The Ordinal

By W. K. Firminger

 

I

      What is the meaning of Order?  We may reply, in the words of St. Augustine, that order is “an arrangement of things like and unlike which assigns to each its place.” [De Civ. Dei, xix. 13.]  Holy Order is the assignment to each of the lot that has been divinely chosen for him.  In Acts 1:17, it is said of Judas that “he was numbered among us and received his lot in this ministry.”  From being the means by which a selection is made, “lot” (χληρος) is transferred to that which it secures.  By the “lot” given in answer to prayer, St. Matthias obtained his “lot” in the apostolic ministry.  Harnack maintains that the early Greek-speaking Christian community at Rome was the first to use χληρος as equivalent to “clergy”. [Constitution and Law of the Church, p. 115.]  Tertullian, the Father of Latin theology, sometimes uses “ordo” as an equivalent to χληρος in the sense of clergy.  As a Montanist Tertullian asks (De Exhort., 7), “Are not even we laymen priests?” and asserts that it is the authority of the Church and the honour which has acquired sanctity by the sitting together of the order (honor per ordinis consessum, i.e. the college of the presbyters sitting on special seats in the sanctuary) which have established the difference between the order and the laity (plebem).  As a Catholic, he had complained (De Praescr., 41) of “the rash, light, and fickle ordinations of the heretics,” that is to say, their capricious interchanges of “sacerdotal functions”.  “To set within the bema” (the sanctuary) is an Eastern synonym for “to ordain”.

      As to the Greek words χειροτονία, χειροθεσία, επίθεσις χειρων, we are fortunate in being able to refer to the article prepared for the Lexicon of Patristic Greek by Prof. C. H. Turner.  χειροτονία (lit. “stretching out the hand”) in a general sense is appointing formally; technically it is used to “include the whole of the conditions which constitute a regular ordination, and of those the two most important were election by the people and the laying on of hands of the bishops.”  Prof. Turner says that χειροτονέω and χειροτονία are “never used in connection with any other ecclesiastical rite than ordination – neither of Confirmation nor of the reconciliation of penitent and heretic; that is to say, they never mean simply ‘laying on of hands’.  There is always in the background the sense of appointment as well.”  χειροθεσία, επίθεσις χειρων, are not equivalents to χειροτονία, but “are related to it as the ‘matter’ or visible sign of the sacrament of which χειροτονία is the whole.”  The technical distinction between χειροτονία as “ordination” and χειροθεσία as excluding it, made by the writer of the Apostolic Constitutions, is an idiosyncrasy of his own. [Cf. J.T.S. xxiv.]

      Coeval with the beginning of the Christian Church, ordination by laying on of hands (semikah) was the practice in the appointment of the elders (zekinim, πρεσβύτεροι), who formed the Palestinian Sanhedrins.  The Old Testament precedent for the kind of “apostolical succession” this Jewish ordination supplied was the appointment of the seventy elders in the wilderness, when God descended in the theophanic cloud and took of the spirit that was upon Moses and put it on the elders (Num. 11:16–25).  For the ordination of scholars the precedent was that of Moses, who, by God’s command, laid hands on Joshua, and placed some of his honour upon him, in order to “appoint a man over the congregation, which may go out before them, and which may go in before them, and which may lead them out, and which may lead them in; that the congregation of the Lord be not as sheep which have no shepherd” (Num. 27:15 ff.).  The picture given us in the Acts of the Church in the apostolic days is of a Spirit-possessed fellowship entering into its great possession as the true Israel, through the Spirit’s indwelling endowed with charismatic gifts.  Even of the Church’s Lord it is said that “He through the Holy Spirit” gave “commandment unto the apostles whom he had chosen” (Acts 1:2).  When, in the Upper Room, the Risen Lord, Himself “anointed with the Holy Ghost and with power” (Acts 10:38), had breathed on His Apostles and imparted to them His own mission from the Father, He bade them receive the Holy Ghost, and committed to them the power of remitting and retaining sin.  Receiving their commission directly from the Lord, and inspired with the Spirit that was upon Him, who is “greater than Moses,” the Apostles, by His command, waited till they were “baptized with the Holy Ghost”.  When the Spirit comes, the Apostles lay on their hands, and men “receive the Holy Ghost”.

      The laying on of hands had been a characteristic action of our Lord: in His acts of merciful power by laying on His hand He blessed, and in thanksgiving by this same action He consecrated.  About to ascend to His Father, He led His Apostles out to Bethany, and “lifted up his hands and blessed them”.  According to the Acts, the laying on of hands is practiced by the Apostolic College at Jerusalem; it spreads to Antioch, [With Acts 13:2, “Separate me (αφορίσατε δή μοι) Barnabas and Saul,” compare Num. 8:11, και αφοριει Αρων τους Λευείτας.  The Levites are to be prepared “to do the service of the Lord.”  “The children of Israel ... lay their hands on the Levites.”  So Barnabas and Saul are sent away “for the work whereunto I have called them.”] where the faithful are first called Christians.  It is employed in the Pauline Churches, and so becomes the universally adopted sign of Ordination.  Dr. Joseph Coppens, [In L’Imposition des Mains et les Rites connexes.] who has made a very extensive study of the Imposition of Hands, and dealt with the Jewish precedents, is perhaps right in believing that the Jewish custom of ordaining would not in itself have led to the adoption of that ceremony as the Christian outward and visible sign of Ordination.  Yet here we have a conspicuous instance of what Dr. Liddon has described as “the inspiration of selection”.  Guided by the Holy Spirit, who is the Interpreter of the will and work of Christ (Acts 1:8, John 16:25–6), following the precedents supplied by the Old Testament in the ordination of the seventy elders, of Joshua, and the Levites, and adopting the Lord’s significant manner of bestowing His grace, the Apostolic Church employed the laying on of hands as the visible sign of an imparted commission.

