NOTES.

And more than this.  Some men naturally influence their fellows more than others: and some men Divinely; that is by Divine appointment.  It is true, for instance, that by the very necessity of our social nature and condition, we affect one another in a very important degree; and that it is even a duty sometimes to exert our moral influence on our brethren.  And the degree in which we are able to accomplish this, will be variously determined.  But beyond the natural influence which we thus exercise, there is an instituted influence, as much a matter of fact as the former.  Keeping to the religious view of this question only, I would thus further explain:

It is evident that in every age, one man may be a blessing to another, by personally instructing him to the best of his power: or by praying for him, to Almighty God.  Every good man may possess this power of mediately blessing his fellow men; but some men more than others.—A Howard may thus bless very “effectually.”  And, generally, the “effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”  But some there have been in every age, who, according to the Divine testimony, have had POWER to give authoritative blessing. (1 Sam. iii. 19.)  Some have been from time to time appointed and endowed by the Deity, “to bless, and to curse, in the name of the Lord.” (1 Chron. xxiii. 13.)  Generally this was the assigned function of the Priesthood, and was declared to pertain to them “for ever.”  But “from the beginning it was so;” Job blessed his three friends, (Job xlii. 8.) and Noah his sons, (Gen. ix.) and before the Levitical priesthood was set up, Melchisedec “blessed Abraham.”  Isaac “blessed Jacob and could not reverse it” though he heartily wished to do so: and Joseph, again, blessed his two sons, officially, and contrary to his own intention. (Gen. xlviii. 9.)  Balaam, we see, also, was sent for to “curse” Israel, and he “blessed them altogether,” though he wished not to do it: (Num. xxii. 11.) so that it was no peculiar privilege of the Jewish nation or their ancestors to be able to impart an authoritative blessing. (Matt. xxiii. 3.)  And we find the same to hold in the Christian dispensation. (Acts x. 41.)  Being reviled “we bless,” said the Apostle.  Say “Peace be to this house,” was our Lord’s direction to His Ministers; “and if the Son of peace be there, YOUR PEACE shall rest upon it.”  So that at the end of his epistles St. Paul sends his Apostolic blessing “under his own hand.”  And “without all contradiction (he argues) the less is blessed of the better.” (Heb. vii. 7.  Deut. xxi. 5; xxvii. 14.)  All men can pray for blessing, but some can “bless.”  So, every man can read “the Absolution,” but “God hath given POWER and commandment to His MINISTERS, to declare and PRONOUNCE it.”  (So St. James says, “If any man (not, if any poor man, only, as some seem to take it) be sick, let him call for the Priests of the Church.”)—And this depends not on the goodness of the MAN.  A Judas was an Apostle.

At the close of the fourth Lecture I have made some observations on the Intention of the Church Catholic, as constituting, in a measure, the essence of the validity of certain of Her Ordinances.  It will be difficult to clear this statement from the possibility of misrepresentation, and even misapprehension: I would request that what I have said at p. 128, &c. may be re-read and considered.  The Doctrine of Laying on of hands is recognized in Scripture; but there is no command of Christ concerning this, in the same way that there is a command concerning Baptism and the Eucharist.  It seems an institute of the Apostles and the Primitive Church; and may perhaps be looked on as an instance of the early exercise of the Church’s inherent power and grace; for the institute certainly received the sanction of Scripture, before the close of the Sacred Canon.  So that it would be impossible to say how dangerous it might not be, to depart from the Church’s Ordinance of Laying on of hands.  I trust therefore that none will imagine, that what is here said can fairly be made to sanction the loose notion, that any part of the Church Catholic can now voluntarily originate and ordain a Ministry in a new way; and without imposition of hands.  The uncertainty, not to say peril of presumption in any such case, will be quite sufficient to guard against the fatal folly of such a thought.  How far the grace of the Apostolate is ordinarily now allied even to the very act of “laying on of hands,” it may be impossible to say; still it is important in many respects to observe, that the Laying on of hands is not so strictly of the nature of a proper sacrament, as that the divine grace is always necessarily allied to that form of ordination exclusively.  There is advantage in considering that in theory it may not be so, though there could be no safety or certainty in deliberately acting on such a doubtfully understood theory.

