BREEN, O.S.B. 
 
 " Ergo inimicus vobis factus sum, verum dicens vobis ? " 
 Gal. iv. 1 6. 
 
 LONDON: BURNS & GATES. 
 
 1877.
 
 ANGLICAN OKDERS : 
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 
 
 $ fetter to a Jrindr. 
 
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 BY 
 
 J. D. BREEN, O.S.B. 
 
 " Ergo inimicus vobis factus sum, verum dicens vobis ? ' 
 Gal. IT. 16. 
 
 LONDON : 
 BURNS, GATES & CO., 
 
 17 4 18, POBTMAN STEEET, & 63, PATEBNOSTEK HOW. 
 1877.
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THE following pages were not originally 
 intended for the press. 
 
 They were written to furnish a friend, who 
 was unable to examine the question for him- 
 self in more elaborate works, with an answer 
 to the query in the title-page, and to place 
 before him, in a plain and simple way, the 
 chief reasons why that answer must be given. 
 It was thought by some, to whose opinion 
 deference was due, that they would be useful 
 to others who were in the same position as 
 the person to whom they were in the first 
 instance addressed, and at their suggestion 
 they are now given to the public. 
 
 I may mention that the extracts from 
 Harding quoted at p. 31 may be found 
 in the Parker Society's edition of Jewel's 
 works, vol. iii. pp. 320-1, 334, &c. ; and that 
 respecting the Council of Trent, quoted p. 34, 
 in Waterworth's work on the subject. 
 
 1824213
 
 IV PREFACE. 
 
 The statement (p. 41) regarding the bap- 
 tism of some Protestant bishops receives 
 considerable support from Dr. Lee's " Life 
 of Rev. R. S. Hawker. '' In the Appendix to 
 that work are given the reasons for supposing 
 that Dr. Tait, the present possessor of the 
 see of Canterbury, has not had valid Christian 
 baptism. Very grave reasons they are, though 
 they do not apply to his case alone. 
 
 J. D. B. 
 
 CHELTENHAM, Feb. 22, 1877.
 
 ANGLICAN ORDERS: 
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 
 
 I HAVE received a letter from you, in which you 
 set before me the difficulties in matters of religion 
 that perplex you, and ask my advice in the doubts 
 that harass your soul. I accept with pleasure the 
 confidence you are pleased to repose in me, and I 
 trust you will never have any reason to regret that 
 you have done so. You may rest assured that my 
 best advice is always and at all times at your 
 service, and that any question you think tit to 
 raise shall receive my most serious consideration. 
 
 Your communication has given me great pleasure, 
 also, on other grounds : (1) because it shows that 
 you are thinking, and that the grace of God is 
 stirring within you ; and, (2) because of your 
 expressed resolve to allow no earthly consideration 
 to hinder you from following the Divine call, and 
 becoming an obedient child of the Church of God, 
 once your intellect is satisfied where that Church 
 is to be found. This resolve is worthy of you, and 
 cannot fail to obtain the blessing it deserves, both 
 of light and grace. At all events, it is more than 
 
 B
 
 2 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 sufficient to engage in your regard the sympathies 
 of any one who has the heart of the ''Bonus ani- 
 inarum Pastor" It is not the fact that you differ 
 from me that can ever separate us. This has 
 arisen from accidents of birth and education, which 
 we may regret, but over which we have had no 
 control, and can furnish no ground of itself for not 
 extending to you that " peace on earth towards 
 men of good-will " which our Lord wished to be 
 the inheritance of all those who truly sought Him. 
 It is this good-will in you, your love of God, and 
 your desire to do His holy Will at all costs, that 
 unites us in spirit more than any external circum- 
 stance can part us in body ; and makes me long 
 for the day when we, who are already so joined 
 together in heart and desire, may no longer be 
 separated in outward communion. 
 
 This is the spirit in which I have learned from 
 St. Augustine that those from without are to he 
 approached, if we would have our words receive 
 that attention which we may think they deserve. 
 
 " Let those," he says, " treat you harshly who 
 are not acquainted with the difficulty of attaining 
 to truth and avoiding error. Let those treat you 
 harshly who know not how hard it is to get rid of 
 old prejudices. Let those treat you harshly who 
 have not learned how very hard it is to purify the 
 interior eye, and render it capable of contemplating 
 the sun of the soul truth. But as for us, we are 
 far from this disposition towards persons who are 
 separated from us, not by errors of their own inven- 
 tion, but by being entangled in those of others. 
 We are so far from this disposition that we pray to 
 God that, in refuting the false opinions of those 
 whom you follow, not from malice, but imprudence, 
 He would bestow upon us that spirit of peace which 
 feels no other sentiment than charity ; and has no
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 3 
 
 other interest than that of Jesus Clmst, no other 
 wish but for your salvation." (Contra Ep. Fund., i., 
 c. ii.) 
 
 You tell me that, as far as your information 
 goes, you see no reason to doubt the A r alidity of 
 Anglican orders, and that this is to you a point of 
 such importance that it justifies, if it does not 
 compel, your continuing a member of the Church 
 of your baptism. 
 
 You have, you say, the Apostolic Succession, the 
 Priesthood, the Real Presence of our Lord in the 
 Blessed Sacrament ; and what more can any one 
 desire 1 
 
 I am far from agreeing with you that the ques- 
 tion of the validity of your orders occupies a place 
 of such primary importance as you seem to suppose. 
 It is, of course, true that valid orders must neces- 
 sarily be found in the true Church of Christ, for 
 they are necessary to her supernatural life, and, in 
 fact, to her very existence ; still, it does not by 
 any means follow, that valid orders are a note of 
 the true Church, and that those who possess them 
 are necessarily within the One Fold of the One 
 Shepherd. Nothing could be further from, the 
 truth. Any such inference is a logical fallacy. 
 
 There are, unfortunately, many men going about 
 the world who have received the imposition of 
 hands, whose souls have been stamped with that 
 character of the priesthood which eternity itself is 
 powerless to efface, and ) et whose lives area wreck, 
 and whose office is a failure. They are unfortunate 
 priests who, in their fall, can be compared only tu 
 Lucifer. It may be that they are apostates, it 
 may be they are reprobates let them have fallen 
 as they may, still they are priests, still they are 
 ordered verily and indeed ; and yet they may have 
 no more claim to be considered, formally, children 
 B 2
 
 4 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 of the Church of God than the veriest Pagan that 
 ever lived. 
 
 What is true of individuals is true also of reli- 
 gious bodies. At no period in the history of the 
 Church have valid orders been accepted as evidence 
 that the parties who possessed them had not suffered 
 shipwreck concerning the faith. Most of the great 
 heresies of the early ages were in possession of 
 orders of unquestionable validity ; nevertheless, in 
 deciding whether their following were to be cut off 
 from the communion of the Church as obstinate 
 heretics or not, this was a point which was allowed 
 to have no weight whatsoever. 
 
 In fact, I can at present recall very few instances 
 of a religious body of any consequence which has 
 revolted against the See of Peter besides the 
 Anglican Establishment whose orders have been 
 disallowed by the Church. Your argument, there- 
 fore, We belong to the true Church because we 
 have valid orders, will not stand. 
 
 Not only is the possession of valid orders quite 
 inadequate, of itself, to establish your claim to be 
 within the fold of the Church, but it is extremely 
 doubtful whether such an inheritance at all im- 
 proves the condition of those who are in other 
 respects extra Ecclesiam whether it is not an 
 aggi'avation of the guilt of schism, or, at any rate, 
 a sort of white elephant, a gift which it is difficult 
 to know what to do with, and which it is better to 
 be without. 
 
 The dangers of sacrilege that encompass such 
 persons are innumerable. There can be no doubt 
 that to rend the seamless garment of Christ by 
 schism or heresy is one of the deadliest sins which 
 it is in the power of man to commit, and that those 
 who approach the sacraments with any such stain 
 upon their souls, trample under foot the Blood of
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 5 
 
 our Lord. Now, in order that those who are 
 entangled in schism or heresy may come to the 
 altar with clean hands, ib is necessary tha,t their 
 good faith be so perfect as entirely to free them 
 from all responsibility, or complicity, not only with 
 those who do such things, but also with those who 
 consent to or communicate with those who do them. 
 
 This is no light matter. The number of souls is 
 easily counted who, by reason of their neglect of 
 prayer, carelessness about sin, worldliness, and 
 religious indifference, are not to some extent an- 
 swerable to God for being what they are. 
 
 There is, moreover, such a thing as receiving 
 valid sacraments fruitlessly, by reason of some im- 
 pediment existing in the soul, which hinders them 
 from producing their proper effect, the grace of 
 God. On the part of the recipient certain disposi- 
 tions are required as necessary conditions to pre- 
 pare the soul for the operations of Divine grace, 
 and this preparation must commence by removing 
 the obstacles that would hinder its working. Fire, 
 for instance, will not melt the flinty rock, nor con- 
 sume green wood, and the nullity of result is due, 
 not to any impotence on the part of the agent, 
 but to the unsuitable nature of the substance with 
 which it is brought in contact. So with the soul 
 of man. " He that believeth and is baptized shall 
 be saved. He that believeth not shall be con- 
 demned " (Mark xvi. 16). 
 
 This valid, though fruitless, reception of a sacra- 
 ment may very easily occur in the case of the 
 Blessed Sacrament. A person may approach Holy 
 Communion in the most perfect good faith, who 
 has confessed his sins with attrition only to a priest 
 who has no jurisdiction whatsoever to absolve him, 
 and whose absolution is therefore null and void. 
 In the case of an Anglican clergyman the question
 
 O ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 of orders apart the only source from which he 
 could profess to derive his spiritual jurisdiction 
 would be from a Bishop, who holds his jurisdiction 
 from the Crown ; and yet he has not even a colour- 
 able pretext for claiming to act in virtue of any 
 such commission when hearing confessions, for he 
 would, as a rule, have to act in defiance of, rather 
 than in obedience to, the authority of his Bishop, if 
 he attempted to do so. 
 