      That which is bestowed on an ordinand by Ordination, however, is not merely something which distinguishes him from the laity on the one hand, or from other ministers in an hierarchy on the other; nor is it even a power – a personal property of his own – of performing this or that service or office.  By the laying on of hands with prayer, the ordinand receives, or is admitted into, that endowment of the Holy Spirit which (1) is the extension throughout the ages of Christ’s gift to His Apostles, and (2) is nothing else but the abiding presence and power of Him whose office it is to cleanse, sanctify, illumine and sustain.  The minister can do nothing apart from the operation of the Holy Spirit, who takes of the things of Christ and presents them to the Church (John 16:15).  Apart from the operation of the Giver of life, all sacraments are of necessity null and void.  Through the presence and power of the Holy Spirit, the one abiding Priest employs His chosen earthly minister as His living instrument; but it is He Himself who baptizes, confirms, consecrates the Eucharistic elements, absolves the penitent, ordains and admits men as His Ministers, joins hands in Christian wedlock, and strengthens the sick.

 

II

      In the Bull Apostolicae Curae, Leo XIII wrote: “All know that the Sacraments of the New Law, as sensible and efficient signs of invisible grace, ought both to signify the grace which they effect, and effect the grace which they signify.  Although the signification ought to be found in the whole essential rite – that is to say, in the matter and form – it still pertains chiefly to the form; since the matter is the part not determined by itself, but is determined by the form.”  In examining ancient Ordination rites, we not unnaturally look at the prayers which accompany the laying on of hands in order to learn how the particular Church, to which these rites belong, understood the grace of the sacrament.  It must, however, be understood that in some Ordination rites the laying on of hands is repeated, and to single out any one of the prayers which accompany the several impositions and to describe it as the essential form is therefore arbitrary.

      The earliest Ordination prayers that have come down to us are those of the “Church Orders”.  A description of these books will be found in an earlier chapter of the present volume, and it is therefore only needful to say in this place that the Canons of Hippolytus, described by Bishop John Wordsworth as the “Roman Church Order,” have been more accurately described by Dr. C. H. Turner as “a very secondary authority, a version of a version, not only late in their present Arabic dress, but also not earlier than the fourth century in their substance.”  After the labours in England of Dom Hugh Connolly and in Germany of Prof. E. Schwartz, the Ethiopic, Coptic and Arabic texts, together with Hauler’s Verona Fragments, which constitute the so-called “Egyptian Church Order,” are now recognized by scholars as the lost treatise – the Apostolic Tradition – of that important but elusive person, Hippolytus.  We thus have Ordination prayers which go back to the commencement of the third century.  The rite cannot be described as a mere literary fragment, for it appears to be still in use in the Abyssinian Church, and through Apostolical Constitutions (Book VIII) its forms appear in the Ordination rites of the Coptic and Maronite Churches, and through the Testament of Our Lord, in the rite for the consecration of the Coptic patriarch. [Denzinger, ii. 48.]

      In the rite for the ordination of a bishop, found in the Apostolic Tradition, after an election by all the people, the bishops with the presbyterate and the people are assembled, on a Sunday.  With the consent of all, the bishops lay their hands on the elect, the presbyterate standing by silently.  “But let all keep silence, praying in heart for the descent of the Holy Spirit: let one of the bishops present, at the request of all, laying on a hand on him who is ordained bishop, pray, saying thus:

      O God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Father of mercies and of all consolation, [2 Cor. 1:3.] who dwellest on high, and beholdeth lowly things, [Ps. 113:56.] who knowest all things before they be, [Susannah 42.] thou who hast set boundaries in thy Church by the word of thy grace, foreordaining from the beginning the race of the righteous (from) Abraham, appointing rulers and priests, [Cuius imperio fit ut ex Adamo perseveret genus iustum ratione huius episcopi, qui est magnus Abraham: qui praelaturas et principatus constituit (Can. Hipp.).] and not leaving thy sanctuary without a ministry; thou from the beginning of the world hast been well pleased to be praised in those whom thou hast chosen : pour forth now that power, that is from thee of thy principal spirit (principalis spiritus), [Cf. Apost. Constit.: του ηγεμονικου πνεύματος, which is based on the LXX Ps. 51:12, rendered by the Vulgate “Spiritu principali”.] which thou didst give to thy beloved Son, Jesus Christ, which he bestowed on thy holy Apostles, who established the Church in each place, thy sanctification, to the glory and unfailing praise of thy Name.

      [Here we give the parallel prayer at the ordination of the presbyter.]

      Grant, O Father, Reader of the heart, to this thy servant, whom thou hast elected to the episcopate, to feed thy holy flock and to show forth to thee the primacy of the priesthood (primatum sacerdotii), serving without blame day and night unceasingly to propitiate thy countenance and to offer the gifts of thy Holy Church, to have, in the spirit of the primacy of the priesthood (primatus sacerdotii), power to remit sins according to thy commandment, to give the lots according to thy precept, to loose every bond according to the power which thou didst give to the Apostles, to please thee moreover in meekness and purity of heart, offering thee a sweet-smelling savour: through thy Child (puerum) Jesus Christ, through whom to thee be glory with him and the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

      God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, look down on this thy servant and impart the Spirit of grace and counsel of the presbyterate, that in a pure heart he may aid and govern thy people, as thou didst look down on the people of thy choice and didst order Moses to choose presbyters, whom thou didst fill with thy Spirit, which thou gayest to thy servant; and now, O Lord, vouchsafe to preserve in us unfailingly the Spirit of thy grace, and make (us) worthy that, believing in thee, we may minister in simplicity of heart, praising thee, through thy Child (puerum) Christ Jesus, through whom be glory and power to thee, Father and Son with the Holy Spirit, in the Holy Church, both now and for ever and ever.  Amen.

