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Article  XXVI

      i.  Connection.  If the Sacraments are “not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession,” but “sure witnesses, and effectual signs of grace,” the important question arises, “Does their efficacy depend on the worthiness of him who ministers them”?  It is to this question that the Article, which we have now to consider, contains an answer.

      ii.  Object.  It was necessary to give an answer to it, for not a few in the sixteenth century [See Hardwick, Hist. Art. p. 103, n. 2.] made the validity of the Sacraments depend on the worthiness of those who ministered them, and some Anabaptists declined to come to the celebration of the Holy Eucharist on the ground of the questionable lives of those who celebrated at the altar. [The Reformatio Legum speaks of Anabaptists, who separated from the Lord’s Table on the plea that they were deterred “vel ministrorum improbitate vel aliorum fratrum.”  Cf. Alley, Poore Man’s Librarie, i. 242 b.]  This, however, was only a revival of early errors, for the Novatians ascribed the efficacy of the Sacraments to the character of the Minister, and the Donatists [The Confession of Augsburg specially mentions the Donatists and others like them, “qui negabant licere populo uti ministerio malorum in Ecclesia, et sentiebant ministerium malorum inutile et inefficax esse.”  Sylloge Confessionum, p. 171.] refused to recognize the Ordination of Caecilian by Felix of Apthonga on the ground that he had during persecution delivered up the sacred books and vessels.  These ideas were revived again and again during the Middle Ages in consequence of the corrupt lives of many ecclesiastics, and were held by the adherents of Arnold of Brescia, the Vaudois [“The Vaudois maintained that priests in mortal sin could not consecrate the Eucharist, and that the transubstantiation took place not in the hand of the unworthy celebrator, but in the mouth of the worthy communicant; that a bad priest could not absolve; that it was better to confess to a pious laic than to a wicked clergyman.”  Bp. Forbes, On the Articles, p. 480.] and the less informed followers of Wiclif and Huss. [Their views led at the time of the Reformation to the idea not that the beneficial effect only, but the reality also of the Sacrament depended on the interior disposition and the faith of him to whom the Sacrament was administered.]

      iii.  Origin.  In its original shape the present Article formed the conclusion of the Fifth of the Thirteen Articles of 1538, and is expressed almost in the selfsame words.  The Fifth of these Thirteen Articles in its turn derived [The Fifth of the Thirteen Articles of 1538 runs, “Et quamvis in Ecclesia ... mali sint bonis admixti, atque etiam ministeriis verbi et sacramentorum nonnunquam praesint; tamen cum ministrent non suo sed Christi nomine, mandato, et auctoritate, licet eorum ministerio uti, tam in verbo audiendo quam in recipiendis sacramentis, juxta illud: ‘Qui vos audit, me audit.’  Nec per eorurn malitiam minuitur effectus, aut gratia donorum Christi rite accipientibus; sunt enim efficacia propter promissionem et ordinationem Christi, etiamsi per malos exhibeantur.”  Hardwick, Hist. Art. p. 264.  Ed. 1859.] at least some expressions from the Sixth and Seventh of the Augsburg series, though in other respects it departed considerably from that confession. [Sylloge Confessionum, pp. 152, 153.]

      iv.  Analysis.  The Article lays down the following propositions: – That

(a) The Sacraments have an objective value in virtue of their institution by Christ and the promise He has annexed to them, and therefore they do not depend for their efficacy on the character of the Minister;

(b) The Clergy, who minister them, do so, not in their own name, but in the name of Christ;

(c) The Grace of God’s gifts is not “diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them; which be effectual, because of Christ’s institution and promise, although they be ministered by evil men” [Comp. Concil. Trident.  Sess. vii.  Can. 7.  “Si quis dixerit, non dari gratiam per hujusmodi sacramenta semper et omnibus, quantum est ex parte Dei, etiam si rite ea suscipiant, sed aliquando et aliquibus: anathema sit.”]

(d) Nevertheless the exercise of godly discipline as regards evil ministers is an absolute duty on the part of the Church, which she cannot put aside.

      v.  The Teaching of Holy Scripture in reference to the above points is quite clear. Our Lord Himself, the great Shepherd and Bishop of souls (1 Pet. 2:25), laid it down again and again that in the visible Church the evil would ever be mingled with the good.  He warned His Apostles that the tares would be mixed with the wheat (Matt. 13:30), the sheep with the goats (Matt. 25:32), the good fish with the bad (Matt. 13:47, 48), the good grain with the chaff (Matt. 3:12), the fruitful with the unfruitful branches of the vine [S. Paul also compares the Church to a great house, in which are not only vessels of gold and of silver, but also of wood and of earth, and some unto honour, and some unto dishonour (2 Tim. 2:20).] (John 15:1 sqq.).  To expect therefore perfection of the Ministers of Christ’s Sacraments is to expect what cannot be realized in this mortal life, [“God sometimes works,” writes S. Chrysostom, “even by those who are unworthy; nor is the Grace of Baptism at all impaired by the life of the priest.”  Hom. viii. in 1 Cor.  Gregory of Nazianzum maintains that “the Baptism of Peter is no better than that of Judas, and he illustrates his assertion by the fact that a seal of iron gives as perfect an impression as a seal of gold.”  Orat. de Bapt.] and no care and pains will infallibly prevent evil and depraved men from joining the most holy societies.  Moreover our Lord Himself bade His disciples do whatever the Scribes and Pharisees bade them, not because they were themselves good men, but because they sat in Moses’s seat (Matt. 23:2, 3), and thus held an acknowledged official position, and He Himself had to bear with a Judas amongst His own Apostles.  But as no one would be justified in refusing to accept Apostolic doctrine because one traitor was found in the original Apostolic College, so to reject the Sacraments because of the personal shortcoming of the Minister thereof, would be to acknowledge that they did minister in their own name, and not by Christ’s institution, commission, and authority, and to introduce disastrous confusion.  In direct opposition to this the Apostles teach not that holiness in the Minister, but that God’s blessing on his Ministry, is the cause of blessing to the Church and to human souls.  They remind their converts that Paul may plant and Apollos water, [Εγω εφύτευσα Απολλως επότισεν, αλλ’ ο θεος ηύξανεν = God was giving the increase).  “observe the force of the imperfect, implying a continual bestowing of divine grace, as distinguished from the transitory acts of His Ministers, Paul and Apollos, whose operations are described by the aorists, εφύτευσα, επότισεν.”  Bp. C. Wordsworth in loc.] but it is God that giveth the increase (1 Cor. 3:6, 7), and that, great and glorious as is the Christian Ministry, yet the treasure is in earthen vessels, to the intent that the greatness of the power may be of God and not of men [“We,” says the Apostle, “carry the treasure of Christ; we bear it through the world in its triumphal progress; we dispense it to the people; but we bear it, not in vessels of gold and silver – like those in which the treasures of earthly conquerors is borne – but in vessels of clay; in order that the excellency of the power of what we dispense in the Ministry of the Word and Sacraments may be, and be seen to be, of God, and not of men.”  Bp. C. Wordsworth on 2 Cor. 4:7.] (2 Cor. 4:7).

      vi.  Ecclesiastical Discipline.  Still, while the Article has a side of comfort, [F. D. Maurice, Sermon on the xxxix. Articles.] for it would indeed be overwhelming if the validity of the Sacraments were to depend upon the personal character of the Minister, yet it has also a side of warning as to the necessity of seeing that those, who minister in holy things, be themselves men of holiness, and as to the need of godly discipline to secure this end.  The Scripture testimony on this point is unmistakable.  (a) The Old Testament teaches us that even under a typical Dispensation the Lord would be sanctified in them that come nigh Him (Lev. 10:3), and would have His priests clothed with righteousness (Ps. 132:9), and the judgments which fell upon two of the sons of Aaron (Lev. 10:1, 2) for offering strange fire before the Lord, and on the sons of Eli for their immoral living (1 Sam. 4:10, 11), attest the purity of life required of those who ministered to the Lord in holy things even under the Old Covenant.  (b) Similarly the New Testament gives special instructions as regards the discipline of the Clergy, and S. Paul in the Pastoral Epistles enforces stringent rules as to laying hands hastily on no man [Χειρας ταχέως μηδενι επιτίθει, 1 Tim. 5:22.  Manus cito nemini imposueris, Vulg.  “Indisputably the most ancient interpretation of these words is the imposition of hands in Ordination, περι χειροτονούντων, Chrys., Bp. Ellicott in loc.  So also Bp. Pearson, Minor Works, ii. p. 385, and the first collect for the Ember Weeks, “lay hands suddenly on no man.”] ( Tim. 5:22).  He also directs that, while Timothy must not rashly receive an accusation against an elder, yet he must reprove in the sight of all them that sin, [Τους αμαρτάνοντας, persistentes in peccato.  “Those πρεσβύτεροι, who sin and continue in sin, and are known to continue in sin; rebuke them before all.”  Bp. C. Wordsworth in loc.] that the rest also may be in fear (1 Tim. 5:19, 20), and thus exercise that ecclesiastical discipline, which all ages of the Church have acknowledged to be part of her duty.

      vii.  The Doctrine of Intention.  As regards the doctrine laid down by the Council of Trent that on the part of the Minister of any Sacrament “there is required the intention at least of doing what the Church does,” [“Si quis dixerit, in ministris, dum sacramenta conficiunt et conferunt, non requiri intentionem saltem faciendi, quod facit Ecclesia: anathema sit.”  Concil. Trident. Sess. vii.  Can. 11.] it will be sufficient to quote the words of Hooker.  “What a man’s private mind is,” he writes, “as we cannot know, so neither are we bound to examine; therefore always in these cases the known intent of the Church generally doth suffice, and where the contrary is not manifest, we may presume that he which outwardly doth the work, hath inwardly the purpose of the Church of God.” [Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 58, 3.]  The “known intent” of the English Church to do what the Church does is plain from the words of the preface to our services of Ordination. [“And therefore, to the intent that these orders (the old orders of the Church, Bishops, Priests, and Deacons) may be continued, and reverently used and esteemed in the Church of England,” the English Church provided a proper Minister, and a proper rite, valid in “matter and form.”  See below under Article xxxvi.]  Where we have the external conditions of validity for a Sacrament, [Canon Estcourt allows that “the intention requisite for the valid administration of a sacrament is the ‘intentio generalis faciendi quod facit Ecclesia’.”  Question of Anglican Ordinations discussed, p. 199; see also Gore, Rom. Cath. Claims, p. 256.] a right form and matter, and Minister, there “no spiritual disqualification, whether in understanding or morals, on the part of the administrator, is a bar to the validity of the rite, and this because of the great principle that the giver of the grace is not the minister, but the Holy Spirit.” [See Gore’s Rom. Cath. Claims, pp. 147, 148.]  To go beyond the known intent of the Church, and to enquire into the Minister’s private mind, is, in the words of Bishop Jewel, to venture into “the very dungeon of uncertainty,” [See Jewel, Reply to Harding, Art. 1, sect. 12.  Ed. Parker Soc.  “The heart of man,” he adds, “is unsearchable.  If we stay upon the intention of a mortal man, we may stand in doubt of our own baptism.”] an uncertainty which would make all Orders and all Sacraments precarious.  We may well be content with the dictum of S. Thomas Aquinas himself, [S. Thom. Aquin.  Summa, Pars iii, Qu. lxiv., Art. 8, ad. 2.  S. Thomas prefers this view on the ground “quia character nunquam imprimitur nisi per sacramentum,” meaning by “character” the “effectus qui est res et sacramentum,” as distinct from the Virtus Sacramenti.  See Denny and Lacey, De Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 87, sect. 133; Denny, Anglican Orders and Jurisdiction, pp. 93–98, S.P.C.K. 1893.] when he says, “The Minister of a Sacrament acts as the representative (in persona) of the whole Church of which he is the Minister; in the words which he utters the intention of the Church is expressed, which suffices to the perfection of a Sacrament, unless the contrary be expressed outwardly on the part of the Minister, or the recipient of the Sacrament.” [Bellarmine says, “It is not necessary to intend to do what the Roman Church does, but what the true Church does, whatever it may be; or what Christ instituted ... He who intends to do what the Church of Geneva does intends to do what the Church Universal does ... the error of the Minister as to the Church does not take away the efficacy of the Sacrament.”  Bellarmine, Disputationes de Controversiis.  De Sacram. in gen. i. c. 27.]

Article  XXVII

      i.  Connection.  Having spoken of the Sacraments generally the Articles proceed to treat of them particularly and separately, and first they deal with Holy Baptism.

      ii.  Source.  It is difficult to find any exact model, on which the 27th Article is framed.  It bears but little resemblance to any Article in any other Confession, either English or foreign, though a few expressions may be traced to the Sixth of the Thirteen Articles of 1538.

      iii.  Object.  It is directed against two opposite classes of opinion: –

(i) That of those, who, like the Anabaptists, regarded Baptism merely as a professional badge or sign of membership in the Christian Society, and repudiated Infant Baptism altogether; [“Because they admit not original sin, they (the Anabaptists) also refuse the baptisme of chyldren, and in as muche as in them lyeth, they drawe awaye the moste parte of men from God, and eternall salvation.”  Hermann’s Consultation, T. vii.  Lond., 1547.]

(ii) That of those who, like the extreme Mediaeval School, unduly exalted the efficacy of the Sacrament. [Some of this school taught the doctrine of “a quasi-physical union of the Holy Spirit with the element of water.”  See Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 105, n. Ed. 1859.]

      iv.  Analysis.  The Article begins by asserting (i) What Baptism is not, and (ii) What it is: –

(1) “It is not only a sign of profession, and mark of difference, whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened; [The Latin here is “a non Christianis.”]

(2) But it is also a sign of Regeneration [In 1553 the Latin ran “signum regenerationis” as now, but the English was “a signe, and seale of our newe birth.”  In 1563 it was altered to “a signe of regeneration or newe byrth.”] or new Birth, whereby, as by an instrument, [Instrumentum in Classical Latin denotes (1) an implement or tool of any kind, comp. Caesar, B. G. vi. 30; (2) the utensils necessary for any business, as that of the painter, the surgeon, the fowler, the huntsman.  Comp. Pliny, Epp. iii. 19, 3.  Here the figure seems to be taken from the grafting knife of the gardener, whereby he grafts a shoot of one tree into the branch of another, and by the union produces fresh life.  Comp. Bucerus in Retract. in Matth., “agnoscit sacramenta recte dici instrumenta, organa et canales gratiae”; Sir Thomas More, Works, i. 386, “God in the working of such clensing of the soule and infusion of grace, useth the sacramentes not as a bare signe, but as an instrument, with whiche and by whiche it pleaseth hym to worke them”; Ridley, Disputation at Oxford, “This Sacrament [the Eucharist] hath a promise of grace, made to those that receive it worthily, because grace is given by it, as by an instrument,”  Works, Ed. P. Society, p. 241; see Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 393.  Ed. 1859.]

(a) They that receive Baptism rightly are grafted [“Ecclesiae inseruntur.”  Inserere is the technical word for (1) sowing or planting in a place; (2) grafting.  It is constructed sometimes with in and the accusative, as “in pyrum sylvaticam pyrum bonam inserere,” Varro R. R., 1. 40, 5; sometimes with the ablative, “cortice virgam inserit,” Ov. Met. xiv. 630; sometimes with the simple accusative, “inutilesque falce ramos amputans, feliciores inserit,” Hor. Epod. ii. 13, 14.] into the Church;

(b) The promises of the forgiveness of sin, and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost, are visibly signed and sealed, [It is noticeable that in the Latin text of 1563 there is no comma after “per Spiritum sanctum.”  The clause runs without break “per Spiritum sanctum uisibiliter obsignantur.”]

(c) Faith is confirmed,

(d) And Grace increased by virtue of prayer unto God.” [“Ui diuinae inuocationis.”  The words seem rather to mean “by virtue of the invocation of the Divine Name,” that Triune Name, which is invoked in Baptism and by our Lord’s express command forms an essential part of the Baptismal Formula.]

      v.  Infant Baptism.  Having stated thus much concerning Baptism generally, the Article proceeds to speak of Infant Baptism.  And here it differs considerably from the original draft of 1553.  Then the clause ran, “The custome of the Church to christen yonge children, is to bee commended, and in any wise to be reteined in the Churche.” [“Mos Ecclesiae baptizandi parvulos et laudandus est et omnino in Ecclesia retinendus.”  The Reformatio Legum, “de Haeresibus,” c. 18, reads “crudelis illorum impietas in baptismum irruit, quem infantibus impertiri nolunt, sed omnino nulla ratione.”]  This clause is simply permissive and almost apologetic.  In the Article, as altered in 1563, a different complexion was given to it.  “The Baptism of young children,” ran the amended clause, “is in any wise [In any wise corresponds to the Latin omnino.  “Any wise” in the sixteenth century denoted “certainly,” “by all means.”  Wise = way or manner.  The Norman form was “guise” = the A. S. wise.  Comp. otherwise, likewise, crosswise.] to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.”

      vi.  The Use of Water for ceremonial purification has been familiar to all nations from the earliest times.  With the Egyptians, [Herodotus tells us that the Egyptian priests bathed twice in the day and twice in the night to fit them for their sacred functions.  Hdt. Hist. ii. 37.] the Greeks, and the Romans, solemn ablutions formed a necessary preliminary to all acts of devotion, especially prayer [Comp. Hom. Od. iv. 759–761, Η δ’ υδρηναμένη, καθαρα χροι είμαθ’ ελουσα, / εις υπερω’ ανέβαινε συν αμφιπόλοισι γυναιξίν· / εν δ’ έθετ’ ουλοχύτας κανέω, ηρατο δ’ Αθήνη.  Also Ovid, Fast. v. 680.  “Spargit et ipse suos lauro rorante capillos: / Et peragit solita fallere voce preces.”] and sacrifice, [Comp. Plaut. Aulular. iii. 8, 534, “Eo lavatum ut sacrificem.”] and were essential to the removal of all ceremonial pollution, and of the guilt of homicide, [Comp. Virg. AEn. ii. 718, “Me bello e tanto digressum et caede recenti / Attrectare nefas, donec me fiumine vivo / Abluero.”] whether intentional or accidental.

      vii.  Amongst the Jews similar lustrations were equally frequent.  We find this again and again, as when Jacob was returning from Padanaram to Palestine (Gen. 35:2); when the Jewish people were about to receive the Law on Mount Sinai (Exod. 19:10); when Aaron and his sons were consecrated to their office (Exod. 29:4); when Joshua was about to lead the host across the Jordan (Jos. 3:5); when Solomon dedicated the Temple (2 Chron. 4:2–6).

      viii.  The Baptism of Proselytes.  At a later period these divers washings (Heb. 9:10) were considerably multiplied.  They preceded all great religious observances. [Compare Mark 7:4; John 2:6, 3:25, 11:55.]  They accompanied all meals, and many of the most ordinary avocations of daily life (Mark 7:3, 4).  Moreover by Baptism, together with Circumcision and Sacrifice, all Israelites – were admitted into covenant with God, and whenever a Gentile proselyte desired to enter the commonwealth of Israel, and to take the yoke of the Law upon him, Baptism was one of the essential ceremonies, so that it was an accepted axiom, “No man is a proselyte until he be circumcised and baptized.” [See Schurer’s Jewish People in the time of Jesus Christ, Div. ii. Vol. ii., p. 319; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, pp. 745, 747, Ed. 2, 1884; Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. on Matt. 3:6.]

      ix.  The Baptism of John. [The Johannine Baptism was not a mere repetition of the Baptism which accompanied Circumcision or of the Baptism of Proselytes, nor was it equivalent to Christian Baptism; it was more than the one, and Less than the other; it was a Symbol of Repentance, but it was not a Laver of Regeneration; and persons who had received it were baptized, if they became Christians, with the distinctively Christian Baptism.  Comp. Luke 3:3, Tit. 3:5, Acts 19:1–7; and see Döllinger, First Age of the Church, ii. pp. 182 sqq.]  Hence when John the Baptist came to announce the Advent of the Messiah, and demanded that the Chosen People themselves should submit to his Baptism, if they would have a place in the Kingdom of Heaven, the Jews were not astonished at this, as though it was something unintelligible.  It was a common saying with them that the sins of Israel delayed the coming of the Messiah, while their repentance would hasten it.  Consequently Jerusalem, and all Judaea, and all the region round about Jordan (Matt. 3:5) flocked forth to John, and were baptized of him after public confession of sin [Εξομολογούμενοι τας αμαρτίας αυτων (Mark 1:5) = openly confessing their sins.  On Exomologesis, see the Article in Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq. i. 644, &c.] (Mark 1:5).

      x.  The Baptism of our Lord.  The Baptism of John was in the strictest sense of the word preparatory. It possessed an outward and visible sign of a life-giving change, but the inward spiritual Grace in the fullest sense of the term was reserved for Christian Baptism.  For Christ too adopted the ancient custom, but He enriched it with a new significance and a still mightier efficacy.  First of all He Himself submitted to the Baptismal Rite [As the Jewish high priest was consecrated to his office by (1) Baptism, (2) Unction, (3) Sacrifice (Exod. 29:4–37, Levit. 8:1–36), so our Lord was solemnly consecrated as our High Priest, (i) by Baptism in the river Jordan; (ii) by the Unction of the Holy Ghost, who descended and abode upon Him (Matt. 3:16, Acts 10:38); (iii) by the daily sacrifice of Himself in lifelong and continuous obedience to His Father’s will (Heb. 10:5, 7), and by its consummation – the sacrifice of Himself on the Altar of His Cross.] in the Jordan, and so sanctified “Water to the mystical washing away of sin.” [See the First Prayer in the Office for the Public Baptism of Infants.]  Secondly, with the same element of water He baptized by the hands of His disciples.  Comp. John 3:22, 26; 4:1, 2.  Thirdly, He directed that with the same element the Apostles should also everywhere baptize, and so admit proselytes and converts from Judaism into the Covenant of Grace, just as Circumcision had admitted into the Mosaic Covenant (Matt. 28:19, 20).

      xi.  Apostolic Baptism.  What Christ directed and solemnly enforced just before His Ascension (Matt. 28:19) the Apostles practiced.  Thus (1) On the day of Pentecost S. Peter admitted upwards of three thousand of his countrymen to the Sacrament of Baptism [Originally Christian Baptism took place in the Jordan; a mere pouring or sprinkling was never thought of, Baptism being distinctly a λουτρόν or bath.  The three thousand of Acts 2:41 were not all necessarily baptized on the same day.  Comp. Barnab. Epist. xi. 8; Döllinger, First Age of the Church, ii., pp. 182 sqq. (Acts 2:38–41); (2) Philip the Deacon baptized the Samaritans (Acts 8:13, 16), and afterwards the Ethiopian eunuch (Acts 8:38); (3) Saul the persecutor, though miraculously converted, was baptized by Ananias (Acts 9:18); (4) as Paul the Apostle he baptized Lydia and her household (Acts 16:5), the Philippian jailor and his household (Acts 16:33), as also several converts at Corinth (Acts 18:8), sometimes doing so by his own hand, sometimes by the hands of others (1 Cor. 1:14).  From that day to this Holy Baptism has been universally retained in the Christian Church, and it is plain that in primitive times it was not regarded as “a mere sign or badge,” but as an actual means of Grace, a Sacrament of Initiation, without which not even the great Apostle of the Gentiles, though miraculously converted on the road to Damascus, could be admitted into the Christian Church [With regard to Christian Baptism in the Sub-Apostolic Age, we may notice: (i) Its Initiatory Function.  Μηδεις δε φαγέτω μηδε πιέτω απο της ευχαριστίας υμων, αλλ’ οι βαπτισθέντες εις όνομα Κυρίου.  Didache ix. 5; Ευχαριστία, ης ουδενι άλλω μετασχειν εξόν εστιν η τω ... λουσαμένω.  Just. Mart. Apol. i. 66.  (ii) Its Negative and Positive Aspects.  Το υπερ αφέσεως αμαρτιων και εις αναγέννησιν λουτρόν.  Just. Mart. ut supr.  Καταβαίνομεν εις το ύδωρ γέμοντες αμαρτιων και ρύπου, και αναβαίνομεν καρποφορουντες εν τη καρδία, και τον φόβον και την ελπίδα εις τον Ιησουν εν τω πνεύματι έχοντες.  Barn. Epist. xi. 11.  (iii)  Its Relation to Faith.  While faith had to be professed before Baptism, yet the faith accepted was rather a desire than a fixed consciousness, a faith which was aided and developed by the Grace of Baptism; δια του λουτρου ... ημεις επιστεύσαμεν, Just. Mart. Dial. c. Tryph. § 14.  Comp. Döllinger, First Age of the Church, ut supr.] (Acts 9:18).

      xii.  The Grace of Holy Baptism.  “Every man,” as we have seen above, [See Article ix., above.] “that naturally is engendered of the offspring of Adam,” suffers from the original “fault and corruption” of his nature.  He is “very far gone from original righteousness,” and being born in sin cannot in his natural condition see the kingdom of God [Ου δύναται ιδειν την βασιλείαν του Θεου.  To see means to partake of, to have part in.  Comp. ιδειν θάνατον, Luke 2:26; θεωρειν θάνατον, John 8:51.  Our Lord does not say, “A man shall not,” but “he cannot.”  It is a moral impossibility for him to have a share in the new kingdom.] (John 3:3).  For entrance into this Kingdom it is necessary that he be born again or anew, [Άνωθεν.  This may mean either (i) from above, and that (a) literally, as of the Veil of the Temple rent in twain from the top, απο άνωθεν έως κάτω (Matt. 27:51, Mark 15:38); (b) figuratively, James 1:17; 3:15, 17; or (ii) afresh, from the very beginning, Luke 1:3, Acts 26:5.  The former rendering is generally adopted by the Greek Fathers, the latter by the Peshitto, Ethiopic, and Latin Versions.  Nisi qui renatus fuerit denuo, Vulg.  Comp. Westcott, in loc.] that he be born of water and the Spirit (John 3:3, 5).  Of this new birth, this translation from a state of nature into a state of Grace, Baptism is the ordained instrument.  As Circumcision admitted the Jew to the privileges of the Old Covenant, so Baptism admits the Christian to the privileges of the new and better Covenant, which God has ratified with the whole world in the Blood of the Mediator, Jesus Christ.  They that receive Baptism rightly [Recte, i.e. with the right materies, water, and the repetition of the prescribed formula.] are new born, i.e. they “are grafted into the Church,” which is Christ’s “mystical Body,” [“Baptism is a Sacrament that God hath instituted in His Church, to the end that they which receive the same might thereby be incorporated into Christ, and so through His most precious merit obtain as well that saving grace of imputation which taketh away all former guiltiness, as also that infused Divine virtue of the Holy Ghost, which giveth to the powers of the soul their first disposition towards future newness of life.”  Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. 60, 2.  “Admission into Christ is the great gift of Baptism.  All Christians are agreed that Baptism is the act by which we are visibly incorporated into the historical Church.  But if the historical Church is what we have already seen it to be, in no merely figurative sense, the Body of Christ, then incorporation into it must carry the blessing of membership in Christ. ... To the mind of S. Paul, inspired by the Holy Ghost, union with Christ was infinitely more than a metaphor.  It did not mean to him an agreement with the principles of Christ, or sympathetic intercourse with His Person.  It meant, literally, a participation in His very self.”  Mason’s Faith of the Gospel, pp. 267, 268, Ed. 1888.  Cf. Rom. 6:3, Gal. 3:27.] and are made “members of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of the kingdom of heaven.”  As members of Christ they have assured to them privileges which “by nature they cannot have.”  God of His bounteous mercy signs and seals to them the promise of

(i) the forgiveness of their sins [Compare the words of S. Peter to the multitudes on the day of Pentecost, “Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins” (Acts 2:38); as also the words of Ananias to Saul of Tarsus, “Arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins” (Acts 22:16).  The clause in the Nicene Creed, “I acknowledge one Baptism for the remission of sins,” explicitly connects the forgiveness of sins with Baptism.  The Apostles’ Creed does so by implication, when it names “the forgiveness of sins” as the first consequence of membership of the Holy Catholic Church.];