This theoretical conception of these ordinances will serve greatly to assist us in meeting a theoretical difficulty, not unfrequently brought against the Doctrine of the Succession.  It is said: ‘Is it not very conceivable, after all that has been urged, that during the long course of ages, in some countries at least, some one break in the Apostolic chain might have occurred?  Is it not a consequence, in that case, that all subsequent Ordinations would be very doubtful?’  To which we reply, ‘Point out the fact.’  We challenge you to find it; a bare supposition can have but little force as an argument.  And then, supposing the fact to be discovered, That a certain Bishop had obtained his place in the Church by invalid means—what is the consequence?  Could he perpetuate such an invalid Succession?  Certainly not; for in Ordaining others, he would be associated with two other Bishops, whose valid grace would confer true Orders, notwithstanding the inefficacy of the third coadjutor in the Ordination.  But, putting the case at the very worst, even if such an instance could be found, it would only affect the condition of the single Church over which the nominal Bishop presided; and that only so far as the particular functions of that Bishop were concerned; and it would be corrected at his death.  And all this may be urged in reply even by Romanists.  But we who deny Holy Orders to be a proper Sacrament of Christ, can add more than this.  We suggest, that in the case of a Bishop obtaining his place in the Church by some invalid means, which the Church had mistaken for valid, the Church’s INTENTION might avail sufficiently, for the time being at least, to counteract the effects of man’s sin; and so give value even to the ministrations of the Church which had been so severely visited, as to have such a Bishop set over them.  So we meet the theoretical difficulty by a theoretical answer.

It is not unusual with those who are more anxious to make difficulties than to understand the Catholic truth, to speak of the “vagueness of the rule of S. Vincent,” and the arduousness of the task imposed by the Doctors of the Via Media on all their scholars.  That it is easy enough to construct a theoretical difficulty of this sort, no one will question.  But it behoves every Christian to consider well, whether any “dilemmas of Churchmen” can be stated which might not (without any very great ingenuity) be turned into ‘Dilemmas of Christians.’  Doubtless it is a trial, (and God intended it to be so, 1 Cor. xi. 19.) to see so many diversities and divisions in the Church; yet candid judges will hardly decide, that English Churchmen have more difficulties of this kind than other men; or that we should be likely to escape similar “dilemmas” by forsaking the Church for any other community.  And in spite of the ingenuity of men, common sense will generally understand the practical use and application of S. Vincent’s rule, “Quod semper,” &c.  An instance of the ordinary manner of its practical employment, may be seen, to a certain extent, in Lecture II. p. 51, and will suggest at once to the minds of many, the way in which the English Churchman can and does proceed.  Difficult as the theory of the Via Media, and the popular recognition of truth by S. Vincent’s test may in theory be made to seem; yet it is, I imagine, practically and as a matter of experience acted on, to a much wider extent, both in our own Church and the Roman, than is commonly noticed, or thought of.  In illustration, the twenty-first chapter of St. Luke might be advantageously consulted.  Our Lord there assumes (what in fact is daily seen) that heresies should arise.  And He tells His people not to follow the “Lo here is Christ!” and “Lo there!”  Of course it might always be easy to say—which is the Church?—and, which is the heresy?—The “Lo here!”  But that is a difficulty which our Lord did not entertain.  It has very little existence in fact and experience.  Every man, generally speaking, knows whether he is in “the Church.”  Though, of course, there is such a thing as a “strong delusion;” (2 Thess. ii. 11.)  The whole of our Lord’s address in this chapter is one which the Catholic Church feels the power of.  It is full of “difficulty,” and “uncertainty, and vagueness,” to Sectarians only, who have no test whereby they can be sure that they are not the very persons aimed at by our Lord, as following false and new teachers.  It seems to me, that the Sectarian cannot act upon Christ’s directions in this chapter.  Nay they must have, to him, all the vagueness and uncertainty which he charges on the Catholic rule.  “Keep to the ancient Apostolic way; mind not novelties; ‘Go not after them.’  Keep to the ‘Quod semper, quod ubique, quod ab omnibus,’ in opposition to every ‘Lo here is Christ!’”