 

      We have printed the two prayers in this way because the Apostolic Tradition directs: “But when a Presbyter is ordained, let the Bishop lay his hand on his head, the Presbyters also touching it together, and let him speak according to what has been said before, as we have said before over the Bishop (secundum ea, quae praedicta sunt, sicut praediximus super episcopum), praying and saying: God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. ...”  The Canons of Hippolytus, however, give another direction: “But if a Presbyter is ordained, let all things be done as with the Bishop, except that he may not sit on the throne.  Let even the entire prayer be prayed over him as over the Bishop, with the sole exception of the name of the Episcopate.  Let the Bishop in all things be made equivalent (aequiparetur) to the Presbyter except in regard to the throne and ordination, because (the Presbyter) is not given power to ordain.”  The prayer for the Presbyter, therefore, is not given in the Canons.  The earlier Ethiopic and Latin versions of the Apostolic Tradition, after directing that what is said in the ordination of a bishop is to be said at the ordination of a presbyter, immediately give a prayer which is not the Bishop’s prayer; and as this prayer for a presbyter has no exordium, it may be believed that the original intention was that the opening of the Bishop’s ordination prayer was to serve as the opening of the Presbyter’s as well.

      The Apostolic Tradition enjoins that when a Deacon is ordained the Bishop alone is to lay on his hand, because the Deacon is not ordained for the priesthood (in sacerdotio), but “for the ministry of the Bishop (in ministerio episcopi).”  The Deacon does not receive the communem presbyteri spiritum, “of which the presbyters are partakers”.  It is on account of this communis et similis cleri spiritus, that the presbyters lay their hands on the candidates for the presbyterate, but the Bishop alone lays hands on the candidate for the diaconate, who is to undertake the work which the Bishop will entrust to him.  “The Presbyter derives from the spirit of his order” authority to receive, but not authority to give; and therefore he does not ordain.

      The Apostolic Tradition ascribes far more liturgical authority to the Deacon than it does to the Presbyter.  The text of the Deacon’s ordination prayer as given by Dom Connolly may be compared with the Latin translation from the Abyssinian Sinodos which Mgr. L. P. Bel supplied to Canon Estcourt. [The Question of Anglican Ordinations, p. xxxv.]

 

Abyssinian.

Apostolic Tradition.

      Send forth on thy servant whom thou hast chosen the Spirit of goodness and watchfulness that he may be a Deacon in thy Church, that he may approach to thy Temple and offer thy holy things to thee with (apud) him who is consecrated thine high-priest, [I.e. the Bishop.] and glorify thy name: cause that he may keep a heart pure and without spot: that he may attain to the highest dignity of the priesthood with honour, etc.

      Give the holy Spirit of grace and earnestness and industry to this thy servant whom thou hast chosen to minister to thy Church and to offer in thy holy of holies that which is offered to thee by thine ordained Chief Priests [I.e. the Bishop.] to the glory of thy name; thus without blame in pure life having served the degrees of ordination he may obtain the exalted (priesthood?) and thy honour, and glorify thee, etc.

 

      This “offering” appears to refer to the act of the Deacon in holding the chalice for his Bishop at the time of consecration.  The presbyters, however, can celebrate with the Bishop, but, as Dr. Brightman says, “between the more conspicuous activity of the Bishop as the president and mouthpiece of the collective priesthood on the one hand, and the active, though subordinate, ministry of the diaconate on the other, the more passive and silent role of the presbyterate was obscured and made inconspicuous.” [Early History of the Church and Ministry, p. 386.]  The idea of the sacerdotium is that of a college, the powers of which are inherent in the Bishop who has received a gift of the Holy Spirit, such as was bestowed on the Apostles by our Lord, an endowment which by his ordination the Presbyter shares, after the manner of the seventy elders on whom the Lord placed the Spirit that was on Moses without withdrawing the Spirit from him.  “Let that Eucharist be considered valid which is under the Bishop or him to whom he commits it,” St. Ignatius had written to the Smyrnaeans.  The question of the competency of a presbyter to consecrate the Eucharist is not raised; but it is clear that the Presbyter celebrates the Mysteries as the delegate of the Bishop.  The act is proper not to the Presbyter personally, but to the sacerdotium of which he is a member.

      With the Presbyter’s prayer of the Apostolic Tradition we may compare the Presbyter’s prayer in the Sacramentary of the Egyptian Bishop of Thmuis, Serapion, the friend and correspondent of St. Athanasius:

      We [This points to the Presbyters’ imposing their hands along with the Bishop.] stretch forth the hand, O Lord God of the heavens, Father of the Only-Begotten, upon this man, and pray that the Spirit of truth may dwell upon him.  Give him the grace of prudence and knowledge and a good heart.  Let a Divine Spirit come to be in him that he may be able to be a steward of thy people and an ambassador of thy divine oracles, and to reconcile thy people to thee, the Uncreated God, who didst give of the Spirit of Moses upon the chosen ones, even Holy Spirit.  Give a portion of Holy Spirit to this man also, from the Spirit of thy Only-Begotten, for the grace of wisdom and knowledge and right faith, that he may be able to serve thee in a clean conscience, through thy Only- Begotten Jesus Christ.

      Dom Pierre de Puniet has rendered the words I have italicized by the words “lui communique l’Esprit même du Christ, afin qu’il puisse remplir désormais les functions du Christ.”  This free rendering brings out what is the essential idea.  The High-priesthood, Christ’s own office, the office in which our Lord, as a greater High-Priest than Moses or Aaron, is invested, is that in which the Bishop acts, when he offers the gifts of the Holy Church in the spirit of High-priesthood.  The Holy Spirit is invoked to take of the Spirit of the Only-Begotten, which is on Him, who in the Church is the antitype of Moses, and to place it on him who is being ordained to the presbyterate.

      The prayer, Deus honorum omnium, of the Leonine and Gregorian Sacramentaries, resembles the prayer of the Apostolic Tradition.  To the analogy of Moses and the Seventy Elders that of the sons of Aaron is added.  The prayer is for a renewal in the ordained of the Holy Spirit (Ps. 51:10), so that, as “men of the second order and dignity,” they may assist their “High Pontiff” in his own ministry.