(ii) the assistance of the Holy Spirit [Compare again S. Peter’s words, “Repent ye, and be baptized ... and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost” (Acts 2:38), and see Acts 19:1–7.]; and

(iii) if they do not forfeit it, of eternal life. [“He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved” (Mark 16:16), and salvation, in its ultimate stage, implies eternal life.]

      xiii.  Regeneration.  The Jews, as we have seen, were wont to speak of a proselyte as “one new born,” as “one born into a new world.” [“The Gentile that is made a proselyte, and the servant that is made free, behold, he is like a child new-born.”  “If any man become a proselyte, he is like a child new-born.”  Lightfoot Hor. Heb. on John 3:3; Waterland, Works, iv, p. 429; Wall on Infant Baptism, Introd., p. 95.]  But with infinitely greater truth may the term be applied to one baptized into the Christian Church.  For whereas by nature we were born in sin and made liable to all its consequences, we are by Baptism translated from our natural state into a higher, state altogether.  By this laver of regeneration (Tit. 3:5) [Regeneration, in Greek παλιγγενεσία, was a term not unknown to Classical writers.  (i) Thus: (a) Plutarch applies it to the transmigration of souls, to their being born again “into a new world”; (b) Marcus Antoninus applies it to the revival of nature in spring time from its winter sleep, την περιοδικην παλιγγενεσίαν των όλων, Marc. Anton.  Meditations, xi. 1; (c) Cicero in a letter to Atticus applies it to his restoration from exile to the dignities and honours of life at Rome, Ad Att. vi. 6, “hanc παλιγγενεσίαν nostram”; (d) Again, Josephus characterizes the restoration of the Jewish nation after the captivity, as την ανάκτησιν και παλιγγενεσίαν της πατρίδος, Antiq. xi. 3, 9.  Comp. also Plautus Captivi, iv. 2, 111, “Dii immortales! iterum natus videor, si vera autumas.”  See Wetstein on S. Matt. 19:28.  (ii) With this sense of renewal, revival, restoration, the word passes into the writings of the New Testament, and there it occurs twice, and twice only – (a) In S. Matthew we read how, in reply to a question of S. Peter, our Lord said, Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed Me, in the regeneration (παλιγγενεσία), when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matt. 19:28); (b) In Titus 3:5 S. Paul says that God saved us through the laver of regeneration (δια λουτρου παλιγγενεσίας).  In the former of these passages the word denotes the new birth of the whole creation, the αποκατάστασις πάντων, the restoration of all things at the last day (comp. Acts 3:21); in the latter it denotes in a narrower and more restricted sense the new birth, not of the whole creation, but of a single soul, “the free act of God’s mercy and power, whereby He translates the sinner out of the kingdom of darkness into that of light, out of the state of nature into a state of grace.”  See Trench, Synonyms, p. 72, Ed. 1855.  See also Tertullian, De Bapt. c. v. 21–2] we are born afresh into the Church and Family of God; and we have His gracious promises signed and sealed to us.  The corruption of our mortal nature is buried, as it were, with Christ through baptism into death (Rom. 6:4), and by virtue of His Resurrection, the first germ of Covenant Grace is given unto us “to be newly formed unto a new life, and to obey the righteousness of God.”  Thus the baptized, whether infant or adult, by virtue of membership with Christ is born afresh into a new relationship other than any that nature could have bestowed.  He is brought into a position, wherein he not only enjoys “the everlasting benediction of God’s heavenly washing,” but is by adoption and Grace made partaker of Christ’s Sonship, and an inheritor of eternal life.

      xiv.  Infant Baptism.  The last clause of the Article is concerned with the Baptism of infants.  This it affirms is “in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable with the institution of Christ.”  It is true that those of whom we read in the New Testament as being baptized were for the most part adults, who had come to years of discretion, and therefore could not only promise repentance and faith, but also perform and keep that promise.  But if “we regard Baptism as a holy cleansing, we cannot think any age superfluous for infants, considering how the human heart from the outset contains the germs of sin, however undeveloped. [Mason’s Faith of the Gospel, p. 295, 2nd Edit.]  The arguments that may be advanced in favour of Infant Baptism are many and various, but for practical purposes they may be grouped under four heads: (i) The analogy of the Jewish Covenant; [The analogy of Circumcision with Christian Baptism is recognized both in Scripture, Col. 2:11, and in early Christian writers, as Justin Mart.  Dial. cum Tryph. § 41.  In S. Cyprian’s time it was even doubted whether in view of “eighth day circumcision” any day earlier than the eighth was allowable for Christian Baptism.  Cyprian Epist. lix.] (ii) The teaching of our Lord; (iii) Apostolic custom; (iv) Primitive practice.

      xv.  Analogy of the Jewish Covenant.  Under the Jewish Covenant we find God distinctly commanding every male among the Jews to be circumcised (Gen. 17:10–14), and accordingly Jewish children were circumcised on the eighth day after birth (Levit. 12:3).  Under the same Dispensation we also find Moses engaging not only their heads, their tribes, their elders, and their officers, even all the men of Israel, but also their little ones, that they shall enter into the covenant of the Lord their God (Deut. 29:10–12), and enjoining that at the Feast of Tabernacles, and in the solemnity of the year of release, not only the men and women, but the little ones should be gathered together that they might observe to do all the words of the law [Comp. also 2 Chron. 20:13, and see Hooker, Eccl. Pol. v. lxiv. 3, 4.] (Deut. 31:12).  We might naturally expect, therefore, that in Baptism, which takes the place of the Jewish rite of Circumcision (Col. 2:11, 12), God would be willing to receive children into His new and better Covenant, unless He had expressly revealed otherwise to us. [“Sith it is certain that the grace of God is both more plentifully found and more clearly declared in the Gospel by Christ, than at that time it was in the Old Testament by Moses, it were a greater indignity if the same grace should now be thought to be either obscurer or in any part abated.”  Noell’s Catechism, p. 209.  Ed. Parker Society.]

      xvi.  The Teaching of our Lord.  But, so far from revealing otherwise to us, His Blessed Son, who is one with Him in will and nature, when He was incarnate here on earth showed in a very special manner that children were the objects of His care and love.  For on one occasion, when His disciples would have kept back certain children, who had been brought to Him by their mothers to receive His blessing [It was customary for Jewish infants to be taken to the synagogue to be blessed by the Rabbis.] (Matt. 19:13), He blamed [Ηγανάκτησεν (Mark 10:14) = He was much displeased.  The word expresses extreme indignation.  It occurs three times in S. Matthew, 20:24, 21:15, 26:8; twice in S. Mark, 10:41, 14:4; and once in S. Luke, 13:14, but is not found in S. John.  “The only time this strong word is used of our Lord,” Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. p. 336.] them severely for their interference; He took the children in His arms, [Εναγκαλισάμενος αυτα, (Mark 10:16), even as He Himself had been taken into the arms (εις τας αγκάλας) of the aged Symeon, Luke 2:28.  The verb is only used by S. Mark here and in 9:36.] and blessed them, laying His hands upon them (Mark 10:16).  And if the “outward gesture and deed” of Him, whose slightest act was full of hidden meaning, be not enough, His words are decisive, for He proceeded to say, Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 19:14).

      xvii.  Apostolic Custom.  Moreover, though there is no express mention in the New Testament of the Baptism of infants as such, [“When our Lord bade His Apostles make disciples or proselytes of all nations (Matt. 28:19), He was addressing persons who had been accustomed to enroll in the Jewish Church their own infants and proselytes of all ages, and who, unless expressly forbidden, would naturally interpret His words as implying that the practice was according to His will.”  Abp Whately on the Sacraments, p. 34.] yet we find S. Peter declaring to his hearers on the day of Pentecost that the promise of the Holy Ghost was to them ... and to their children (Acts 2:39); we find S. Paul speaking of the children of his Corinthian converts as holy (1 Cor. 7:14) [S. Paul’s assumption that sanctification is conferred upon children by even one Christian parent is, though indirect, perhaps the strongest evidence to be found in the Apostolic writings of the contemporary practice of Infant Baptism.  Comp. Döllinger, First Age of the Church, ii. 185 sq.]; we find him baptizing Lydia and her household at Philippi (Acts 16:15), the gaoler and all his at the same place (Acts 16:33), as also the household of Stephanas at Corinth (1 Cor. 1:16), and it is difficult to believe that these families and households included no children.

      xviii.  The Practice of the Primitive Church.  Though, however, there is no express mention of Infant Baptism in the New Testament, we have every reason to believe that it prevailed from the most primitive times.  S. Irenaeus, who was born probably in the year A.D. 97, and who sat at the feet of S. Polycarp, the disciple of S. John, says that our Lord came into the world in order that “through Himself He might save all men, infants, and little ones, and children, and youths, and elders, even all who through Him are born again unto God.” [“Omnes enim venit per Semetipsum salvare; omnes, inquam, qui per Eum renascuntur in Deum, infantes, et parvulos, et pueros, et juvenes, et senores.”  Iren. adv. Haer., ii. 22, 4.  Ed. Bened.]  S. Justin Martyr, writing his First Apology, about A.D. 139, mentions persons who had been made disciples to Christ while children. [Πολλοίτινες και πολλαι εξηκοντουται και εβδομηκοντουται, οι εκ παίδων εμαθετεύθησαν τω Χριστω, άφθοροι διαμένουσιν.  Just. Apol., i. 15.]  Tertullian, again, who was of full age before the death of Irenaeus, gives absolutely conclusive proof that the Baptism of infants was a common practice of the Church in his own time. [Tertullian asks, “Quid festinat innocens aetas ad remissionem peccatorum?”  De Bapt., c. 18.  “With characteristic freedom he expresses his own opinion that the practice might wisely be altered, stating reasons for his opinion (de Bapt., c. 18).  But he nowhere says one word to imply that the practice of his own contemporaries was an innovation upon the earlier usage of the Church.”  Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq., i. p. 169.]  Origen, who was born probably in the year A.D. 186, and was a disciple of the famous S. Clement of Alexandria, [This Father in a passage bearing on Baptism speaks of children “being drawn up out of the water,” των εξ ύδατος ανασπωμένων παιδίων.  Paedag. iii. c. 11.] argues that infants must have original sin, asks why else they are baptized, [See Origen, Hom. viii on Leviticus, and his Comment. in Ep. ad Rom. 5:9, c. vi. 9, “Ecclesia ab Apostolis traditionem suscepit, etiam parvulis Baptismum dare.  Sciebant enim illi, quibus mysteriorum secreta commissa sunt divinorum, quod essent in omnibus genuinae sordes peccati, quae per aquam et Spiritum ablui deberent.”] and goes on to affirm that the Church received from the Apostles the tradition to administer Infant Baptism.  S. Cyprian asserts of a Council of sixty-six Bishops, held A.D. 252, that they had decided that the Baptism of infants ought not to be delayed beyond the second or third day after birth.

      xix.  Conclusion.  Thus the analogy of the Jewish Covenant, our Lord’s words, [So far from infants being unfit for His Kingdom, our Lord says that grown men must become like them to be fit.  He says that innocence, not intelligence, is the qualification; that there is no virtue in belief, but that the barrier is disbelief.  See Hooker, Eccl. Pol. V. lxiv. 5.] Apostolic custom, and primitive antiquity alike, tend not only to remove all doubt as to the propriety of admitting infants to Holy Baptism, but to make us earnestly believe that our Heavenly Father will “embrace them with the arms of His mercy; that He will give unto them the blessing of eternal life, and make them partakers of His everlasting Kingdom?” [See the Office for the Public Baptism of Infants.]

Article  XXVIII

      i.  Connection and Title.  From Holy Baptism we naturally pass on to the second of the two Sacraments of the Gospel, the Holy Eucharist.  The title of the 28th Article, which treats of this subject, has never varied since the first draft.

      ii.  The Form and Language of the Article, however, differ in several respects from the shape in which it originally appeared.  As we have it now, it consists of four clauses.  The first and second of these are the same as in the draft of 1553, save that the expression, “overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament” [“Sacramenti naturam euertit.”  The phrase, however, was not new.  we find its equivalent “a natura sacramenti discrepat” in the Reform Legum, De Haeres., c. 19.  Again, in the “Declaration of Christian Doctrine,” drawn up in 1559, we have the same thought: “So dothe it utterly denye the nature of a sacrament.”] was then wanting. [Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 130.  Ed. 1859.]  The third clause was a new one composed in 1563, [It was added on the motion of Bishop Guest, as is proved by a letter found amongst the State Papers from Guest to Cecil, Dec. 22, 1566.  See below.] and took the place of a long paragraph, [The paragraph which was withdrawn ran: “Quum naturae humanae veritas requirat, ut unius ejusdemque hominis corpus in multis locis simul esse non posset, sed in uno aliquo et definito loco esse oporteat, idcirco Christi corpus, in multis et diversis locis, eodem tempore, praesens esse non potest.  Et quoniam, ut tradunt Sacrae literae, Christus in Coelum fuit sublatus, et ibi usque ad finem saeculi est permansurus, non debet quisquam fidelium carnis ejus et sanguinis Realem et Corporalem (ut loquuntur) praesentiam in Eucharistia vel credere vel profiteri.”] which was withdrawn as suggestive of interpretations favourable to the school of Zwingli, and savouring of his tenets.  The fourth clause remains as originally drafted.

      iii.  The Object of the Article is twofold.  It repudiates

(i) The errors of the Zwinglian School, which taught that the Eucharist was merely “a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one towards another”;

(ii) The opposite dogma of physical transubstantiation of the Eucharistic Elements by consecration.

      iv.  Analysis.  Like the preceding Article it begins with negativing the low conceptions of the Sacrament entertained by some, and

(i) Lays down (a) negatively, and (b) positively, what is the true nature of the Holy Eucharist;

(ii) It condemns the mediaeval doctrine of a physical transubstantiation of the Elements;

(iii) It sets forth the true doctrine of the Real Presence;

(iv) It affirms, in opposition to prevalent practices, the true object for which the Sacrament was ordained by Christ.

      v.  The Account of the Institution of the Holy Eucharist is itself sufficient to remove a low conception of its nature and object.  It comes to us from three Evangelists [Matt. 26:26–29, Mark 14:22–25, Luke 22:14–20.] and from the Apostle Paul.  Our earliest authority is the great Apostle of the Gentiles, who in the year A.D. 57 reminds the Church of Corinth of what he had himself told them respecting the institution of the Holy Eucharist, even as he had received it by direct revelation from Christ, his Ascended Lord [Εγω γαρ παρέλαβον απο του Κυρίου ο και παρέδωκα υμιν.  The Apostle established on an immoveable foundation the authority of his narrative.  “It comes from the Lord, and without any other middle party than the Apostle himself.  The εγω, ‘I,’ is put at the head to give the readers an assurance of the truth of the narrative.  This is what I hold, I from a good source, from the Lord Himself ... If the account of the Institution of the Supper really came to Paul from the Lord, it could only be in the way of direct revelation.”  Godet on 1 Cor. 11:23.] (1 Cor. 11:23).  Combining the narratives together we learn that

(a) The Holy Eucharist was instituted by our Lord on the eve of His Passion in an upper room at Jerusalem, during a Paschal Meal, for which He Himself had made special preparation, and respecting which He had given the most minute instructions to His Apostles; [He reminds them of the approach of the Festival of the Passover (Matt. 26:2); (ii) He sends two of the Apostles to make ready (Mk 14:13); (iii) He describes the guide who would direct them as άνθρωπος κεράμιον ύδατος -βαστάζων (Mk 14:13, Luke 22:10); (iv) He prescribes the words they were to address to the owner of the house whither he would lead them (Matt. 26:18, Mark 14:14, Luke 22:11); (v) He even particularizes the size and aspect of the room which he would show them, ανώγεον μέγα εστρωμένον (Mk 14:15; Luke 22:12).]

(b) As part of the ceremonial of the Passover, it was the custom for each household to partake of, amongst other things prescribed, some flat unleavened Passover cakes, while four cups of red wine mingled with water were handed round at different stages of the feast; [“Omnes in coena Paschali oportet quatuor pocula bibere.”  Buxtorf de Coena Domini, pp. 299, 300; Lightfoot, Hor. Heb. on Matt. 26:27; Edersheim, Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. p. 485.]

(c) On this occasion our Lord on reaching the upper room took the place of Celebrant, or Proclaimer of the Feast, and as the solemn meal proceeded, while we read nothing of any Paschal lamb being eaten, He took one of the unleavened cakes, that had been placed before Him, and, after giving thanks, He brake it, and then gave it to His Apostles, saying, Take, eat, [Λάβετε, φάγετε, Matt. 26:26.  These words are peculiar to S. Matthew.  See R.V.] This is My Body, [Τουτό εστι το σωμά μου, (Matt., Mark, Luke, 1 Cor. 11:24).] Which is given for you; [Το υπερ υμων διδόμενον (Luke 22:19); κλώμενον (1 Cor. 11:24), but κλώμενον is omitted by L. T. Tr. WH. RV.  Διδόμενον means which is being, or, is on the point of being, given for you.] Do This in remembrance of Me; [Τουτο ποιειτε εις την εμην ανάμνησιν, Luke 22:19, 1 Cor. 11:24.  Ανάμνησις in Classical Greek means “a calling to mind,” “an act of recollection”; but in the LXX it has the fuller sense of a “commemoration.”  Thus in Levit. 24:7 we read of the shewbread και έσονται εις ανάμνησιν προκείμενα τω κυρίω; again, in Num. 10:10, it is said of trumpets blown over the sacrifices, και έσται υμιν ανάμνησις έναντι του θεου υμων.  In the N. T. the word only occurs in one other place Heb. 10:3, αλλ’ εν αυταις (10:1 ταις αυταις θυσίαις) ανάμνησις αμαρτιων κατ’ ενιαυτόν.  Here there is a contrast between the sacrificial commemoration of sins under the Law, and the Eucharistic commemoration of the Redemption wrought out for us by our Lord.  The Vulgate renders it “hoc facite in meam commemorationem,” and the Rhemish Version, following it, translates, “Do this for a commemoration of Me.”]

(d) Afterwards He took a cup of wine, probably the third cup, or “Cup of Blessing,” and when He had given thanks, He gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of This; [Πίετε εξ αυτου πάντες, Matt. 26: 27.  These words again are peculiar to S. Matthew.] for This Cup is My Blood of the [New] Covenant, [Τουτο γάρ εστι το αιμά μου, το της διαθήκης (Matt. 26:28, Mark 14:24 (the best MSS. omit καινης): η καινη διαθήκη εν τω αίματί μου (Luke 22:20).] Which is shed for many for the remission of sins; [Το περι πολλων εκχυνόμενον εις άφεσιν αμαρτιων, Matt. 26:28.  S. Luke 22:20 has το υπερ υμων εκχυνόμενον; S. Mark 14:24 has υπερ πολλων; This is My Blood of the [New] Covenant, which is being, or, is on the point of being, poured out for you, for many, unto remission of sins.] Do This, as oft as ye shall drink it, in remembrance of Me. [Τοτου ποιειτε, οσάκις αν πίνητε, εις την εμην ανάμνησιν, 1 Cor. 11:25.  This occurs only in S. Paul’s narrative.  Tyndale and Cranmer render the words, “This do as often as ye drink it, in the remembrance of Me.”  Thus, at this historic Festival, He enshrines in a unique and significant Rite the mysterious destruction of the temple of His Body, of which He had before darkly spoken, and not only recalls to the minds of His Apostles all that He had said respecting His Body as “ true flesh,” and His Blood as “true drink,” but He actually supplies the mode of that mysterious eating and drinking, which He had before so marvelously demanded as essential to true life.  See Maclear, The Evidential Value of the Eucharist, pp. 223 sq.  3rd Ed. S.P.C.K.]

      Thus calmly and deliberately, with His eyes fixed on His approaching death upon the Cross on the morrow, at one of the greatest historical Festivals of the Jews, our Lord instituted the Holy Sacrament of His Body and Blood.  “What He was in no position to testify to the world on the following day, when the soldiers laid their rude hands upon Him, and bound Him – that His death was really an offering, a freewill surrender of Himself – that He testified now; ‘What I give you to eat is My Body which is broken for you, what ye drink is My Blood which I shed for you’.” [Döllinger, First Age of the Church, i. p. 53.  E. T. ed. 1866.]

      vi.  The Eucharist no mere Sign.  If, then, we deem the Institutor of this unique and unexampled Rite to have been all that He is declared to be in the Second Article, “the very and eternal God,” [See above, Art. II. ix.] and as He is described in the Fifteenth Article, “the Lamb without spot, who, by sacrifice of himself once made, should take away the sins of the world”; [See above, Art. XV. v.] if we reflect on the solemn and unparalleled circumstances under which He ordained it, and the elaborate preparation He made for its Institution [See above.] as the culminating point of all previous announcements, whether figurative or specific, respecting His coming Passion, it is impossible to regard the Rite as “only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have among themselves one to another.”  The solemn words and actions, which accompanied the Institution, testify of themselves to the surpassing dignity of this Holy Mystery, and to His death as the source of an inestimable benefit to all mankind.

      vii.  The Eucharist a Sacrament of our Redemption.  Having declared what the Holy Eucharist is not, the Article proceeds to affirm what it is.  It states that it is “a Sacrament of our Redemption by Christ’s death.”  The Passover, as often as it was celebrated by the Jews, recalled, as in a living drama, [Compare Deut. 16:5, 6; 2 Chron. 30:16, 35:10, 11.] the great story of the deliverance of the nation from cruel and oppressive bondage in Egypt (Deut. 16:2, 3); [See Stanley, Jewish Church, i. p. 104.  Ed. 1870.] a deliverance, which elevated them from the condition of slaves to that of a ransomed people, and gave them the hope of entrance into the Promised Land of Canaan.  So the Eucharist is the continued setting forth of the death of Christ as the means of the deliverance, not of a single nation, but of the whole world from the bondage of sin and Satan.  In the Feast of the Passover the first place had been occupied by the lamb.  It had been selected with scrupulous care (Exod. 12:5).  It had been slain with solemn ceremony.  Its blood had been sprinkled on the brazen altar in the outer court of the Temple, and on the side posts and upper part of the door, and it had then been roast with fire and eaten by the Paschal company with thankful commemoration of redemption from degrading bondage in Egypt.  But now that “the very Paschal Lamb” was come, [As on the tenth day of Nisan the Paschal Lamb was selected to be kept till the fourteenth day, so our Lord had “taken care that His entry into Jerusalem should fall on the very day when, ‘according to the ordinance of Moses, the Paschal Lamb was chosen.”  See Döllinger, First Age of the Church, i. p. 51.  E. T. 1866.] and was about to offer Himself on the Altar of His Cross, no word is said of the Jewish Paschal victim.  The Bread and Wine, hitherto subordinate, now take the first place.  The lamb had been eaten as a type of Him.  He now ordains the Elements of Bread and Wine to be taken and received in remembrance of Him, who,

“Himself the Victim and Himself the Priest,”

was about to offer the one “full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice ... for the sins of the whole world.”

      viii.  The Inward Grace of the Sacrament.  So much for the outward part or sign of this “Sacrament of our Redemption.”  Respecting “the inward part, or thing signified,” [In the Holy Eucharist the outward part, the Sacramentum, or external “Signum,” is an assured token of the presence of the inward part or “Res Significata,” for it was ordained by Christ Himself as a means whereby we receive, and a pledge to assure us that we do truly receive, His Body and Blood.  See the Church Catechism.  The mysterious union of the outward and inward parts is brought about by the act of consecration.] the Article states that “to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith” receive the Elements ordained by Christ,” the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”  The truth of this statement is sufficiently confirmed by the words of our Lord Himself.  For while, on the occasion of the first Passover of His Public Ministry, He had declared to Nicodemus that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up (John 3:14), [At the same Passover He had uttered in the hearing of the deputation from the Sanhedrin, Λύσατε τον ναον τουτον, και εν τρισιν ημέραις εγερω αυτόν, John 2:19.  The sign is one of the most remarkable.  As a Rabbi He answers the Rabbis.  The words indicate a destruction, which comes from dissolution, from the breaking of that which binds the parts into a whole, or one thing to another.  They “spring from an immeasurable depth.  They illustrate domains then completely unexplored by any other consciousness than His own.”  Godet in loc.] and on the occasion of the second Passover He had declared to the Jews in the synagogue of Capernaum that His Flesh was true meat, and His Blood true drink [Η γαρ σάρξ μου αληθής εστι βρωσις, και το αιμά μου αληθής εστι πόσις, John 6:55.  The words employed are such as it is inconceivable that any mere man could have uttered.  On the lips of any merely human teacher they have no meaning whatever.  Nowhere in any literature, not even in the luxuriant imagery of the East, do we find an instance of a teacher speaking of the reception of his doctrine under so astounding a metaphor as “eating his flesh” and “drinking his blood.”] (John 6:55), at this last Passover He gathered up in action all that He had then expressed in words.  For, when He gave the Bread to His Apostles, He said, Take eat; this is My Body, and when He gave them the Cup, He said, This is My Blood of the Covenant.  Thus as the Jewish Passover was a feast of Redemption, so He made this transfigured Passover to be for His Church the Sacrificial Feast of an infinitely greater Redemption not of a single nation, but of the whole world.[ “The communion of the Paschal lamb, as the characteristic offering of the Old Law, had formed the foundation and centre of the whole sacrificial system of the Old Testament.”  Döllinger, First Age of the Church, i. p. 58.  E. T. 1877.]

      ix.  Feasts on Sacrifices were common alike to the Jews and to the Gentile nations.  They were means of ratifying covenants between God and man.  They were especially characteristic of the peace offerings of the Jews, and indicated that what had separated the sacrificer from Jehovah was now covered and cancelled, that the Most High now welcomed him to His table, and in this feast gave him a pledge of reconciliation and restoration to His favour. [Compare the scene on Sinai, when Moses and Aaron, Nadab and Abihu with the seventy elders, after the ratification of the covenant between Jehovah and His people by solemn sacrifices and sprinkling of blood, ate and drank in His presence at a covenant feast, and therein received a pledge of reconciliation and pardon (Exod. 24:9–11, Heb. 9:19, 20).]  So at this sacrificial feast of the New Covenant, our Lord assures us that He has become our peace (Eph. 2:14, Col. 1:20), and invites us to receive “the spiritual food” of His own precious Body and Blood.  At this Holy Table we are His guests, and receive Him under the earthly veils of Bread and Wine.  The old Passover was a Feast upon a Sacrifice, the Holy Eucharist is a Feast upon a Sacrifice.  “The one on the lamb; the other on the Lamb of God.  The one true; the other true.  The one carnally true ; the other spiritually, and, therefore, even more true.” [Bp. Browne On the Articles, p. 713, ed. 1854.]  And thus in this holy Feast “we are one with Christ, and Christ with us,” and “the Bread, which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ ; and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ.”

      x.  Transubstantiation.  The exact way in which Christ is present at this sacred Feast, and gives is Body and Blood to the faithful communicant, has occasioned great controversy.  The early Church [The change in the elements through consecration was in the oldest times expressed by the simplest terms, “It is,” “It becomes”; or in prayer to God, “consecrate,” “perfect,” “appoint,” “make”.  The Liturgy of S. Chrysostom, and others following it, use the words, “change by Thy Spirit.”  There are also other more emphatic yet rare words, occurring once or twice only in each Father who uses them, “transmute,” “trans-element,” “transfashion,” “transfigure”.  Μεταποιεισθαι is once used by S. Gregory of Nyssa, and once by Theodoret, μεταρρυθμίζειν and μετασκευάζειν, each by S. Chrysostom; “transfigure,” twice by S. Ambrose; “transfero,” in the Gallican Sacramentary.] did not attempt to explain the Mystery.  The doctrine of the manner of Christ’s Presence in the Holy Eucharist, and the precise nature of the relation in which the consecrated Elements and the Body and Blood of Christ stand to one another, never came into serious debate, and thus never were the subject of authoritative definition.  Men were content with the blessing, and did not care to define it.  That Christ was present in the Sacrament, that in that sacred Feast He fed the faithful with the precious food of His own most blessed Body and Blood, in this all the Fathers of the Early Church were agreed. [See Abp. Trench, Medieval Church History, p. 182.]  As yet however, there was but little speculation as to what was meant by this Presence.