 Putting aside for a moment the question of 
 validity, all such ablutions would be invalid on 
 the score of want of jurisdiction, and the party who 
 in good faith might approach the altar on the 
 strength of having received such an absolution only 
 with attrition, would not indeed commit a formal 
 sacrilege, but still would not receive the benefit of 
 the Sacrament, because he has sin upon his soul, 
 and its presence there is a bar to the entrance of the 
 Holy Spirit under his roof. The most that we can 
 positively assert is, that such a one has saved himself 
 from the guilt of receiving unworthily ; for whether 
 God will supply, by the working of His unfettered 
 Spirit, in reward for bis good will, what has not 
 come to him through the ordinary channel, is a 
 mystery, which can only be known on that day 
 when the secrets of all hearts shall be revealed. 
 
 This clear conscience in dealing with holy things 
 can only be true of those who are in the most perfect 
 good faith, and upon whose souls has not rested any 
 serious shadow of a doubt. 
 
 So that the fact of your having fruitful sacra- 
 ments in the case of adults not in danger of death 
 depends more on your being in the Church than 
 having real orders. 
 
 St. Augustine (Contra Litteras Petiliani, lib. iii. 
 c. 1)* writes thus, as to the effect which schism 
 
 * Gaume, iii. page 503.
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 7 
 
 has in impeding the fruit of the sacraments : " For 
 if the baptism which Pretextatus and Felicianus 
 have administered in the communion of Maximia- 
 nus was theirs, why has it been acknowledged by 
 you in those whom they baptized, as if it were 
 Christ's 1 But if it is Christ's as it truly is it 
 could be of no avail to those who had received it 
 with the crime of schism. Of what avail do you 
 say it could be to those whom you have received 
 with the same baptism, except that after the crime 
 of their wicked separation had been blotted out by 
 the bond of peace they would not be obliged to 
 receive the sacrament of holy baptism, as if they 
 had it not ; but that, as what they possessed before 
 was to their hurt, so now it might begin to be to 
 their advantage 1 But if this has not been fur- 
 nished them in your communion because it cannot 
 be furnished to schismatics among schismatics it 
 is, however, supplied to you in the Catholic com- 
 munion ; not that you receive baptism as if it were 
 wanting in you, but that that whicL you have 
 received becomes fruitful. For all the sacraments 
 of Christ are received, not to our salvation, but to 
 our condemnation, when without the charity of the 
 unity of Christ." 
 
 Again,* he says, in his discourse to the people ot 
 the Church of Csesarea, "Outside the Catholic Church, 
 he " [the schismatical bishop] " can have everything 
 except salvation. He can have honour, he can have 
 the sacrament, he can sing Alleluia, he can answer 
 Amen, he can believe the Gospel, he can both 
 have and preach the faith ; but nowhere, except in 
 the Catholic Church, can he find salvation." 
 
 Again,t "So when any of the Donatists comeover 
 to us, we accept not their faults; to wit, their dissen- 
 
 * Ganme, ix. page 947. t Ganme, ii. page 222.
 
 8 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 sion and error, which are rejected as hindrances to 
 concord ; and then we embrace them as brethren, 
 standing with them, as sayeth the Apostle ' in the 
 unity of the Spirit, in the bond of peace' (Eph. iv. 3), 
 and acknowledge God's gifts in them, whether holy 
 baptism, or the blessing of ordination, or the pro- 
 fession of continence, or the stability of virginity, 
 or faith in the Trinity, and whatsoever others there 
 may be ; yet, though they had all these, they were 
 useless in the absence of charity. But who shall 
 say that he possesses the charity of Christ, when 
 he enters not into the unity of Christ 1 Thus, 
 when any such join the Church Catholic, they do 
 not receive what they were already in possession 
 of; but, in order that what they formerly had may 
 begin to be of service to them, they receive some- 
 thing which before was wanting to them. For in 
 it they receive the root of charity in the bond of 
 peace and in the society of unity, in order that those 
 sacraments of Truth which they possess, may be 
 held unto their deliverance and not to their dam- 
 nation." * 
 
 This, remember, was written of those who had 
 valid orders and true faith, and whose sole offence 
 consisted in their schismatical refusal to listen to 
 the voice of Peter. 
 
 The Anglican cause is, on many grounds, in far 
 greater straits than was that of the Donatists ; for, 
 whereas the orders of the latter were admitted on 
 all hands as valid, those of the former are as uni- 
 versally rejected. 
 
 The Catholic Church of the West in communion 
 with the Holy See leads the way, and ordains abso- 
 lutely as being a layman every Anglican bishop 
 or cleric who submits to her authority. The Greek 
 
 * Epistola LXI. ad Theodorum Episcopum.
 
 ARE THEY VALID 1 9 
 
 Church follows her example in rejecting Anglican 
 orders. Only lately, at the Bonn Conference, the 
 Greek representatives, when called upon to accept 
 such orders as valid, utterly refused ; and Dr. 
 Overbeck, speaking for the Orthodox Greeks in his 
 book, " Intercommunion between the English and 
 Orthodox Churches," quotes a whole posse of 
 English divines to prove that the Established 
 Church never taught the necessity of Episcopal 
 ordination ; the Roman Church, he adds, is " rigor- 
 ously orthodox " in ordaining ah initio converted 
 Anglicans; that "the Eastern Church can but imi- 
 tate her proceedings"; and that "all further con- 
 troversy is broken off and indisputably settled."* 
 Again, he says, " The Orthodox Church does not 
 recognize the English Church to be a Church at all."t 
 
 AVith both of these the Anglican Church herself 
 is in substantial agreement. Taken, not as she 
 exists in the hopes and wishes of the best of her 
 children, but as a whole, concrete, and actually 
 existing corporate body, the Established Church 
 of England has persistently repudiated the idea 
 that she possesses orders in our sense of the word, 
 and is at the present moment busy in putting down 
 those of her clergy who presume to act on any such 
 hypothesis. So far is the necessity of Episcopal 
 Ordination, as a divine institution, from being any 
 part of her creed, that it was not till the passing of 
 the Act of Uniformity in the reign of Charles II., 
 that clergymen who officiated in the Established 
 Church were required to have received it at all. 
 
 Those in her bosom who don the habit and office 
 of the Catholic priest, though in her, are not of 
 her. They can hardly conceal from themselves 
 that they are out of humour with her whole spirit 
 
 * Page 71. t Pa ge 89-
 
 10 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 and history ; they are at issue with her authority ; 
 and, if they would save themselves from being 
 swamped by the full tide of public opinion and 
 Ecclesiastical legislation which has set in so strongly 
 against them, they will have to swim for their 
 lives against the stream. Like Virgil's shipwrecked 
 heroes, " Apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto." 
 
 fhefact that those who have busied themselves 
 in vindicating their claim to a sacrificing priest- 
 hood have had the case decided against them by 
 the verdict of the Christian world, is one of great 
 significance, and ought to have much weight with 
 persons of your way of thinking. St. Augustine, 
 in his controversy with the Donatists, was able to 
 appeal to this fact as being quite decisive : 
 " Securus judicat orbis terrarum." The j udgment 
 of the Christian world is against you, and that 
 settles the question. 
 
 One of the most surprising phenomena of the 
 present Ritualistic movement is the reliance which 
 those who lead it place on the infallibility of the 
 conclusions of their private judgment in this 
 matter, such a weight of external authority to the 
 contrary notwithstanding. So much so, that they 
 are willing to stake the salvation of their souls on 
 the issue ; that they are in the right, and all the 
 rest of the world is in the wrong. 
 
 Individual impressions, no matter how strong, 
 are not infallible. Between them and external 
 realities the gulf is great indeed, and they never 
 can suffice to raise any opinion out of the region of 
 the probable. The testimony of such an ovei- 
 whelming number of Christians must always 
 present an insuperable barrier to certainty, and 
 render the theology of those who are ready to send 
 souls into eternity on the chance of their being 
 true priests quite unintelligible.
 
 ARE THEY VALID 1 ? 11 
 
 It is time now to take in Land the thesis 
 which I jiropose to myself to establish to your 
 satisfaction, viz., that to avail oneself of Anglican 
 orders in any way must be held unlawful for two 
 reasons : 
 
 I. Because historically they are doubtful. 
 
 II. Because theologically they are absolutely 
 invalid. 
 
 I. 
 
 The historical aspect of the question is neces- 
 sarily a dreary one. It would be cruelty to attempt 
 to drag an ordinary reader through the tangle in 
 which it is involved. 
 
 I wish rather to confine your attention to the 
 uncertainty of those facts which are necessary to 
 the Anglican theory, so that, even if I fail to 
 satisfy you on the second point of my argument, I 
 shall still leave you no escape from the ci inclusion. 
 For the existence of a serious doubt, resulting from 
 an hiatus in the chain of evidence, is quite as fatal 
 to the lawfulness of exercising Anglican orders as 
 their absolute invalidity. ]n dealing with the 
 Sacraments, it is never lawful to follow even a 
 probable opinion in preference to a safer one 
 except when the salvation of a soul is at stake, 
 and there is no other course open. For instance, 
 it must ever be held a sacrilege to attempt to offer 
 the Holy Sacrifice as long as there are any serious 
 grounds for supposing that, instead of renewing 
 the great oblation of the new law, you may only 
 be acting a wretched parody of the most sacred 
 mysteries of the Christian religion. 
 
 The historical events which preclude any such 
 certainty as could render the exercise of Anglican 
 orders lawful are the following : 
 
 1. The absence of any documentary evidence 
 that Barlow ever received Episcopal consecration.
 
 12 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 He is the father of the present Episcopacy, such as 
 it is ; and if the case breaks down in his person, 
 the whole succession is vitiated in its source. 
 