      God, Giver of all honours and dignities ... that contend for thee; through whom all things progress; through whom all things are established, the growths of orderly nature having developed for the better through an order disposed in a fitting design: Whence priestly grades and levitical offices instituted in mysterious sacraments have increased: so that when thou hadst set up High Pontiffs to rule thy people, thou didst chose for their society and assistance men of a second order and dignity.  Thus also in the wilderness, through the minds of seventy prudent men, thou didst propagate the spirit of Moses; which helpers he used as assistants in the people and easily governed innumerable multitudes.  So also thou didst transfuse in Eleazar and Ithamar, the sons of Aaron, the abundance of the paternal plenitude, so that the ministry of priests might suffice for saving victims and sacraments of more frequent duty.  By this providence, O Lord, thou didst add to the Apostles of thy Son, teachers, companions of the faith, by whom they filled the whole globe with second preachers.  Wherefore to our infirmity also, Lord, we pray, bestow these aids, who in that we are the more fragile so much the more we need these many (supports).  Bestow, we beseech, Almighty God, on these thy servants the dignity of the presbyterate, and renew in their inward parts the spirit of holiness, that they may obtain, as received by thee, O God, the office of second worth, and set forth the strictness of morals by the example of their conversation.  May they be prudent (providi, but perhaps probi) cooperators of our order, and may the beauty (forma) of integral justice shine on them, so that when they must render a good account of the stewardship entrusted to them, they may obtain the rewards of eternal blessedness. [From the text printed by Duchesne, Christian Worship, p. 360, which differs from that of the present Roman Pontifical.]

      The Gregorian prayer for the Episcopate has a lengthy exordium which recalls the letter in which Pope Celestine I (422–432) chided the bishops (sacerdotes) of Gaul on the score of superstitious observances in costume.  “Those who have not grown up in the Church, but, coming in by another road,” wrote Celestine, “have introduced with themselves into the Church those things which they had in another mode of life. ... We must be distinguished from the common people and the rest by our learning, and not by our clothes; by our mode of life, and not by our costume; by purity of mind, and not by elegance of dress.  For if we begin to busy ourselves with novelties, we shall tread underfoot the traditions handed down to us from the Fathers in order to make room for worthless superstitions.”  The Gregorian Ordination prayer for a Bishop refers to the priestly garments in which Moses was commanded to vest Aaron as “aenigmatica figura,” since “the dress of the ancient priesthood is the ornament of our mind,” and “now it is the splendour of souls, and not the honour of vestments that commends pontifical glory.”  God is thus besought to bestow on the servant whom He has chosen in ministerium summi sacerdotii whatever the garments of the ancient high priesthood, by the brightness of gold and the glitter of gems and variety of workmanship, signified.

      Perfect in thy priests the height of thy mystery (mysterii tui summam) and sanctify them, set forth in the ornaments of all glorification, with the dew of heavenly unction. [When the ceremony of Unction was introduced, in many pontificals this was, as it is in the modern Roman rite, the point at which it took place.]  May this, Lord, copiously flow on their head, run down to the lower parts of the mouth, descend to the extremity of the whole body, that the power of thy Spirit may envelop both their exteriors and interiors.  May constancy of faith, purity of affection, sincerity of peace abound in them.

      At this place in the prayer, where it is found in the Missale Francorum and in Gelasian books, there follows a passage which is not found in the Gregorian books.  The opening sentence: “In thy service may their feet be lively in preaching the gospel of peace,” Mgr. Batiffol considers to be more in keeping with the diocese of St. Martin of Tours than with Rome.  A ministry of reconciliation in words and deeds and in power of signs and wonders is entreated, and a discourse and preaching not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and in power.

      Give to them the keys of the kingdom of heaven: may they use, not boastingly, the power thou bestowest for edification, not for destruction.  And may whatever they should bind on earth be bound in heaven, etc.  May he who blesses them be blessed, and he who curses them be filled with curses.  May those whom thou dost set over thy family, Lord, be faithful and prudent servants, that they may give them their meat in due season, so that they may set forth every man perfect.  May they be unweary in care, fervent in spirit.  May they hate pride, love truth, nor ever, overcome by lassitude or fear, desert it.  Let them not set light for darkness, nor darkness for light.  Let them not call evil good, nor good evil.  May they be debtors to the wise and obtain fruit from the progress of all.

      Here ends the interpolated matter, and the rest follows:

      Grant to them the episcopal chair to rule thy Church and universal people.  Be to them authority: be to them power: be to them strength.  Multiply on them thy benediction and grace, that, for ever seeking thy mercy, they, fit for thy service, may be set apart by thy grace.

      In the description of ancient Western liturgical books, given elsewhere in this volume, it has been stated that the so-called Gelasian Sacramentary represents the rites in use in the Gallican Church prior to the arrival at the Court of Charles the Great, sometime between 784 and 791, of the Hadrian Sacramentary.  The Gelasian presbyter’s prayer, Sanctificationum omnium Auctor, implores God to pour the hand of His blessing (... tuae benedictionis infunde) [The text is corrupt.] on the servant whom “we dedicate with the honour of the presbyterate, so that by purity of deeds and strictness of living he may prove himself to be an elder (seniorem), established in those rules which Paul set forth to Titus and Timothy; that, O Almighty, he, meditating on thy law, by day and by night, may believe what he may read, teach what he may believe, and imitate what he may teach,” etc., and “preserve the gift of thy ministry pure and unstained.”  Then comes a passage for which there are conflicting readings.  As it stands in Wilson’s edition of the Gelasian Sacramentary it is a petition that the priest who is being ordained may “through the service of thy people transform the Body and the Blood of thy Son by a stainless benediction and by an inviolate charity into a perfect man, into the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ, at the day of judgment of eternal justice, with pure conscience, full faith, full with the Holy Ghost, may ...”  It would seem that the petition based on Eph. 4 was originally a prayer that the new priest might be enabled to transform the body of Christ so that it would come in the unity of the faith “unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the age of the fullness of Christ.”  This doubtfulness of the text led to some copyists reading “transformetur” for “transformet” and making “corpus” read “corpore,” so that the petition would be that the new priest might himself be transformed by his participation in the Eucharist.