      xi.  Paschasius Radbert.  But matters could not always continue in this state, and in the ninth century Paschasius Radbert, a learned monk, [He was born A.D. 786, and died A.D. 865.  See Hardwick’s Middle Age, p. 166.] afterwards Abbot of New Corbey, well skilled in all the theological learning of his age, put forth a treatise On the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ.  In this he maintained that by virtue of the priestly consecration and the cooperation of the Holy Ghost, the material elements were so transformed as to retain no more than an appearance (“figura”) of their natural substance, being truly, though invisibly, replaced by Christ Himself in every way the same as He was born and crucified. [Hardwick, Middle Age, p. 166; Neander, iv. pp. 210 sqq., E. T. 1852; Gieseler, Church History, ii. pp. 284 sqq., E. T. 1859.]  This view was opposed by another monk of Corbey, Ratramnus, [For his connection with the Predestinarian Controversy, see Hardwick, Middle Age, p. 163.] who put forth a counter treatise at the request of the Emperor Charles the Bald.  He favoured a real, while he disbelieved in a corporal, or material presence in the Eucharist.  The controversy slumbered during the whole of the tenth century, but was revived by Berengarius, Archdeacon of Angers, A.D. 1040, who reasserted the view expounded by Ratramnus.  This exposed him to much opposition, and he was twice compelled to sign a formula of faith, in which the physical conversion of the Elements was stated in the most revolting terms. [In A.D. 1059 he subscribed to a formula which stated “verum corpus et sanguinem Domini nostri Jesu Christi esse, et sensualiter in solo sacramento, sed in veritate, manibus sacerdotum tractari, frangi et fidelium dentibus atteri.”  Lanfranc, Opp. p. 233.  The Formula which he signed in A.D. 1079 ran “Corde credo et ore confiteor, panem et vinum, quae ponuntur in altari, per mysterium sacrae orationis et verba nostri Redemptoris substantialiter converti in veram et propriam vivificatricem Carnem et Sanguinem Jesu Christi Domini nostri, et post consecrationem esse verum Corpus Christi ... et verum Sanguinem Christi, qui de latere Ejus effusus est, non tantum per signum et virtutem Sacramenti, sed in proprietate naturae et veritate substantiae.”  Lanfranc, ut supr.]  The view, to which he subscribed, that Christ’s Body is “sensibly” present in the Eucharist, that it is broken by the priest, and this not sacramentally only, but really and without any figure, was the doctrine generally held by the people and also by many of the clergy at the era of the Reformation. [See the form of recantation framed by Cardinal Pole and signed by Sir John Cheke.  Strype’s Life of Sir John Cheke, p. 123.]

      xii.  The Scholastic Doctrine.  On the overthrow of Berengarius the views he opposed gained complete possession of the leading teachers of the West.  As years went on the exact intention of the phrase “transubstantiation” [Transubstantiation is formed from (a) trans, which = (1) across, beyond, and (2) in composition denotes a change from one state to another, as in the words “transform,” “transfigure,” and (b) substantia, which denotes not what we ordinarily understand by substance, but what is expressed by the Greek ουσία, essence.  Hence the Greek word μετουσίωσις corresponding to transubstantiation.  The word is first found in an exposition of the Canon of the Mass by Peter Damian, A.D. 988–1072, cap. vii.  It first appears as a term accepted and recognized by the Church at the fourth Council of Lateran, A.D. 1215.] was much discussed by the Schoolmen.  They taught that every object we can take cognizance of by the senses possesses two invariable properties (i) the “accidents” [Accident, from accidere to fall, to happen, denotes (1) anything that happens, any occurrence, or incident; (ii) that which is present by chance, and therefore nonessential; a property or a quality not essential to our conception of a substance; an attribute; (iii) in Scholastic Theology the material qualities remaining in the Sacramental Bread and Wine after consecration.  Comp. Wyclif, A.D. 1380, Eng. Wks., “No man durste seye til nou [th]at accident is Goddis body, for [th]is newe worde may haue no ground”; Caxton, Golden Leg., “Whan the breed is converted into the precious body of our Lord the accidents abyden”; Lydgate, Pylg. Sowle, A.D. 1483, “Quantitie is an accident only appropred to bodylie thynges.”] or external properties, as shape, form, colour, size, material, and (ii) the “substance,” the internal, invisible essence, the true reality, of which the “accidents” were the outward clothing.  Their doctrine, a refinement of the theory of Paschasius, was that, after consecration, while the accidents remained the same as before, the invisible substance or essence of the bread and wine was transfigured or transubstantiated into the substance or essence of the Body and Blood of Christ. [“Sancta haec Synodus declarat, per consecrationem panis et vini conversionem fieri totius substantiae panis in substantiam corporis Christi Domini nostri, et totius substantiae vini in substantiam sanguinis Ejus; quae conversio convenienter et proprie a sancta Catholica Ecclesia Transubstantiatio est appellata.”  Concil. Trident., sec. xiii., cap. iv.]  Thus transubstantiation was defined at the Council of Trent, and this is the definition of the Roman Church held now.

      xiii.  The First Objection which the Article makes to this refinement on the teaching of Paschasius is that it “cannot be proved by holy Writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture.”  When He instituted the Sacrament, our Lord did not say “This represents My Body,” or “This has the power and efficacy of My Body,” but “This is My Body.”  Thus He indicates a deep mystery, whereby what was bread is called and is His Body, and what was the cup is called and is His Blood.  And yet S. Paul uses the word “Bread” and the word “the Cup” to describe these Elements after consecration.  He says to the Corinthians, As often as ye eat this Bread and drink the Cup, ye proclaim the Lord’s death till He come (1 Cor. 11:26).  The bread is still called “the Bread”.  The cup is still called “the Cup.”  No annihilation of the outward sign is hinted at or indicated.

      xiv.  The Second Objection taken in the Article is that the doctrine “overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament.” [“Naturam sacramenti evertit.”  Evertere = (i) to turn out, to drive out; (ii) to overthrow, as “silvis evertere pinum,” Virg. Georg. i. 256; (iii) to overthrow, completely destroy, as evertere funditus amicitiam,” Cic. Fin. ii. 25; “evertere ... disciplinam militarem,” Livy viii. 30.  The English translation “overthroweth” is rendered in some MSS. “perverteth.”  See Hardwick, Hist. of Articles, p. 313, ed. 1859.]  A Sacrament, as we have seen, consists of two parts, the outward visible sign and the inward spiritual grace.  There must exist in a valid Sacrament the “signum,” the sign, and the “res significata,” or thing signified.  Now if after consecration the outward form is virtually annihilated, and ceases to have any real existence, the thing signified alone remains, and the nature of a sacrament is overthrown, and the visible sign of that which is invisible vanishes.

      xv.  The Third Objection is that it has “given rise to many superstitions.”  This alludes to the superstitions, which a gross and material view of the physical change after consecration too often produced.  Such, for instance, were the stories of the appearances of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament as a little child; [As to Plecgils, a priest of the fifth century, see Blunt’s Dictionary of Doctrinal and Historical Theology, Art. Transubstantiation.] of drops of blood flowing, when Odo, Archbishop of Canterbury, broke the Host; and other instances alluded to by AElfric in his Homilies. [Bp. Forbes On the Articles, p. 553.]  Such ideas were the result of a coarse and unguarded propagation of the views set forth by the teaching of Paschasius, which led to the idea that such appearances were appearances of the Body of our Lord under such conditions as were realized during His earthly life.

      xvi.  The View advanced in the Article.  In primitive times, as we have said, we trace no such subtle speculations as these, we find no exact statement as to the nature and extent of the change effected by consecration in the Holy Eucharist.  Men were content to maintain a reverent reserve in respect to so great a mystery.  They believed that in the words of S. Justin Martyr, the Eucharist is no longer “common bread or common drink”; that in this sacred Feast Christ feeds us with the precious food of His Body and Blood, but they did not attempt to define the mode or the manner of His Presence. [“All things considered, and compared with that success which truth hath hitherto had by so bitter conflicts with errors in this point, shall I wish that men would more give themselves to meditate with silence what we have by the Sacrament, and less to dispute of the manner how?”  Hooker, Eccl. Pol. V. lxvii. 3.]  Similarly cautious and guarded is the language of the Article.  It states that the Body of Christ is “given, taken, and eaten in the Supper,” and herein it agrees with the language of the Catechism. [Compare the words of the Church Catechism, “What is the inward part or thing signified?  The Body and Blood of Christ, which are verily and indeed (vere et reipsa),” i.e., truly and actually, not in a mere metaphorical sense, not only in a figure, “taken and received (sumuntur et percipiuntur) by the faithful in the Lord’s Supper.”  The use of the word “taken” implies that what is received has its existence apart from the recipient.]  But repudiating the idea of a corporal presence of Christ’s Flesh and Blood, it affirms that He is given and received “only after an heavenly and spiritual manner.”  Christ’s Body is now a glorified Body, [“His human substance in itself is naturally absent from the earth, His soul and body not on earth but in heaven only. ... Yet as the manhood of Christ may after a sort be everywhere said to be present, because that Person is everywhere present, from whose divine substance manhood nowhere is severed; so the same universality of presence may likewise seem in another respect appliable thereunto, namely, by cooperation with Deity, and that in all things.” Hooker, Eccl. Pol. V. lv. 7, 8.] and no longer subject to the conditions of its earthly state.  Flesh and blood, writes S. Paul, cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1 Cor. 15:50).  Any Presence of Christ, therefore, in the Blessed Sacrament, must have reference to His glorified, heavenly, Body.  But His Presence is not less but more real [The word “real” as applied to Presence is often confounded with the word carnal or corporal.  It does not bear that meaning at all.  Real, from the Latin realis, is derived from res, a thing.  It denotes (i) actually being or existing, not fictitious or imaginary.  Compare Milton, Par. Lost: “Whereat I waked, and found / Before mine eyes all real, as the dream / Had lively shadowed”: it denotes (ii) true, genuine, not artificial or counterfeit, as a real fact; (iii) as a law term, real estate, real property, e.g. lands, tenements as opposed to personal or moveable property.  A real presence denotes the presence of a reality, a true, actual presence as opposed to an untrue, counterfeit, unreal presence.] because it is spiritual and ineffable, and passes all human comprehension. [That the compilers of the Articles did not reject the Scholastic theory of Transubstantiation because they shrank from a full belief in the Sacramental Presence is clear from many statements of the leading divines of the sixteenth century.  Thus Bishop Ridley writes, “The true Church of Christ doth acknowledge a Presence of Christ’s Body in the Lord’s Supper, but yet sacramentally and spiritually, not carnally or corporally giving life, and in that respect really, that is, according to His benediction, giving life.”  Ridley’s Works, P. Society, p. 236; again he writes “That heavenly Lamb is (as I confess) on the Table; but by a spiritual presence, and not after any corporal presence,”  Works, p. 249.  “Thus much we must be sure to hold,” we read in the Second Book of the Homilies, “that in the Supper of the Lord there is no vain ceremony, no bare sign, no untrue figure of a thing absent”; First Pt. of the Sermon concerning the Sacrament, p. 378, ed. 1802.  Again Bishop Jewel, the chief writer of the Second Book of Homilies, says, “Diserteque pronunciamus, in Coena credentibus vere exhiberi Corpus et Sanguinem Domini, carnem Filii Dei,” Jewel, Apologia, Pt. II. xi. i.]  The Article does not, to use the words of Bishop Guest, [Bishop Guest, who was chiefly concerned in penning this Article, writes, “I told the Bishop of Gloucester plainly that the word only in the aforesaid Article did not exclude the Presence of Christ’s Body from the Sacrament, but only the grossness and sensibleness in the receiving thereof.”  Guest’s Letter to Cecil, Dec. 22, 1566.  So also Bishop Andrewes writes, “As to the Real Presence we are agreed; our controversy is as to the mode of it.  The Presence we believe to be real as you do.  As to the mode we define nothing rashly, nor anxiously investigate, any more than in Baptism we enquire how Christ’s Blood washes us ; any more than in the Incarnation of Christ we ask how the human is united to the divine nature in One Person.”  Bp. Andrewes, Responsio, p. 13; comp. his Sermon on the Resurrection, ii. p. 302.] “exclude the Presence of Christ’s Body from the Sacrament, but only the grossness and sensibleness in the receiving thereof.”  It simply refuses to define what passes all definition, and what it finds a mystery it leaves a mystery under the shadow of God’s throne. [One most powerful argument against Transubstantiation is found in the use made of the Blessed Sacrament by, e.g. Theodoret, S. Gelasius, and S. Chrysostom, as an illustration of the Catholic doctrine of the Two Natures of our Lord; if Transubstantiation had been the doctrine of their day it would have supported not the Catholic, but the Monophysite view.]

      xvii.  The Last Clause of the Article deals with various points connected with the celebration of the Eucharist, such as reservation, carrying about, elevation, and adoration of the Elements.  These ceremonies it affirms are no parts of Christ’s original institution.  They may be omitted without breaking our Lord’s enactment respecting the celebration of the Sacrament.  He did not ordain it in order that they should be observed; they are not essential to the validity of the Sacrament ; and their omission leaves the whole of the original institution untouched.

      xviii.  Reservation was allowed in primitive times for the sake of carrying a portion of the consecrated Elements to the sick.  Thus Justin Martyr in his First Apology, describing the celebration of the Eucharist says, “The Deacons communicate each of those present, and carry away to the absent of the blest Bread and Wine and Water.” [Just. Mart.  Apol. i. 65.]  Again Eusebius, near the beginning of the fourth century, tells of a man, who on his death bed sent at night for a priest to communicate him, and, the priest being ill, the Eucharist, which must have been reserved, was taken to him by a layman. [Euseb.  Eccl. Hist. vi. 44.]  S. Chrysostom relates how in a tumult at Constantinople soldiers entered the place, where the holy vessels were stored, and the most Holy Blood of Christ was spilt on their garments. [S. Chrysost.  Epist. ad Innoc. 3; see Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq. ii. 1787.]  The practice was subsequently still further developed, and resorted to in the case of long journeys by land and by sea. [Travelers by sea had the body and blood of the Redeemer with them, Greg. Mag. Dial. iii. 36.  “Becket carried the Sacrament round his neck on the occasion of his going in search of Henry II.  When the ordeal by fire was proposed to decide whether the Pope was right in excommunicating Savonarola, his friend Fr. Dominic, who was to make the fiery trial, held the Sacrament in his hand.”  See Bp. Forbes, Articles, p. 570.]  The custom, however of reservation, is one of permission not of obligation, its observance forms no part of the original institution of the Sacrament, and each independent Church, as possessed of power “to decree rites or ceremonies,” may adopt or disallow the practice as it may be judged to be expedient.

      xix.  The Carrying about of the Blessed Sacrament in solemn processions was a ceremony introduced into the Church during the Middle Ages.  It does not exist in the orthodox Eastern Church, neither do any of the Eastern heretical Churches practice it.  It is difficult to fix the date of its first [S. Carlo Borromeo, in the Acts of the Council of Milan, puts restrictions on the public exposition of the Blessed Sacrament.  The Feast of Corpus Christi did not become universal till after the Council of Vienne in 1331.] introduction.  The Feast of Corpus Christi was instituted by Pope Urban IV in 1264, and subsequently commanded by Clement V in 1311, but it formed no part of the original institution or of Apostolic practice.

      xx.  Elevation.  S. Paul in his Epistle to the Galatians speaks of Christ as being “placarded” or “visibly held up” as crucified before the eyes of the Galatians [Οις κατ’ οφθαλμους Ιησους Χριστος προεγράφη εσταυρωμενος.  Gal. 3:1.] (Gal. 3:1).  This passage has sometimes been regarded as an indication of the contemporary practice of the Elevation of the Sacrament.  But the custom cannot be traced back to such an age.  There is no allusion to it in the early Sacramentaries [In all early Oriental Liturgies an elevation of the Host by the celebrating Priest is prescribed contemporaneously with the proclamation άγια αγίοις, and before the Fraction.  Thus in the Liturgy of S. James, “then he elevates the gifts and saith ‘Holy things to holy persons’”; in the Liturgy of S. Chrysostom, “the priest, elevating the holy bread exclaims, ‘Holy things for holy persons’.”  But the rite took place within the Bema, while the doors were closed and the curtains drawn.  The original intention, therefore, was clearly not that the Host might be adored by the people.  Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq. i. 605.] of Gelasius, Leo, or Gregory, or in the ancient writers [Roman writers on ceremonial confess their inability to find any trace of the practice in the ancient Sacramentaries, or the codices of the Ordo Romanus, or in any of the writers on ritual, Alcuin, Amalarius, Walafrid.  There is little doubt that the custom of Elevation owes its introduction to the spread of the tenets of Berengarius in A.D. 1050, against which it was regarded as a public protest.  It had little or no authoritative sanction before the 13th century.  See Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq. i. 606; Bingham, Orig. Eccl. xv. 5, 4.] on the ceremonies of the Church.  It is not till we come to A.D. 1136 that we find any mention made of it.

      xxi.  Adoration.  In reference to this point the Article is worded very carefully and with great moderation.  As it is stated in Art. xxv that the object for which Christ ordained the Sacraments was not that they might be “gazed upon” or “carried about,” so here it is laid down that the Sacrament of the Holy Eucharist was not by Christ’s ordinance ... to be worshipped or adored.  The Article deals with the adoration of the Sacrament, that is, of the Sacramental Bread and Wine there bodily received, or of any Corporal Presence of Christ’s Flesh and Blood. [The “Black Rubric” or “Declaration of Kneeling” at the close of the Communion Service was introduced into the Second Prayer Book of 1552, but it was removed from Q. Elizabeth’s Prayer Book.  The wording of it was altered at the Caroline Settlement.  On its first appearance it ran thus: “We do declare (i.e. by kneeling) no adoration is intended ... unto any real and essential presence there being of Christ’s Natural Flesh and Blood.”  On its reintroduction at the Caroline settlement it was worded, “unto any Corporal Presence of Christ’s natural Flesh and Blood.”  Thus the words “Corporal Presence” take the place of “real and essential Presence”.  Procter, Book of Common Prayer, pp. 122, 139.  “We allow ‘Christum in Eucharistia vere praesentem, vere et adorandum’.”  Bp. Andrewes, Responsio, p. 266.]  It says nothing whatever about the adoration of Christ in the Sacrament.  It deals with the adoration of the outward Elements, not of Him, Who is present under these earthly veils.

Article  XXIX

      i.  Connection.  After stating in the preceding Article “that to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith, receive the same, the Bread which we break is a partaking of the Body of Christ and likewise the Cup of Blessing is a partaking of the Blood of Christ,” the 29th Article proceeds to speak of “the Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith,” who yet draw near to this Holy Feast.  At a time when it was the great aim of those, who drew up the Articles, to emphasize the idea of Communion, it was natural to fear that people, “who would not part with their sins, would thrust themselves into holy things to their own hurt.”

      ii.  History.  The 29th Article was altogether wanting in 1553, and did not appear in the early printed copies of the draft of 1563.  It owes its origin to Archbishop Parker, and we may conclude that it was probably composed in 1563, [It is found in the Parker Latin MS. of 1563, and in the Parker English MS. of 1571, also in the Latin edition of 1571, printed by John Day, and published by the Queen’s authority.] but was not absolutely and fully adopted till 1571.  In drawing it up, the Archbishop took his statements almost word for word from a passage in S. Augustine’s Commentary on the sixth Chapter of S. John’s Gospel. [In the Latin Parker MS. there is a marginal reference “super Joann. Tract 26,” and also in a unique copy of the English Articles of 1571.  Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 315, ed. 1859.]  But the Benedictine editors [The passage, as it runs in S. Augustine, is as follows: “Ac per hoc qui non manet in Christo, et in quo non manet Christus, procul dubio nec manducat (spiritaliter) Carnem Ejus, nec bibit Ejus Sanguinem (licet carnaliter et visibiliter premat dentibus Sacramentum Corporis et Sanguinis Christi), sed magis tantae rei Sacramentum ad judicium sibi manducat et bibit.”  The parts deemed interpolations by the Benedictine edition are enclosed in brackets, and are put in italics.  The clauses are found in the Commentaries of Bede and Alcuin on S. John.] of that great Father’s works deemed portions of the passage to be interpolated, and the fairness of the quotation was called in question by Cecil, [Cecil’s gentleness in dealing with the adherents of the Old Learning, whether Romish or Lutheran, is well known.  For the letter to Cecil by Bishop Guest, May 1571, which may have occasioned this interview between the Minister and the Archbishop, see Bishop Guest, Articles xxviii, xxix, by the Rev. G. F. Hodges, p. 24, quoted from the State Papers, Domestic, Elizabeth, 1571, Vol. lxxv., No. 36.] Elizabeth’s minister, at an interview between him and Parker, and the passage was verified by reference to the treatise, out of which it was taken.

      iii.  The Title.  Though the Title forms no part of the Article yet it deserves attention.  It is, then, to be observed that it does not say that the wicked “receive not,” but that they “eat not” the Body of Christ “in the use of the Lord’s Supper.”  Now the expression “eat not the Body of Christ” is taken from the sixth Chapter of S. John’s Gospel, and imports that the wicked eat not in such a way, that they “thereby dwell in Christ and Christ in them,” they neither eat nor drink of the Bread and Wine for any purpose or effect unto which Christ ordained these Elements to be received. [In S. John 6:50, our Lord says, This is the Bread, which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die; in 6:51, He says, If a man eat of this Bread, he shall live for ever; and in 6:54, He that eateth My Flesh and drinketh My Blood hath eternal life.  R.V.  “To eat, therefore, the Body of Christ is used of such eating, whereby a man dwelleth in Christ and Christ in Him; whereby he shall ‘live for ever,’ whereby he hath eternal life, and liveth by Christ, as Christ liveth by the Father.”  Pusey, Real Presence, p. 255.  “Nowhere in Scripture do we hear of an eating and drinking of the true Body and Blood of our Lord which is not profitable.  The Body and Blood are of that nature, that they are in the reason of the case, by the simple fact of being eaten and drunk, beneficial; and no such thing is contemplated as a real eating of them, which is not a beneficial eating of them also.”  Professor Mozley, Lectures and Theol. Papers, p. 205.]

      iv.  Analysis.  This consideration of the Title prepares us for the Article itself, which states that

(a) “The Wicked, and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ;

(b) But rather, to their condemnation, do eat and drink the sign or Sacrament of so great a thing.”

      v.  The Phraseology here used is very important.  It is not said that the wicked are not partakers of the Body and Blood of Christ; it is said that “in no wise are they partakers of Christ.”  The expression “partakers of Christ” occurs in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where the writer says, We are become partakers of Christ, [Μέτοχοι γαρ του Χριστου γεγόναμεν.  Participes Christi effecti sumus.  Vulg.  “We have been united with Him and so we have been made now to partake in the fullness of His life.”  S. Chrysostom paraphrases it, Μετέχομεν αυτου, φησίν, εν εγενόμεθα ημεις και αυτός, είπερ, αυτος μεν κεφαλη σωμα δε ημεις, συγκληρονόμοι και σύσσωμοι.  “In eo etiam participamur, quia Corpus et Sanguinem Ejus sumimus ad redemptionem nostram.”  Primasius, quoted by Bp. Westcott in loc.] if we hold fast the beginning of our confidence firm unto the end (Heb. 3:14), and in another place he speaks of those who were once enlightened and tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost [Μετόχους γενηθέντας Πνεύματος αγίου.  “The compound expression (μετόχους γενηθέντας), as distinguished from μετασχόντας (Heb. 2:14), marks more than the simple fact of participation (Heb. 7:13, 1 Cor. 10:17).  It brings out the fact of a personal character gained; and that gained in a vital development.”  Bp. Westcott in loc.] (Heb. 6:4).  To be a partaker of the Holy Ghost is to have a share of Him, Who is the gift of God, shed abroad in the hearts of all those, who are His by the Spirit; it is to be a partaker of Christ Himself.  Now the impious and willfully impenitent, so long as they remain such, are the enemies of the Cross of Christ, they belong to those who are said to crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an open shame (Heb. 6:6).  Clearly, so long as they remain impenitent and void of a living faith, they are not and cannot be “partakers of Christ”.  And there was much reason in the times of Archbishop Parker to warn those, who would thrust themselves into holy things, that to approach the Lord’s Table in a spirit of unbelief, contempt and disobedience, was to expose themselves to grievous risk; that they might “carnally and visibly press with their teeth the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ,” [“The spiritual food of our Lord’s Body and Blood, cannot be eaten except spiritually ... But if it cannot be eaten except spiritually, how does the carnal man supply the spiritual medium and instrumentality of eating?  The carnal man has only the natural mouth and teeth to apply; this is all he has; but this is totally irrelevant to spiritual food.”  Professor Mozley, Lectures and Theol. Papers, p. 205.] but could not be “partakers of Christ”.  They might receive the “Sacramentum”; they could not receive the “Virtus Sacramenti.” [It is the Virtus Sacramenti which the unworthy and impenitent do not receive.  “Aliud est Sacramentum, aliud Virtus Sacramenti.  Quam multi de altari accipiunt et moriuntur, et accipiendo moriuntur.”  S. Aug. Tract. in Ioann. 26:11.  In theological language the word Sacramentum has two senses: it may mean (i) the “outward and visible sign,” the bare signum, (ii) the signum together with the res significata, not the Virtus Sacramenti the “wholesome effect or operation.”  It is in the second and more comprehensive sense that the word is here used by S. Augustine.]

      vi.  The Words of S. Paul, when he found it necessary to correct the disorders that had crept into the Church at Corinth as regards the celebration of the Lord’s Supper, support the language of the Article.  The Apostle writes, Whosoever shall eat the Bread or drink [Η πινη “or drink,” not “and drink,” a translation not only erroneous but detrimental to the significance, of the warning.  “Unworthy and irreverent partaking, whether of the one element or the other, involved the guilt of which the Apostle is about to speak, – guilt in regard of the whole blessed Sacrament; hence του σώματος και του αίματος in the clause that follows.  Bp. Ellicott in loc.] the Cup of the Lord unworthily, [“Aliter quam dignum est tanta mysteria tractari.”  Beza.] shall be guilty of the Body and Blood of the Lord, ... he that eateth and drinketh, eateth and drinketh judgement unto himself, if [The participle is here used with a hypothetical or conditional reference.  See R. Version.  It is μη διακρίνων not ου διακρίνων.] he discern not the Body [“Note these words, ‘The Lord’s Body’.  It is not here said, ‘The sign or Sacrament of the Lord’s Body, nor the grace or fruit of the Lord’s Body, nor the memory of the Lord’s Passion, but plainly, ‘The Lord’s Body,’ to teach us that the evil men of the Church do receive Christ’s Body.”  Bishop Guest’s Letter to Cecil, State Papers, Elizabeth, 1571.  “Corpus enim Domini et sanguis Domini nihilominus erat etiam illis quibus dicebat Apostolus, Qui manducat indigne, judicium sibi manducat et bibit.”  S. Aug.  De Baptismo contra Donat. v. 9.] (1 Cor. 11:27, 29).  It is plain from this that the Apostle draws a distinction between a worthy and an unworthy mode of approaching the Blessed Sacrament, between a reverent recognition of the presence of the Lord in this holy Feast, and a profane and irreverent attitude, which fails by its “unhallowed sense” [Martensen, Christian Dogmatics, p. 440, E. T.] to discern the inward part of the Sacrament.  The just inference from the Apostle’s words is that there can be no beneficial reception [“The thing offered to them is identical with that which is offered to the faithful, but they lack both the will and the power to assimilate it.  Honest faith, however rudimentary, and right intention, however weak in practice, may count on receiving the Body of Christ; but the touch of positive unbelief and contempt and disobedience profanes the Sacrament.”  Mason, Faith of the Gospel, pp. 300 sq., ed. 1888.] of the Sacrament by those who persist in living in a state of willful sin, for to them Christ is present not to bless, but to judge.