 Such an absence of documentary proof is only 
 negative, and hence of itself not conclusive ; 
 though it is a suspicious circumstance that, in the 
 case of every other bishop where the register is 
 missing, Professor Stubbs has been able to supply 
 the necessary evidence of his consecration from 
 diocesan registers, Rymer, or elsewhere.* For 
 Barlow he has been able to do nothing. This 
 circumstance, however, does not stand alone. The 
 more Barlow's case is examined, the worse it 
 appears ; and every fresh fact that comes to light 
 goes to support the suspicion that he was never 
 consecrated. 
 
 We know, for instance, that Henry VIII. re- 
 warded several of his creatures with the tempo- 
 ralities of bishops' sees, gave them the title of 
 bishop, and a seat in the House of Lords, ard that 
 Barlow was amongst the number. We have Bar- 
 low's opinion expressed in the plainest terms an 
 opinion which he held in common with the king 
 and other Reformers that consecration was quite 
 unnecessary. 
 
 In addition to this, we have a copy of the resti- 
 tution to Barlow of the temporalities of St. David's, 
 lately found in the Memoranda Roll of the Remem- 
 brancer of the Lord Treasurer of the Exchequer. 
 This form of grant is quite exceptional, and must 
 have been drawn up to meet some special exigency. 
 So far from being in the usual form, it is a grant of 
 temporalities on account of the vacancy of the see, 
 with the addition, " To hold to him and his assigns 
 during his life " ; so that the revenues of the vacant 
 
 * Stubbs, " Begistrum Anglicanum," page 77.
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 13 
 
 see were handed over to him for his lifetime. The 
 writ states, moreover, that the chapter had elected 
 Barlow for " Bishop and Pastor," and that " the 
 Archbishop had not only confirmed him," hut 
 "preferred him to he Bishop and Pastor"; and 
 had given, not " for the time of vacancy," not " to 
 the snid elect and confirmed," but " to the same 
 now Bishop, for his life, all the profits in the King's 
 hands by reason of the last vacancy of the bishopric 
 and the custody of the temporalities."* 
 
 The omission of all mention of consecration is 
 remarkable, as, since 1534, in consequence of Act 
 25 Henry VIII., cap. 20, it was usual to recite it 
 in the writ, as well as the statement that he held 
 the temporalities for his life, not because he held 
 the See, which was vacant, but in virtue of the 
 King's grant. 
 
 That this same " now Bishop " was so still only 
 by election is evident from the writ of summons 
 to the House of Lords issued the following day, 
 June 12th, wherein he is described as " the Bishopp 
 then elect of St. Asaph's, now elect of St. Davyes." 
 Had any consecration taken place previously it must 
 have been known to Cromwell, the King's Vicar- 
 General, and it was from him this writ emanated. 
 
 Barlow, after this, immediately assumed the style 
 and title of a Bishop, though up to the 12th of 
 June he was BO only by election, as is proved by 
 the documents referred to above. To say that 
 Barlow was spoken of and treated as a Bishop is no 
 proof of his consecration, for he had already received 
 what was, in the eyes of the sycophants that sur- 
 rounded Henry, quite as good as consecration the 
 King's election, and that was sufficient. Barlow 
 himself formulates the principle for us thus: 
 
 * Estccrart, " Question of Anglican Ordinations," Ap- 
 pendix IV.
 
 14 ANGLICAN ORDERS t 
 
 " If the King's grace, being Supreme Head of the 
 Church of England, did chuse, denominate, and 
 elect, any layman, being learned, to be a Bishop, 
 that he so chosen, without mention made of any 
 orders, should be as good a Bishop as he is or the 
 best in England."* He was, moreover, legally at 
 least, Bishop of Bath and Wells. 
 
 How little the fact of a man being styled Bishop 
 in those days proves, we see in the case of Parker. 
 His consecration supposing that he was conse- 
 crated took place 17th December. Now, we 
 have a document, signed per ipsam Reginam, ad- 
 dressed, on the 20th of the previous October, " To 
 the most reverend Father in Xt., Mathew, Arch- 
 bishop of Canterbury " ; and that he had the tem- 
 poralities, is evident from the fact that Tunstall, 
 who died at Lambeth, 18th November, 1559, was 
 committed to his keeping. He was, therefore, 
 styled Archbishop, and had possession of his See 
 in virtue of the Queen's election some two months 
 before his alleged consecration. These facts tell 
 very strongly against the supposition that Barlow 
 was a Vfilidly consecrated Bishop; in fact, that he 
 was ever anything more than a nominee of the 
 Crown. The amount of positive evidence to the 
 contrary is so strong, that it is quite impossible to 
 prove, he was anything more than this ; and until 
 this can be done, the claim of Anglicans to an un- 
 broken Apostolic Succession must be considered in 
 abeyance. It does not meet the case to argue that, 
 at all events, Hodgson was consecrated according 
 to the rite of the Roman Pontifical ; that he 
 assisted in the consecration of Parker ; and that, 
 even if Barlow was not a Bishop, this would cover 
 the defect. For, in the first place, it was not cer- 
 
 * Strype's " Memorials," vol. i. page 184 ; Records, 
 
 No. 77.
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 15 
 
 tain that he was so consecrated ; and, in the second 
 there is no sufficient authority for saying that his 
 presence as assistant would validate a consecration 
 in which the Consecrator was no Bishop. An 
 assistant is present to help the principal, and, in 
 case his act is unproductive of any result, it is 
 simply the old story over again of John helping 
 Tom. " What are you doing, John 1 " " Helping 
 Tom, sir." " What are you doing, Tom 1 " " No- 
 thing, sir." 
 
 2. The next historical fact of importance bearing 
 on the case is that Barlow, his associates, and suc- 
 cessors, were heretics. They held and taught false 
 doctrine, and on no point were they more at issue 
 with the ancient Church of England than on the 
 nature and office of the Christian priesthood. This 
 I need not stay to prove, for you and all who 
 think with you hold such men convicted of heresy. 
 
 It is only necessary to take up any High Church 
 publication to find their modern representatives, 
 the Barings, the Jacksons, and Bickersteths of the 
 day, held up to public reprobation as ignorant 
 heretics. This is another shadow cast over the 
 claim of Anglicans to a certainly valid priesthood. 
 Orders conferred by heretics have, in certain cases, 
 not been received by the Church. Though there 
 is, I admit, a strong case in favour of their validity, 
 there is also a strong case against them ( Bingham, 
 .Antiq., iv. 7). Aud the existence of this strong 
 case against them is fatal to their claim being 
 recognized as certainly substantiated, until, at least, 
 the Church has pronounced in their favour. With- 
 out this guarantee heretical ordinations cannot be 
 regarded as safe. You will recollect the distinction 
 made between the orders of the Miletians and those 
 of the ISTovatians and Donatists as bearing upon 
 this point.
 
 16 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 3. The third important fact in the list is the 
 omission of the tradition of the instruments. This 
 portion of the ceremony is, it is true, not primitive; 
 still it was part of the existing rite at the time, 
 used to render more explicit the declaration of the 
 nature of the office conferred, and cannot be omitted 
 without prejudice to the status of those so ordained. 
 Benedict XIV.* mentions the case of a priest, who 
 by accident omitted to receive the instruments from 
 the Bishop. On the case being brought before the 
 Sacred Congregation, it was decided that he must 
 be ordained again conditionally. What, then, is to 
 be said of the intentional omission of this part of 
 the Ordination Service, coupled as it was with 
 the omission of everything that had been considered 
 of the essence of the priesthood 1 If the former 
 omission was sufficient to render ordination pro- 
 bably invalid, the latter very much increases the 
 probability. 
 
 4. The uncertainty as to valid baptism leaves 
 the whole question of Ordination in inextricable 
 confusion. The denial of baptismal regeneration 
 has from the beginning been a tradition found in 
 the Anglican Church. By the Gorham Judgment it 
 has been given a legal recognition, and has been 
 declared an opinion which any clergyman may 
 hold and act upon. This opinion had always been 
 acted upon by a certain number, whose lax prac- 
 tice rendered valid baptism almost impossible. We 
 are all familiar with the old-fashioned cleric, who 
 baptized with a damp finger, or who did not use 
 water in winter, as it was too cold for the babies, 
 or who, standing on one side of the font, sprinkled 
 a few drops of water at sundry bundles of clothes 
 held by several women on the other. All these 
 
 * Syn. Dioc., viii. 10.
 
 ARE THEY VALID 1 17 
 
 practices combined to rear up generations of men 
 who could neither confer nor receive valid orders. 
 
 Mr. Bennett, of Frome, bears witness to the 
 fact, without apparently perceiving how deeply it 
 affects the question of bis orders. In an article on 
 " Some Results of the Tractarian Movement," pub- 
 lished amongst " Essays on the Church and the 
 World," * edited by Orbly Shipley, he says, 
 " Strange ; yet not more strange than true, that 
 Baptism as a Sacrament was well-nigh lost amongst 
 the English people. Common basins were brought 
 into the churches ; while the fonts were made into 
 flower-pots for the garden of the parsonage. It is 
 very questionable whether water, when used, really 
 did touch the person of the child meant to be 
 baptized. The prayers which in the Baptismal 
 Office asserted the doctrine of a new birth, were 
 frequently altered in the recitation, or altogether 
 omitted. The water was not blessed or conse- 
 crated, and the whole service was studiously muti- 
 lated to escape the doctrine which it involved." 
 