      In the Orthodox Church of the East, the rites of Ordination are, in contrast to those of some of the separated Eastern Churches, short and simple.  The three sacred orders of Bishop, Presbyter and Deacon are “within the Bema,” while the minor orders of subdeacon, reader and singer are “outside the Bema”. [The Order of Deaconess fell into abeyance in the East in the twelfth century.  The Bishop prays that God will “give the grace of thy Holy Spirit to this thy servant, who desires to offer herself to thee and to fulfill the grace of the diaconate, as thou didst give the grace of thy diaconate unto Phoebe, whom thou calledst to the work of the Ministry.”  She is invested in the diaconal stole, and after she has received Communion, the Bishop gives her the chalice, which she receives and places on the altar.  Her ecclesiastical rank was thus superior to that of the subdeacon.  In the East the office of Deacon is not, as it usually is with us in the West, a stepping stone to the presbyterate, but a lifelong appointment.  See the forms of Ordination of Deaconesses in The Ministry of Women (S.P.C.K. 1919).]  The person to be ordained Deacon is conducted by two Deacons, and the person to be ordained Presbyter by two priests, [So in Hittorp’s Ordo Romano Vulgatus, and in Martène’s Ordo XIII.] from the platform that skirts the Bema into the Bema, and there the Bishop signs the ordinand three times on his head.  The candidate for the subdiaconate does not enter the Bema, but remains outside.  While the candidate is kneeling (the candidate for the diaconate on his right knee: the candidate for the presbyterate on both knees), the Bishop, laying on his hands, makes the proclamation:

      The Divine Grace, which always healeth that which is sick and filleth up that which lacketh, advances N. the most pious {Subdeacon / Deacon} to a {Deacon / Presbyter} Presbyter.  Let us all therefore pray for him that the grace of All-Holy Spirit may come upon him.

      The proclamation in both cases is followed by two prayers said secretly, while the Bishop holds his hand on the head on the person.  At the consecration of a bishop, the elect is led up by three bishops to the consecrator at the footpace of the Altar, and in the consecrator’s hands is placed a paper on which is written: “By the election and approbation of all the most God-loving bishops, and of all the sacred Council, the Divine Grace, which always healeth, etc.”  The consecrator reads this proclamation, and then opens the Gospel, and lays it on the head and neck of the elect, the other bishops touching him at the same time.  He then makes three crosses on the head of the new bishop, and, keeping his hand there, he prays secretly to God, who “by thine illustrious Apostle Paul hast enjoined on us the degrees and ranks for the service and ministry of thy sacred and stainless mysteries at thy holy Altar, first Apostles, secondarily Prophets, thirdly Teachers,” to strengthen with “the visitation and might and grace of thy Holy Spirit this man, who has been elected and deemed worthy of coming under the yoke of the Gospel and the episcopal dignity, through the hands of me, a sinner, and the fellow bishops.”  While one of the bishops, loud enough for the attendant bishops to hear, recites the diaconal sentences, the consecrator, still keeping his hand on the new bishop, prays secretly:

      O Lord our God, who, because the nature of man cannot endure the presence of the substance of the Godhead, hast in thy governance appointed for us teachers of like passions with ourselves, occupying thy seat, to offer unto thee sacrifice and oblation for all thy people, do thou, O Christ, grant that this man, now made a steward of episcopal grace, may be an imitator of thee, the True Shepherd, giving his life for thy sheep, to be a guide to the blind, a light to those in darkness, a teacher of the ignorant, an instructor of infants, a lamp in the world; that, having trained the souls committed unto him in this present life, he may stand unashamed at thy judgment seat and receive the great reward which thou hast prepared for those who contend for the preaching of thy Gospel.  For thou, O God, hast mercy, and dost save us, and to thee we ascribe glory, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, now and for ever, and to ages of ages. [St. Gregory Nazianzen (died 389 or 390), in his Oration on his father, speaks of the proclamation.]

      At the ordination of a presbyter in the Orthodox Church, the assistant presbyters do not join in the laying on of hands, but the Bishop, who has already signed the head of the ordinand three times, holds his right hand on the ordinand’s head and says: “The Divine Grace which always healeth the sick, and filleth up that which lacketh, advances N., the most pious deacon, to a presbyter.  Let us all therefore pray for him, that the grace of the All-Holy Spirit may come upon him.”  The Bishop, continuing to hold his hand on the head of the ordinand, says two prayers secretly.  The first of these prayers is for “the great grace of thy Holy Spirit,” that he who has been advanced to minister (ιερουργειν) “the word of thy truth may direct well that great priestly honour.”  The second secret prayer is that God will fill with the Holy Spirit “this man whom thou hast been pleased should enter the degree of presbyter.”  The functions of the degree are “to stand blamelessly before thine Altar, to preach the Gospel of thy Kingdom, to minister (ιερουργειν) the word of thy truth, to offer to thee gifts and spiritual sacrifices, to renew thy people through the laver of regeneration.”  After that the new priest is raised from his knees, and the Bishop, rearranging the stole of the new priest, says “worthy,” which all within the Bema and the singers repeat.

      A reference to Old Testament precedent is not altogether absent from the Orthodox Ordination rites.  The first of the secret prayers, which follow the proclamation at the consecration of a bishop, is to God, “who by thine illustrious Apostle Paul hast enjoined on us the order of degrees and ranks for the service and ministry of thy sacred and stainless mysteries at thy Holy Altar, first Apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers”: but it is besought that God will strengthen the new Bishop “with the visitation and grace of thy Holy Spirit, as thou didst strengthen thy Holy Apostles and Prophets; as thou didst anoint Kings; as thou didst sanctify the high priests.”  In the second prayer for the bishops, the appointment of “teachers of like passions with ourselves, occupying thy seat, to offer unto thee sacrifice and oblation for all thy people,” is said to be because “man cannot endure the presence of the substance of the Godhead.”  The Bishop is to be an “imitator of the True Shepherd giving his life for the sheep.”