Article  XXX

      i.  The Thirtieth Article, like the preceding one, was wanting in the series of 1553, but was introduced by Archbishop Parker in the reign of Elizabeth, at the revision in 1563. [See above.  Compare Article x of the Eleven Articles of 1559, Hardwick, Hist. Articles, pp. 128, 396, ed. 1859.]

      ii.  Object.  Its object is to vindicate for the laity a right to Communion in Both Kinds, to the Cup as well as to the Bread.  The custom which had arisen in the Western Church of administering to the laity only the consecrated Host, while the Priest alone [The Sacerdos conficiens, the Priest who consecrates and dispenses.  Other Priests present were Sacerdotes non conficientes.] partook of the Chalice, had given rise to much controversy long before the Reformation.  It was indeed the cause of terrible wars, especially in Bohemia, where the people rose in a body and protested desperately against being deprived of a part of the Sacrament, which Christ had intended for all alike.

      iii.  Analysis.  The Article brings out two main points:–

(i) A statement; “The Cup [Calix, from the Greek [κύλιξ, in classical writers denoted a cup or drinking vessel.  In Ecclesiastical writers it is confined specially to the Chalice of the Holy Eucharist.] of the Lord is not to be denied to the Lay people:”

(ii) A justification of the statement; “For both the parts of the Lord’s Sacrament, [With “Calix Domini” and “dominici sacramenti,” comp. 1 Cor. 11:21, Κυριακον δειπνον, and the phrases Dies Dominica; Oratio Dominica.] by Christ’s ordinance and commandment, ought to be ministered to all Christian men alike.”

      iv.  The Original Institution.  That the Chalice was intended for the laity may be proved, (i) from the original institution of the Sacrament as recorded in the New Testament, and (ii) from the writings of the early Fathers.  In the account of the original institution we are told that the words of our Lord to His Apostles were

Drink ye all of this;

[Πίετε εξ αυτου πάντες, Matt. 26:27.  See above.]

and that they complied with His command is clear, for we read in the Gospel of S. Mark

And they all drank of it.

[Και έπιον εξ αυτου πάντες, Mark 14:23.]

Here we might suppose the argument was at an end.  It is urged, however, that the Apostles, forming a consecrated body of Priests, might receive the Chalice, and so the command does not apply to the laity.  But upon this it is to be observed that even if we assume that the Apostles were at the time all Priests, the account of the original institution is not that our Lord received the Chalice and none else, but that He received and they received.  Thus there is no justification for withholding the Cup not only from the laity, but even from all the Clergy, except the officiating Priest. [See Bp Browne On the Articles, p. 735.]

      v.  Apostolic Custom.  If we ask whether, as a matter of fact, the Apostles administered to themselves and their successors in Both Kinds, and to the lay members of the Church in One Kind only, an answer is ready to hand from the Scriptures of the New Testament.  For

(a) In the Acts we find the members of the Church attending constantly on the breaking of the bread from house to house [Ησαν προσκαρτερουντες ... τη κλάσει του αρτου, Acts 2:42, and κλωντες κατ’ οικον άρτον, 2:46.] (Acts 2:42–46).  This is a form of expression which can hardly be understood except as including lay persons;

(b) Again, it is impossible to understand how the troubles at Corinth could have originated at all, had the chalice been denied to the laity.  If they had no right to it at all, how came it to pass that excesses calling for such stern rebuke from S. Paul accompanied the administration? [1 Cor. 11:17–34.]  Why, again, in rebuking them does he not say that they had done wrong in receiving the Species of Wine at all?  Would not such have been a simpler and more obvious way of checking these excesses?  Again, what force would there have been in his argument about the heathen sacrificial feasts, Ye cannot drink the Cup of the Lord and the Cup of demons, [1 Cor. 10:21, Ου δύνασθε ποτήριον Κυρίου πίνειν και ποτήριον δαιμονίων.] except the laity were permitted to drink of the chalice?

      Unless, therefore, we believe that the Church was mistaken from the very first, it is clear that the Apostolic administration of the Eucharist contemplated the reception of the Species alike of the Bread and of the Wine by all faithful communicants.

      vi.  Patristic Testimony.  Thus Apostolic custom is opposed to reception in one kind only.  What is the teaching of the Primitive Fathers?  It is equally decisive.  For

(a) We find Justin Martyr saying in his Apology that “the Deacons gave to everyone that was present of the bread, over which thanks had been offered, and of wine mixed with water, and that they carried them also to those not present;” [Διάκονοι διδόασιν εκάστω των παρόντων μεταλαβειν απο του ευχαριστηθέντος άρτου και οίνου και ύδατος, και τοις ου παρουσιν αποφέρουσι, Just. Mart. Apol. i. cap. lxv.]

(b) Again, Cyprian speaks of the deacons as “offering the Cup to those present “at the Holy Eucharist without any intimation of a distinction of persons in so doing; [“Solemnibus adimpletis calicem diaconus offerre praesentibus coepit.”  Cyp. de Lapsis, p. 189.]

(c) Once more S. Chrysostom in his Commentary on the first Epistle to the Corinthians writes, “whereas under the Old Covenant the Priests ate some things and the laymen others, and it was not lawful for the people to partake of those things of which the Priest partook, it is not so now, but one Body is blessed before all, and one Cup.” [Και θέμις ουκ ην τω λαω μετέχειν ων μετειχεν ο ιερεύς, αλλ’ ου νυν, αλλα παντι εν σωμα προκειται και εν ποτήριον.  For other quotations from S. Chrysostom to the same effect, see Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq., Art. Holy Communion, i. 416.]

      These quotations, without multiplying others, sufficiently justify, so far as early custom is concerned, a practice which obtained in the Church without question for upwards of twelve centuries, and which the Greek Church still maintains, for she always does and always has communicated her many millions of believers in Both Kinds.

      vii.  The Origin of the practice of communicating in One Kind may be traced to the fear of spilling the Consecrated Wine at the time of administration.  This led to the dipping of the Bread into the chalice, as was done in the early Church in communicating the sick, and as is still done in the Greek Church, [See Article Fistula in Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq.] or to the use of a fistula or tube, through which the Consecrated Wine might be drawn.  Gradually, however, and especially in the twelfth century, the administration of the chalice began to be forbidden by many Bishops to avoid the risk of irreverence, and of spilling the Sacred Species.  The change, however, was not brought about without much opposition, not only from eminent divines, but even from Ecclesiastical Councils.  Thus in A.D. 1095 the Council of Clermont decreed that “all, who communicated at the altar, shall receive the Body and Blood of Christ under Both Kinds, if there be no provision to the contrary.” [Canon xxviii.  Conc. Clermont.  The Third Council of Braga, A.D. 675, condemns those who were accustomed “intinctam Eucharistiam populis pro complemento Communionis porrigere.”]  Moreover it is acknowledged by Cardinal Bona, one of the most eminent liturgical writers of the Roman Communion, that “the faithful always and in all places, from the beginning of the Church till the twelfth century, were used to communicate under the Species of Bread and Wine.” [“There is no gainsaying the ‘Drink ye all of it,’ especially as interpreted by the practice of twelve centuries.”  Bp Forbes on the Articles, p. 598.]  Nay, even the Council of Constance, which first decreed on June 15, 1415, the withholding of the Cup from the laity, [“Semper enim et ubique, ab ecclesiae primordiis usque ad saeculum duodecimum, sub specie panis et vini communicarunt fideles: coepitque paulatim ejus saeculi initio usus calicis obsolescere, plerisque episcopis eum populo interdicentibus ob periculum irreverentiae et effusionis.”  Bona, Rer. Liturg. ii. 18, n. 1, quoted by Bingham, Eccl. Antiqq. xv., v. 1.] allows that “Christ Himself administered in Both Kinds to His disciples, and that in the Primitive Church the Sacrament was received in Both Kinds by the people.” [Concil. Constant. Sess. xiii.]  The responsibility for introducing so great a change must lie with those who chose to violate a custom, which has on its side a prescription of twelve centuries, and which was never disputed in the primitive ages of the Church. [Even Pope Gelasius lays it down that people “should either partake of the Sacraments in their entirety or be excluded from the entire Sacraments, because the division of one and the same mystery cannot take place without great sacrilege.”  See Gratian, Corpus Jur. Can. Decr. iii. pars; De Consecr. dist. ii. c. 12, quoted by Bishop Forbes, 596; Pope Leo the Great pronounces abstinence from the chalice to be a Manichaean heresy.  Leo Magn.  Hom. xli.]

Article  XXXI

      i.  Title and Connection.  The Latin Title of the Article has been uniform since 1553.  The English Title then ran, “Of the perfeicte oblacion of Christe made upon the crosse.”  It forms the conclusion of the Sacramental Articles, which have all been leading up to it, [F. D. Maurice On Art. XXXI.] and it states what that is, independently of which the Sacraments have no value in themselves.

      ii.  Origin.  The Article is derived from the Third Article of the Second Part [The Second Part of the Augsburg Confession is based on a Series called “the Torgau Articles,” drawn up by certain Lutheran Divines who met the Elector at Torgau early in 1530, in anticipation of the Augsburg Diet.  See Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 22.] of the Augsburg Series of 1530.  That Article begins by stating emphatically that the Holy Eucharist, or the Mass, had never been abolished by the Lutherans, but was celebrated by them with the greatest possible reverence, only with some changes of ceremonial, and with the addition of some German Hymns for the instruction of the people. [“Falso accusantur ecclesiae nostrae, quod Missam aboleant, retinetur enim Missa apud nos et summa reverentia celebratur.  Servantur et usitatae ceremoniae fere omnes, praeterquam quod Latinis cantionibus admiscentur alicubi Germanicae, quae additae sunt ad docendum populum.”  Sylloge Confessionum, p. 138.]

      iii.  Object.  The design of the Article is twofold:–

(a) To urge with all possible emphasis and clearness the uniqueness and completeness of the Sacrifice, which our Blessed Lord offered upon His Cross; [“If the Sacrifice of the Mass be the same with the Sacrifice of the Cross, we attribute more unto it than yourselves; we place our whole hope of salvation in it.  If you understand another Propitiatory Sacrifice distinct from that as this of the Mass seems to be; if you think of any new meritorious Satisfaction to God for the sins of the world; you must give us leave to renounce your Sacrifice indeed, and to adhere to the Apostle,” By one offering He hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified, Heb. 10:14; Archbp. Bramhall, Works, vol. i. p. 54.]

(b) To refute a current form of misbelief as to the repetition of that offering in “the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said that the Priestes did offer Christe for the quicke and the dead, to haue remission of payne or gylt.” [“What the Article speaks of here is not ‘the sacrifice of the Mass,’ but the habit of trusting to the purchase of Masses when dying, to the neglect of a holy life, or repentance, and the grace of God and His mercy in Christ Jesus, while in health.”  Pusey, Eirenicon, i. pp. 25, 26.]

      iv.  Analysis.  This being its object, the Article may be thus analyzed:–

(a) It declares that the offering of Christ once made [“There is only one Christ, one offering for sin, one purchase of man’s redemption.”  Bp Forbes, On the Articles, p. 618.] is “the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original and actual”;

(b) It affirms that besides this One Sacrifice there is “none other satisfaction for sin, but that alone”;

(c) It repudiates the idea that the priest repeated this one Sacrifice once made in “ the sacrifices of Masses,” so that they could be propitiatory [“The Article was directed against the errors of those, who, by rejecting the doctrine of a sacrifice by way of commemoration and consecration, and not literally identical with that on the Cross, and by their crude and objectionable mode of expression countenanced the vulgar error, that the sacrifice of the Eucharist or Mass was in every respect equal to that of Christ on the Cross; and that it was in fact either a reiteration or a continuation of that Sacrifice.”  Palmer, Treatise on the Church, ii. p. 463.] for the quick and the dead.

      v.  The First Clause of the Article is noticeable for the number of words used to set forth the completeness and all-sufficiency of our Lord’s sacrifice of Himself “once made” [Or as one MS. has it “once made for ever”.] on the altar of His Cross.  It is described as “the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins [Observe the fullness of the expression “pro omnibus peccatis totius mundi, tam originalibus quam actualibus.”  Compare the Augsburg Confession, De Missa, “Passio Christi fuit oblatio et satisfactio, non solum pro culpa originis, sed etiam pro omnibus reliquis peccatis,” and the language of Article II, where it is said that Christ came “ut esset hostia, non tantum pro culpa originis, verum etiam pro omnibus actualibus hominum peccatis.”  So also in The Institution of a Christian Man we read, “Now I may boldly say and believe, as indeed I do perfectly believe, that by His Passion ... Christ hath made a sufficient expiation or propitiation towards God, that is to say, a sufficient satisfaction and recompense as well for my original sin, as also for all the actual sins that ever I have committed, and from the everlasting pain due for the same.”  Formularies of Faith, Henry VIII, p. 35.] of the whole world, both original and actual.”

(1)  The Perfect Redemption.  The first of these three figures is borrowed from the redemption of a slave, and his deliverance from bondage.  The idea of His Sacrifice being a ransom is one which our Lord Himself set forth.  The Son of Man, He said, came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many [Compare also Mark 10:45, Ο υιος του ανθρώπου ουκ ηλθε διακονηθηναι, αλλα διακονησαι, και δουναι την ψυχην αυτου λύτρον αντι πολλων.  This and the parallel in S. Matthew are the only two passages where the word λύτρον occurs in the Gospels.  But several words group themselves round this idea of λύτρον, a ransom.  Thus we have (i) the verb λυτρουν = to ransom (Luke 24:21); (ii) the substantive λυτρωτής = a ransomer or redeemer applied to Moses (Acts 7:35); (iii) λύτρωσις = the act of ransoming or redemption (Luke 1:68, 2:38), and this is applied in Heb. 9:12, to the eternal redemption wrought out by Christ, αιωνίαν λύτρωσιν ευράμενος.] (Matt. 20:28).  S. Paul also frequently uses the figure.  In one place he says that our Lord gave Himself a ransom in behalf of all [Δους εαυτον αντίλυτρον υπερ πάντων, 1 Tim. 2:6, and compare 1 Pet. 1:18.] (1 Tim. 2:6); in another he states that He is our redemption (1 Cor. 1:30); and in yet another, that in Him we have our redemption through His Blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses (Eph. 1:7).  For man, having fallen into sin and become the servant of sin (John 8:34), could not redeem himself from its guilt and consequences.  He had no ransom, which he could offer to God for his sin.  But what he could not pay himself, that of His “tender love towards mankind” [“To the Jews of our Lord’s day the idea of a ‘ransom’ was quite familiar, and the Law had regulated ransoms with much minuteness, whether for the redemption of a slave (Lev. 25:47–49), the life of the firstborn child (Num. 18:16), or the possession of an inheritance (Lev. 25:25–27).  Ransoms were usually paid in money, but in a certain large class of cases the sacrifice of the life of one creature redeemed another from death (Exod. 13:13, 34:20; Num. 18:15).”  Dr Dale, The Atonement, p. 76.] God the Father gave His only-begotten Son to pay for man, and out of the same “tender love” the Son consented to pay it for man, and constituted Himself man’s surety.  To undertake this work of unimaginable condescension He Himself “became Man,” and in man’s nature lived a life of perfect and absolute obedience to His Father’s will, and offered up on the Cross that perfectly unblemished life as an all-sufficient “ransom” for many, [See the Collect for the Sunday next before Easter.  “The freedom of the Father’s gift of His blessed Son, and the freedom of the Son’s self-oblation, are insisted on in Holy Scripture.”  Liddon, University Sermons, First Series, p. 243.] and so redeemed all mankind alike from the power and from the consequences of sin.

(2)  The Perfect Propitiation.  The second figure employed is that of a Sin-offering or Propitiation.  The Greek word thus translated, Ιλασμός, only occurs in the writings of S. John.  Christ, says that Apostle, is the propitiation for our sins [Αυτος ιλασμός εστι περι των αμαρτιων ημων, 1 John 2:2; ιλασμόν περι των αμαρτιων ημων, 1 John 4:10.  The word ιλασμός is formed from ίλεως = propitious (Matt. 16:22, Heb. 8:12), whence come also (i) the verb ιλάσκεσθαι, which means (a) to be propitious towards one (Luke 18:13), (b) to make propitiation for one (Heb. 2:17); (ii) the substantive ιλαστήριον, which denotes (a) the mercy seat of the ark, Χερουβιμ δόξης κατασκιάζοντα το ιλαστήριον (Heb. 9:5), (b) a propitiation, ον προέθετο ο Θεος ιλαστήριον δια της πίστεως εν τω αυτου αίματι (Rom. 3:25).] (1 John 4:10).  The term is specially applicable to our Lord’s work upon the Cross, because it is He, Who, as the all-perfect sacrifice, has covered or expiated the sin of the world.  The idea is brought out in several passages.  Thus, when the Baptist sees our Lord coming up from the scene of His temptation, he exclaims, Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world (John 1:29, 36).  When our Lord gives to His Apostles the Cup at the institution of the Holy Eucharist, He says, This is My Blood of the Covenant, which is shed for many unto remission of sins (Matt. 26:28).  By this He intimated that He was about to be a sin offering, and His Blood was about to be shed for the remission of sins.  The oblation He offered was not the arbitrary substitution of one innocent Man for a guilty race. [“Our Redeemer cannot be substituted for man; He is Man.  One thing cannot be put in the stead of another unless it distinctly is another.  But our Lord is not another.  He has made Himself one with us.  He has gathered us up into Himself.”  Mason, Faith of the Gospel, p. 208, Ed. 1889.]  He, the Eternal Son of God, Himself became Man, and so, when He suffered upon the Cross, our Nature suffered in Him, [When He died for all, then, in the words of S. Paul, οι πάντες απέθανον, all died in Him, 2 Cor. v. 15.  “Though God is the Author of the Atonement, and without Him fallen humanity would have been unable to offer it, yet it was made by Man, acting in the true conditions of man’s nature.”  Ibid. p. 209.  “By offering Himself upon the Cross, He maintained, even through death, the fellowship of humanity with God.”  Westcott, Incarnation and Common Life, p. 377, Ed. 1893.] for all humanity was not only represented by but gathered up in Him.  By the offering up of His sinless Self, He bare our sins in His own Body on the tree (1 Pet. 2:24), and by the transcendent merit of His sacrifice He made expiation for the sins of entire humanity.

(3)  The Perfect Satisfaction.  The third term employed in the Article is one which is not found in the Greek Testament.  Satisfaction, from the Latin satisfactio, is a word used in the processes of Roman civil law, [“Satisfactio pro solutione est.”  Ulpian, Dig. xlvi. 3. 52.] and in Classical Latin denoted the liquidation of a debt, or the offering an apology for some wrong done. [Comp. Caesar Bell. Gall. vi. 9, “Caesar Ubiorum satisfactionem accepit”; Bell. Gall. i. 41, “Eorum satisfactione accepta.” See also the first Exhortation in the Communion Service, “And if ye shall perceive your offences to be such as are not only against God, but also against your neighbours; then ye shall reconcile yourselves unto them; being ready to make restitution and satisfaction, according to the uttermost of your powers.”]  Employed first as an ecclesiastical expression by Tertullian, it was afterwards greatly developed by S. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury. [The word “satisfaction” occurs in the Collect for the 4th Sunday in Advent, and in the Communion Office we assert that by His one oblation of Himself once offered our Lord has made “a full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction” for the sins of the whole world.]  He lays it down that either punishment or satisfaction must follow every sin; that man’s sin was so great that God alone could pay the debt he owed; therefore One must pay it Who is God and Man.  Hence arose the necessity for the Incarnation.  But the Incarnation itself was not all.  The life of spotless obedience which followed, and the Death, by which that life of obedience was crowned, paid in infinitely superabundant measure the debt, which man owed to the Justice and Holiness of God. [“Ipse sponte sustinuit mortem, non per obedientiam deserendi vitam, sed propter obedientiam servandi justitiam, in qua tam fortiter perseveravit ut inde mortem incurreret.”  S. Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, i. 9.]  Thus “the infinite worth of the Son of God,” [Compare the words of Hooker, “No person was born of the Virgin but the Son of God, no person but the Son of God baptized, the Son of God condemned, the Son of God, and no other person, crucified; which one only point of Christian belief, the infinite worth of the Son of God, is the very ground of all things believed concerning life and salvation by that which Christ either did or suffered as Man in our behalf.”  Eccl. Pol. v. 52, 3.] dying for man and in man’s nature, wrought out a perfect satisfaction for human sin, and availed to do that for man, which he alone and unaided could not have done for himself.

      vi.  The Second Clause of the Article asserts that besides this offering of Christ there can be none other satisfaction for sin. Offered by the Son of God Himself, this Sacrifice stands absolutely alone in the world.  It is singular and unique as regards (1) the Victim, the spotless Lamb of God; as regards (ii) the act, His voluntary submission to death for man; and as regards (iii) the result, the accomplishment by Him of a perfect expiation of all the sins, both original and actual, of entire humanity.  This one Sacrifice of the Son of God was offered once for all. [It was the oblatio unica, the offering of Christ once made, semel facta, “for all the sins of the whole world, and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone,” neque praeter illam unicam est ulla alia.  “What ought to be more certain and known to all Christian people, than that Christ died once, and but once, for the redemption of the world?”  Cranmer, Answer to Gardiner, p. 366, sect. 393, Parker Soc.]  This is the point, on which the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews insists so strongly, when he says that every priest under the Law standeth daily ministering and offering oftentimes the same sacrifices, the which can never take away sins: [Αίτινες ουδέποτε δύνανται περιελειν αμαρτίας, which are such that they can never take away sin, Lat. auferre peccata.  The expressive word περιελειν expresses the stripping off the terrible robe of sin, which man has woven round himself.] but He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins for ever, sat down on the right hand of God [Ουτος δε μίαν υπερ αμαρτιων προσενέγκας θυσίαν, εις το διηνεκές, O. L. una oblata hostia in sempiterno sedit; Vulg. hic autem unam offerens hostiam in sempiternum.  “The sacrifice was efficacious for ever, through all time, being appropriated by each believer.  The connection of εις το διηνεκές with the following εκάθισεν (for ever sat down) is contrary to the usage of the Epistle; it weakens the contrast with εστηκεν; and it imports a foreign idea into the image of the assumption (εκάθισεν) of royal dignity by Christ.”  Bp Westcott in loc.] (Heb. 10:11, 12).  These words make it clear that the Sacrifice of Christ was efficacious for ever, and through all time, and is incapable of repetition, that once made, it lives on in heaven, and our Ascended Lord pleads it, generation after generation, for each one of our sinful race.  It cannot be denied that the language of this passage from the Epistle fully justifies the anxiety manifested in the Article that nothing should seem to overshadow, or interfere with, or supplement the meritoriousness of the One Sacrifice of our Lord upon the Cross, to the merits of which He Himself adds nothing. [Hence we can understand the emphasis with which Bullinger says in his Decades of Sermons, published in 1550, and dedicated to Edward VI, “Itaque relinquitur jam indubitatum Christum Dominum plenariam esse propitiationem, satisfactionem, hostiamque ac victimam pro peccatis (pro poena, inquam, et pro culpa) totius mundi, et quidem solam.  Non est enim in alio quoquam salus.”  Quoted in Laurence’s Bampton Lectures, p. 299.]

      vii.  The Third Clause.  It is natural that having dealt with this point the Article should proceed to treat of “the sacrifices of Masses, in the which it was commonly said, that the Priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt.”  It is to be noticed that the Latin is not “Missae sacrificium,” “the sacrifice of the Mass,” but “Missarum sacrificia,” “the sacrifices of Masses”.  The expression “sacrifices of Masses,” generally meant in the language of the sixteenth century “private Masses,” which were said for the sake of gain, and were a source of much profit. [Thus Cranmer contrasts “the many Masses every day,” “the daily private Masses,” “the selling Masses,” with the one common Mass in a day.  Defence of the Catholic Doctrine, v. 16.  “These private Masses,” he writes again, “sprang of lucre and gain, when priests found the means to sell Masses to the people, which caused Masses so much to increase, that every day was said an infinite number, and that no priest would receive the Communion at another priest’s hand, but every one would receive it alone.”  Cranmer, On the Lord’s Supper, p. 353, Parker Soc.]  Respecting these “sacrifices of Masses” it is to be noticed that the Article is concerned with what was “commonly said” respecting them.  “This,” it has been truly observed, “is a strictly historical mode of speaking of what the authors of the Articles knew to have been in force in time past and saw before their eyes.” [Newman, Tract XC, p. 62.]  Now it was commonly held in the sixteenth century that the Body of Christ was once offered upon the Cross for original [This view seems to have been first propounded by Albertus Magnus, who writes, “Secunda causa institutionis hujus Sacramenti est sacrificium Altaris, contra quamdam quotidianam delictorum nostrorum rapinam; ut sicut Corpus Domini nostri semel oblatum est pro delicto originali, sic offeratur jugiter pro nostris quotidianis delictis in altari, et habeat in hoc Ecclesia munus ad placandum sibi Deum, super omnia legis sacramenta vel sacrificia pretiosum et acceptum.”  Sermo 1 de Sacramento Eucharistiae, Alberti Magni Opera, tom. xii., p. 250, quoted in Denny and Lacey’s De Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 128.  So also Ambrosius Catharinus, “inter doctores Tridentinos, eminentissimus,” commenting on Heb. 10, writes, “Apparet quod pro peccatis sub Novo Testamento post acceptam salutaris hostiae in baptismo efficaciam commissis, non habemus pro peccato hostiam illam, quam Christus obtulit pro peccato mundi, et pro delictis baptismum praecedentibus.”  See De Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 130.  Bp Jewel quotes Catharinus in his Defence of the Apology, Works, Vol. iii., p. 451, Parker Soc.  See also the present Bp. of Salisbury’s pamphlet De Validitate Ordinum Anglicanorum, p.9, Ed.1894.] sin, but is continually offered on the altar for daily sin, that is, that in the Mass the One Sacrifice is repeated, and that in such a sense the Mass was a propitiatory sacrifice for daily sins. [For the preaching of this doctrine on the Continent compare the words of Luther, “Cur jam aperte concionentur, pro peccatis post Baptismum commissis Christum non satisfecisse, sed tantum pro culpa originali.”  Conciones ad 16 Joann. Comp. also the Augsburg Confession; “accessit opinio quae auxit privatas Missas in infinitum, videlicet quod Christus sua passion satisfecerit pro peccato originis, et instituerit Missam, in qua fieret oblatio pro quotidianis delictis, mortalibus et venialibus.  Hinc manavit publica opinio, quod Missa sit opus delens peccata vivorum et mortuorum.”  Sylloge Confessionum, p. 139.  That similar doctrine was taught in England is clear from Latimer’s Sermons: “For whereas Christ, according as the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so would He himself be exalted, that thereby as many as trusted in Him should have salvation; but the devil would none of that: they would have us saved by a daily oblation propitiatory, by a sacrifice expiatory or remissory.”  Sermons, pp. 72, 73, Parker Soc.  And again in a Sermon preached before Convocation in 1536 he speaks of those, “Who preached to the people the Redemption that cometh by Christ’s death to serve only them that died before His coming, that were in the time of the Old Testament, and that now since redemption and forgiveness of sins purchased by money and devised by men is of efficacy, and not redemption purchased by Christ.”  Latimer, Sermons, p. 36, ed. Parker Soc.]  It was also held that particular, special, Masses were more profitable to souls than “the one common Mass,” and whereas the suffrages of the Church benefited those most, who most deserved to be benefited, those offered specially benefited those most for whom they were performed, specially the Masses, which were offered for departed souls. [Comp. the Augsburg Confession, “Hic coeptum est disputari, utrum una Missa dicta pro pluribus, tantundem valeat, quantum singulae pro singulis.  Haec disputatio peperit istam infinitam multitudinem Missarum.”  Sylloge Confess., p. 139.]  Thus the idea of a propitiatory sacrifice in the Mass, valid independently of the Sacrifice of the Cross, was accentuated by these private Masses, and they naturally became a potent source of gain to the priests who offered them.  This is what the Article distinctly and energetically repudiates.  It affirms that it is a “blasphemous fable” to teach that there is a sacrifice for sin other than the Death of Christ, and that Masses are that sacrifice, [“Art. xxxi rejects the vulgar idea of the priest’s offering Christ at every celebration for the living and the dead, with a view to the remission of pain or guilt, and in his repeating the offering of Christ made once for all (as the first part of the Article declares) every time he offers Christ, and this as again procuring each time the grace of the one offering of Christ.”  Prof. Friedrich in Jan. No. of The International Theological Review, p. 11, 1895.] introducing a second and continually recurrent atonement, or, as Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, expressed it, a “new redemption.” [Compare a Sermon of his preached on the Festival of S. Peter, 1548.  “For when men add unto the Mass an opinion of satisfaction or of a new redemption, then do they put it to another use than it was ordained for.”  See Foxe, Acts and Monuments, pp. 772, 773; Dixon, Hist. of Ch. of England, iii. p. 264, Ed. 1893.  Gardiner could write strongly in 1531 on the all-sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice of Himself: “This is agreed,” he says, “and by the Scriptures plainly taught, that the oblation and sacrifice of our Saviour Christ was and is a perfect work, once consummate in perfection without necessity of reiteration, as it was never taught to be reiterate, but a mere blasphemy to presuppose it.”  See Abp Cranmer’s Works, On the Lord’s Supper, P. S., p. 344.  The teaching of the Bishop agrees with the statement agreed to at the Bonn Conference in 1874, “The Eucharistic Celebration in the Church is not a continuous repetition or renewal of the Propitiatory Sacrifice offered once for ever by Christ upon the Cross; but its sacrificial character consists in this, that it is the permanent memorial of it, and a re-presentation and presentation on earth of that One oblation of Christ for the salvation of redeemed mankind, which according to the Epistle to the Hebrews (9:11, 12) is continuously presented in heaven by Christ, who now appears in the presence of God for us” (9:24).]  It further affirms that it is a “pernicious imposture” to turn this doctrine into a means of making gain, into a source of emolument for those who celebrate these Masses.