Again, the Teachers, except they be called and Sent, cannot fruitfully teach.  For the seed of God’s word doth never bring forth fruit, unless the Lord of the harvest do give increase, and by His Holy Spirit do work with the sower.  But God doth not work with the preacher whom He hath not sent, as St. Paul saith . . . Wherefore, good children, to the intent you may steadfastly believe all things which God by His ministers doth teach and promise unto you, and so be saved by your faith, learn diligently I pray you, by what words our Lord Jesus Christ gave this commission and commandment to His ministers, and rehearse them here, word for word, that so you may print them in your memories, and recite them the better when you come home.  The words of Christ be these:

And they that were so ordained, were indeed, and also were called the ministers of God as the Apostles themselves were, as Paul saith unto Timothy.  And so the ministration of God’s word (which our Lord Jesus Christ Himself did first institute) was derived from the Apostles, unto other after them, by imposition of hands and giving the Holy Ghost, from the Apostles’ time to our days.  And this was the consecration, orders, and unction of the Apostles, whereby they, at the beginning, made Bishops and Priests; and this shall continue in the Church, even to the world’s end.

The arguments used in p. 87, 88, &c. respecting the Priesthood of Christ, still manifesting the One Sacrifice of Christ in the Church, may serve incidentally to illustrate the error of the Romanists respecting both the Priesthood and the Sacrifice.  St. Paul certainly implies that an analogy exists between the Ministers and their functions in the respective Churches of the Jews and Christians.  And in implying an analogy, he evidently takes for granted that there is not an identity.  The Romanist seems to overlook this: his error is truly a Judaizing error; and it seems to result from a virtual forgetfulness, that the ONE great Sacrifice “once for all” has been offered, and that the Christian Priesthood has only continuously to “manifest” it.  In speaking of the “Priesthood” of the Church, and the Eucharistic “Sacrifice,” we certainly imply that the Christian Presbyter has truly holy functions to perform, in respect of the great atoning Sacrifice, analogous to those of the Jewish priest: but we must be careful not to make them identical.  St. Paul, in the epistle to the Hebrews, evidently assumes the analogy, but his argument is wholly inconsistent with the notion of identity.  The Christian Priest cannot “sacrifice,” in a Jewish sense of the word; but in a much better.  So it may be truly said, that he has to “offer” continually The Sacrifice once made by The Divine High Priest. (Gal. iii. 1.)  But the term “offering,” among primitive writers, is used generally; and does not exclusively refer to the Consecrated Elements alone.—See note E. in the former series of “Parochial Lectures,” on the Holy Catholic Church.  There is some historical light thrown on our own Church’s view of this subject by the volume just published by the Principal of St. Alban’s Hall, Oxford, comparing the two Liturgies of King Edward VI.—Oxford, 1838.

By the same Author,

[1]  The Feast of St. Andrew.

[8]  Not justly so; because in writing to his own people, there was not perhaps the same necessity for vindicating his apostolate.

[10]  See Notes.  No. I.

[11]  Philippians ii. 22. 25.

[24]  They who would wish to investigate this subject further, may find it fully treated in Leslie’s “Case of the Regale and Pontificate.”

[26a]  See Newman’s History of the Arians, p. 347.

[26b]  Quoted by Leslie, from Bp. Burnet, p. 30.