      It should be observed that the form of the proclamation corresponds with the Orthodox baptismal proclamation: “The servant of God, N., is baptized in the Name of the Father, Amen, and of the Son, Amen, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.”  The person of the minister is not asserted, as it is God Himself, God working through His mystery, who baptizes.  God’s eternal choice of a servant to serve Him lies behind man’s choice of the ministry.  So in the second secret prayer for the Deacon we read: “O Lord of all, fill this thy servant, whom thou hast chosen to enter on the ministry of the Diaconate, with all faith, and power, and sanctification, by the visitation of thy Holy and quickening Spirit, for it is not by the laying on of my hands, but by the watchfulness of thy rich mercies, that grace is given to thy chosen ones.”

      Morin, who was anxious to prove that Ordination forms are precative in form, was unable to recognize in the words of the proclamation the essential Greek form, although he admitted the fact of its great antiquity.  A recognized authority, Simon of Thessalonica (died about 1430), regarded the proclamation as the most operative thing in the ceremony, for “the grace is given simultaneously with the words,” but he takes the broad view that the whole rite constitutes a moral unity.  In Archbishop Makarios’s Dogmatic Theology of the Mysteries it is stated that the Fathers of the Orthodox Church regarded the proclamation, “the Divine Grace, etc.,” as an essential form of ordination. [I owe this reference to my friend, the Archimandrite G. D. Kazakos.]  Certainly, as Cardinal Gasparri (De sacr. ordin., 1089) says, this view is the “now received opinion”.  But what an Orthodox theologian would understand by “form” is different from what is understood by a Latin theologian.  “Whatever grace there be in the water of Baptism,” writes St. Basil (De Spiritu Sancto, 15), “is not then of the nature of the words, but of the presence of the Holy Spirit.”  “The Divine Grace advances” indicates a divine power which is at work, and it is this divine power, theologians of the Eastern Church hold, and not the mere concurrence of a mystic ceremony with an essential form, which accomplishes the mystery of Holy Order.

      The “Divine Grace” proclamation appears in every Eastern Ordination rite, the Nestorian excepted; although in the Coptic and Syrian Jacobite rites it is pronounced by the Archdeacon, and not by the Bishop.  A significant passage of a prayer in the Greek rite for the ordination of deacons appears in the Syrian Jacobite rite: “for not in the imposition of our sinful hands, but in the visitation of thy copious mercy, grace is given to them.”  In the Maronite [The Maronites belong to the Roman obedience.] rite for deacons we read in one prayer: “for not in the imposition of our sinful hands, but by the rich operation of thy mercies, grace is given them,” and in another prayer shortly afterwards: “for not through the imposition of the hands of us sinners and fearful men, but through the illapse of the divine mercies of thy Holy Spirit, grace is bestowed on all those whom thou hast made fit, so that by it they may be worthy who approach to thee.  Later, after having placed his hands “on the Mysteries,” the Bishop says the two prayers – the first of them secretly, with one hand “over the Mysteries” and the other placed on the candidate’s head.  In the second of the prayers occur the words: “non enim per manus impositionem,” etc.  Before these two prayers are said the candidate is not regarded as yet ordained a Deacon, for in the preceding prayer there is a petition, “Ascribe this thy servant to the third order, which is the diaconate.”  If there be any “essential form” and “moment of consecration” in the Maronite rite, they are perhaps to be found after the obsignation, the vesting, the procession round the altar in which the candidate carries the censer, and the procession round the church in which he carries the book of the Gospels.  It is then that he receives yet another laying on of hands, this time “coram altari,” the Bishop holding first the paten with the Holy Body, and saying a prayer, and then holding the chalice, and saying another.  After this, the Bishop proclaims: “He is ordained in the Church of God.”  In the Maronite rite of Ordination to the presbyterate, immediately before an unction of the thumb and palm of the candidate, the Bishop, in a prayer which rehearses God’s redemptive work from man’s fall to Calvary, the laying on of our Lord’s pure and holy hands on His Apostles when He ascended on the Mount of Olives, His sending of the Holy Spirit, the constitution of “sacerdotes et pastores et ministri” (“nine orders ... according to the number of the choirs of Angels”), says: “And we also, thy poor and sinning servants and the work of thy holy hands, who, albeit we were unworthy, have received the power of the priesthood from thine Apostles, pray thee, and implore thy mercy for this thy servant N., who expects thy great gift by the laying on of hands, which he receives by us at this instant, that thou wouldst bestow on him the priesthood and the gift of the Holy Spirit.”  As the Bishop anoints the head of the ordinand, he says a prayer in which occur the words: “Anoint him with thy true and living (Spirit) and mingle him with thy divine sacraments, and bestow this order of the presbyterate on this thy servant.”  After this prayer, the Bishop again lays on his hand, and says: “He is ordained in the Church of God.”

      In the Coptic Church the proclamation (“the Divine Grace”) is made by the Archdeacon.  In the prayer said while the Bishop lays his hands on the candidate for the diaconate occur the words, “For it is not by the imposition of hands,” etc.  This prayer is practically identical with the Deacon’s prayer in the Apostolic Constitutions, but not with that of the Apostolic Tradition.  The prayer which is said while the Coptic Bishop lays his hand on the candidate for the presbyterate is, with a number of verbal alterations, the prayer found in the Apostolic Constitutions and is an expansion of the Presbyter’s prayer in the Apostolic Tradition.  Similarly, in the Coptic rite the first of the Ordination prayers for a bishop is, with many verbal alterations and omissions, the prayer for the Bishop in the Apostolic Constitutions, and its original basis is Hippolytus’ Apostolic Tradition.  The second prayer corresponds with the concluding part of the second prayer in the Greek Ordination of bishops – “a guide of the blind,” etc.