      viii.  Conclusion.  Thus the Article lays down with striking emphasis that the Sacrifice of Christ upon the Cross is “the perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction,” “not only for original guilt, but also for all actual sins of men.”  It affirms that the Eucharistic Sacrifice neither acquires nor possesses anything propitiatory in itself independently of that One Sacrifice; that it can only apply what was once and for all merited by that Sacrifice. [The idea condemned in the Article is that of the value of many Masses, as separate acts of sacrifice independent of the Sacrifice of the Cross, the one only-availing Sacrifice.  Hence the force of the second clause, “Wherefore the sacrifices of Masses...”  The One Sacrifice of our Lord and its all-sufficient merits live on as in our Lord’s perpetual presentation of Himself in heaven.  So in the Eucharistic Sacrifice “we have nothing apart from that One Sacrifice; our Eucharistic Oblation is not something in and for itself; something independent of that One Sacrifice, even while it pleaded it. Such is its union with that Sacrifice, that it is a perpetual application of its virtue; yet not as something distinct, but united with it through the oneness of that which is offered.”  Bp Forbes, On the Articles, pp. 615, 616.  “What we dare not say,” writes Bramhall, “is that the Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice propitiatory in itself, by its own proper virtue and expiatory efficacy.  Whatsoever power it hath, is in relation to the Sacrifice of Christ, as a means ordained to apply that to true believers.”  Bramhall, Works, Vol. v. Oxford 1845.]  As regards “the sacrifices of Masses” its language is to be understood as referring to the special doctrine which it is opposing, [Compare the language of the Homilies, “What dens of thieves the Churches of England have been made by the blasphemous buying and selling the most precious body and blood of Christ in the Mass, as the world was made to believe at diriges, at months’ minds, in trentalls, in abbeys and chantries.”  Homily On Repairing and Keeping Clean of Churches, p. 277, Cambridge 1850.] and, though strong, is not more strong than that of an Ultra-montanist Bishop of the 14th century, when he says, “Our Church is full and overfull of altars, masses, and sacrifices, and therewith in them that sacrifice it is full of homicides, sacrileges, uncleanness, and simonies, and other wickednesses, excommunications, and irregularities to the very utmost.  For to this day so many masses are said for gain, or custom, or complaisance, or to cover wickednesses, [The key to the meaning of “Missarum Sacrificia” in the Article is to be found in the principle laid down by Catharinus “pro quotidianis delictis quotidianum sacrificium.”  “Nos,” says Catharinus commenting on Heb. 10:18, “quoniam pro assiduis peccatis, quae indies committuntur, offerimus sacrificium, nihil prohibet, immo necesse est assidue sacrificare, ac simul assidue litare; ut quae assidue admittuntur assiduo sacrificio expientur.”  Speculum Hareticorum, fo. E iiii, Cracoviae, 1540, quoted by Denny and Lacey, Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 129.] or for their own justification, that both amongst priests and people the holy Body of the Lord is now held cheap.  Whence also S. Francis willed that the brothers everywhere should be content with one Mass, foreseeing that the brethren would wish to justify themselves by Masses, and reduce them to a matter of gain [“Why must a solitary mass, bought for a piece of money, performed and participated by a priest alone, in a private corner of a Church, be, not only against the sense of Scripture and the Primitive Church, but also against common sense and grammar, called a Communion, and be accounted useful to him that buys it, though he never himself receive the Sacrament, or but once a year; but for this reason, that there is great gain, but no godliness at all, in this doctrine?”  Bp Bull’s Sermons, Works, Vol. i. p. 13, Oxford 1846.  “The world was made believe, that by the virtue of so many masses, which were to be purchased by great endowments, souls were redeemed out of purgatory, and scenes of visions and apparitions, sometimes of the tormented, sometimes of the delivered souls, were published in the places; which had so wonderful an effect, that in two or three centuries, endowments increased to a vast extent ... the practices by which this was managed, and the effects that followed on it, we can call by no other name than downright impostures; worse than the making or vending false coin: when the world was drawn in by such arts to plain bargains to redeem their own souls, and the souls of their ancestors and posterity, so many masses are to be said, and forfeitures were to follow upon their not being said: thus the masses were really the price of the lands,” Bp. Burnet On Article XXII, p. 251, Oxford 1845.] as we see done at this day.” [“Nostra autem Ecclesia plena et supplena est altaribus, missis et sacrificiis, sed cum hoc plena in sacrificantibus homicidiis, sacrilegiis et immunditiis, et simoniis, et aliis sceleribus, excommunicationibus et irregularitatibus usque ad summum ... Tot enim hodie dicuntur missae quasi quaestuariae vel consuetudinariae vel ad complacentiam vel ad scelera cooperienda vel propriam justificationem, quod apud populum vel clerum Sacrosanctum Corpus Domini jam vilescit ... Unde et almus Franciscus voluit quod in quocunque loco fratres contenti essent una missa, prospiciens fratres se velle justificare per missas, et ad quaestum eas reducere sicut videmus hodie fieri.”  Alvarus Pelagius, De Planctu Ecclesiae, ii. 5, quoted by Pusey, Truth and Office of the English Church, p. 30.  Alvarus Pelagius was a Penitentiary of Pope John XXII.]

Article  XXXII

      i.  Connection.  At first sight it seems a violent transition from the subject treated of in the last Article to the question of the Celibacy of the Clergy.  But the transition is not really so violent as it seems. [See F. D. Maurice, Sermon on the Articles, Art. XXXII; Cheetham, First Six Centuries, p. 135.]  The idea that Masses could be offered for the quick and dead for the remission of pain or guilt, wept far to sustain the notion that the Priest was to be so far different from other men that family ties were incompatible with his position.

      ii.  Title and Language.  Both the Title and Language of the Article have undergone a change.  The original Latin title in 1553 was Coelibatus ex verbo Dei praecipitur nemini, or, in English, “The state of single life is commaunded to no man by the worde of God.”  This was altered in 1563 to “De Coniugio Sacerdotum” “Of the marriage of Priestes.”  Moreover whereas the Article originally consisted of a single clause containing a negative statement that the state of single life without marriage is not enjoined to be vowed by Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, nor are they by God’s law compelled to abstain from Matrimony; this was strengthened in 1563 by the positive additional statement that it is lawful for them, as for all other Christian men, to marry at their own discretion, as it may seem to serve better to godliness. [Hardwick, Hist. Articles, p. 128.]

      iii.  Early History.  In the earliest and purest ages of the Church the idea of prohibiting Clerical marriage does not seem to have occurred to the minds of the holiest of men.  Thus (a) S. Polycarp speaks of Valens, a Priest, and his wife, as though the fact was by no means strange. [Epist. Polyc., c. xi.]  (b) Eusebius mentions Chaeremon, Bishop of Nilus, a man of great age, as flying from the Decian persecution together with his wife, [Euseb., Hist. Eccles., vi. c. 42.] and tells us how, during the Diocletian persecution, Bishops and Priests were urged to have pity on their wives and children, and for their sakes to offer sacrifice. [Euseb., Hist. Eccles., viii., c. 9.]  (c) Before long, however, an exaggerated esteem for celibacy crept into the Church, but it was opposed by Councils and Canons.  Thus the Council of Ancyra, A.D. 314, decreed that those, who, at the time of Ordination as Deacons, declared their intention to marry, should be allowed to do so, and to remain in the Ministry, but it forbade the marriage of those, who at the time of Ordination bound themselves by vows of continence. [Concil. Ancyr., Can. x.]  Again, the very important Council of Gangra, A.D. 314, anathematizes those who hold aloof from the ministrations at the Holy Communion of a married Priest. [Concil. Gangr., Can. iv.  A Canon of the Spanish Council of Elvira, A.D. 305, is regarded as the earliest, which enjoined on the clergy to cease cohabitation with their wives.]  (d) An attempt was indeed made to enforce celibacy on the Clergy at the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, but it was frustrated by the firmness of Paphnutius, an eminent Egyptian prelate, himself unmarried, who earnestly protested against putting so heavy a burden on the Clergy, saying it ought to suffice that they should not marry after Ordination, and should not be required to separate from their wives. [Socrat. Hist. Eccles., i. c. 11; Sozomen, Hist. Eccles., i. c. 23; Stanley’s Eastern Church, Lect. v. 3.]

      iv.  Later Developments.  Gradually, however,, the spirit which at first exhibited itself only to be condemned in heretical communities, [“The ascetic views of the Essenes, of the Montanists, of the Gnostics, and of other sects external to the Church affected more or less the Church itself.”  Bp. Browne, On the Articles, p. 752.] stifled the healthier feeling, and at length the liberty not only of cohabiting with but of having wives was refused, so far as Bishops were concerned, in the East and West alike.  In the case of Priests the practice of the two halves of Christendom became more and more divergent.  In the East Bishops were required to observe celibacy, but Priests and Deacons might live with their wives.  In the West the rule against Clerical marriage grew more and more rigid, [Edicts of Innocent I in the year A.D. 405, and of Leo I in the year A.D. 443, enjoined the strictest continence.  It was far however from receiving universal obedience.  “The great Church of Milan, claiming the authority of its greatest bishop, S. Ambrose, and bearing the repute of having the best clergy in Italy, was content with the ancient rule which permitted only one marriage to a cleric”: Cheetham, First Six Centuries, p. 351; see also Milman’s Latin Christianity, Bk. vi., c. 3.] Spain leading the way.  But there was a long struggle between the natural feelings of the Clergy and the increasing rigour of Church discipline.  In 1074 Gregory VII held a Council at Rome which condemned the marriage of Priests under the name of concubinage.  Two years afterwards Archbishop Lanfranc held a synod of English Bishops at Winchester, which forbade Canons to have wives, and decreed that in future Priests should not marry; while such Priests as lived in the country and were already married, might retain their wives. [Wilkin’s Concil., i. p. 367; Gieseler, Church History, iii. 205–207, n. 4.  “The marriage of the clergy discredited on every hand, was gradually disused, and died away entirely at the middle of the thirteenth century.”  Hardwick, Middle Age, p. 241.]  Under Anselm, the successor of Lanfranc, it was finally decreed A.D. 1102 that in England no one should be ordained either Priest, Deacon, or Subdeacon who did not profess celibacy, and this decree was confirmed by the Council of London, A.D. 1108. [Ibid. p. 387.  The Council of Trent in one Canon condemns those who would permit the clergy to marry.  Sess. xxiv.  De Sacr. Matrimon. Can. ix.]

      v.  The Teaching of Scripture.  When we ask what is the teaching of Scripture on the subject we notice that in the Old Testament times the Priests were not only allowed, but encouraged to marry (Levit. 21:13, 14).  Moreover the office even of the High priest was made hereditary, and he was confined in the choice of a wife to a virgin belonging to his own people (Levit. 21:13). [The priests were not so much restricted in their choice as the High priest.  They were only prohibited from marrying prostitutes and divorced women (Levit. 21:7).  According to the spirit of the Mosaic economy, marriage was regarded as the indispensable duty of every man, nor was it imagined that it involved any drawback to the attainment of a high degree of holiness.  The Essenes were the first to propound any doubts as to the propriety of marriage.  Some of them avoided it altogether, others availed themselves of it under special restrictions.  Similar views were held by the Therapeutae.]  In the New Testament, whereas, considering the awfulness of His Mission, we might have expected that our Lord would have imitated the example of John the Baptist and inculcated the extremest asceticism, we find that He committed the keys of His Kingdom to S. Peter, who was himself a married man (Mark 1:30), and He was pleased to perform His first miracle at a marriage feast in Cana of Galilee (John 2:1–11).  In Apostolic times we find S. Paul affirming that what was true of S. Peter was true also of the other Apostles and the brethren of the Lord [“Licebat et Apostolis nubere et uxores circumducere.”  Tertull.  De Exhort. Castitat., c. 8.] (1 Cor. 9:5).  Further in his Pastoral Epistles he specially directs that bishops and deacons should be the husbands of one wife (1 Tim. 3:2, 12; Tit. 1:6), and he lays down special rules concerning the conduct of their wives (1 Tim. 3:11), and the management of the children and household (1 Tim. 3:4).  Moreover he makes the forbidding to marry a sign of the apostasy of the latter days, and as having its origin in the hypocrisy of men that speak lies, seared in their own conscience as with a hot iron (1 Tim. 4:2, 3), while on the other hand he speaks of marriage as consecrated to “such an excellent mystery, that in it is signified and represented the spiritual marriage and unity betwixt Christ and His Church” (Eph. 5:23–32).  Unless, then, we are to suppose that S. Paul was mistaken from the outset, it is clear that he did not consider that estate to be unfit for the Christian Priesthood, which Christ Himself had honoured with the glory of His first miracle. [It must of course be remembered that the sacrifice of home made in obedience to Divine vocation, is a very strong recognition of the excellence of home ties, for it is the essence of sacrifice to surrender by dedication what is best.]

      vi.  Special Passages.  There are, indeed, passages of Scripture which appear to give a preference to the single rather than the married life.  Thus after our Lord on one occasion had condemned the too common facility of divorce, and had declared the marriage tie inviolable, the disciples remarked that, this being so, it was not expedient to marry [Nothing could more clearly prove the revolution in thought brought to pass by Christ than this.  Even the disciples feel that such a principle would make the yoke of marriage unbearable.] (Matt. 19:10).  In reply our Lord did not say it was not expedient.  He simply remarked that all men could not receive this saying (Matt. 19:11), and abstained from laying down any universal rule.  And similarly S. Paul, while he tells the Corinthians that under certain circumstances it would be good for a man to remain unmarried (1 Cor. 7:1), yet has no idea of imposing on whole bodies of men that which his Master said all men could not receive.  He admits that every man hath his own gift from God, one after this manner, and another after that (1 Cor. 7:7), and declares that he has no desire to cast a snare on the conscience of any man, or to strain human mature beyond what it can bear (1 Cor. 7:35).

      vii.  Conclusion.  The proposition, then, that the celibacy of the Priesthood is not commanded by God’s Law is absolutely primitive and Catholic.  “It has ever been regarded as a matter of pure discipline, varying with the different ages and the divers necessities of the Church.” [Bp. Forbes On the Articles, p. 627.]  The Article claims for the Clergy the same freedom as is allowed the people, the same freedom as was conceded under the Jewish Law.  But it by no means regards Clerical marriage as a matter of course.  It leaves the ultimate decision to the individual conscience, and the question for each person to solve is whether marriage is likely or not to promote the spiritual life. [Whether it will tend in the language of the Article “ad pietatem.”]  Our Lord spoke of continence as a Grace given to a few, and it is clear that He would commend those, who embrace voluntarily whatever privation single life involves in order to yield themselves more effectually a living sacrifice to duty and to God. [See Mason’s Faith of the Gospel, p. 342.  2nd Ed. 1889.]  What the Article plainly demands is that great care and prayerful forethought should be exercised before the married state is entered upon by those in Holy Orders, who are called to be an example unto the flock which “Christ purchased for Himself with His own Blood.”

Article  XXXIII

      i.  Source and Language.  The Thirty-third Article is based on the Fifth Article of the Augsburg Confession, and in language has undergone no change since the first draft in 1553.

      ii.  The Object.  Its object is to settle questions which arose in the 16th century respecting internal discipline, a topic which excited the most vehement disputation in the reign of Edward VI. [See Hardwick, Hist. Articles, pp. 91, 104.]  For several sects of disordered spiritualists, setting at naught the letter of Holy Scripture, professed to have reached such a stage of perfection, that they were beyond all need of discipline.

      iii.  Analysis.  The question as to the right of the Church to exercise discipline is not raised in the Article.  It is assumed, and the only point discussed is the way in which it is to be carried out.  It affirms that:–

(i) He who by open denunciation ... is rightly cut off from the unity of the Church and excommunicated, “ought to be regarded by the whole body of the faithful as a heathen man and a publican; and that

(ii) He is to be so regarded, until he be openly reconciled by penance and received into the Church by a Judge that hath authority thereunto.”

      iv.  Jewish Excommunication.  Under the Jewish Law there were three kinds of excommunication:

(a) One of the simplest description, involving exclusion from the congregation for a period of a month, or, in the event of impenitence, two or three months. [נִדּוּי  Niddui.  See Buxtorf, Lex. Chald., Smith’s Dictionary of Christian Antiquities.]

(b) A second, or more severe kind, accompanied with imprecations from Deut. 28 and other places of Scripture: [חֶרֶם  Cherem.  With one under this sentence none might consort, no, not to eat.  To this S. Paul is supposed to allude in 1 Cor. 5:11.]

(c) The third and heaviest form, involving total expulsion from the Synagogue, and handing over to the power of the Evil One. [שַׁמּתָּא  Shammata; comp. John 9:34, και εξέβαλον αυτον έξω; 12:42, δια τους Φαρισαίους ουχ ωμολόγουν, ίνα μη αποσυνάγωγοι γένωνται.]

      v.  In the New Testament we find our Lord laying down three courses to be observed in the case of offences.  He enjoins that if a brother sin against another, (i) The party, who deems himself offended, is to tell the other privately of the matter which has caused offence; (ii) If this fails, there is to be reprehension before two or three witnesses; (iii) In the event of continued refusal to be reconciled, then the offended party is to tell the matter to the Church, and, if there be still no signs of penitence, the offender is to be no longer regarded as a Christian, but as a heathen man and a publican (Matt. 18:15–17).

      vi.  Apostolic Practice.  In accordance with these regulations we find S. Paul in the case of the incestuous person at Corinth enjoining the members of the Church there to assemble together in the Name of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 5:4), and while he himself is with them in spirit, to deliver over the offender to Satan for the destruction of his flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the day of the Lord Jesus (1 Cor. 5:4, 5).  And when the incestuous man repents, the same Apostle enjoins the Corinthians to restore and forgive him, and promises that whosoever they forgive he will forgive also (2 Cor. 2:5–11).  Again, he threatens to enquire judicially into the case of certain persons in the same Church, and to deal sharply with them according to the power which the Lord had given him (2 Cor. 13:10).  Thus also he informs Timothy that he had himself excommunicated Hymenaeus and Alexander (1 Tim. 1:20), and he gives directions to him and to Titus how they are to judge, rebuke, and reject wherever necessary (1 Tim. 5:19–21, Tit. 3:10, 11).

      vii.  Christian Excommunication.  That the example of S. Paul should be followed in the early Church was only natural, and we find that, as amongst the Jews, the exercise of discipline was carried out on a graduated scale: (a) The more lenient form consisted of separation from the Holy Eucharist and from the prayers of the faithful, but it did not exclude the offender wholly from the Church; (b) an intermediate form excluded the offender for a longer period than the first; (c) the great Excommunication, called “Anathema,” involved a total exclusion from all Church communion and from all Christian privileges. [See Bingham, Eccl. Antiq., Bk. xvi., Ch. ii. 7, 8; and Smith’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities.]  The Judge or Officer, who was empowered by the early Church to impose and remove [For the form observed at such a solemn anathema, see the office in the Sarum Pontifical, Maskell, Mon. Rit. Eccl. Angl. II. clxv.] the penalties of Excommunication was the Bishop.  But during the Middle Ages this power was claimed almost exclusively for the Popes, and in their hands acquired a new and terrible meaning.  Of this we have prominent examples in the Excommunication of the Emperor Henry IV by Pope Gregory VII, and the Interdict, under which all England was laid in the reign of John by Pope Innocent III.

      viii.  The Reformers generally recognized the power of Excommunication, as is proved by the statement contained in the Augsburg and Saxon Confessions.  Calvin was a very strict asserter of this authority on the part of the Church, and divided it into (1) private monition, (2) reprehension before witnesses, (3) exclusion from the Holy Communion, humiliation before God, and open confession before the Church. [Calvin, Instit. iv. xii. 2.  This Reformer exempted no one, not even the sovereign, from such censures, and he quotes the case of Theodosius excommunicated by S. Ambrose as a precedent for rigour in all cases.]  In our own Church we have in the Commination Service the recitation of the doom of willful sinners as contained in Deut. 28:1–26, [For the recitation of these dooms in the time of Joshua see Josh. 8:33–35.] and the Rubric before the Holy Communion directs the Priest to repel notorious and evil livers from participation in that Holy Feast, provided that he at once acquaints the Bishop of the fact of his so doing.  The Excommunication contemplated in the Article is that known as “the greater Excommunication”.  It can never be inflicted except by a Judge in a properly constituted Ecclesiastical court, and this is implied by the words “rightly cut off,” that is in a formal and regular manner, and even now the power of these courts to excommunicate, and even to order penance for living in incest, adultery, or fornication has not been entirely taken away. [The extent to which it still remains is substantially defined by the Act 53 George III. c. 127.  See Hook’s Church Dictionary, p. 339, new edition, 1887, and Phillimore’s Eccles. Law, p. 1375.]

Article  XXXIV

      i.  Origin.  The Thirty-fourth Article is derived from the Fifth of the Thirteen Articles of 1538, [“Traditiones vero et ritus atque caremonia, quae vel ad decorem vel ordinem vel disciplinam Ecclesiae ab hominibus sunt institutae, non omnino necesse est ut eaedem sint ubique ant prorsus similes.  Hae enim et variae fuere, et variari possunt pro regionum et morum diversitate, ubi decus, ordo, et utilitas Ecclesiae videbuntur postulare.”  Art. v de. Ecclesia.  The following paragraph is written on a loose slip of paper, as if subsequently added: ‘Hae enim et variae fuere, et variari possunt pro regionum et morum diversitate, ubi decus decensque ordo principibus rectoribusque regionum videbuntur postulare; ita tamen ut nihil varietur aut instituatur contra verbum Dei manifestum.’  Hardwick, Hist. of Articles, Appendix II. p. 264.] which contains many of the expressions incorporated in the former.

      ii.  Language.  As originally drafted in 1553 it consisted of only two clauses, the present first and second.  The third clause was not added till 1563, after the Council of Trent had so far sought to annihilate the distinction of National Churches, as to introduce a uniformity, not only of doctrine, but also of ceremonial and of discipline throughout the West. [The question of “the indeterminate and ever-widening authority which the Popes asserted over the kingdoms and Churches of the West” had been submitted to the judgment of Western Christendom so early as the Council of Pisa in 1409.  The national and conciliar or anti-Papal view had been boldly urged by such great Gallicans as Gerson and Peter d’Ailly, and it is interesting to note the strength of their position in the fact that at the Council of Constance in 1414 the votes of those present were given by nations and not individually; but at the Council of Basel in 1437 the position was reversed, “its method of procedure ran counter to the new direction which had been communicated to European federacy by the action of the Constance congress,” and thus the way was paved for the final triumph of Pontifical Absolutism at the conclusion of the Council of Trent in 1563.  Compare Symonds, Renaissance in Italy, The Catholic Reaction, Pt. I. pp. 98 sqq.]

      iii.  Object.  While, then, it asserts in opposition to the teaching of the Anabaptists that (1) Church traditions, [“The word ‘tradition’ in the sense in which the Article means it to be taken, is synonymous with the term ‘consuetudo,’ meaning such a custom as is produced by the simultaneous and frequent action of the greater part of a community.”  Bp. Forbes, On the Articles, p. 670.  Compare the answer of Gregory the Great to the second Interrogation of S. Augustine, “Ex singulis ergo quibusque Ecclesiis, quae pia, quae religiosa, quae recta sunt elige, et haec quasi in fasciculum collecta apud Anglorum mentes in consuetudinem depone.”  Bede. Hist. Eccl. ii. 27.] ceremonies, rites and customs ought not to be violated at the impulse of man’s private judgment, and that (2) private persons are not justified of their own will in breaking the traditions and ceremonies of the Church, so long as they are not repugnant to God’s Word, [“That paramount authority of Holy Scripture, which is so remarkable a characteristic of the Thirty-nine Articles, and which the Church of England inherited from the great teachers of the Middle Ages, supplies the limit to the diversity of the traditions of the Church.”  Bp. Forbes, On the Articles, p.672.  The limitations to the influence of such consuetudo is suggested by Cyprian’s attitude towards Pope Stephen in respect of the re-baptism of heretics: “Proinde frustra quidem qui ratione vincuntur consuetudinem nobis opponunt; quasi consuetudo major sit veritate, aut id sit in spiritualibus sequendum quod in melius fuerit a Sancto Spiritu revelatum.”  Cypr. de Haeret. Baptiz., Ep. lxxiii.] it stoutly affirms that (3) every particular or National Church has authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites of the Church ordained only by man’s authority, provided only that all things be done to edifying.

      iv.  The Teaching of Scripture does not supply us with much reliable information for or against the first of these three statements.  S. Paul lays it down as a general rule that all things should be done unto edifying (1 Cor. 14:26), and that in church everything should be done decently and in order (1 Cor. 14:40).  These directions of the Apostle leave much liberty in the ordaining of the ceremonies and services of the Church.

      v.  The Teaching of Church History makes it plain that the different Churches, though wonderfully concordant in doctrine and Apostolical government, yet exhibited great variety in discipline and ritual.  Thus

(a) The Eastern and Western Churches differed as regards the time of keeping Easter.  The Western Churches keeping it as we keep it now, so that it always falls on a Sunday, while the Churches of Asia commemorated the Crucifixion on the fourteenth day of the month Nisan, after the manner of the Jewish Passover, on whatever day of the week it might fall, and the Resurrection on the sixteenth. [See the Chronicon Paschale, i. pp. 12–14, ed. Dindorf; Kentz, Handbuch, i. 243 ff.  For the visit of S. Polycarp of Smyrna to Anicetus, Bishop of Rome, on the subject see Eusebius H. E. iv. 14. v. 24, § 16.]