[30]  It has been well remarked, that the consequence of allowing it to be said “that we are a Parliamentary Church,” has been, that the higher ranks among us are verging towards Deism, and the lower to Fanaticism.  The former, not believing that there can be much Divine in a religion which they can shape and modify as they please in the Senate.  And the other, seeing nothing very “scriptural,” or heavenly, in a “State-made” Creed.

[41]  The first week in Advent.

[45]  This prophecy seems taken by the ancient Fathers to refer to the Holy Eucharist.

[46]  It may be sufficient perhaps to refer to “Hey’s Threefold Ministry,” as a synopsis of the Scriptural view of the subject.

[47]  See Bishop Hall’s Episcopacy by Divine right.

[48]  See Notes, No. II.

[58]  Originating probably from a literal interpretation of Matt, xviii. 20.  Just as the bowing at The Blessed Name seems derived, by Catholic and pious practice taking literally Philippians ii. 10.

[60]  And our false position is frequently increased by our tacitly admitting the popular antithesis between ourselves and the continental Churches, which are taken in a mass—and called, all together, “The Church of Rome!”—Thus we practically overlook the fact, That the Church of Rome is one particular Italian Church: and so increase our own apparent difficulty.

[62a]  See Notes, No. II.

[62b]  Of the authenticity of the first fifty at least of the Apostolical Canons, there can now be no doubt.  They consist of those rules which had grown up in the Church in the Apostles’ days, and the first hundred years after them.  They seem to have been composed very early indeed, but gathered together about a hundred years after the death of St. John, (probably, it is said, by Clement of Alexandria) and they are quoted as ancient, about a hundred years later.

[63a]  See the Canons of Nice, and the earlier ones of Ancyra and Neocesarea, in Routh’s edition of the Scriptor. Opus, and the Rel. Sacr. vol. iii., and Tertullian adv. Hær. c. 36.

[63b]  Such was the extent of discipline indeed, that even common Christians in passing temporarily to another Church, had to take letters of communion from their Bishop.

[65a]  See Notes, No. II.

[65b]  “Per Successiones Episcoporum pervenientem (h. e. Ecclesiam) usque ad nos, judicantes confundimus omnes eos qui quoquo modo . . . præter quam oportet colligunt.”—S. Irenæus, in lib. iii. adversus Hæreses, c. 3.  In which may be seen the Evidence of the teaching of Polycarp, St. John’s disciple.

[66]  “Quis enim fidelis servus et prudens quem constituit Dominus ejus super domum suam ut det cibos in tempore?”—Quod ad Apostolos ceterosque Episcopos et Doctores parabola ista pertineat manifestum est: maxime ex eo quod apud Lucam (cap. xii.)  Petrus interrogat dicens, “Ad nos parabolam istam dicis? an ad omnes?”— . . . Ait Apostolus, (ad Cor. c. iv.)  “Ita nos existimet homo, ut ministros Christi et Dispensatores Mysteriorum.”—Hîc jam quæritur inter dispensatores ut fidelis quis inveniatur, &c.—Origen. in Matth. Tractat. xxxi.

[67]  See the next Lecture, towards the close.

[69]  The second week in Advent.

[81a]  See the Nicene Canons.

[81b]  See Jewel’s Apology.

[82a]  And again, virtually, by the Gallicans.

[82b]  This is worthy of their consideration who are apt to be too disheartened at the divisions in the English Church.  When the Popedom was a disputed matter for seventy years, what could the plain Catholic laity have thought?  It was impossible to avoid the anathema of one Pope or the other, both pretending to infallibility.  See Notes No. III.

[83]  Such, for instance, as those glanced at in p. 47, 48, and referred to in Notes No. II. and III.

[88]  Connected with this part of the subject few books are so important to be read as “Johnson’s Unbloody Sacrifice.”

[89]  See also, among others, that striking passage, Rom. xv. 15.##

[93a]  See Notes No. I.

[93b]  1 Kings xxii. 24.

[94]  As, for instance, the cure of the blind man, by the clay.  Or that of the lepers.