 Dr. Newman also bears witness to the fact, and 
 estimates its bearing on the question of Orders as 
 follows : " Previous baptism is the condition of 
 the valid administration of the other Sacraments. 
 When I was in the Anglican Church I saw enough 
 of the lax administration of baptism, even among 
 High Churchmen, though they did not, of course, 
 intend it, to fill me with great uneasiness. Of 
 course there are definite persons, whom one might 
 point out, whose baptisms are sure to be valid. 
 But my argument has nothing to do with present 
 baptisms. Bishops were baptized not lately, but as 
 children. The present bishops were consecrated 
 by other bishops; they, again, by others. What I 
 
 * Page 9, 1867. 
 C
 
 18 ANGLICAN ORDERS: 
 
 have seen in the Anglican Church makes it very 
 difficult for me to deny that every now and then a 
 bishop was a consecrator who had never been bap- 
 tized. Some bishops have been brought up in the 
 North as Presbyterians, others as Dissenters, others 
 as Low Churchmen, others have been baptized in 
 the careless, perfunctory way so common ; there is, 
 then, much reason to believe that some consecra- 
 tors were not bishops, for the simple reason that, 
 formally speaking, they were not Christians. But, 
 at least, there is a great presumption that, where 
 evidently our Lord has not left a rigid rule of bap- 
 tism, He has not left a valid ordination." * 
 
 That Baptism as a Sacrament was well-nigh lost 
 amongst the English people up to the time of the 
 Tractarian movement renders it quite impossible 
 to trace out a certainly valid Apostolic Succession. 
 
 5. It is beyond dispute that the founders of the 
 Anglican Church held Episcopacy to be a lawful 
 and praiseworthy form of Church government, but 
 they were very resolute against the idea that it was 
 of divine institution, or was able to confer grace, 
 or was a sacrament. This is abundantly proved 
 both by the words and the acts of the Reformers. 
 Tyndale pronounces on the question of the ministry 
 as follows : " We choose temporal officers and read 
 their duty to them, and they promise to be faithful 
 ministers, and then are admitted. Neither is there 
 any other manner of ceremony at all required in 
 making of our spiritual officers than to choose an 
 able person, and then to rehearse him his duty and 
 give him his charge, and so to put him in his 
 room."f 
 
 Jewel follows in the same strain : " How are 
 we to speak of the ministry of the Church, which 
 
 * The Month, September, 1868, page 271. 
 t " Obedience of a Christian Man/' vol. i. page 259, ed. 
 Parker Society.
 
 AKE THEY VALID ? 19 
 
 some have called Holy Orders 1 Shall we account 
 it a Sacrament ? There is no reason to do so. It 
 is a heavenly office, a holy ministry or service. Bv 
 such as have this office God lighteneth our darkness, 
 He declareth His mind to us, He gathereth together 
 His scattered sheep, and publisheth to the world 
 the glad tidings of salvation. The Patriarchs did 
 bear this office. This was the office of the Prophets. 
 . . . No doubt the ministering of the Gospel is highly 
 to be esteemed, seeing our Saviour was not ashamed 
 to publish the will of His Father in His own person; 
 yet it appeareth not wherever He did ordain it to 
 be a Sacrament".* 
 
 On this subject Bishop Cooper's language is 
 remarkably clear and strong. He maintains, in 
 his " Answer to Martin Marprelate," printed in 
 1589, "that no form of Church government ia 
 divinely ordained ; that Protestant communities, 
 in establishing different forms, have only made a 
 legitimate use of their Christian liberty ; and that 
 Episcopacy is peculiarly suited to England, because 
 the English Constitution is monarchical " (Macau- 
 lay's " History of England," vol. i. p. 77, ed. 1862). 
 
 Cranmer has not hid his light under a bushel. 
 His answer to certain questions on the Sacraments 
 are given by Collier (vol. ii. Appendix 49) : " Q. 
 11. Whether a Bishop hath authority to make a 
 priest by the Scripture or no ? And whether any 
 other but only a Bishop may make a priest 1 A. 'A 
 Bishop may make a priest by the Scripture, and so 
 may Princes and Governors also, and that by the 
 authority of God committed to them, and the people 
 also by election.' And in the next answer he says, 
 'In the New Testament he that is appointed to be 
 a bishop or a priest needeth no consecration, by the 
 
 * " A Treatise of the Sacraments," Works, vol. ii. 
 page 1129. 
 
 c 2
 
 20 ANGLICAN ORDEES: 
 
 Scripture ; for election or appointing thereto i 
 sufficient.' " 
 
 It was only to be expected that men with such 
 views should act up to them. Accordingly, we have 
 an instrument by which Archbishop Grindal, 
 Primate of All England in 1582, authorizes John 
 Morrison, a Scotch minister, ordained by the General 
 Synod of County Lothian of the Reformed Church 
 of Scotland, to preach and administer the Sacraments 
 in any part of the province of Canterbury. 
 
 In the year 1603, the Convocation (Canon 55) 
 declared the Church of Scotland to be a true part 
 of the Holy Catholic Church of Christ ; and in it 
 there is no Episcopal ordination or control. To 
 meet this view also, the expression ordination by 
 "imposition of hands " was corrupted into ordi- 
 nation " by election " in the Protestant Bibles of 
 1562, 1577, and 1579. 
 
 In fact, it was not till the passing of the Act of 
 Uniformity in 1662, more than a hundred years 
 after the Reformation began, that Episcopal ordina- 
 tion was made a condition for holding office in the 
 Established Church. 
 
 " It was by the Act of Uniformity, passed after 
 the Restoration, that persons not Episcopally or- 
 dained were, for the first time, made incapable of 
 holding benefices. 
 
 " No man was more zealous for this law than 
 Clarendon. Yet he says, ' This was new; for there 
 had been mariy, and at present there were some, 
 who possessed benefices with cure of souls, and 
 other Ecclesiastical promotions, who had never re- 
 ceived orders but in France or Holland ; and these 
 men must now receive new ordination, which had 
 always been held unlawful in the Church, or by 
 this Act of Parliament be deprived of their liveli- 
 hood, which they enjoyed in the most flourishing
 
 ARE THEY YALID ? 21 
 
 and peaceable time of the Church ' " (Macaulay 
 "History of England," vol. i. p. 79). The same 
 author states, that as many as two thousand such 
 ministers resigned in one day rather than take 
 orders by ordination from a Bishop. 
 
 Not only, then, are Anglican orders untrust- 
 worthy, because for nearly three hundred years 
 there was no certain baptism, but also because for 
 over a hundred there can be no certainty about 
 ordination. 
 
 Some time ago there was a movemenc for bringing 
 about an interchange of communion between the 
 Anglicans and the Swedes. Dr. Pusey argued, 
 with much force, against any such attempt, on 
 the ground that where there was no valid priest- 
 hood there could be no true Bishops, and that the 
 Swedish forms were insufficient to make a priest. 
 Dr. Littledale followed him in the same line of 
 argument. If this be true as it most certainly 
 is in the case of the Swedes what becomes of the 
 Anglicans during the period preceding the Act of 
 Uniformity? 
 
 Here, then, are five facts of history, as hard and 
 dry as you could wish. The total result is that 
 they leave the whole question in such a tangle of 
 uncertainty that it is quite hopeless to attempt to 
 unravel it by the aid of history alone. Any one 
 of them is enough to cast a doubt on the validity 
 of Anglican orders enough to render any attempt 
 at using them, in a Catholic sense, unlawful. All 
 of them taken together render it almost an im- 
 possibility that they could be valid. 
 
 It is quite a mystery to me that a man like Dr. 
 Forbes, who must have known these things, could 
 make such a statement as this : " It is absolutely 
 certain that Anglican orders are valid and regular, 
 unless the Pope's recognition be essential " ("On the
 
 22 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 Thirty-nine Articles," vol. ix. p. 717). He ought to 
 have said rather, " unless it be quite clear that 
 certainly valid Episcopal ordination, certainly valid 
 priesthood, certainly valid baptism, true doctrine 
 and tradition of the instruments be essential." The 
 absence of any of these things we know to be fatal 
 to absolute certainty. 
 
 To assume that Barlow, because he acted as 
 bishop, must have been consecrated, and then to 
 busy oneself about fixing the date at which his 
 consecration must have taken place, is not the way 
 in which impartial critics handle evidence upon 
 whose correct estimation issues of grave moment 
 depend. 
 
 II. 
 
 So far we have dealt only with the historical 
 side of the question ; we have confined ourselves to 
 the consideration of facts which it is impossible to 
 deny, and of their bearing on the lawfulness of 
 exercising Anglican orders in view of the doubts 
 which these facts raise as to the possibility of an 
 unbroken succession. 
 
 Here theology comes in to our assistance ; it 
 throws fresh light on the subject, and enables us to 
 take a step forward. Historical doubts may suffice 
 to prove the unlawfulness of exercising Anglican 
 orders without closing the question of their validity. 
 It has been by the light of theology, and not of 
 history, that the Church has been able to decide, 
 without any hesitation, that they are not only 
 doubtful, but absolutely invalid. 
 
 Holding her theological principles in her hand, 
 like so many threads of Ariadne, she has been 
 enabled to wind her way through the labyrinth of 
 difficulties which bewilder a student who approaches 
 the question without any such guidance.
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 23 
 
 To the consideration, therefore, of these theolo- 
 gical principles we must now direct our attention. 
 
 A Sacrament is defined by the Book of Common 
 Prayer to be " an outward and visible sign of an 
 inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained 
 by Christ himself, as a means whereby we receive 
 the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof," 
 
 This definition is sufficient for our purpose, for 
 it mentions (1), the outward visible sign ; (2), in- 
 ward spiritual grace j (3), institution by Jesus 
 Christ ; and these are what are generally considered, 
 essential to the nature of a Sacrament. 
 