      The proclamation “the Divine Grace” is in the Armenian rites said by the Bishop after it has been sung by the people; and the same importance is attached to it by the Armenian Church as by the Greek.  The wording of the prayers which follow confirms this estimate.  Tradition of instruments takes place after the robing of the new priests and the unction of their hands.  According to Issarverden’s translation of the Roman Armenian rite, the Bishop says, as he delivers the chalice and paten with unconsecrated elements to the newly-ordained priest: “Receive these because ye have received power through the Grace of God to consecrate and complete the Holy Sacrifice, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, for the living and the dead”: but in the Armenian Church itself the chalice and paten are delivered with “the Life-giving Body and Blood” with the words: “Take and receive authority to seal and perfect Holy Sacrifice” – a form analogous to that which accompanies the placing of the girdle round the priest: “Take authority from the Holy Ghost to loose and to bind, as our Lord gave authority to the Apostles, saying: Whosoever ... ye bind,” etc.

      In the Nestorian rite for the ordination of presbyters, when the candidates are kneeling on both knees with hands extended, the Bishop says: “May the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, which at all times supplies that which is deficient, with the blessing of God the Father and the power of the Holy Spirit, be with us at every moment, and perform through our hands this tremendous and sublime ministry for the redemption of our life.”  He then lays his right hand on the candidates, “that they may be presbyters elect.”  He signs their heads, and the Archdeacon calls for prayer.  Again laying on his right hand, he in a low voice prays that God will look on His servants and elect them to the priesthood by an holy election by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit “that they may lay their hands on the sick and they may be healed, and in a pure heart and good conscience serve thy holy altar, offering to thee the oblations of prayers and of confessions in thy Holy Church,” etc.

      Nearly all the Oriental rites correspond with the description given by the writer who called himself “Dionysius the Areopagite,” and who flourished at the end of the fifth century.  In his work on the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy, he notices these ceremonies:

      1. The candidate for the diaconate when presented kneels on his right knee : the candidates for the presbyterate and episcopate kneel on both knees.

            2. The laying on of hands.

            3. The signing with the cross.

            4. The proclamation.

            5. The kiss that terminates the ceremony, and

      6. Peculiar to the consecration of bishops, the laying of the Bible on the head of the Bishop elect.

      This necessarily brief examination of ancient Ordination prayers will serve to throw a strong light on the meaning of Order and Ordination.  The doctrine of the Oriental prayers, in particular, is clearly expressed in a passage from St. John Chrysostom’s 85th Homily on the Gospel of St. John: “What speak I of priests?  I say that neither angel nor archangel can give us any of these things: which be given unto us of God; but it is the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost which is the effectual cause of all these things: the priest doth only put on his hands and his tongue.”  St. Gregory of Nyssa, in a remarkable passage in his sermon on the Baptism of Christ, speaks of the “sanctification bestowed by the Spirit” as working a change in the ordinand: “The same power of the Word makes the priest venerable and honourable, separated, by the new blessing bestowed upon him, from his community with the mass of men.  While but yesterday he was one of the mass, one of the people, he is suddenly rendered a guide, a president, a teacher of righteousness, an instructor in hidden mysteries; and this he does without being changed at all in body or in form; but while continuing to be in all appearance the man he was before, being, by some unseen power and grace, transformed in respect of his unseen soul to the higher condition.”  This unseen power is, in the words of the Greek rite, “the visitation of thy Holy and Quickening Spirit.”

      In the Orthodox Church this characteristic grace of Holy Order is confidently believed to be an endowment of the Holy Spirit, and because the Church on earth is the covenanted home of the Holy Spirit, St. Cyprian and St. Firmilian, in their memorable controversy with Pope Stephen, repudiated sacraments administered outside the Church as invalid.  St. Basil, who accepted the view of his predecessor, “our own Firmilian,” writes that “those who had apostasized from the Church had no longer on them the Grace of the Holy Spirit. ... The first separatists had received their ordination from the Fathers, and possessed the spiritual gift by the laying on of their hands.  But they who were broken off had become laymen, and, because they were no longer able to confer on others the grace of the Holy Spirit from which they themselves are fallen away, they had no authority either to baptize or to ordain.”  In the same letter (No. 188), St. Basil makes use of that prerogative, which the Orthodox Church calls “the Economy,” and accepts, “for the stewardship of the many,” baptisms which in the strictness of his theory would in themselves be invalid.  Pope Innocent I (401–17), although he endorses the practice of Pope Stephen, and recognizes Arian baptism as valid (ratum), yet, in making that concession in regard to baptism only, denies that Arians can receive the Holy Spirit thereby, “since, when their leaders departed from the Catholic faith, they lost the perfection of the Spirit which they had received: nor could they give the fullness which is especially operative in Ordination.”  The attitude of St. Basil and Pope Innocent I shows how both East and West were at one in the conception of the Ministry as the sphere in which the Holy Spirit operates through a human agency.

      We have noticed that in the Orthodox prayer for the ordination of a deacon, the Bishop says: “it is not by the laying on of my hands, but by the watchfulness of thy rich mercies that grace is given to thy chosen men.”  With this thought the English “King’s Book” of 1543 concurs.  Priests and bishops, although in the execution of their office and administration they do use and exercise the power and authority of God committed unto them, yet they be not the principal causes, nor the sufficient, or of themselves the efficient causes or givers of grace, or any spiritual gift which proceedeth and is given by God by his word and sacraments; but God is the only principal, sufficient and perfect cause of all the efficacy of his word and sacrament; and by his only power, grace and benefits it is that we receive the Holy Ghost, and his graces, by the office and administration of the same priests and bishops; and the said priests and bishops are but only as officers to execute and minister with their hands and tongues the outward and corporal things wherein God worketh and giveth grace in word, according to his pact and covenant made with and to his espouse the Church.”