[98]  Sermons on Baptism, Absolution, and the Eucharist.

[99a]  Bp. Hall’s Episcopacy by Divine Right, p. 6.

[99b]  See Jewel, and Hooker.  Ed.  Keble.  And Notes, No.  IV.

[99c]  “Non sumus adeo felices.”  Words of the President of the Synod of Dort.

[100]  Melanchthon Ep. Luthero, quoted by Bishop Hall.

[101]  A parallel case, to a certain extent, may be seen in Judges xvii. 5, 6, 13. &c.  The priesthood of the Lord was associated partly with idolatrous worship.  Micah had graven images and teraphim, yet he, with a Levite for a Priest, was partly blessed by God.  It is not for us to say how far God may bless those who are not strictly obeying Him; nevertheless we must not calculate on this.  Obedience is still a duty.

[102a]  That is; Many who have departed and joined the sects in sincerity and ignorance, may be attributing to human causes that re-invigoration of spiritual life, which is but the forgotten Baptismal grace of Christ, mercifully “in them, springing up to everlasting life.” (John iv. 14; John vii. 38, 39.)  This may be also, one of God’s means of humbling and reforming His too careless Church.

[102b]  John iii. 5.—The ordinary “entrance to the Kingdom.”

[103a]  Matt. xx. 22.; and perhaps 1 Cor. xv. 29.

[103b]  Rom. x. 10. (which conveys the principle); and Luke xxiii. 42.

[103c]  Our own Church recognizes this doctrine; speaking in her Baptismal Office of the “great necessity of the Sacrament where it may be had;” and in the Catechism of its “general necessity.”  Christ affirmed generally the necessity of being “born of water,” as the preliminary of “entrance to His kingdom,” yet He promised admission thereto to the dying thief, who confessed Him with a penitent heart.

[105a]  Acts x. 35.

[105b]  See, on this subject, and generally, on the danger of Schism, S. Jerome’s Ep. 69, &c.  And concerning the peril of departing from the Bishops Catholic, see S. Ignatius ad Smyrn. ad Trall, et ad Phil.

[106]  Ephesians iv. 8–12.

[107]  1 Cor. xi. 10.

[109]  The Feast of St. Thomas.

[111]  See the former series of “Parochial Lectures,” On The Holy Catholic Church, Lecture IV. p. 113, &c. in which I have explained this more fully.

[113]  See Lect. I. page 27.

[120]  Of course there were some that disputed even in their own days the Power of the Apostles themselves.—See 2 Tim. iv. 10, 16; 3 John 10.  The Apostles shrank not from asserting their own “POWER which the Lord had given them to edification”—“A Spirit of POWER and of love”—“Not that I have not POWER,”—said St. Paul, (2 Thess. iii. 9.)

[121]  The manner in which modern sectarians sometimes profess to recognise “only the kingship and headship of Christ,” affords a striking proof of this; for no one misunderstands them, as some did the Apostles, by supposing them to be establishing a temporal rule.  The Apostolic system evidently had that in it, which furnished some apparent ground for such a mistake; and so also the Catholic Church is sometimes charged with “interfering with the State.”

[123]  Apost. Can. 37.  Ed. Coloniæ, 1538.

[128]  See the Homily of our Church, on the Common Prayer and Sacraments.  And Notes No. II.

[134a]  Called, therefore, “the συναξις” in the early Church.

[134b]  A similar principle seems hinted, John vii. 22.

[135]  This may perhaps throw some light on Tertullian’s meaning in a passage quoted by Bishop Kaye, (p. 226.)  The word “consessus” seems to allude to the expression of our Lord, “where two or three are gathered together;” indeed in the same connexion, he quotes this very text.  And I would suggest, that Tertullian’s argument in this place, however ill expressed, may perhaps imply, and certainly requires no more than is stated above, viz. that the Sacerdotal grace was primarily or essentially in the Church, and not originally in the persons of any individuals as such.

[137]  See Notes, No. V.