 The outward visible sign is composed of two 
 parts; (1), the Matter the visible thing done or 
 used, whose nature as a Sacrament is determined 
 by the form ; (2), the Form that part of the Sacra- 
 ment which sanctifies the matter, so as to bestow 
 on it the power of causing grace, and which, ordi- 
 narily at least, consists in the words pronounced 
 by the minister. 
 
 If it is asked why any particular form of words 
 has power to sanctify the external matter in 
 such a way that it not only contains grace itself, 
 but also has the power of causing grace to exist in 
 the souls of those to whom it is applied, the only 
 answer to such a question is, because Christ has 
 selected them for that purpose. 
 
 In the same way, the only reason why the 
 external visible cause, bread, produces the inward 
 effect, life ; and why other things wood, for in- 
 stance do not, is that God has created the 
 former for the purpose, and the latter He has not 
 so created. 
 
 Hence it has always been a first principle in 
 theology, that any one who does not use the form 
 instituted by Christ, either directly or indirectly, 
 or substantially alters it, cannot possibly confer
 
 24 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 the Sacrament that results from the application of 
 the external matter which that form was ordained 
 to bless and consecrate. 
 
 It is, moreover, necessary that the person who 
 uses the outward and visible sign does so for the 
 purpose of conferring the Sacrament ; else the result 
 in the spiritual world is nil. For instance, it may 
 often fall to the lot of an elderly priest to instruct 
 the younger clergy in the manner of conferring 
 the sacraments, and. althmigh the whole rite may 
 be gone through with the utmost accuracy, no 
 sacrament is conferred, because what was done was 
 not doneybr tJie purpose of conferring the Sacra- 
 ment, but for some other. 
 
 Keeping these principles steadily in view, we are 
 now in a position to approach the question of the 
 validity of the Anglican rite of Consecration. 
 
 Up to the time of the Reformation the rite of 
 Consecration of Bishops was made up of the impo- 
 sition of hands, accompanied by certain prayers, one 
 or other of which was doubtless the form of the 
 Sacrament. Now, the Church has not as yet de- 
 cided what exact part constitutes the form ; hence 
 the necessity for not expunging any important part 
 is all the greater, lest in doing so we omit something 
 essential. 
 
 " In truth, the Catholic rite, whether it differs 
 from itself or not in different ages, still in every 
 age, age after age, is itself, and nothing but itself. 
 It is a concrete whole, one and indivisible, and acts 
 per modum unius ; and having been established 
 by the Church, and being in possession, it cannot 
 be cut up into bits, be docked and twisted, or split 
 into essentials and non-essentials, genus and species, 
 matter and form, at the heretical will of a Cranraer 
 or a Ridley, or turned into a fancy Ordinal by a 
 Royal commission of divines, without a sacrilege
 
 ARE THEY VALID 1 25 
 
 perilous to its vitality " (Newman's " Essays, 
 Critical and Historical," vol. ii. p. 82). 
 
 If the Church ever does interfere with the rite 
 for conferring the Sacraments, it is chiefly by way 
 of addition; she distinctly disclaims all right to 
 make any substantial alteration. (Council of Trent, 
 Sess. 21.) 
 
 In estimating the nature of the change in 
 the mode of consecrating, the Reformers have 
 saved us a great deal of trouble by the cleanness 
 with which they did their work. They were no 
 clumsy bunglers ; but men of decided views. They 
 proposed to themselves to give practical expression 
 to their views on orders in the ritual, and they did so. 
 
 In the Anglican Ritual devised by Cranmer in 
 the reign of Edward VI., the following equivocal 
 and meagre exhortation was substituted for the form 
 in the Pontifical : " Take the Holy Ghost ; and 
 remember thou stir up the grace of God which is in 
 thee by the imposition of hands ; for God hath not 
 given us the spirit of fear, but of power and love 
 and soberness." 
 
 These words are accompanied by imposition of 
 hands, and are hence the only ones that can claim 
 to be the Form of the Sacrament. They are quite 
 ambiguous ; they do not determine the action any 
 way, for they mention neither the order to be con- 
 ferred nor the special end for which the words are 
 used. 
 
 They are, moreover, of recent origin. The latter 
 portion is an innovation of Cranmer and Co. ; the 
 former, " Take the Holy Ghost," may be taken as a 
 substitute for the words " Receive the Holy Ghost," 
 &c., used in the third imposition of hands in the 
 old Ritual, which, however, was not introduced into 
 it till about the fourteenth century, as Martine has 
 proved (" De Antiquis Ecclesiae Ritibus"). * 
 * Lib. I. art. x. n. 14.
 
 26 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 The whole of that part of the service by which, 
 and by which essentially, orders had been conferred 
 in the West for the first fourteen centuries was swept 
 clean away ; all that was left was an addition, 
 made to render the rite more explicit, and claiming 
 no higher antiquity than the 14th century. What- 
 ever part of the Ritual, therefore, may claim to be 
 the form instituted by Jesus Christ for giving the 
 grace of Orders, this clearly cannot put forward 
 any such claim. For, in order to take up such a 
 position, it would be necessary to adopt the suicidal 
 defence, either that the form of the Sacrament has 
 been altered, which would mean that the Sacra- 
 ment had been destroyed for the matter and form 
 have always been considered of the essence of the 
 Sacrament or that the ancient Church had no 
 true priesthood or legitimate ministers. Courayer, 
 whom Anglican writers have championed so lustily, 
 sees the force of this argument so plainly that 
 he maintains that the words, " Receive the Holy 
 Ghost " cannot be the form of the Sacrament, for 
 reasons which he takes from Morinus.* 
 
 It is curious that he and his following do not 
 see that thereby they cut from under their feet 
 the only defence on which the validity of Anglican 
 orders could stand. 
 
 Dr. Lingard also perceives this difficulty, and 
 sees no alternative but to accept the monition 
 tacked on to the words : " Take the Holy Ghost," 
 as the only portion of the service that could be 
 regarded as a substitute for the " Prayer of Con- 
 secration " in the old Rituals, which was generally 
 considered to contain the essential Form of Holy 
 Orders. He deals with the question as follows : 
 
 " However, setting Barlow aside, there still re- 
 mained the very important question, whether the 
 
 * " Dissertation," page 111.
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 27 
 
 Lambeth rite was of itself sufficient to constitute a 
 Christian bishop ; for the reader is not to suppose 
 that the consecration of Dr. Parker was celebrated 
 according to the form in which Episcopal conse- 
 crations are performed at the present time. In 
 Edward's reign Archbishop Cranmer had 'devised 
 an ordinal, in conformity with his own Calvinistic 
 notions respecting the Episcopal character. It 
 seems, however, not to have harmonized perfectly 
 with the notions which Barlow and his coadjutors 
 had acquired from their foreign masters. Omit- 
 ting, therefore, part of it, they conseci-ated the new 
 Archbishop in the following manner. Placing 
 their hands upon his head, they admonished him 
 thus : ' Remember that thou stir up the grace of 
 God which is in thee by imposition of hands, for 
 God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of 
 power and love and of soberness.' How, it was 
 asked, could this monition make a bishop 1 It 
 bore no immediate connection with the Episcopal 
 character. It designated none of the peculiar 
 duties incumbent on a bishop. It was as fit a 
 form for the ordination of a parish clerk as for the 
 spiritual ruler of a diocese. Parliament, in the 
 eighth of Elizabeth, ordered that the ordinal de- 
 vised under Edward YI. should be observed, which 
 ordinal continued in force till the Convocation in 
 1662 made the following alteration in the form to 
 be henceforth observed : ' Receive the Holy 
 Ghost for the office and work of a bishop in the 
 Church of God, committed unto thee by the imposi- 
 tion of 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 to 
 thee by this imposition of our hands ; for God hath 
 not given us the spirit of fear, but of power and 
 love and soberness.' This addition was mani-
 
 28 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 festly a great improvement, inasmuch as it im- 
 parted to the rite that Episcopal character which 
 it had hitherto wanted ; but, to have been of any 
 real use, it ought to have been introduced at the 
 same time with the line of prelates to whom it 
 applied. By Charles II. it was approved, and at 
 his recommendation was established by Parliament 
 as the legal form of ordaining bishops in the 
 Churjh of England. Statutes of Realm, V." 
 (" History of England," vol. vi. Note C.) 
 
 We must also bear in mind that the new Angli- 
 can Ritual was drawn up to suit the new doctrine, 
 which was a direct contradiction of the teaching 
 of the old Church of England on the nature of the 
 Sacrament. 
 
 Our forefathers had been simple enough to be- 
 lieve that Orders was a sacrament, which, like all 
 sacraments, conferred grace, as a superadded and 
 abiding quality on the soul, and impressed a cha- 
 racter which constituted the priesthood. The new 
 teachers changed all this, and held that Orders was 
 not a sacrament ; that it was only an appointment 
 to an office ; that the mode of appointment was not 
 a divine institution, and had no promise of grace 
 attached to it ; that they were, in fact, ministers, 
 whose chief office was that of public speaking and 
 public reading. 
 
 Here, then, we have to deal, not simply with an 
 accidental omission, nor with an omission which 
 had no doctrinal significance in the eyes of those 
 who were responsible for it, but with a change 
 made by those who had no right to make it, and 
 made for the purpose of putting an end for ever to 
 all claim to the inheritance of Orders as a sacra- 
 mental grace on the part of those so ordained. 
 The teaching of the 25th Article is quite clear on 
 the point, where it says that Orders is one of those
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 29 
 
 tilings " not to be counted for Sacraments of the 
 Gospel, being such as have grown partly of the 
 corrupt following of the Apostles, partly are states 
 of life allowed in the Scriptures ; but yet have not 
 the nature of Sacraments with Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper, for that they have not any visible 
 sign or ceremony ordained of God." 
 