(b) The Church of Rome differed from the Church of Africa on the important question of the rebaptism of heretics.  While Cyprian and the African Bishops maintained that those who had been baptized by heretics ought to be rebaptized; [“The same view was held in Asia Minor, Alexandria, and many other Eastern Churches, and was sanctioned by a series of provincial Synods at Carthage, Iconium, and Synnada.”  Cheetham’s First Six Centuries, p. 153.] Pope Stephen and the Roman Church maintained that such Baptism was valid, and therefore could not be repeated. [For Stephen’s keen opposition to Cyprian on the point see Fermilian’s letter to Cyprian, Cyp. Epist. 75, c. 28.  The contest was an obstinate one and outlived both the principal combatants.  Gradually the Roman practice prevailed, and was sanctioned at the Synod of Arles in the year 314.  Hardouin’s Conc., i. 265.]

(c) Again, Churches differed as to the mode in which the Jewish Sabbath ought to be treated, some observing the Lord’s Day only, others the Saturday and Jewish Sabbath also; some were wont to fast on Friday, the day of our Lord’s Crucifixion, others on Friday and Saturday also, as the day on which the Lord lay in the grave. [Especially those of the Patriarchate of Antioch.  There was a marked difference in manner between those who did observe the Saturday.  In the East it was customary to observe it as a Festival, in the West as a Fast.  “Alii, sicut maxime populi Orientis, propter requiem significandam mallent relaxare jejunium, alii propter humilitatem mortis Domini jejunare, sicut Romana et nonnullae Occidentis Ecclesiae.”  S. Aug. ad Casulam, Ep. xxxvi; cf. Bingham Antiqq. xx. (3) 5, 6.]

(d) Once more, each Bishop was allowed to frame his own Liturgy, [Hence we have the statement of S. Augustine respecting the custom of S. Ambrose: “Cum Romam venio, jejuno Sabbato; cum hic sum, non jejuno.  Sic enim tu, ad quam forte Ecclesiam veneris, ejus morem serva, si cuiquam non vis esse scandalo, nec quemquam tibi.”  S. Aug. Ad Inquisitiones Januar. i. Ep. liv.  On the variety of customs in different Churches see Sozomen, Eccl. Hist. vii. c. 19.] and hence we have the Liturgies of Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople, Rome, Gaul, and Spain, in which while certain characteristics remain constant, there are many differences of detail and of arrangement. [See Archdeacon Cheetham’s First Six Centuries, p. 380.]

      Thus the action of the Holy Ghost within the Church of Christ illumines the minds of the different nations without destroying their national characteristics, and therefore we cannot be surprised to find many marked peculiarities in the services and ceremonies of the different Churches throughout the world.  Forms of devotion and edifying rites will be ever profoundly modified by climate, by the history of thought, and by the degree of civilization that may have been attained. [Bp. Forbes, On the Articles, p. 672.]  Absolute uniformity of ritual and worship is not desirable.  It may be gained, but it will be at the expense of customs, to which tradition imparts a peculiar value, and of that sense of largeness and freedom, which is so important an element, and so conducive to the health and proper action of the Body of Christ. [For the moral bearing of the question comp. S. Aug. ad Casulam, Ep. xxxvi.  “In his enim rebus de quibus nihil certi statuit Scriptura divina, mos populi Dei, vel instituta majorum pro lege tenenda sunt.  De quibus si disputare voluerimus, et ex aliorum consuetudine alios improbare, orietur interminata luctatio, quae labore sermocinationis, quum certa documenta nulla veritatis insinuet, utique cavendum est ne tempestate contentionis serenitatem caritatis obnubilet.”]

      vi.  The Second Clause of the Article contains a caution against those persons, who, of their private judgment, wantonly break or neglect the traditions of the Church.  For by such infringement (i) they “offend against the common order of the Church;” (ii) they “hurt the authority of the magistrate;” [The authority of the Church in these matters is placed first; and then the injury done to the authority of the magistrate.  “For since, according to ancient custom, the magistrate gave a civil sanction to customs of ‘the common order of the Church,’ then, to infringe that, to which he had lent this sanction, was to lower his authority also.  The wont of giving such civil sanction to the laws of the Church dates back to the earliest times of the converted Empire.”  See Bp. Forbes, On the Articles, pp. 676–679.] (iii) they “wound the consciences of the weak [“In Rom. 14:1 sqq., the ασθενής contemplated by S. Paul is the man who has his own private rule, probably of Essenic origin, relative to the use of meats and the observance of days; he is free to frame and use such a rule, but not free to regard it as of universal obligation; the δυνατός on the other hand, who binds himself by no such rule, is not free to treat the ασθενής with contempt.”  Comp. Liddon, in loc.] brethren.”

      vii.  The authority of Scripture is strong against those who do this.  Thus

(a) Our Lord enjoined His disciples to obey the Pharisees, because they sat in Moses’ seat [Επι της Μωυσέως καθέδρας εκάθισαν οι γραμματεις και οι Φαρισαιοι· πάντα ουν όσα αν είπωσιν ποιήσατε και τηρειτε.  Observe the tenses; ποιήσατε = “do the special act enjoined”; τηρειτε = “continue to observe”.] (Matt. 23:2).

(b) The Apostles in all things not unlawful adhered to Jewish observances and followed the customs of their own nation even after the Church of Christ had been established [“God had not yet abolished the synagogue; the Sanhedrin still asserted a rightful jurisdiction over the Jewish Church, and the believers submitted to it on all points but one, where they must obey god rather than man.”  Döllinger, First Age of the Church, pp. 72, 73.] (Acts 2:46; 21:20, 26), and S. Paul specially exhorts his Thessalonian converts to withdraw themselves from every brother that walked disorderly [Στέλλεσθαι υμας απο παντος αδελφου ατάκτως περιπατουντος.  2 Thess. 3:6.  The literal meaning is to take in your sails (στέλλεσθαι τα ιστία) so as to steer clear of a rock or reef.  Here to part company with, decline from, and avoid a brother who walked disorderly.] (2 Thess. 3:6), and while he bids the Christians of Rome mark those who caused the divisions and occasions of stumbling contrary to the doctrine which they learned (Rom. 16:17), he enjoins all to obey their spiritual rulers, and to submit themselves to them. [Comp 1 Cor. 16:16, 1 Thess. 5:12, Heb. 13:17.]

      viii.  National Churches.  The Article concludes with a vigorous assertion of the independence of National Churches.  Obviously this independence in no way affects the Faith.  The Faith is one everywhere, and at all times.  What the Article claims is only that “every particular or National Church [See Bp Forbes, On the Articles, p. 684.] hath authority to ordain, change, and abolish ceremonies or rites ordained only by man’s authority.”  Even under the Empire National Churches, like those of Africa, Spain, and Gaul, used each their own code, and were marked by variations of practice in things non-essential. [Compare the Sixth Canon of the Council of Nicaea in reference to such a national independence in things nonessential, τα αρχαια έθη κρατείω, τα εν Αιγύπτω και Λιβύη και Πενταπόλει, ώστε τα της Αλεξανδρείας επίσκοπον πάντων έχειν την εξουσίαν, επειδη και εν τη Ρώμη επισκόπω τουτο σύνηθές εστιν· ομοίως δε και κατα την Αντιόχειαν και εν ταις άλλαις επαρχίαις, τα πρεσβεια σώζεσθαι ταις εκκλησίαις.]  And if this was so, much more is variation permissible in reference to inferior matters, such as discipline, ceremonies, and whatsoever tends to the edification of each local Church.  This principle was fully admitted by Gregory the Great, [See Bede Eccl Hist. i. 27. “Mihi placet, sive in Romana, sive in Galliarum, seu in qualibet ecclesia, aliquid invenisti quod plus omnipotenti Deo possit placere, sollicite eligas, et in Anglorum Ecclesia, quae adhuc ad fidem nova est, institutione praecipua, quae de multis Ecclesiis colligere potuisti, infundas.  Non enim pro locis res, sed pro bonis rebus loca amanda sunt.”] when he bade S. Augustine of Canterbury carefully select whatever he found in the Church of Rome, or Gaul, or in any Church whatever that was likely to please Almighty God, and introduce it into the Church of England, then new in the Faith, remembering that we must love not things for places, but places for things. [At the Council of Florence, a Canon was made in the exact sense of this very Article, that everyone should observe the rites and customs of his own Church, which it is not lawful for anyone to change by his private authority.  For the national character of our branch of the Church Catholic as “founded in the estate of prelacy within the realm of England,” see Earl Selborne’s Defence, pp. 9, 10; Aubrey Moore’s History of the Reformation, pp. 35, 40.]  This direction of the great Bishop is in harmony with the position taken up in the present Article.

Group  V.

Articles  XXXV–XXXIX.

      The Articles in this group deal with certain points affecting the Church and the Realm of England.

      (a)  They treat of the two Books of Homilies put forth in the Sixteenth Century (Art. XXXV), and defend the Anglican Ordinal as containing all things really necessary to valid Ordination (Art. XXXVI);

      (b)  They define the limits of the Royal Supremacy, and assert its right to be free from all foreign jurisdiction (Art. XXXVII);

      (c)  Lastly they touch on certain points put forward by the Anabaptists respecting capital punishment and the lawfulness of war (Art. XXXVII), community of goods (Art. XXXVIII), and the right of a Christian man to take an oath in a Court of Justice (Art. XXXIX).

Article  XXXV

      i.  The Title of this Article was originally Homiliae, “Homilies,” and in 1571, De Homiliis, “Of Homilies”.  In 1563 the statement about the Homilies, without the Title, was appended to the preceding Article on Ecclesiastical Traditions.  The Catalogus Homiliarum, so entitled, constituted the next Article, Art. XXXIV of that year.  In 1571 the Title De Homiliis and the text subjoined were introduced as an independent Article by Archbishop Parker.

      ii.  The Word Homily [The substantive Ομιλία occurs in 1 Cor. 25:33, φθείρουσιν ήθη χρήσθ’ ομιλίαι κακαί.  Here the word is used in the sense of “evil company,” “Evil company doth corrupt good manners.”  The verb from which it is formed occurs more frequently in the New Testament.  Thus in S. Luke 24:14 we are told of the two journeying to Emmaus that they communed (ωμιλουν)with each other of all those things which had happened; and in Acts 20:11 we find S. Paul at Troas talking to those assembled (ομιλήσας) a long while, even till break of day; and it is said on another occasion that Felix communed with Paul (ωμίλει) Acts 24:25.] denotes (1) a familiar or colloquial discourse, [In Xenophon Mem. 1. ii. 6 and 15 the word ομιλία is used for the instruction which a philosopher gave his pupils in familiar conversation.] (2) an inartificial, popular address delivered to a congregation. [The word did not pass into common use in this sense in Latin before the fifth century.  Victor Vitensis towards the end of that century speaks of Augustine’s popular addresses, “quos Graeci homilias vocant,” as if ‘homilia’ were still somewhat strange to his Latin readers.  Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq. i. 781.]  From the beginning of the Church’s activity the preaching of Sermons and Homilies formed a very important department of its teaching office, and mainly took the form of comments on the Divine Scriptures, and expositions of large consecutive passages.  These expositions and “teachings” [The most primitive types of Homilies are perhaps the discourses which accompanied the celebration of the Holy Eucharist (Acts 20:7 sqq).  To these Justin Martyr refers as follows: ειτα παυσαμένον του αναγινώσκοντος ο προεστως δια λόγον την νουθεσίαν και πρόκλησιν της των καλων τούτων μιμήσεως ποιειται, Apol. i. 67.  Another instance is the instruction, which was delivered to the Catechumens at the Traditio Symboli, and of this S. Augustine’s Sermo ad Catechumenos is a specimen.  This instruction in subsequent times assumed a fixed form and was termed in the Latin Church Praefatio Symboli.  Exhortations from the Holy Scriptures form a great part of the writings of S. Cyril of Jerusalem, S. Chrysostom, S. Gregory of Nyssa, S. Gregory Nazianzen, and S. Basil in the East, of S. Ambrose, S. Augustine, and S. Leo in the West.  Bede’s Homiliae de Tempore were much used by those who were unable or unwilling to compose sermons.  Charles the Great commissioned Paul Warnefrid to draw up a collection of Homilies from the Fathers.  In A.D. 813 the Council of Rheims enjoined the Bishops to preach Sermons of the Fathers in the dialect of their several dioceses.  The Collection of AElfric was probably the successor of various other collections of English Homilies, some of which may have existed before the time of Charles the Great.  See Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiqq. ii. p. 782.] lived on during the Middle Ages, [During the Middle Ages the Sermons of S. Bernard, of eminent preachers belonging to the Dominican Order, of Savonarola, of S. Anthony of Padua exerted a great effect.  For the names of authors of mediaeval Sermons which were deemed most worthy of preservation after the invention of printing, see Bp. Forbes On the Articles, p. 692.] and the habit of preaching varied with the fervour or languor of the Church.  In the East it gradually died out, and at present hardly forms any part of the public worship of the Church.  In the West it never entirely ceased even in the worst of times.  Preaching at the time of the Reformation had greatly deteriorated.  The practice had almost been abandoned by the parochial Clergy and left to the Friars.  The Reformers, before the actual breach with Rome, had already begun to use this weapon for their own purposes, and when the breach had taken place, they saw plainly its great importance. [Postils on the Epistles and Gospels were, with Cranmer’s sanction, edited and in part composed by Richard Taverner, Clerk of the Signet to Henry VIII, as early as 1540.]

      iii.  The First Book of Homilies was the first book pertaining to the teaching of the Church of England which was put forth in the reign of Edward VI.  Of the Twelve Homilies which it contained three at least, including that Of the Salvation of all Mankind, Of the true and lively Faith, and the Exhortation to the reading and knowledge of the Holy Scripture, appear to have been written by Cranmer himself, while those Of the Misery of all Mankind and Of Christian Love and Charity were the work of Bishop Bonner and his Chaplain. [Hardwick’s History of the Reformation, p. 211, n. 5.]  Nine editions of this book were printed before the end of 1547, but they were received with scant favour.  If the Priest misliked both them and the “Men of the New Learning,” from whom they emanated, he read them unintelligibly.  If the people objected to them, there was such talking and babbling in church, that not a word could be heard. [Hence the necessity for the words of the Article, “eas in Ecclesiis per ministros diligenter et clare, ut a populo intelligi possint recitandas esse judicavimus.”]

      iv.  The Second Book of Homilies.  It was intended during the reign of Edward VI to put out a fresh Book of Homilies, but this was prevented by his death and the accession of Queen Mary. [Bonner, however, published some Homilies in Mary’s reign.]  When Elizabeth came to the throne, a second Book of Homilies was drawn up, and together with the Thirty-Nine Articles was submitted to Convocation in 1562.  The queen took some time to consider them and they were not in the hands of the public till Aug. 1, 1563.  These new Homilies, twenty in number, were, it is supposed, to a great extent the work of Bishop Jewel.  But their authorship has not in every case been ascertained, and a considerable portion of the material, out of which the book was framed, is traceable to foreign sources. [Hardwick’s History of the Reformation, p. 249, n. 4.  Of Homily x., on “Certain Passages in Scripture,” a few sentences were taken from a tract of Erasmus; Homily xi. “Of Almsdeeds” is greatly drawn from S. Cyprian; Hom. xviii. “Of Matrimony,” is derived half from Veit Dietricke of Nuremberg, and half from S. Chrysostom; Hom. xix. “Of Repentance,” is translated to a great extent from Rudolph Gualther.  The 21st “Against Rebellion” was added on the occasion of the rising in the North of England instigated with a view of restoring the Roman obedience by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland.]

      v.  Their Reception.  At first, as we have seen, it was necessary to enjoin the Clergy to read the Homilies distinctly, on account of the general dislike of the innovations they contained.  In the course of time, however, the tone of feeling changed, and the Puritans were the chief party who disliked them, [Hardwick On the Articles, p. 205; History of Me Reformation, p. 232.  Many of the exiles during the reign of Mary, unaccustomed for some years to such services as those of the English Church, no sooner returned than they lost no time in expressing their dislike of them.  “Remove Homylies, Articles, Injunctions” was soon the cry.] on the ground that nothing uninspired ought to be read in church.  The Homilies were now enjoined to be read by way of stifling “the prophesyings,” [The “Method of Prophesying,” especially rife in East Anglia, under the patronage of Parkhurst, Bishop of Norwich, was rigorously suppressed by Archbishop Parker in 1574.  About two years later Archbishop Grindal though opposed by the queen, who held that the remedy would be found in great measure in the use of the Homilies, attempted to regulate “the Prophesyings.”  Strype’s Grindal, p. 325 sqq., 341 sqq.; Cardwell, Doc. Ann. i. pp. 389 sqq.] and for this reason were appealed to by James I, who directed their use. [See his directions concerning “preachers,” dated Aug. 4, 1622.  They were due in part to the action of Knight, an Oxford Preacher, who had defended the right of the subject to arm against the sovereign.  The king immediately “tuned the pulpits” by requiring Archbishop Abbott to issue, through his suffragans, six “Directions,” to the Preachers, which limited the subjects to be treated of to such as were warranted by the formularies of the Church, and forbade the discussion of such matters as predestination, and the royal prerogative, and all this under penalty of suspension.  Collier, Eccl. Hist. i. pp. 723 sqq.; Cardwell, Doc. Ann. ii. 198 sqq.]  There is little danger in these days of the Homilies being esteemed by the people as of like authority with Holy Scripture, and the objection to them on this ground would equally apply to the use of Sermons and Hymns as part of public worship.

      vi.  Their Authority.  The measure of the authority of the Homilies has been diversely estimated.  While some would hardly attach to them any real value, others would elevate them almost to the position of a standard of doctrine.  Their value is sufficiently expressed in the words of the Article itself, when it says that they “contain a godly and wholesome doctrine,” necessary for the times in which they were drawn up.  We are not required to express approval of every statement which occurs in them.  The assent we are called upon to give to them is general, not specific.  They were well adapted for the age which called them forth, and are of no little value as reflecting the views of those, who reformed our services and drew up our Articles, and as throwing light on documents more authoritative than themselves. [Bp Browne, On the Articles, p. 777.]

Article  XXXVI

      i.  The present Title of the XXXVI-th Article varies considerably from that in the original draft.  In 1553 it ran, “Of the booke of Praiers, and Ceremonies of the Churche of Englande.” [Or as it ran in Latin, “De Libro Praecationum et caeremoniarum Ecclesiae Anglicanae.”]  Thus it covered the whole Prayer Book.  But in 1563 the part of the Article relating to the Prayer Book itself was omitted, [It was incorporated with the Preface to the Prayer Book.] and it was restricted to the Ordinal or the “Consecration of Bishops and Ministers”.

      ii.  The Ordinal.  On Jan. 31, 1550, six prelates and six other men of the realm, “learned in God’s law,” were appointed to prepare an Ordinal as a companion to the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, [See Procter on The Book of Common Prayer, p. 31.] and this with a few changes was added to the revised Prayer Book of 1552.  The Ordinal, thus drawn up, was again revised by Convocation in 1661, [Lathbury, History of Convocation, p. 288.] and has ever since been retained in the Church of England.

      iii.  Object.  It was to confirm the authority of this Ordinal that the present Article was inserted by the Convocation of 1562 in place of the old XXXV-th Article, which covered the whole Prayer Book.  The intention of those who drew it up was to confute the views of two opposite parties: – (a) the Mediaevalists, who objected to the Ordinal on the ground that it lacked some, as they supposed, essential ceremonies; (b) the extreme Reformers, who took grave exception to it as containing some superstitious forms and phrases.

      iv.  Analysis.  As against the first class of objectors the Article asserts that

(a) The Ordinal set forth in the reign of Edward VI contains all things necessary to both “Consecration and Ordering”;

(b) As against the second it affirms that it contains nothing “ that of itself is superstitious and ungodly”;

(c) It concludes by stating clearly and explicitly that “all such are rightly, orderly, and lawfully consecrated and ordered,” who either have been or hereafter shall be consecrated or ordered according to the Rites of this Book. [The Puritans were ever clamouring against “that prescripte Order of seruice made out of the Masse-booke.”  They maintained that in addition to its ritual deformities, the Prayer-Book was “full of corruptions,” that in the Ordinal there was one paragraph, which they never hesitated to condemn as “manifest blasphemy,” and some, for this reason, steadily refused to sign the Articles in 1571, when called into the presence of the High Commissioners.”  Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 206.]

      v.  The First Objection to the validity of our Orders on the part of Roman divines is founded on an alleged flaw in their derivation.  They are derived through Matthew Parker, [He had been chaplain to Elizabeth’s mother and her father, and in king Edward’s time, Dean of Lincoln.  The queen had an especial affection for him, and he was held in high esteem by her leading ministers.] who was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury on Sunday, December 17, 1559.  He was consecrated according to the Ordinal of the Church of England in the chapel of Lambeth Palace by William Barlow, who was Bishop of Bath and Wells before Mary’s accession, and was then Bishop-elect of Chichester; by John Scory, formerly Bishop of Chichester, then Bishop-elect of Hereford; by Miles Coverdale, formerly Bishop of Exeter; [Scory and Coverdale were consecrated at Croydon on Aug. 30, 1551, by Cranmer of Canterbury, Ridley of London, and Hodgkyns, Bishop suffragan of Bedford.] and by John Hodgkyns, [Hodgkyns was consecrated on Dec. 9, 1537, according to the Sarum Pontifical by Stokesley, Bishop of London, Hilsey, Bishop of Rochester, and Wharton, Bishop of S. Asaph.] Bishop suffragan of Bedford.  A story, invented some fifty years later, endeavoured to throw discredit on Parker’s consecration by representing that it took place in a tavern in a ludicrous manner. [“The ‘Nag’s Head’ fable was not alleged till the beginning of the seventeenth century, and even Canon Estcourt allows that it is very unfortunate it was ever seriously put forward; for it is so absurd on the face of it that it has led to the suspicion of Catholic theologians not being sincere in the objections they make to Anglican orders.”  Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations discussed, p. 754.  “When the fiction was put forward the aged Earl of Nottingham, who (then being 23 years of age) had been, as a connection of Parker’s, present at the actual consecration in Lambeth Chapel, when the story was told at the Privy Council, declared it to be false, and referred in confirmation of this statement to the account which had been drawn up at the time and given by the Archbishop to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  The king thereupon sent for it, and it was found to corroborate the earl’s statement.  The chaplain to the earl’s son also declared that his father had often heard from the old earl the same account of the consecration.”  See Burnet’s History of the Reformation, vol. v. p. 553.]  But no historical fact is more certain than the due and orderly performance of the ceremony in the chapel of Lambeth Palace.  Then it is objected that the evidence is insufficient to show that Bishop Barlow, who acted as the head of the Commission for consecrating Parker, was himself consecrated.  This, however, would not amount to an insuperable defect, even if it were true, for all the Bishops laid their hands on Parker, and all repeated the words, [Hierarchia Anglicana, p.14.  This exceptional precaution was founded on the precedent of Archbishop Chichele’s consecration.  See Pusey’s Eirenicon, i. p. 232.] and thus each performed the complete act of consecration.  But, in point of fact, there is no valid ground for doubting the fact of Barlow’s consecration.  It is true that the record of it is absent from the Lambeth register.  But this register was carelessly kept, and is acknowledged to be incomplete. [Thus in the register kept by Archbishop Warham there is no record of the consecration of Heath, who was the chief consecrator of Cardinal Pole, and whereas during his archiepiscopate there were 26 bishops consecrated, the records of 20 of these consecrations only are given, while 6 are missing, viz. Blyth of Coventry, 1503; Penry of Bangor, 1504; Stanley of Ely, 1506; Stokesley of London, 1530; Gardiner of Winchester, 1531. Haddan, Preface to Bramhall, iii. p. 17; Hierarchia Anglicana, p, 30, n.]  It lacks the record of the consecration of Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and Stokesley, Bishop of London, who were consecrated in the reign of Henry VIII, and of some six or seven prelates, who are known to have been consecrated during Cranmer’s primacy.  The omission, therefore, of Barlow’s name in the record may be regretted, but it is no real defect as regards his consecration, and when it is considered that Parker was elected by the Chapter of Canterbury, and confirmed without opposition at Bow Church; [The certificate of his election at Bow Church was signed by his four consecratory, and is extant in Parker’s Register, Hierarch. Angl. p. 14.] that he was consecrated by four bishops, all of whom laid their hands upon him; that no official or formal protest was made at the time against his consecration; that no rival claimant to the See was put forward; [The mandate for Parker’s enthronement was signed on Dec. 31, 1559; he was enthroned Jan. 1, 1560; and was admitted to the temporalities of his See on March 21 by Royal letters after homage had been made to the queen in the usual manner.  See Patents, 2 Eliz. p. 14; Strype, Parker, Bk. ii. ch. i.] and that for eleven [The Diary of Archbishop Parker, preserved in the Library of Corpus Christi College contains the following entry: – “17. Decembr. Anno 1559.  Consecratus sum in Archiepiscopum Cantuar.  Heu!  Heu!  Domine in quae tempora servasti me?  Jam veni in profundum aquarum et tempestas demersit me.  O Domine vim patior, responde pro me et Spiritu Tuo principali confirma me.”  Strype, Parker, Appendix, p. 15, gives extracts from this Diary.] years the Roman Catholics in England did not formally withdraw from the jurisdiction of the Anglican Episcopate, it is difficult to see how any really valid objection can be made to the claim of Parker to have been rightly and duly consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury. [“When,” writes Dr Lingard, “we find Barlow during ten years, the remainder of Henry’s reign, constantly associated, as a brother, with the other consecrated Bishops, discharging with them all the duties, both spiritual and secular, of a consecrated Bishop, summoned equally with them to Parliament and Convocation, taking his seat among them, according to seniority, and voting on all subjects as one of them; it seems most unreasonable to suppose, without direct proof, that he had never received that sacred rite, without which, according to the laws of both Church and State, he could not have become a member of the episcopal body.”  See Lingard, History of England, vol. vi., pp. 329, Appendix; Dalbus, Les Ordinations Anglicanes, p. 18.  “The result of my investigation,” says Dr Döllinger, “is that I have no manner of doubt as to the validity of the Episcopal succession in the English Church.”  Bonn Conference 1874, p. 51.]

      vi.  The Second Objection is to the form and matter of Anglican Ordinations as lacking certain essential ceremonies.  The essence, we are told, of valid Ordination, the necessary form and matter, includes at the consecration of a Bishop the delivery to him of the pastoral staff and ring, and at the Ordination of a Priest, the handing to him of the chalice and paten with the words, “Receive the power to offer sacrifice.”  This omission, it is urged, vitiates the Anglican Ordinal.  But it may be replied without fear of contradiction that the delivery of the pastoral staff and ring to a Bishop cannot be traced back further than the eighth century, and the porrection, as it is called, to the Priest of the sacred vessels [The delivery of the paten cum oblatis and the calix cum vino followed the chrism, or the anointing of the hands of the priest.  The chrism, however, was not in general use till the 9th century, and there is no mention of the porrection of the sacred vessels in the oldest Ordinals.  See Smith’s Dict. Christian Antiquities, ii. p. 515; Gore, The Church and the Ministry, p. 68, note.  The delivery of the chalice and paten and pastoral staff was retained in the first Prayer Book of Edward VI, but laid aside in that of 1552.] was unknown to the Western Church for a thousand years, and is still unknown to the Eastern Church. [In the Eastern Church the delivery of the sacred vessels takes place after Ordination, and no formula for the delivery is prescribed.  The great Roman theologian Morinus in the latter part of the seventeenth century allows that the rite was unknown in the Church for a thousand years.  See Walcott’s English Ordinal, p. 260.]  If, therefore, these ceremonies constitute “the essential matter and form of orders,” all the Ordinations of the first thousand years and all those of the Eastern Church also are vitiated.  The argument, therefore, from omission proves too much, and it is certain that the further back we go, the simpler do we find all the forms of ordination in all parts of the world, while the real essentials of ordination in Apostolic times were (1) imposition of hands [See 1 Tim. 4:14, and 2 Tim. 1:6.  Even Bellarmine allows that the imposition of hands is the essential part of Ordination, and he cites the decree of the Council of Trent, Sess. iv., c. 3, concerning Extreme Unction, where it says that the minister of extreme unction is a Bishop or Priest duly ordained per manus impositionem.  De Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 64.] and (2) prayer. [See Palmer, Orig. Lit. ii. p. 304; Collier, Eccl. Hist. v. pp. 366 sq.  As He ascended, our Lord lifted up His hands and blessed His Apostles (Luke 24:50), and this significant action was adopted afterwards by them at Ordinations.  Thus Paul and Barnabas were ordained with prayer and laying on of hands (Acts 13:3); thus Timothy was consecrated (1 Tim. 4:14; 2 Tim. 1:6); thus the Bishops, ordained by the Apostles (Acts 20:28); thus Deacons were ordained (Acts 6:3), and Priests (1 Tim. 5: 22).]