 Hence, even if what was said or done might 
 otherwise have been in itself sufficient, the fact 
 that the words used were not used as a sacramental 
 form, and that the alteration made in them was 
 made with a view of excluding all question of 
 grace, and of preventing their being considered 
 any part of a sacramental sign, is sufficient to 
 hinder any bestowal of grace. 
 
 It is not said, or even implied, that a man who 
 holds an heretical opinion on the nature of a Sacra- 
 ment may not confer it validly, provided the form 
 and intention of the Church have not been inter- 
 fered with. When, however, as in this case, the 
 heretical view annihilates the very essence of the 
 Sacrament, and is given external expression by 
 corrupting the essential prayers or ceremonies 
 for the matter and form of the Sacraments, as 
 Benedict XIY. teaches in his work, " De Synodo 
 Desecesana" (1. viii. c. 10), belong to the substance 
 of the Sacrament, and are declared by the Council 
 of Trent to be unalterable (Sess. 21, c. 2). it must 
 be held to vitiate the whole proceeding. Such must 
 be the judgment of theology, according to the 
 principle of St. Thomas Aquinas: " He who 
 corrupts the sacramental words in uttering them, if 
 he does this on purpose, does not appear to intend 
 that which the Church does, and thus the Sacra- 
 ment does not appear to be perfected" (P. 3, q. lx., 
 a. 7, ad. 3). It must be borne in mind that St. 
 Thomas, in writing his Summa, does not profess
 
 30 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 to do more than furnish a summary, for the use of 
 students, of those principles of theology which had 
 been handed down to his times by the unbroken 
 tradition of what some are pleased to call the 
 undivided Church. 
 
 It may, then, be accepted as proved : 
 
 1. That in the Ordinal of Edward VI., those 
 parts which had up to that time been held to con- 
 stitute the Sacramental forms, indispensable to the 
 validity of the Sacrament, by which and up to 
 the 14th century, by which alone Episcopal 
 Orders were conferred, were omitted bodily. 
 
 2. That in the consecration of Parker even the 
 Ritual of Edward "VI. was not followed. 
 
 3. That these alterations were made to give 
 expression in the rite to the view that Orders were 
 not a visible sign or ceremony ordained of God, 
 had not the nature of a Sacrament, aud bestowed 
 no grace. (Compare Art. 25 with the definition of 
 a Sacrament in the Catechism given pi-eviously.) 
 
 " Dr. Champneys and all Catholics," says 
 Clerophilus Alethes,* " have ever attacked their 
 Orders from the defect of that form." It may be 
 well, therefore, to produce some evidence of the 
 fact, and to see what effect this denial had upou 
 both Catholics and Protestants in their dealings 
 with Anglican Orders. For this purpose it will be 
 necessary to enter, at some length, upon the history 
 of the period. The light which it throws upon 
 the subject will reward us for our labour. 
 
 Very soon after the alleged consecration of 
 Parker, the Catholic party openly challenged the 
 valid ordination of those of the new learning, and 
 called upon them to produce, if they could, evidence 
 of the fact. 
 
 The following are a few specimens of their line 
 of argument : 
 
 * Page 237.
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 31 
 
 1. Harding fastens upon Jewel, and takes him 
 to task in this wise : " Ye have abandoned the 
 external Sacrifice and Priesthood of the New 
 Testament, and have not in your sect consecrated 
 Bishops, and therefore, being without Priests made 
 with lawful laying on of hands, as Scripture re- 
 quireth, all Orders being given by Bishops only, 
 how can you say that any among you can lawfully 
 minister, or that you have any lawful ministers at 
 all ? " 
 
 He compares Jewel to Ischyras, who was no 
 lawful minister, as he was not lawfully ordained, 
 because Collythus, who pretended to ordain him, 
 " died in the degree of Priesthood himself, and 
 was never consecrated Bishop " (Harding's " Con- 
 ference of Jewel," p. 58). 
 
 He concludes his argument, as follows : " Thus 
 they be neither Priests nor Deacons which be 
 not lawfully consecrated according to the order that 
 is used in the Church, that is, to wit, by Bishops 
 lawfully consecrated, but either by the people as 
 the lay magistrate ... or by monks and friars 
 apostate, or by excommunicated Priests having no 
 bishoply power." 
 
 Again, he pursues Jewel in these words : " You, 
 Jewel, bear yourself as though you were Bishop of 
 Salisbury. But how can you prove your vocation 1 
 By what authority usurp you the administration 
 of doctrine and the Sacraments? What can you 
 allege for the right and proof of your ministry ] 
 "Who hath called you 1 "Who hath laid hands on 
 you? By what example hath he done it? How 
 and by whom are you consecrated ? Who hath 
 sent you ? Who hath committed to you the office 
 you take upon you ? Be you a priest or be you 
 not ? If you be not, how dare you usurp the name 
 and office of a Bishop ? If you be, tell us who 
 gave you orders ? The institution of a Priest was
 
 32 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 never yet but in power of a Bishop. . . . Show 
 us the letter of your Orders. At least show us 
 that you have received powers to the office you 
 presume to exercise, by due order of laying on of 
 hands and consecration. But order and consecra- 
 tion you have not. . . . Though the Prince 
 has thus promoted you, yet ye be presumers and 
 thrusters in of yourselves. Well, lands and manors 
 the Prince may give you ; Priesthood and Bishopric 
 the Prince cannot give you." To all this, all that 
 Jewel could answer was that he was bishop by 
 " election," and that Harding was one of those 
 who elected him. 
 
 Dr. Stapleton also follows Harding's line of 
 argument, thus : " Now the pretended Bishops of 
 Protestantism whereas the whole number of our 
 learned and reverend Pastors, for confession of the 
 truth, were displaced of their rooms, none being 
 left in the realm having authority to consecrate 
 Bishops or make Priests, that being the office of 
 only Bishops by what authority do they govern 
 the fold of Christ's flock 1 Who laid hands upon 
 them ? . . . Whither went they to be conse- 
 crated into France, Spain, or Germany seeing 
 that at home there was no number of such as 
 might and would serve their turn ? . . . I say, 
 therefore, by the verdict of Holy Scripture and 
 practice of the primitive Church, these men are no 
 Bishops. I speak nothing of the laws of the 
 realm : it hath been of late sufficiently proved they 
 are no Bishops, if they be tried thereby. But let them 
 be tried by Scripture. . . . Your pretended 
 Bishops have no such ordination (as the ancient 
 Bishops had), no such laying on of hands of other 
 Bishops, no authority to make true Priests or 
 Ministers, and, therefore, neither are ye true 
 Ministers, neither are they any Bishops at all " 
 (" Fortress of the Faith," p. 36).
 
 AKE THEY VALID ? 33 
 
 The same writer, when dealing with Jewel's 
 "Untruths," says, that these men had "rushed into 
 the ministry without any imposition of hands, and 
 without any ecclesiastical authority"; and at page 
 93, that they "began from themselves, receiving im- 
 position of hands from nobody." 
 
 This writer's " Return of Untruths," his chal- 
 lenge to Jewel and Horn, and his Counterblast 
 against them, are worth your perusal. 
 
 Bristow wrote some nine years later than 
 Hardiug cr Stapleton. He was Professor of 
 Theology both at Douay and at Rheims, and deals 
 with the question as a professed theologian. He 
 calls the new ministers " laymen, unsent, uncalled, 
 unconsecrated " ("Motives," p. 91, 1574). "The 
 King of England," he says, "and the Queen too, give 
 their diplomas to whom they choose. Then these 
 carry themselves as Bishops, and begin to ordain 
 ministers." 
 
 " We have," he says again, '' many examples in 
 England to wit, in the case of Parker, Grindal, 
 Saunders, Home, and others who, having been 
 ordained Priests according to the Catholic rite, 
 were judged fit to be, without any ordination, not 
 only Priests, but also Bishops, Archbishops, and 
 Primates, either by virtue of royal letters, or by a 
 ridiculous consecration by those who had received 
 the power of consecrating only from the Queen" 
 (p. 264266). 
 
 This repeated assertion that Anglican orders had 
 no higher sanction in their origin than the royal 
 authority, tends much to strengthen the suspicion 
 that Barlow was Bishop only by royal "election ''; 
 a title which, we have seen, he held to be both suffi- 
 cient and legitimate. For it would have been ruin 
 to their cause if these writers grounded their charge 
 on statements of fact which they did not know to 
 
 D
 
 34 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 be true, and which the parties most concerned 
 could easily prove to be false. 
 
 The Council of Trent had its attention directed 
 to the question by Pope Pius, and were consider- 
 ing the expediency of condemning Anglican ordera 
 by a formal decree. They were prevented from 
 doing so only by the intervention of the Spanish 
 Ambassador, who opposed the expediency of issuing 
 such a decree on two grounds : first, that it was 
 unnecessary ; because it was perfectly notorious 
 that Anglican Prelates were no Bishops ; and 
 secondly, because such a proceeding would moat 
 likely irritate the English Government. "All the 
 world knows," he says, " that Anglican Bishops 
 are impostors ; but, if you exasperate the English 
 Government, you will only make the condition of 
 English Catholics still more intolerable than it is 
 at present." 
 
 On the death of Edward VI., and the accession 
 of his sister Mary, the status of the newly-ordained 
 clergy was a question that received her immediate 
 attention. The claim to possess valid orders was 
 a pretence of such notoriety that she deals with rt 
 as a fact beyond dispute, on which it was not neces- 
 sary to wait for the Church to adjudicate. In her 
 letter to Bonner, Art. 15, she directs: "Item, 
 touching such persons as were heretofore promoted 
 to any orders, after the new sort and fashion of 
 orders, considering they were not ordered in very 
 deed, the Bishop of the diocese, finding otherwise 
 sufficiency and ability in these men, may supply that 
 thing which wanted in them before, and then, accord- 
 ing to his discretion, admit them to minister." 
 
 Now the thing that was wanting in them was 
 that they were not " ordered in very deed." 
 
 The Bishops, made after the new sort and fashion 
 of orders, were deprived of their sees for various
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 35 
 
 reasons. The Commissions for proceeding against 
 them are dated in March, 1553-4, and are given in 
 Rymer (xv. 70). Taylor, of Lincoln, was deprived 
 expressly " on account of the nullity of his conse- 
 cration and defect in his title, which he held from 
 King Edward VI. by letters-patent, with this 
 clause: 'during his good behaviour.' " ("Canter- 
 bury Register," March 20.) Hooper, who had 
 been consecrated by the Revised Ritual, was de- 
 prived on the same day for the same reason. Far- 
 rer, of whom Collier says that his consecration 
 " had not been altogether performed after the old 
 form," * was also deprived on the same day, for the 
 same reason. Harley was deprived with him, on 
 the same grounds. Bird and Holgate, for their 
 marriage. Bush resigned. Scory had to give up 
 Chichester to the lawful bishop, Day, and on his 
 repentance was allowed to act as Priest. It is 
 also a fact worthy of being remembered, that when 
 some of these " pretended" Bishops were degraded, 
 before they were handed over to the secular power 
 they were treated simply as Priests, and degraded 
 only from the Priesthood, no notice being taken of 
 their consecrations according to the Revis-ed Ritual. 
 Larimer, Farrer, and Ridley were dealt with in 
 this way. 
 
 When Pole landed in England in the following 
 November, there were, therefore, no Bishops, after 
 the new sort and fashion of orders, iu the possession 
 of any see, left for him to deal with. It is suffi- 
 ciently probable that the English authorities were 
 in communication with the Pope, and acted with 
 his knowledge and sanction. The fact that their 
 acts were not in any way questioned or appealed 
 against, on the arrival of Pole, seems to point to 
 
 * Part II. book iv. no. 266. 
 D 3
 
 36 ANGLICAN ORDERS 
 
 that conclusion. However, we have no ceitain 
 information on the point. 
 
 The work of the legate in England lay chiefly 
 amongst the lower order of clergy. Some of them 
 had been validly ordained according to the Roman 
 Ritual, under Henry VIII., others had been 
 ordained with cuts and omissions to suit the fancy 
 of the Reformers. Others had been ordained in 
 accordance with the the new Ritual, and some not 
 at all. In addition to this, heresy, schism, simony, 
 and incontinence had brought upon some or other of 
 them nearly every censure and punishment known 
 to the canon law. It was, therefore, necessary 
 that every case should be judged on its own merits, 
 and that Cardinal Pole should not only have very 
 large powers himself, but be able to delegate these 
 powers to others, as it was quite impossible for one 
 man to deal with every case likely to arise in con- 
 sequence of the late state of affairs. Accordingly, 
 Cardinal Pole received from Pope Julius III. a 
 Bull, dated March 8, 1554, authorizing him to 
 subdelegate to others the very large legatine facul- 
 ties he had already received. 
 
 The perusal of this document is ver.y instructive, 
 as it shows how thoroughly the situation was under- 
 stood at Rome. Speaking of those clergy who by 
 reason of their crimes had incurred the censure of 
 irregularity, he says that on repentance they may 
 be absolved and allowed to exercise their orders 
 " provided," however, " that before tlieir fall into 
 this heresy they had been rightly and lawfully 
 promoted or ordained." 
 
 This clause excludes those who had been ordained 
 by the Edwardine forms, for they had been oi-dained 
 and promoted in direct violation of the canon law, 
 and therefore unlawfully. We shall find later on 
 that the evil thing about their ordination and
 
 ARE THEY VALID 1 37 
 
 appointment was, that it was not done according to 
 the form and intention of the Church. 
 
 Another passage deals more directly with the 
 question before us, as it separates off the ecclesias- 
 tics in England by the condition of the Orders they 
 laid claim to. 
 
 The Pope empowers the legate " Freely to use all 
 and each of the aforesaid .... faculties .... in 
 person, or through others appointed by thee for this 
 purpose pro tern., even as regards orders which they 
 had never or evilly received, and the rite of Conse- 
 cration which was applied to them by other bishops 
 or archbishops, even heretics and schismatics, or 
 otherwise unduly aud without following the accus- 
 tomed form of the Church." 
 
 Here we have mention of three classes of persons 
 to be dealt with : (1) Those who had not received 
 orders ; (2) Those who had received them evilly ; 
 (3) Those who had received them unduly. 
 
 Under which of these classes, then, are the 
 Edwardine clerics to be ranked ? We have seen 
 that Queen Mary, acting certainly under advice, 
 ranks them in the first category by the words : 
 " Seeing they are not ordered in very deed." As 
 do also the Bishops, who deprived Taylor, with other 
 Edwardine prelates, expressly on the ground of the 
 " nullity of his consecration." 
 
 Now, is thei-e any reason to suppose that Cardinal 
 Pole differed from the Queen and the Catholic 
 Bishops in his estimate of the Revised Ordinal ? 
 Quite the contrary. Not only did he allow their 
 decision to hold good, but also, in the Commission 
 granted to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury 
 for reconciling the clergy and laity of that Province, 
 he expresses this agreement. 
 
 " The instrument," says Collier, " extends to the 
 absolving of all persons who repent their miscar-
 
 38 ANGLICAN OEDERS : 
 
 riages, and desire to be restored from all heresies, 
 schisms, apostasies, from all excommunications, 
 suspensions, and other ecclesiastical censures ; and 
 more particularly the clergy who had received 
 orders from any schismatical or heretical bishops, 
 officiated in virtue of that character, and complied 
 with any unallowed ceremonies and forms of prayer 
 are absolved, provided the Form and Intention of 
 the Church was not omitted in their ordination."* 
 
 I have shown already, beyond all question, that 
 this was the very thing done in the Revised Ritual. 
 Both the Form and the Intention of the Church 
 were tampered with. Schismatical and heretical 
 orders are allowed to stand after repentance and 
 absolution ; not so, however, in the case where the 
 Form and Intention of the Church were omitted. 
 
 You will notice that the two points insisted on 
 throughout these quotations are (1) Unlawfulness 
 of title or promotion ; (2) Invalidity of Orders, in 
 the case of those promoted after the new sort and 
 fashion of orders. 
 
 On the death of Queen Mary, her sister, Queen 
 Elizabeth, set herself to undo the work of the last 
 reign, and to introduce again the new religion, und, 
 along with it, the Revised Ordinal. The difficulties 
 in her way were serious. None of the Bishops of 
 the English Hierarchy would have anything to do 
 with her or her Ordinal. They were, therefore, 
 deposed, with the exception of Kitchen, of Llandaff. 
 As they refused to hand on the succession to the 
 Queen's nominees, and as they were the only persons 
 who could lawfully do so, on the principle, " Quod 
 non habetis, non potextis dare," the lawful succession 
 in the Church of England would on their death 
 become extinct. In this extremity, the Queen 
 
 * Part II. book v. no. 377.
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 39 
 
 bethought herself of her Royal Supremacy in 
 spiritual matters over the Church, and on her own 
 authority commissioned four of her creatures to 
 consecrate Parker by an instrument in which the 
 following dispensation was inserted, to cover all 
 the irregularity and deficiency in the proceeding : 
 " Supplying, nevertheless, by our supreme Royal 
 authority, of our mere motion and certain know- 
 ledge, if anything either in those things which shall 
 be done by you according to our foresaid mandate or 
 in you or any one of you is or shall be wanting in 
 condition, status, or faculty, of those things which 
 are required or are necessary by the statutes of this 
 kingdom or by Ecclesiastical laws in this matter, 
 the nature of the time and the necessity of the 
 circumstances requiring it." 
 
 This clause is remarkable from the use of the 
 technical terms " of our mere motion and certain 
 knowledge," which are used in Papal documents to 
 indicate their unreserved application to all cases. 
 
 Those who confirmed Parker in his dignity 
 quote this clause in their commission as the au- 
 thority for their acts. They say, " The election of 
 the venerable man, Mr. Mathew Parker, we con- 
 firm by the supreme authority of the said most 
 serene Lady, our Queen, committed unto us in his 
 behalf; supplying by the supreme royal authority, 
 of the Queen's mere motion and certain knowledge, 
 delegated to us, all defects in this election, as well 
 in those things done by us and proceeded with 
 according to the commandment given us, or that 
 are or shall be in ourselves or in the condition, 
 status, or capacity of any one of us for this perfor- 
 mance" (Bramhall, iii. 202). Nor is this all. 
 
 The validity of the consecration of Parker and 
 also the validity of the consecrations of the Queen's 
 bishops, as well as their lawful authority, were
 
 40 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 seriously questioned in many quarters, and doubts 
 were freely expressed on the subject. To set the 
 whole matter at rest, an Act was passed in lot) 5 
 (8 Eliz. c. 1.), to decree " that all acts and things 
 heretofore had, made, or done by any person or 
 persons in or about any consecration, confirmation, 
 or investing of any person or persons elected to 
 the office or dignity of any Archbishop or Bishop 
 within this realm, or within any other the Queen'a 
 Majesty's dominions or countries, by virtue of the 
 Queen's Majesty's letters patent or commission 
 since the beginning of her Majesty's reign, be and 
 shall be by the authority of this present Parliament 
 declared, judged, and deemed, at and from every 
 of the several times of the doing thereof, good and 
 perfect to all respects and purposes ; any matter or 
 thing that can or may be objected to the contrary 
 tJtereof in any wise notwithstanding." 
 
 If it be within the scope of the civil power to 
 make good and perfect consecrations in holy orders 
 by the authority of Parliament anything to the 
 contrary notwithstanding then those of the 
 Queen's bishops are, beyond question, valid. You, 
 however, agree with me so far, that the Apostolic 
 succession and valid orders must have a higher 
 sanction than even the weighty authority of the 
 British Parliament. 
 