      vii.  A Third Objection is that, if the laying on of hands is sufficient matter, the words “Receive ye the Holy Ghost,” without specification of the office of Bishop or Priest, do not constitute a sufficient formula for the validity of the Consecration or Ordination.  But neither Scripture nor the Church has prescribed any particular form of words to be used on such occasions, and the introduction of the phrase “for the Office and Work of a Bishop,” in the service for the consecration of Bishops, and of the phrase “for the Office and Work of a Priest” in that for the ordering of Priests, which took effect in 1661, removes any objection, at all events, to our present Ordinal.  Moreover the form of ordination does not consist merely in the words of consecration. [“The form which accompanies the imposition of hands in Episcopal Ordination in the Roman Pontifical itself, is merely this ‘Receive the Holy Ghost’; and the prayer which follows does not directly mention the Episcopal Office.”  Palmer, Treatise on the Church, ii. p. 345.  Ed. 3, 1842.]  The whole service forms part of it, and the other prayers, which occur therein, distinctly determine the meaning of the action.  Furthermore it is to be noticed that the Bishops consecrated according to the Ordinal as it was in the reign of Elizabeth, were in no worse case than were their predecessors.  In none of the English Pontificals, except that of Exeter, is there any determining word at the time of the imposition of hands, and the occurrence in the English Ordinal of the charge of S. Paul to Timothy as Bishop (1 Tim. 3:1–6), shews that it was in the minds of the consecrators of Archbishop Parker to confer on him the authority of a Bishop.

      viii.  A Fourth Objection urged that admitting the imposition of hands and prayer to be sufficient matter and form, the English forms of ordination do not confer the power of offering sacrifice, and are therefore null.  But the offering of sacrifice is not, strictly speaking, the chief end of the Christian Ministry.  When S. Paul has occasion to dwell on the end of the Christian Ministry, he says, Christ gave some to be Apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers; for the perfecting of the saints, unto the work of ministering, unto the building up of the body of Christ, until we all attain ... unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ [Comp. Acts 20:28.] (Eph. 4:11–13).  The Apostle does not mention the offering of the Eucharistic Sacrifice as the “end” of the Ministry.  Moreover we do not find that all the ancient forms of Ordination expressly convey this power. There is no mention of it in the Ethiopic Ordination rites, in the ancient Coptic forms of Ordination, in the rite of the Syrian Jacobites, or in several of the most ancient Latin Sacramentaries a thousand years old. [Palmer, Treatise on the Church, ii. p. 346.  Ed. 3, 1842.]  The functions of the Priesthood are expressed in the Apostolic Constitutions [Const. Apost. Lib. viii. c. 16, quoted in Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 115.] in very general terms, and even Morinus allows that there is no express mention of this power in the most ancient formularies. [See Hierarchia Anglicana, p. 115.]  If it is further objected that the Church of England had no idea of conferring such power because she substituted the present form of Ordination in place of others which expressly mentioned it, it may be replied that the power of sacrificing was only expressly referred to in connection with the modern rite of “the porrection of the instruments,” which with many other modern rites was discontinued by those who drew up our present Ordinal.  The omission, however, certainly did not arise from any denial of the Eucharistic Sacrifice [“Les erreurs de l’Eglise Anglicane, surtout celles qui ont pour objet le sacerdoce et le sacrifice eucharistique, n’ont-elles pas déteint sur la rédaction de l’Ordinal au point d’en compromettre l’efficacité?  Il me semble que, sur ce point, la présomption est en faveur de la thèse anglicane.  Il n’y a pas d’hérésies positivement énoncées dans l’Ordinal; tout ce qu’on peut reprocher à ses auteurs est d’en avoir écarté toutes les expressions qui supposent un véritable sacerdoce sacrificateur et un véritable sacrifice eucharistique.  Mais c’est là chose plutôt négative; l’Ordinal n’en devient pas positivement hérétique.”  Review of “De Hierarchia Anglicana” in La Correspondance Catholique, 23 Mai, 1895, by Neuter.] in the primitive and Catholic sense. [As regards the doctrine of Intention, see above pp. 313, 314.  Barlow was required to consecrate Parker, and he did so, and we cannot but believe that he really intended to do and to say what he actually did and said in the matter of consecration.  The fact that each one of the Bishops present pronounced the consecrating words shews that the whole subject had been cautiously and seriously considered.]

      ix.  The Objections of the Puritans are of a very different kind.  The Puritans were opposed to the use of the words in the Ordination of Priests, “Receive the Holy Ghost ... Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.”  They alleged that the power of remitting and retaining sins was miraculous, confined to the Apostles, and not to be expected by other Ministers, and further that as man cannot bestow the Spirit of God, it is profane to claim the power to do so.  Now the formula “Receive ye the Holy Ghost” is grounded on the words of our Lord to His Apostles on the evening of the world’s first Easter Day, when He said to them, As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you, [On the force of these words, see above under Art. XXIII.] and when He breathed on them [Ενεφύσησε.  “The breath (πνευμα) is an emblem of the Spirit (John 3:8); and by ‘breathing,’ as S. Augustine observes, the Lord shewed that the Spirit was not the Spirit of the Father only but also His own.  The act is described as one (ενεφύσησε), and not repeated.  The gift was once for all, not to individuals but to the abiding body.”  Bp Westcott in loc.] and said Receive ye the Holy Ghost [The words in the original Greek are λάβετε πνευμα άγιον.  Here it is to be noticed that the definite article is altogether wanting.  The words, therefore, might be translated Receive ye Holy Spirit, which would imply not the Holy Spirit in His fullness, but “a gift of the Holy Spirit.”] (John 20:21, 22).  The words in the original indicate that the gift spoken of was not the personal sanctifying Grace of God in their hearts, nor the miraculous baptism of the Spirit, afterwards bestowed on the day of Pentecost, [“The Spirit which the Lord now imparted to them was His Spirit, or, as it may be expressed, the Holy Spirit as dwelling in Him.  By this He first quickened them, and then sent, according to His promise, the Paraclete to be with them, and to supply all power for the exercise of their different functions.  The relation of the Paschal to the Pentecostal gift is therefore the relation of quickening to endowing.  The one answers to the power of the Resurrection, and the other to the power of the Ascension (Godet); the one to victory and the other to Sovereignty.”  Bp. Westcott in loc.] but it was the Grace of Ordination, the right to exercise that Ministry of Reconciliation, which He had rendered effectual by His Resurrection from the dead. [For, as S. Paul says to the Corinthians, If Christ be not raised, ye are yet in your sins (1 Cor. 15:17).  See Bp. Ellicott in loc.]  Ministry, the right to minister, is one of the gifts of the Spirit (Rom. xii. 7).  This, including all that it involves, our Lord bestowed upon the Apostles, and, as we have seen, [See above.] upon all who should come after them.  Hence, when the hand of the Bishop is laid upon the head of him whom he ordains, we need not doubt that the charisma of God’s Spirit is given for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God.

      x.  Absolution.  As to the Ministry of Reconciliation no one will dispute that God alone can forgive sins and that no Priest can claim a power, which must obviously belong to Him alone.  No one again will dispute that even God cannot forgive all sins, but only the sins of those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe, for these conditions of pardon are inexorably laid down by God Himself. But God is pleased to work through men upon the world of men, and He uses a human Ministry to declare and convey His forgiveness to those, who fulfill the prescribed conditions of that forgiveness, just as He uses the instrumentality of Men to preach the word, to teach, to edify, and to comfort.  Hence every Bishop, who has authority to ordain, has also authority to declare that “the Ministry of Reconciliation” is committed to the person whom he ordains, and the newly-ordained Priest receives by Christ’s own ordinance a divine commission to minister, and at the same time a divine commission duly to exercise the power of pronouncing the absolution of sins on the prescribed conditions of faith and repentance being observed by the recipient. [As regards the whole subject see a Sermon of Bp Andrewes on S. John 20:23, preached before the Court in 1600, Works, vol. iii. p. 82 ff.  Oxford, 1843.]

Article  XXXVII

      i.  Title and Language.  The Title of Article xxxvii has remained uniform since the original draft in 1553, but the language has undergone considerable modification.  As it was first drawn up it began, “The King of England is supreme head in earth, next under Christ, of the Church of England and Ireland.” [“Rex Angliae est supremum caput in terris, post Christum, Ecclesiae Anglicanae et Hibernicae.”  To this one MS. added, “Neque in universo orbe ullum seipso majorem agnoscit a quo sua potestas et autoritas pendeat.”  Hardwick, Hist. Art., p. 342, n.]  This language is nearly identical with that of the Act of Supremacy passed in 1534 in the reign of Henry VIII, in which Henry is acknowledged as “Protector and only Supreme Head of the Church and Clergy of England,” but with the important proviso, “so far as is permitted by the Law of Christ.” [“It is plain from the recitals in that and also in another Statute of the same year, and from other proofs, that the King did not mean to claim any spiritual office or character, or any power different in its nature from what had often before been asserted as belonging of right to the English Crown.”  Earl Selborne, Defence of the Church of England, p. 32.]

      ii.  Alteration under Elizabeth.  On the accession of Mary the Acts of Henry VIII. and Edward VI were repealed.  When Elizabeth came to the throne, her first act was to restore to the Crown “the ancient jurisdiction over the State ecclesiastical and spiritual, abolishing all foreign power repugnant to the same.”  The title, however, “Supreme Head of the Church,” was never revived, and for it was substituted that of “Supreme Governor of the Church”.  In an Admonition appended to her injunctions of A.D. 1559 the Queen explained that nothing was meant by this, other than what was acknowledged to be due to “the most noble kings of famous memory,” her father and brother, [“The legislation of Henry VIII-th’s reign against the Pope’s pretensions to jurisdiction in this kingdom did but carry to their full consequences, under the circumstances of that time, principles admitted in Anglo-Saxon times, for which Norman and Plantagenet kings had contended, which had been embodied in the acts of their-Councils and Parliaments, and in which the Ecclesiastical authorities of the realm had either actively concurred or at least practically acquiesced.”  Earl Selborne, Defence of the Church of England, pp. 8, 9.] and which was of ancient time claimed by the imperial crown of this realm, – “that is, under God, to have the sovereignty and rule over all manner of persons born within these her realms, dominions, and countries, of what state, either ecclesiastical or temporal, soever they be, so as no other foreign power shall or ought to have any superiority over them.” [Cardwell’s Doc. Annals, pp. 199–201.  See the comments of Sir Matthew Hale on the Royal Supremacy, quoted by Earl Selborne, Defence of Ch. of England, pp. 13, 14.]

      iii.  Analysis.  The present Article, therefore, (i) commences with the assertion that “The Queen’s Majesty hath the chief power in this realm of England and other her dominions,” and then (ii) goes on to state that to the Sovereign appertains the chief government of all estates of the Realm, whether they be ecclesiastical or civil, and that she is not, nor ought to be, subject to any foreign jurisdiction.  (iii) Moreover to silence objections, it defines the limits of the government of the sovereign as not extending either (a) to the performance of any spiritual function, or (b) to the exercise of any prerogative other than that allowed to godly princes in Holy Scripture by God Himself. [See Palmer, Treatise on the Church, vol. i. p. 200.  3rd ed. 1842.]  (iv) It declares that the government of the sovereign extends to that coercive power, which alike in the Old and the New Testaments is placed in the hands of princes. [Thus it is carefully provided that the civil magistrate is not the source of spiritual as well as civil jurisdiction, and the Church of England “claims to have a spiritual mission and authority, a ministry of the Word and Sacraments, neither derived from nor communicable to the State; and she acknowledges in the Head of the State that power only, over ecclesiastical persons and causes, which she believes to be within the rightful province of all Christian Governments.”  Earl Selborne, Defence of the Church of England, p. 35.]  (v) This done, the Article proceeds to lay down the following points:

(a) That the Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm:

(b) That no Foreign jurisdiction can interfere with the right of the national sovereign either to (1) inflict capital punishment, or (2) claim the assistance of his soldiers in war.

      iv.  The Civil Supremacy in temporal matters is the foundation of all settled government, and Scripture alike in the Old and the New Testament sanctions the extension of this power, under due and proper limits, to matters ecclesiastical.  Thus (a) In the Old Testament: – (1) Aaron is subject to Moses (Exod. 32:21, 22); (2) Saul is declared by Samuel to be head of the tribes including Levi (1 Sam. 15:17); (3) David distributes the priests into twenty-four courses, and makes various regulations as regards the Temple Services (1 Chron. 23:6); [Similar directions concerning sacred matters are given by Jehoshaphat (2 Chron. 20:3–13), Hezekiah (2 Chron. 29:3–19), and Josiah (2 Chron. 34:1–13 ff.).] and (4) it is distinctly said that the priests and Levites departed not from the commandment of Solomon concerning any matter (2 Chron. 8:15). [But the king was not allowed to intrude upon the sacred offices of religion, as was shewn by the punishment of Saul (1 Sam. 13:8–14), and the punishment of Uzziah for intruding into the Holy Place to burn incense (2 Chron. 26:16 ff.).]  Again (b) in the New Testament: (1) Our Lord directs that all alike are to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s (Luke 20:25); (2) S. Paul bids every soul be subject to the higher powers as being ordained of God (Rom. 13:1); (3) S. Peter writes to the Christians of the Dispersion, Be subject unto every ordinance of man for the Lord’s sake: whether it be unto the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by Him for vengeance on evil doers, and for praise to them that do well (1 Pet. 2:13, 14).

      v.  The Royal Supremacy.  These passages guide us to a right conception of what is meant by the royal supremacy.  (i) We do not mean, (a) a spiritual headship, for that belongs to Christ alone; nor (b) an ecclesiastical headship, such as would empower the sovereign to teach or preach, or administer the Sacraments, or consecrate persons and things, or impose ecclesiastical censures[“It was during the primacy of Archbishop Warham (not Cranmer) that the Convocations of both provinces of Canterbury and York formally acknowledged the king’s ‘Supreme Headship’ of the Church of England.”  Earl Selborne, Defence of the Church of England, p. 32.]; nor (c) an arbitrary and unlimited supremacy, so that we should be supposed to put our consciences under the uncontrolled guidance of the sovereign.  (ii) What we do mean is (a) that the sovereign must hold some position in the Church and this can only be the highest; (b) that for coercive purposes and to preserve the peace of the realm he is over all persons and in all causes supreme; (c) that legally and constitutionally he can do nothing concerning the doctrine and discipline of the Church, unless it has received the consent of the clergy and laity, as represented in Convocation and Parliament respectively; (d) that he is entitled to those ancient privileges, which belonged to kings and princes in Scripture, to Christian Emperors in primitive times, and to the ancient sovereigns of England, and which empower them “to rule all estates and degrees committed to their charge by God, whether they be Ecclesiastical or Temporal, and restrain with the civil sword the stubborn and evil doers.”

      vi.  The Papal Jurisdiction in the realm of England is claimed on various grounds.  It is urged that (i) S. Peter had a supremacy given him over the rest of the Apostles, and over the universal Church; that (ii) he exercised this supremacy as Bishop of Rome for upwards of twenty-five years; that (iii) this supremacy is inherited by the Bishops of Rome as his successors; that (iv) England was converted to the Christian Faith by Missionaries from Rome and therefore owes allegiance to the Roman See.

      vii.  The Supremacy of S. Peter.  We do not deny that a certain priority was conceded to S. Peter by our Lord.  We cannot read the New Testament without noticing that (1) his name is placed first in all the catalogues of the Apostles; [Matt. 10:2, Mark 3:16, Luke 6:14, Acts 1:13.] that (2) he takes the lead in speaking and acting for the rest; [Matt. 19:27, Luke 12:41, Matt. 16:16, Mark 8:29.] that (3) he is peculiarly honoured in conjunction with S. James and S. John; [Mark 5:37, Luke 8:51, Mark 9:2, Luke 9:28.] that (4) our Lord makes to him a special promise as regards His Church; [“And I say unto thee (καγω δέ σοι λέγω) that thou art Peter (ότι συ ει Πέτρος), and upon this rock (επι ταύτη τη πέτρα) I will build My Church, and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it, and I will give thee (δώσω σοι) the keys of the kingdom of heaven ; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:18, 19).  Amongst the Fathers there is no fixity of interpretation as regards the meaning here of the Rock.  Different interpretations are given by many in different parts of their works.  Some apply it to S. Peter himself; others to the faith he confessed; others to Christ, acknowledged by the Apostle to be God and Man.  S. Augustine himself varies in his interpretation.  In his earlier expositions he acknowledges he had applied the words to S. Peter, but in his later ones to Christ (S. Aug. Retract. i. 21).  It is noticeable that our Lord does not say επί σοι οικοδομήσω μου την εκκλησίαν but επι ταύτη τη πέτρα.  The expression points, not so much to the person of the Apostle himself, as to something to which his name (Πέτρος) bore witness, and which had evinced itself in his glorious confession.  This much at any rate seems clear; – (a) The Apostle obviously could not be the Rock in any sense which trenched on the prerogative of Christ Himself, Who is the foundation stone, θεμέλιος (1 Cor. 3:11), the chief cornerstone, ακρογωνιαιος (Eph. 2:20), binding the parts of the building of His Church together; (b) still S. Peter by virtue of his faith and confession had a primacy, not the primacy of absolute sovereignty, but “the primacy of historical inauguration,” as Bp Lightfoot terms it: (c) and so in the Apostolic records he appears using the keys and opening the gates at each successive stage in the progress of the Church.  The same courageous faith, which prompted this confession and called forth the promise of Christ, enables him to receive into the Church the three thousand on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:41); to open the gates to the Samaritans (Acts 8:14, 16); to admit the Gentile Cornelius to Christian Baptism (Acts 10:46, 47).  But then, as though to shew that the Church was not founded on the personality of S. Peter, he vanishes from our sight, and another assumes the chief place in his stead, of whom, not of S. Peter, S. Augustine says “Ipse (Paulus) caput et princeps Apostolorum” and again “(Paulus) tanti Apostolatus meruit principatum.”  See S. Aug. De Pecc. Meritis et Remissione ii. 20; Bp Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Pt. i. Vol. ii., pp. 487 sqq.] that (5) after the Ascension he is signally prominent in the founding of the Church.  But priority of order does not involve preeminence of jurisdiction.  Had it been so, we surely should have found in the New Testament some traces of such preeminence being asserted and claimed.  But so far from it,

      (a) In the Gospels,

(i) We never find our Lord giving S. Peter himself apart from the rest of the Apostles any title of special honour;

(ii) On the contrary we find Him protesting against any claims to preeminence, and saying, Whosoever will be chief among you, let him be your servant (Matt. 20:27); Be not ye called Rabbi, for one is your teacher, and all ye are brethren (Matt. 23:8);

(iii) Again in the solemn delegation of ministerial authority after His resurrection, He says to the whole Apostolic body in general, As the Father hath sent Me, even so send I you (υμας, John 20:21). [Again He says Whose soever sins YE forgive, they are forgiven unto them, whose soever sins YE retain, they are retained (John 20:23); Go YE, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them ... teaching them: (Matt. 28:19, 20).  There is nothing here to indicate that what the Apostles had, they had not directly from Christ, but indirectly from Christ through Peter.  See Gore, Rom. Cath. Claims, p. 74.  “Our Lord’s words were addressed to all the Apostles; no distinction was made; all were alike addressed, and all were therefore given the same Apostolical authority ... Every Apostle was sent as Jesus Christ was sent by the Father; that is with the plenitude of supreme power; every Apostle was authorized to remit sins, and to teach all nations.  Nothing conceivable by human imagination can surpass the grandeur and the magnitude of this Mission and these powers.”  Palmer, Treatise on the Church, ii. p. 480.]

      (b) In the Acts,

(i) We find S. Peter actually sent with S. John by the other Apostles to Samaria (Acts 8:14–16);

(ii) The appeal made at the Council of Jerusalem is not made to S. Peter, but to the Apostles and elders (Acts 15:13, 19);

(iii) S. Peter did not preside at the Council, but this position was occupied by James the Lord’s brother, and first bishop of Jerusalem (Acts 15:19); [See Appendix to Bp Lightfoot’s Commentary on the Galatians, “S. Paul and the Three.”]

(iv) S. Peter retires after this altogether into the background of the sacred history, while S. Paul becomes the prominent figure.

      (c) In the Epistles,

(i) S. Paul instead of going up after his conversion to S. Peter as the supreme head of the Church, [Consider again the words of the great Apostle of the Gentiles, Paul an Apostle, not from man, neither through man (Gal. 1:1); I did not receive it (the Gospel) from man, neither was I taught it (Gal. 1:2); they of repute (i.e. the pillar Apostles, James and Cephas and John) imparted nothing to me (Gal. 2:6); the Gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto me, as the Gospel of the circumcision was unto Peter (Gal. 2:7).  “There is no sort of dependence of S. Paul on S. Peter which these words do not exclude.”  Gore, Rom. Cath. Claims, p. 80, n.] waits some time, and only after a considerable interval receives from him the right hand of fellowship (Gal. 2:9);

(ii) The same Apostle on one occasion actually withstands S. Peter to the face, because he stood condemned [Κατεγνωσμένος ην not “reprehensible,” but “condemned.”  His conduct carried its own condemnation with it.  Comp. John 3:18, Rom. 14:23.  “The condemnation is not the verdict of the bystanders, but the verdict of the act itself.”  Bp. Lightfoot in loc.; see also Bp Ellicott’s Commentary on the passage.] (Gal. 2:11), and he severely rebukes as schismatics those who said, I am of Cephas (1 Cor. 1:12);

(iii) Moreover in his own Epistles S. Peter himself never claims preeminence or superiority over his fellow Apostles or the Church. He calls himself an elder amongst elders (1 Pet. 5:1); an Apostle amongst other Apostles (1 Pet. 1:1, 2 Pet. 1:1); he gives no hint that he stands in any special relation to the chief Shepherd (1 Pet. 5:4) beyond that in which the other Apostles stood, any more than S. John does, when he speaks of the twelve foundations of the Church, equal and coordinate, as the twelve Apostles of the Lamb [Και το τειχος της πόλεως έχον θεμελίους δώδεκα, και επ αυτων δώδεκα ονόματα των δώδεκα αποστόλων του αρνίου, Rev. 21:14.  Observe the studied repetition of the word δώδεκα.] (Rev. 21:14).

      We conclude, then, from these four lines of argument that though it cannot be disputed that our Lord promised to build His Church upon S. Peter, as the great Confessor of His Divinity, there is no warrant for the notion that this gave the Apostle preeminence of jurisdiction over the others, and so over the Universal Church.

      viii.  S. Peter’s Bishopric at Rome, which is said to have lasted upwards of twenty-five years, really involves an appeal to history, and to history we can go.  The martyrdom, then, of S. Peter at Rome, which may be accepted as authentic, [Tertullian, De Praescript. 36, Scorp. 15, and also Origen in Euseb. Hist. Eccles., iii. 1, refer to the tradition that he was crucified at Rome with his head downwards, and that S. Paul suffered also at the same time.] cannot have taken place before A.D. 68, when Nero was Emperor.  Now twenty-five years [It is in Jerome’s version of the Chronicle of Eusebius, Lib. ii. anno 43, that we find the first distinct statement that S. Peter went to Rome in the year A.D. 43, and remained there for 25 years as Bishop of the Church in that city.] subtracted from this date brings us to A.D. 43 as the commencement of the Petrine episcopate; [“I cannot find,” writes Bp Lightfoot, “that any writers of the first two centuries and more speak of S. Peter as bishop of Rome. ... The language of Irenaeus (iii. 3. 3) is explicit.  He describes the Church of Rome as founded by the Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul, who appointed Linus bishop.” ... “After him came Linus; after Linus, Anencletus; after Anencletus in the third place from the Apostles Clement is elected to the bishopric, and the others, when any numbers are given, are numbered accordingly.”  Apost. Fathers, Pt i. Vol. ii. pp. 501, 502.] and we have a history of the period from A.D. 30–60 in the Acts of the Apostles, but there is nowhere to be found a single hint in it of the Apostle’s presence in the capital of the West.  In A.D. 58 S. Paul wrote his Epistle to the Church of Rome, [In this Epistle S. Paul obviously takes for granted that no Apostle had yet reached Rome (Rom. 15:20).] but he preserves an absolute silence as to the episcopate there of his brother Apostle. [“If silence can ever be regarded as decisive, its verdict must be accepted in this case.  S. Paul could not have written as he writes to the Romans (1:11, sq., 15:20–24) if they had received even a short visit from an Apostle, more especially if that Apostle were S. Peter.”  Bp Lightfoot, Apostolic Fathers, Pt i. Vol. ii. p. 491.]  Between A.D. 60 and A.D. 66 he wrote at least five Epistles from Rome, but in none of these does he allude to the presence of S. Peter.  In the two Epistles written by that Apostle himself he lets fall no word, which indicates any episcopal jurisdiction at Rome.  The only passage which can be alleged to have any possible reference to the Eternal City is the verse, in which the Apostle writes, There saluteth you she that is in Babylon, elect together with you; and so doth Marcus my son (1 Pet. 5:13). [Ασπάζεται υμας η εν Βαβυλωνι συνεκλεκτή, και Μάρκος ο υιός μου = the fellow elect in Babylon greeteth you, and so doth Marcus my son (1 Pet. 5:13).  The interpretations of the words are various.  Some would understand them to refer to some sister or Christian lady, well known to S. Peter’s converts.  But the context Η εν Βαβυλωνι συνεκλεκτή is unnatural as the description of a person, and several early authorities (including א) add Εκκλησία.  If a “fellow elect Church” is intended, the mention of S. Mark, S. Peter’s “companion and interpreter” (Eusebius H. E. iii. 39), points to Rome, where S. Mark composed his Gospel, and where the latest notices in the New Testament represent him either as staying or invited to visit (Col. 4:10, Philem. 24, 2 Tim. 4:11).  Moreover the Crucifixion of S. Peter (John 21:18) is always connected by tradition with Rome, and with no other place.  Bp Lightfoot considers this to be supported by the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians c. 5, and by that of Ignatius to the Romans c. 4.  Apostolic Fathers, Pt i. Vol. ii. pp. 491, 492.]  But, even if “Babylon” here means Rome, there is no allusion to any jurisdiction in that City. [Irenaeus says that S. Peter and S. Paul preached at Rome, and laid the foundation of the Church there, and after so doing “committed into the hands of Linus the office of the episcopate.”  But the Greek word here used cannot be made to mean “handed on” or “handed down,” as if Linus succeeded either or both of them after they died.]  While, then, it is probable that the Apostle found his way to the Capital of the West and there received the martyr’s crown, [Bishop Lightfoot considers that S. Peter arrived at Rome in the latter part of A.D. 64, during S. Paul’s absence after his first imprisonment.  The Neronian persecution broke out soon afterwards, and he would be one of the most prominent victims.  Ancient tradition states that S. Peter was buried in the Vatican, S. Paul on the Ostian Way.  “The Vatican gardens were the scene of the hideous festivities, in which the victims of the fire suffered, and amongst these (we may assume) was S. Peter, A.D. 64.  On the other hand an isolated victim who was put to death some years later (say A.D. 67), as was presumably S. Paul’s case, might meet his death anywhere.”  Apostolic Fathers, Pt i. Vol. ii. pp. 497, 498.] the supposition that he remained for twenty-five years bishop of the Church of Rome involves insuperable chronological and historical difficulties.

      ix.  The Supremacy of the successors of S. Peter is seriously involved in the doubts respecting the Apostle’s bishopric at Rome. [There is not a syllable in the three texts alleged to embody the Petrine Privilege (Matt. 16:18, 19, Luke 22:31, 32, John 21:15–37) which empowers S. Peter to convey the privilege, whatever be its nature, to any other person, and there is no evidence producible that he ever did confer and transmit his peculiar privilege and authority.]  For if the permanence of S. Peter’s privilege was recognized in early times, it is difficult to account for several historical facts.  Thus

(a) In A.D. 95 Clement of Rome writes to the Corinthians, and does not give the slightest indication of this privilege;

(b) In A.D. 108 S. Polycarp consults Anicetus about the keeping of Easter, but he does not consider himself bound to defer to his authority as conclusive on the point; [Eusebius Hist. Eccl. iv. 14; v. 24.  Neither bishop would yield to the other, but the two parted in peace.]