 The Catholics were not the only persons who 
 pronounced the Revised Ordinal worthless. The 
 Scotch Presbyterians, on the very same grounds, 
 argued that there were no Bishops in the Esta- 
 blishment ; that, in fact, it was Presbyterian 
 because the Ordinal was insufficient to make a 
 Bishop. So straight did they drive their argument 
 home, that in order to meet it the Consecration 
 Service was altered to its present form a hundred 
 years and more too late to be of any use to the 
 line of prelates which it introduced.
 
 ARE THEY VALID? 41 
 
 Burnet, in his " History of the Reformation," * 
 speaks of this alteration as follows : " They agreed 
 on a form of ordaining deacons, priests, and bishops 
 which is the same we yet (i. e. A.D. 1683) use, 
 except in some few words that have been added 
 since in the ordination of a Priest or Bishop. For 
 there was then no express mention made, in the 
 words of ordaining them, that it was for the one 
 or the other office. In both it was said, ' Receive, 
 thou the Holy Ghost, in the name of the Father, 
 
 &c But that having been since made u*e of to 
 
 prove both functions the same, it was of late years 
 altered as it is now." 
 
 Such then, in short, are the considerations which 
 ought to guide an inquirer as to the validity of 
 Anglican Orders, and which seem to me sufficient, 
 for all practical purposes, to close the question. I 
 have confined my remarks, as you cannot fail to 
 have noticed, chiefly to the consecration of Bishops, 
 because, if there are no validly consecrated Bishops 
 there can be no orders of any kind in the Esta- 
 blished Church. 
 
 I have maintained, from an historical point of 
 view, the unlawfulness of attempting to exercise 
 such Orders, (1), Because of the grave reasons there 
 are for thinking that some at least of the Protestant 
 Bishops were never formally even Christians, on 
 account of their never having received any certainly 
 valid Christian Baptism, and hence were incapable 
 of receiving any valid Christian Orders. That there 
 have been some such is beyond a doubt ; and the 
 very loose theology and practice of former days on 
 the subject of baptismal regeneration render it more 
 than probable that there have been many others. 
 (2) Because we know for certain that, till the 
 
 * Part II. book i. page 144, ed. 1683.
 
 42 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 Act of Uniformity was passed, a very large number 
 of persons acting as clei-gy never even pretended 
 to have received ordination to the priesthood from 
 any Bishop. These grave doubts as to Baptism 
 and Priesthood create a state of uncertainty as to 
 the existence of Orders in any given case, in which 
 it is not safe, and hence not lawful, to act. 
 
 I have further maintained the absolute invalidity 
 of Anglican Orders because of the omission in the 
 Revised Ritual, amongst otherthings, of the "Prayer 
 of Consecration," which had, up to that time, 
 been considered part of the essential sacramental 
 Form of Holy Orders. An omission made without 
 any authority, and one so serious, that you might 
 almost as well hold that if the words, " I baptize 
 thee in the name of the Father," &c. were omitted 
 in baptism, the other passages in the Ritual would 
 supply the deficiency. 
 
 The only answer that can be attempted to this 
 is, to say that our Lord ordained His Apostles by 
 the form, " Receive the Holy Ghost," and that the 
 Holy See in the case of the Abyssinian ordinations 
 has allowed the sufficiency of this Form. 
 
 But, in the first place, you know that theologians 
 generally hold that Christ determined, substantially 
 at least, the Matter and Form of all the Sacraments 
 before His Ascension, and the fact that the words, 
 " Receive the Holy Ghost," wei-e not used in the 
 West till about the 14th century, would seem to 
 leave no question as to their not being the Sacra- 
 mental Form ; for, if so, this sacrament has been 
 lost to the Church., 
 
 The power of the Priesthood is twofold : one, 
 sacramental, over the real Body of Christ in the 
 Holy Eucharist. This power was given to the 
 Apostles by the words : "J)o this in commemoration 
 of Me." And hence the Council of Florence, in
 
 ARE THEY VALID ? 43 
 
 the Decree of Union, has laid down that " The 
 Form of the Priesthood is this : ' Receive power to 
 offer sacrifice for the living and the dead, in the name 
 of the leather,'" &c., which is substantially the same 
 as the former. Without the bestowal of this power 
 Orders are impossible. The other power of the 
 Priesthood is judicial inforo interiore over the mys- 
 tical body of Christ. This is the power that is con- 
 sidered to be given by the words, " Receive the 
 Holy Ghost," and can be given only to one who is 
 already a Priest. Our Lord Himself conferred 
 them separately, as is evident ; giving the former 
 at the Last Supper, and the latter after the Resur- 
 rection. The sine qud non of the Priesthood, i.e. 
 power to consecrate, was not given on the lattter 
 occasion by the words then used. 
 
 A s regards the decision of the Holy See in refe- 
 rence to Abyssinian Orders, you ai'e probably by 
 this time aware that Canon Estcourt, who put forth 
 the opinion you allude to, laboured iinder a very 
 serious misapprehension. He was quite wrong in 
 supposing that therein the sufficiency of the words, 
 " Receive the Holy Ghost," as a Sacramental Form, 
 was established. Even if it were so for the Priest- 
 hood, nothing would follow as regards the Episco- 
 pacy. However, I submit for your perusal the 
 repudiation by the Holy See of any intention to 
 decide the matter in this sense. 
 
 Letter of Cardinal Patrizi to his Imminence the 
 Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. 
 
 " To the Lord Cardinal, Archbishop of West- 
 minster. April 30, 1875. 
 
 "Most Eminent and most Reverend Lord, In 
 your letter of the 24th of August of last year, your 
 Eminence called attention to a question now dis-
 
 44 ANGLICAN ORDERS : 
 
 cussed by several writers as to the meaning attach- 
 ing to a certain ' decree,' as it is termed, issued by 
 the Supreme Congregation of the Holy Inquisition 
 on the 10th of April, 1 704, in a certain Abyssinian 
 case, regarding the validity of ordination conferred 
 by the words, " Receive ye the Holy Glwst,' joined 
 with imposition of hands ; and (you mentioned) 
 that it had given the Anglicans ground for asserting 
 and boasting that in future Catholics could enter- 
 tain no doubt of the validity of Anglican Orders. 
 Wherefore, to remove all cause of anxiety and to 
 defend the truth more securely, your Eminence 
 requested a solution of the following doubt : namely, 
 whether the doctrine that imposition of hands joined 
 to these words only, ' Receive ye the Holy GJtost y ' 
 suffices for the validity of the Order of Priesthood, 
 was contained implicitly or explicitly in the above- 
 named decree. 
 
 " On Wednesday, the 24th of the present month, 
 it was decided by the Most Eminent Fathers the 
 Cardinals, who share with me the office of Inquisitor 
 General, alter a mature discussion of the question, 
 that an answer must be returned in the negative. 
 And one or two of the motives which guided them 
 in this decision will suffice to convince your Emi- 
 nence of the justice of this Decree. For it is 
 manifest from the Coptic rite, as given in their 
 Pontifical books, that the words, ' Receive ye the 
 Holy Ghost,' do not constitute the entire form ; 
 nor is the meaning of the document dating from 
 1704 (which document is not a Decree of the Sacred 
 Congregation, as appears from its Archives) to be 
 understood as implying more than this that the 
 ordination of a Priest among the Copts, conferred 
 by the laying on of hands and the pronouncing of 
 the form prescribed by their ancient rite, is to be 
 considered valid ; nor has the Holy Supreme Con-
 
 ARE THEY VALID 1 45 
 
 gregation ever declared, explicitly or implicitly, 
 that the imposition of hands with no other words 
 than ' Receive ye the Holy Ghost ' suffices for the 
 validity of the Order of Priesthood. 
 
 " With the consciousness of having complied with 
 the duties of my office, it only remains for me to 
 kiss, with all due reverence and humility, your 
 Eminence's hand. 
 
 "Your Eminence's most humble and 
 
 devoted servant, 
 
 " (Signed) C. CARDINAL PATRIZI. 
 "Rome, April 30th, 1875." 
 
 Some persons who seem to forget that discretion 
 is the better part of valour, may perhaps resent 
 what I have written as an attack upon their 
 honour and an insult to their Church. With such 
 I do not care to dispute ; yon know me too well 
 to suppose fur a moment that I have any such in- 
 tention. 
 
 I have written solely with the view of bringing 
 home to you what I believe to be the truth, and in 
 the spirit of the most perfect charity. This is a 
 question upon which the salvation of your soul 
 may depend, and eternity is altogether too serious 
 an issue to allow of your risking it at a game of 
 rouge et noir; for this is what you are doing now. 
 
 The whole Catholic Church never has accepted 
 and never can accept Anglican Orders, and never 
 ceases to cry aloud to those who would sustain the 
 spirits of their followers by assei'ting that when they 
 come over in a body she will make terms with them, 
 " No illusions, gentlemen no illusions ! " 
 
 On the other hand, what have you to fall back 
 upon 1 Beyond the assurance of your leaders and 
 your own private judgment nothing. What gua- 
 rantee have you that both they and you may not
 
 46 ANGLICAN ORDERS: ARE THEY VALID? 
 
 be mistaken? None whatever. Suppose you find, 
 when it is too late, that you have made a mistake 
 what then ? The whole of the Catholic Church, 
 the Schismatical Greek Church, even the body you 
 called your Mother Church, were witnesses to you 
 that you were clinging to a phantom. You would 
 not have it so ; you staked your soul on the issue 
 that you were right and all the world in the wrong 
 and you have lost. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 J. D. BREEK 
 
 THE .END. 
 
 Wyman % Sont, Printers, Great Queen Street, London, W.C.
 
 A 000100371 4