(c) In A.D. 196 Polycrates, bishop of Ephesus, disputes with Victor, Bishop of Rome, on the same point, and as they cannot agree, Victor excommunicates him, and for so doing, although Bishop of the capital of the West, he is rebuked by a number of bishops, and amongst them by Irenaeus himself, [It is important to observe that Eusebius recognizes no special “Petrine privilege,” on the strength of which Victor was justified in taking the course he did.  Hist. Eccl. v. 24.] “Victor stood reproved.  His excommunication failed.” [Gore, Rom. Cath. Claims, p. 91.]

(d) In A.D. 255 Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, and other African bishops come into collision with Pope Stephen on the question of heretical baptism, and when the latter refuses to recognize them, and renounces communion with the African Churches, they stoutly express their disapproval of his attempt to make himself a “bishop of bishops”;

(e) In A.D. 424 the bishops of Africa, with S. Augustine at their head, write strongly to Pope Celestinus, denying his right to interfere with their jurisdiction, and complaining that he had violated the Canon of the Council of Nicaea, which directed that causes between bishops and clergy shall be heard by their own metropolitan, and not carried elsewhere; [See Laud, Conference with Fisher, p. 166; Crackanthorpe, Def. Eccl. Angl. p. 176; Hooker, Eccl. Pol. VII. xii. i.]

(f) Above all, Pope Gregory the Great vehemently protested against the bishop of Constantinople, [As S. Cyprian had done before him; “Neque enim quisquam nostrum Episcopum se Episcoporum constituit, aut tyrannico terrore ad obsequendi necessitatem collegas suas adegit, quando habeat omnis Episcopus pro licentia libertatis et potestatis sum arbitrium proprium.”  S. Cyprian in Concil. Carthag. vii.] for claiming the title of “universal bishop,” and not only declares such an assumption to be arrogant, indeed, and schismatical, but affirms that he who made it was a forerunner of Antichrist. [“Ego autem fidenter dico quia quisquis se universalem sacerdotem vocat, seu vocari desiderat, in elatione sua Antichristum praecurrit, quia superbiendo se caeteris praeponit.”  Greg. Magn. Epist. vii. 33; “Si unus Patriarcha universalis dicitur, patriarcharum nomen caeteris derogatur.”  Ibid. v. 43.]

      x.  Decisions of Councils speak with no less certain voice on the same subject.  The sixth Canon of the Council of Nicaea, A.D. 325, places the Roman Bishop on a level with those of Jerusalem, Antioch, and Alexandria.  The eighth Canon of the Council of Ephesus, A.D. 431, forbids any bishop to invade another’s province, which had not been from the beginning under his authority. [See Dr Bright’s Notes on the Canons.]  The twenty-eighth Canon of the Council of Chalcedon, A.D. 451, confirms the decrees of the Council of Constantinople, and gives in the West privileges to “Old Rome” as the seat of Empire, and to the see of “New Rome,” or Constantinople, because that city was acknowledged as the seat of Empire in the East. [Gore, Rom. Cath. Claims, pp. 97, 98.  “Nothing can be more certain than that the Bishops, who enacted this Canon, did not regard the privileges of Rome as part of the divine and essential constitution of the Church; nothing is more clear than that the primacy of Rome is a ‘primacy of honour,’ and that the claims of Rome to supremacy were not regarded by the Eastern Church as part of the Catholic faith.”  Dr Bright, Waymarks in Church History, pp. 223, 224.]  Evidently the Roman patriarch was considered to have no more authority given to him than the patriarchs of Antioch, Alexandria, and Constantinople; the first place was assigned to Rome as being the imperial City; next came Constantinople as being “New Rome”; and every bishop was expressly forbidden to invade any Diocese, which had not from the first been subject to him and to his predecessors.  Of any divine right of the Roman See to special preeminence and authority over other Churches the Councils give no hint.  Political causes chiefly led to the preeminence of the Roman Church and its bishop.  All the roads in the world led to Rome; all nations were represented there ; the early bishops of Rome possessed the instinct of government more strongly than their contemplative brethren of the East; and the majesty of the eternal City exercised a mysterious spell over the minds of men, as the one apostolic See of Western Europe.

      xi.  The Conversion of England.  Another claim, however, to direct rights of jurisdiction over England is based on the fact that Pope Gregory the Great won over the country to the Christian Faith.  But to this it may be well replied that there is no precedent in early Church history for such an argument.  It nowhere appears that a Church, which succeeded in any Missionary effort, acquired permanent jurisdiction over the country it converted. [“The African Church was according to Tertullian, De Praescr. Haereticorum, xxxvi, and Cyprian, Epist. xlv, both high authorities on the subject, planted from Rome, yet the Church formally repudiated the authority of the Bishop of Rome in A. D. 253, and again in 419–422.  Moreover, the Churches of Gaul were certainly founded by Missionaries from Asia Minor, yet the Churches of Asia Minor never claimed jurisdiction over them.”  Denny, Anglican Orders, S.P.C.K., p. 222.]  If this was the case, Jerusalem would be the Mistress, as well as the Mother of all Churches.  Again, there was an ancient and flourishing Church in England long before the arrival of S. Augustine, [Tertullian speaks of “Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita.”  Eusebius, Praecep. Evang. iii. 7, speaks of Britain joining in the worship of the true God, while S. Alban was martyred at Verulam under Diocletian 300 years before the landing of Augustine. Bede, Hist. Eccl. I. 6. 7.] and after his arrival the British succession [At the Synod of Arles, A.D. 314, three British Bishops were present, and British prelates were also present at the Council of Sardica, A.D. 347.  See Haddan and Stubbs, Councils and Documents, Vol. i.] continued for some time side by side with the Roman.  While it is true that S. Augustine won over the Saxon inhabitants of Kent and some other portions of the country, the conversion of by far the largest part was brought about by Scotch and Irish Missionaries, who received no Mission for this purpose from Rome at all.  To these missionaries, indeed, the Christianizing of all the north, west, and centre of England is due, [See Bright, Early English Church History, pp. 94–96; Bp Lightfoot, Leaders in the Northern Church, p. 11.  “Augustine,” the Bishop writes, “was the Apostle of Kent, but Aidan was the Apostle of England.”  We may perhaps not form the highest estimate of the success of S. Augustine’s Mission, but still it effected much.  “Practically his landing had renewed the union with the western world which that of Hengist had destroyed.  The new England was admitted into the older commonwealth of nations.  The civilization, art, letters, which had fled before the sword of the English Conquest, returned with the Christian Faith.”  Green’s History of the English People, i. p. 42.] and as Rome never gave mission to these bodies of teachers, she cannot claim jurisdiction over regions which they won over to the Faith.

      xii.  Capital Punishment.  Having thus justified the position that it is not within the right of the sovereign to make over the liberties of the people or the Church to any foreign power, the Article proceeds to assert the right of every independent Christian state, (i) to inflict capital punishment, and (ii) to engage in just and righteous wars.  Capital punishment was deemed by some in the sixteenth century, as it is by not a few now, to be inconsistent with the spirit of Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, wherein He forbids men to resist him that is evil, [Εγω δε λέγω υμιν, μη αντιστηναι τω πονηρω.  Here the words τω πονηρω may be translated “him that is evil,” as in the R.V., or “evil” as in the Margin.] and directs whosoever smiteth thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also (Matt. 5:39), and again says, All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword [Οι λαβόντες μάχαιραν.  “They who take the sword “of their own motion, without authority from God, who alone gives commission to bear the sword (Matt. 26:52), shall perish by the sword of divine retribution.”  Bp C. Wordsworth in loc.  See also Lange’s Comm. in loc. (T. & T. Clark).] (Matt. 26:52).  But here undoubtedly our Lord is dealing with the behaviour of individual Christians, not with states or communities or the magistrates of any country. [“The administration of justice is not only of importance to individuals whose rights are thus personally secured, but to the whole civil community.  For this reason, legal institutions must be absolutely maintained against all caprice and despotism. ... Its penal legislation, and the recognition and validity given thereto, is a nation’s clearest expression of its consciousness of justice, and therewith of its moral consciousness of the authority of law, of duty and responsibility, of accountability and guilt.”  Martensen, Christian Ethics, ii. p. 176.  E. T.]  Under the Patriarchal Dispensation we find capital punishment was enjoined.  Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, we read, by man shall his blood be shed (Gen. 9:6).  This commandment, applicable to the whole human race, was not repealed under the Mosaic Law, and under the New Dispensation we have S. Paul upholding the authority of the magistrate to inflict the penalty of death.  He beareth not the sword in vain, he writes to the Romans, for he is the minister of God, an avenger for wrath to him that doeth evil (Rom. 13:4).  If this was true of heathen magistrates, much more is it true of Christian authorities.  Violations of justice differ in kind and degree.  It is only reasonable that penalties should differ also.  The extreme violation of justice is willful murder.  The corresponding extreme penalty is capital punishment, which is necessary for the protection of society.

      xiii.  The Right of War.  As with capital punishment, so with the right of war, some of our Lord’s words seem decisive against its lawfulness.  But again it is to be noticed that He is dealing not with nations or governments, but with individuals, and laying down general principles of action.  War is a necessary evil to be entered upon for the averting of greater evils. [“The true vocation of war is to serve as a means of preventing injustice and violence by physical force and of extorting what justice demands.”  Martensen, Christian Ethics, ii. 231.]  Wars for revenge and for mere glory are unquestionably unworthy of Christian states and Christian men. [It is to be observed that the Latin of the Article has “justa bella administrare,” but there is no equivalent for justa in the English translation.]  But wars for the. assertion of national independence, wars for the protection of people’s life and liberty, are not opposed to the will of God, unless we are to believe that the Gospel was designed to condone the supremacy of the violent and unscrupulous.  The testimony of Scripture seems to be clear on this point.  For in the Old Testament we find the Jews [On the exterminating wars of the Old Testament see Mozley, Lectures on the Old Testament, Lect. iv.] constantly engaged in war, and that often by the direct command of God. [“If a one-sided pessimist view regards only the many terrors and devastations of every war, the horrors of the battlefield, the sorrows brought upon families, the towns burnt, the cornfields trampled on, and the demoniacal passions let loose, we must not overlook the fact that war has also its arousing and purifying effects.  It arouses a slumbering patriotism, and calls citizens from the luxurious enjoyments of peace, and from petty and selfish interests, to sacrifices and self-denial for the common cause.  It awakens in many a lively consciousness of the perishableness and insecurity of human affairs, teaches many to pray, and humbly submit to the Lord of Hosts, whose just judgments may be executed upon earth even by means of war.”  Martensen, Christian Ethics, ii. p. 233, 4.]  And in the New Testament we find John the Baptist, so far from ordering the soldiers, who came to his baptism, to lay down their arms and quit their profession, bidding them do violence to no man, neither exact anything wrongfully, and be content with their wages (Luke 3:14).  Again our Lord heals the servant of the heathen centurion, and instead of ordering him to give up his calling, commends his faith as exceeding any he had found in Israel (Matt. 8:10).  S. Peter again instructs and baptizes Cornelius, but does not demand of him either before or after his baptism that he shall quit the army or give up his profession (Acts 10:34–45).  Lastly S. Paul not only draws a parallel between the armour of the soldier and the panoply of the Christian, without any hint that the soldier’s calling is wrong in itself (Eph. 6:10–17), but he actually commends the prudence and self-denial of the soldier to the imitation of Timothy himself (2 Tim. 2:4).

Article  XXXVIII

      i.  Connection.  The previous Article dealt with the Anabaptist objections to capital punishment and the right of Christians to carry arms.  The present Article deals with another erroneous doctrine of the same sect, [“Excludetur etiam ab eisdem Anabaptistis inducta bonorum et possessionum communitas, quam tantopere urgent, ut nemini quicquam relinquant proprium et suum.”  Reformatio Legum, De haeresibus, c. 14, “With them the doctrine was a source, not so much of personal self-denial, as of efforts to subvert civil government and the whole framework of society; and it was not therefore to be treated as an innocent enthusiasm, but to be denounced as a dangerous error.”  Bp. Browne On the Articles, p. 830.] who held that the goods of Christian men were common to all alike, and pushed their peculiar doctrines so far as to leave no man anything which he could call his own. [“The idea of property has been challenged in modern times by such communists as St Simon, Fourier, and Proudhon, who boldly stake the matter on the apparent paradox that it is property that is the theft.”  Bp. Forbes On the Articles, p. 791.]

      ii.  Analysis.  The Article asserts two things: –

(1) That the riches and goods of Christian men are not common, as touching the right, title, and possession of the same;

(2) That nevertheless every man ought to give ‘liberally of such things as he possesseth to the poor, according to his ability.

      iii.  The Teaching of Scripture.  It is true that our Lord in several passages of the Gospels dwells on the danger of riches, and exhorts His disciples to a renunciation of worldly wealth. [Comp. Matt. 5:42, Give to hint that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away; 6:19, Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where moth and rust doth consume, and where thieves break through and steal: but lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven; and see the parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Luke 16:19–25.]  And it is beyond doubt that in the earliest ages of the Church, the first believers had all things common (Acts 2:44, 45), and sold their possessions and goods, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them at the Apostles’ feet, and distribution was made unto each according as anyone had need (Acts 2:45, 4:34, 35). [Comp. for the state of things somewhat later Justin Mart. Apol. i. 14, 67; Didache, i. 4; Hermae Pastor, Vis. iii. 9.]  But on the other hand it is to be borne in mind that this community of goods was not even then absolute or compulsory.  S. Peter says to Ananias respecting the piece of land he pretended to have sold, while it remained, did it not remain thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thy power? [“Si nolles vendere, quis to cogeret?  Si velles offerre dimidium, quis exigeret totum?”  S. Aug. Sermo 148.] (Acts 5:4).  His sin lay not in the retaining of his goods, but in pretending to give all while he kept back a part.  Again, Mary, the mother of John Mark, had a house at Jerusalem, and practiced no little hospitality (Acts 12:12). [There was no formal community of goods and abolition of private property in the early Jerusalem Church.  There was a common purse for supporting the needy, into which many rich persons put the proceeds of the sale of their estates (Acts 4:34 sqq.), while everyone was allowed to possess his own property (Acts 12:12).  There was also a community of the daily use of all worldly possessions (Acts 4:32), and when the Church assumed a larger scale, this community of use developed into the active charity and hospitality upon which S. Paul insists (Rom. 12:13, 15:26), and the existence of which is quite evident from the writings of the early Christian Fathers, or, to put it otherwise, it was the application to very simple and exceptional circumstances of the distinctively Christian virtue of αγάπη.  Comp. Döllinger, First Age of the Church, ii. pp. 240, 241; Shirley, The Church in the Apostolic Age, p. 7.]

      iv.  A Strict Community of goods would render the sixth and eighth commandments superfluous, and would be in direct opposition to many exhortations of our Lord and His Apostles.  Thus

(i) Christ bids us give alms (Matt. 6:4, 10:42); make friends by means [Ποιήσατε εαυτοις φίλους εκ του μαμωνα της αδικίας.  Εκ here may be rendered either (1) by means of or (2) out of.  See R.V. in loc.] of the mammon of unrighteousness (Luke 16:9); call the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind to our feasts (Luke 14:13), feed the hungry and clothe the naked (Matt. 25:35);

(ii) Again, S. Paul bids us as we have opportunity, work that which is good (Gal. 16:10); be given to hospitality (Rom. 12:13); communicate to the necessity of the saints (Rom. 12:13); lay by in store as God hath prospered us (1 Cor. 16:2);

(iii) And S. Peter exhorts his converts to use hospitality one to another without murmuring (1 Pet. 4:9).

      v.  The Right of Property.  Now all these exhortations acknowledge the strongest obligations to abundant and liberal almsgiving. But it would be impossible to obey them, if a strict and absolute community of goods was enforced. By the very terms, in which they are expressed, they presuppose the existence of distinct possessions in the hands of members of the Church, and leave to the conscience of each man the extent to which he shall give liberally in alms to the poor and needy.

Article  XXXIX

      i.  Connection.  The Thirty-ninth Article, like the previous one, is aimed at the fanaticism of the Anabaptists, who, after the example of the Waldenses of the Middle Ages, and the Quakers of modern times, had such scruples on the subject of taking oaths, that they denied the propriety of their being exacted even in a court of justice.

      ii.  Oaths.  When the early Christians were called upon to swear before heathen magistrates, they were naturally required to use idolatrous oaths.  This was abhorrent to them and produced a dread of swearing altogether. [Περι δε του μη ομνύναι όλως, ταληθη δε λέγειν άει, ούτως παρεκελεύσατο, Μη ομόσητε όλως.  Just. Mart. Apol. i. 16.]  Still, as we learn from Tertullian, while they abhorred idolatrous oaths, they would occasionally swear by “the safety of the Emperor,” though not by his genius, deeming the genii no better than demons. [“Sed et juramus, sicut non per genios Caesarum, ita per salutem eorum, quae est augustior omnibus geniis.  Nescitis genios daemonas dici?”  Tertull. Apol. c. 32.]  Later, about A.D. 390, Vegetius informs us “that they were wont to swear by God, and Christ, and the Holy Spirit, [“Jurant autem per Deum, et per Christum, et per Spiritum Sanctum, et per Majestatem Imperatoris.”  Veget. Institutio sui Militaris, i. 5.  See Smith’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities, sub voce Oath. ii. 1416.] and the Majesty of the Emperors.” [Compare the oath of Joseph, Gen. 42:16, “By the life of Pharaoh,” νη την υγίειαν Φαραώ, LXX.]  There was, however, without doubt much scruple amongst the early Christians on the subject of swearing.  Clement of Alexandria [Clem. Stromat. vii. 8, p. 861,ed. Oxon. 1715.] considered it an indignity for a Christian to be put upon his oath, as disparaging his fidelity, and says that he ought to avoid swearing, saying only “Yea and Nay”.  To this we may add the testimony of Lactantius, who says that a Christian will never perjure himself, lest he mock God; nor indeed will he swear at all, lest he fall by accident or carelessly into perjury. [“Hic non perjurabit, ne Deum ludibrio habeat; sed ne jurabit quidem; nequando, vel necessitate, vel consuetudine, in perjuriam cadat.”  Lactant. Epitome. c. 6.]  Still in matters of great moment it was not thought wrong to take an oath; and even S. Athanasius [Athanasius mentions the oath, υπερ της σωτηρίας του ευσεβεστάτου Αυγούστου, Ep. ad Monachos, i. p. 866.] required of the Emperor Constantius that his accusers should be put upon their oaths. [Apol. ad Constant. i. p. 678.  “In the conference between the Catholics and Donatists in the time of Honorius the emperor’s delegate swore to judge impartially by the marvelous mystery of the Trinity, by the Sacrament of the Incarnation, and by the emperor’s safety.”  Harl. Conc. i. 1052.  Smith’s Dict. of Christian Antiquities, ii. 1416.]

      iii.  Idle and Vain Swearing.  What Scripture is specially directed against is idle and vain swearing. [The use of oaths in ordinary conversation was so common at Antioch that of the twenty-one homilies, which S. Chrysostom preached to the people of Antioch after the imperial statues had been thrown down, there is not one in which allusion is not made to this evil practice.  “We shall preach to you,” he says, “the whole week respecting oaths,” and in one of his sermons he threatens to exclude all swearers from partaking of the Holy Mysteries.  Ad Pop. Antioch, Hom. iv. 6; vi. 7.]  Such swearing is forbidden alike by our Lord and by S. James.  The Jews in our Lord’s time seem to have thought they might swear as much as they chose, so long as they did not forswear themselves.  But He, going deeper than the mere letter of the Commandment, bids His disciples abstain from swearing, either by heaven, or earth, or Jerusalem, or the Temple, or their heads.  Let your speech, He says, be Yea, Yea; Nay, Nay (Matt. 5:33–37), and S. James (James 5:12) almost repeats in his Epistle the words of his Master, and he evidently regards rash and profane swearing in ordinary conversation as being thoroughly opposed to the Gospel of Christ.

      iv.  An Oath in a Court of Justice.  But while vain and rash swearing is thus forbidden, it is allowable on solemn and important occasions, and especially in a court of justice, to take an oath.  For

(a) When Caiaphas solemnly adjured our Lord to state whether or no He was “the Son of the Blessed,” He did not refuse to plead to such an adjuration, but answered at once (Matt. 26:63, 64); [“This one argument seems to be a host in itself.  Our Lord consented to be put upon His oath.  Oaths therefore before a civil tribunal cannot be forbidden to His disciples.”  Bp. Browne On the Articles, p. 837.]

(b) S. Paul frequently in very weighty matters calls God to witness, which is essentially the same thing as taking an oath.  Thus he writes to the Corinthians, I protest by that glorying in you, [Νη την υμετέραν καύχησιν ην έχω εν Χριστω Ιησου τω Κυρίω ημων.  See the R.V. translation of this verse.] which I have in Christ Jesus our Lord, I die daily (1 Cor. 15:31), and again, The God and Father of the Lord Jesus, He who is blessed for evermore, knoweth that I lie not (2 Cor. 11:31); [Compare also Rom. 9:1, 2 Cor. 11:10, 12:19; Gal. 1:20, Phil. 1:8.  Such solemn appeals were usual in the earliest times.  God Himself sware unto Abraham (Gen. 22:16); Abraham swears by God to deal kindly with Abimelech (Gen. 21:23, 24);so also does Isaac (Gen. 26:31); and Jacob swears solemnly to Laban (Gen. 31:53).]

(c) Again, in the Epistle to the Hebrews the Almighty Himself is represented as swearing (Heb. 3:11), and the writer of the Epistle compares this with the swearing common among men, saying, Men swear by the greater: and in every dispute of theirs the oath is final for confirmation (Heb. 6:16). [Και πάσης αυτοις αντιλογίας πέρας εις βεβαίωσιν ο όρκος, Heb. 6:16.  See R.V. translation.]

      v.  Conclusion.  These examples justify on solemn and important occasions, and especially in a court of justice, the legal confirming of an assertion by a solemn attestation in the sight of God.  The Article itself quotes the words of a prophet in justification of such a course.  Thou shalt swear, we read in Jeremiah, the Lord liveth, in truth, in judgment, and in righteousness (Jer. 4:2).  Three conditions are here stated to be requisite to a legitimate oath, righteousness, judgment, and truth.  Righteousness, that the thing be lawful and honest, and so the Name of God be not adduced in confirmation of injustice or sin; judgment, in that the oath be not taken without necessity or grave cause; and truth, that the thing be true, or at least on reasonable grounds and bona fide believed to be true, so that the Holy Name be not brought forward to testify to a lie, which were perjury and a great sin. [See Bp. Forbes On the Articles, p. 803.]  An oath so taken is not only no sin but a religious act.  Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God, said Moses, and by His Name shalt thou swear (Deut. 10:20).

Appendix

I – The Lambeth Articles

      i.  During the Marian persecutions many English divines sought refuge on the Continent and there became associated with the leading Swiss reformers, who were strongly addicted to the predestinarian views of Calvin.  On their return to England in Queen Elizabeth’s reign they propagated widely the system of Geneva, and entrenched themselves firmly in the University of Cambridge, where they enlisted the services of not a few zealous, able, and determined men in opposing the whole system of the English Church.  Of this party Thomas Cartwright, fellow of Trinity, became the acknowledged leader, and his appointment to the Margaret Professorship of Divinity in 1569 increased his influence.  After some little time another pronounced advocate of predestinarian views was found in Dr Whitaker, a keen polemic and Regius Professor of Divinity, and under his influence and that of others holding similar opinions, Puritanism found at Cambridge a strong centre for disseminating Calvinistic opinions.

      ii.  The exertions of Archbishop Whitgift had secured in the Elizabethan statutes of the University a formidable preponderance of influence for the Heads of Colleges, and he and some other bishops were inclined to take part with the Heads, and espousing the popular side which was inclined to predestinarian tenets, to condemn the late band of orthodox divines, who wished “to raise their scheme of divinity upon the noble foundations of the Fathers, the Councils, and the ecclesiastical historians.” [The expression of Young, Bishop of Rochester, in 1600, when he ordained the future Archbishop Laud.  Le Bas, Life of Laud, p. 6, quoted in Hardwick’s Reformation, p. 242.]  In 1595 the archbishop, who was a strong disciplinarian and regarded conformity to the law, ecclesiastical and civil, as the first duty of an English subject, thought by assimilating the doctrines of the English Church to the doctrines of Calvin, who had become what the “Master of the Sentences” had been in the palmy days of the Scholastic philosophy, to reconcile the Puritan party, and render them innocuous to the Government.  Accordingly he got together at Lambeth Palace Dr. Fletcher, Bishop of London; Dr. Vaughan, Bishop of Bangor, and Dr. Tyndall, Dean of Ely, and the Calvinistic divines from Cambridge, and drew up what are called “The Lambeth Articles.”

      iii.  These Articles were nine in number, and they laid down the following propositions:–

      iv.  These Articles, asserting the extremest views of the Calvinistic system, were too pronounced for the Queen or statesmen like Burghley to accept, and were abhorrent to the rising school of theologians represented by Andrewes and Overall. [See Wakeman, The Church and the Puritans, p. 51.]  To Andrewes the statements contained in the first and last of the Articles seemed to be a direct incentive to lawlessness.  “They were charging God with cruelty,” said Burghley, “and might make men desperate in their wickedness.”  Moreover the prelates, who drew them up at Whitaker’s suggestion acted without authority, for they were not assembled in synod.  The meeting was a mere private conference, and the Articles had no synodical authority.  Whitgift was severely censured afterwards by Elizabeth for the whole proceeding, and so, finding himself in opposition to the Court, he was content to let the matter drop, [See Strype, Whitgift, p. 462.  For Hooker’s view of the Lambeth Articles, see his Works, i. p. cii. et passim; Saravia’s in Strype, Whitgift, Bk. iv. Append. xxiv; Bishop Andrewes in his Minor Works, pp. 289–300, Lib. Anglo-Cath. Theol.] and promised to write to Cambridge that the Articles might be suppressed. [They were, however, again brought forward and rejected at the Hampton Court Conference in 1604.]

II – Chronological Tables

      [*F. Paolo Sarpi, Historia del Concil. Trident., p. 423, ed. 1619.  As regards this invitation Froude quotes Cecil’s answer – “If the Council was held in a place which the Kings of France and Spain considered satisfactory the Queen of England, Cecil said, could not reasonably object; she would not refuse to allow the presidency of the Pope, provided it was understood that the Pope was not above the Council but merely its head; and its decisions should be accepted in England if they were in harmony with Holy Scripture and the first four General Councils.  But he assumed –  as if it was a point on which no difficulty could be raised – that the English Bishops, having been apostolically ordained, and not merely elected by a congregation like Lutherans or Calvinists, would be admitted to sit with the rest.”  Froude, Hist. of England, p. 482.  London, 1870.]