      With the Ordination prayers for the presbyterate already examined we may now contrast the form which Pope Eugenius IV declared to be essential for the ordination of a presbyter.  “Receive the power of offering sacrifice in the Church for the living and the dead, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.”  In the same decree, Eugenius declared the matter of the Sacrament of Holy Order to be the delivery (porrectionem) of the chalice with wine and the paten with bread.  In language borrowed from a treatise of St. Thomas Aquinas, De articulis fidei et ecclesiae sacramentis, that Pope instructed those questionable representatives of the Armenian Church who had come to him after the closing of the Council of Florence in 1439, that “all sacraments are complete by three things – things as matter, words as form, and the person of the minister conferring the sacrament with the intention of doing what the Church does.”  It is true that this doctrine as to what constitutes the essential form and matter of Ordination has been widely abandoned by Latin theologians, yet for several centuries it represented the belief of the majority of the Schoolmen; it constitutes, the basis on which the rubrics of the Roman rite for the ordination of priests have been constructed, and it is the practice of the Holy Office at Rome to direct that wherever a case occurs of the omission of the porrectio instrumentorum and accompanying words the ordination should be repeated sub conditione, but if the ordinand has for some reason failed to receive the imposition of hands, that ceremony is alone “cautiously supplied”.  In exercising their intention to ordain, the vast majority of bishops of the Roman Communion must have intended to use the form Accipe potestatem, etc., and not the ancient prayer Deus honorum omnium auctor, as the essential form in the ordination of a presbyter.  How, we may ask, came it about that in the West the laying on of hands that is to be found in every Catholic rite of Ordination to the sacred Orders came to be regarded as secondary to a ceremony which was not older than the eleventh century, and how could a form of Ordination in which the Holy Spirit is not mentioned be regarded as the essential form in a sacrament in which, as Innocent I has written, the Holy Spirit is “especially operative”?

      The answer to these questions is to be found in the gradual substitution by Latin theologians from the eleventh century onwards of the Augustinian conception of a sacrament for the primitive conception of a “mystery” which is still that of the Orthodox Church of the East.  St. Augustine is no less emphatic than St. Cyprian in the belief that the “Holy Spirit is not outside the Church,” but he does not draw from that belief, as St. Cyprian had done, the consequence that outside the Church there can be no valid sacraments.  Not “extra ecclesiam nulla sacramenta,” but extra “ecclesiam nulla salus,” is St. Augustine’s attitude.  In conceding authentic sacraments either to schismatics or to the ficti or unconverted within the Church, he deprives sacraments of their efficacy.  Thus for him, what the schismatic or the fictus within the Church receives by baptism is not forgiveness of sins and regeneration, but a “character” or mark which will serve to condemn the soldier who has deserted his Commander.  And it was from St. Augustine that the Schoolmen derived their doctrine of the composition of a sacrament in matter and words.  The locus classicus for this doctrine is a passage in the 80th Treatise on the Gospel of St. John, where, after pointing out that our Lord said, not “through the baptism wherewith ye have been washed,” but “through the word which I have spoken unto you” (John 15:3), St. Augustine writes: “Take away the word, and the water is neither more nor less than water.  The word is added to the element, and there results the sacrament, as if it were itself also a kind of word.”  The Saint adds that the efficacy of word is “not because it is uttered but because it is believed,” but even so, the contrast between the older doctrine of the Holy Spirit performing His office in response to the sacramental action of the Church and the newer theory of the external efficacy of the conjunction of a word, received in faith, with a physical action or material thing is obvious.  In his attempt to rationalize the practice of recognizing the sacraments of the Donatists as valid, St. Augustine, in effect, developed a tendency, which is conspicuous in the works of St. Optatus, to give sacraments a self-derived efficacy.  The scientific systematization which his elusive language has undergone at the hands of the Schoolmen has produced a doctrine of matter and form which suggests to many the idea that the grace of a sacrament is a mechanical or magical product of the exact performance of external rites accompanied by prescribed formulas and with visible elements.  The words of Leo XIII, with which this section commenced, “Matter is the part which is not determined by itself,” reflect the revived knowledge of Greek philosophy which led the Schoolmen to apply the Greek metaphysical doctrine of matter and form to the sacraments. [William of Auxerre (died c. 1237) is said to have been the first to press Aristotle’s theory of matter and form into the theology of the sacraments, and also the first to use the formula “intentio faciendi quod facit ecclesia.”  In the Mitrale of Sicard, Bishop of Cremona (d. 1215), “stola ... et casula, oleum calixque, patena simul et haec verba [accipe potestatem ...] sunt hujus sacramenti substantia; caetera praecedentia et subsequentia sunt solemnitatis.”]

      St. Augustine’s metaphor, of a mark or character indelibly set on a man at his baptism to show to whom he belongs, was applied by the Schoolmen to express the effect of Confirmation and Ordination; Aristotle had distinguished three qualities of the soul: (1) Emotions (πάθη), (2) Faculties (δυνάμεις: potentiae), (3) Moral states (έξεις, habitus).  Alexander of Hales taught that character belongs to the second kind of quality, and that it is a habitus which disposes the soul towards an assimilation of the soul to Jesus, our Priest. St. Thomas Aquinas, on the contrary, denied that character could be habitus, for the reason that character admits of being both well and badly used, while a good habit cannot have a bad end, or bad habit a good one.  Character cannot be an emotion, since it is indelible.  He contended that character is therefore a potentia, and its purpose is not to fit the soul for the reception of grace, but to invest a man with power to perform acts of divine worship – a passive power in receiving divine things and an active power in imparting them.  St. Thomas, indeed, teaches that the laying on of hands signifies “a most copious effect of grace, by which they on whom hands are imposed are by a given similitude maintained as the ministers for whom a copiousness of grace is requisite”; but in his system the sacramental matter is the delivery to the ordinand of the instrument essentially necessary for the execution of his office, as a token of the power (or character) conferred on him.  The laying on of hands, according to this theory, is a preparation of the ordinand, but not the matter of Ordination. In the light since thrown on the history of sacramental theology the doctrine of St. Thomas could only be maintained on one of two suppositions: (1) that ordination to the presbyterate was not a sacrament until the ceremony of the tradition of the instruments had been introduced, or (2) that the Church has it in her power, by sporadic enrichment of her liturgical books, to alter the outward and visible signs handed down from the Apostles.  The point, however, which should be regarded as the salient one is the supersession of primitive emphasis on the operation of the Holy Spirit by the mediaeval doctrine of character. [The writer would safeguard himself from being judged to regard the doctrine of ministerial character as in its essence untrue. In the form that doctrine has been developed in scholastic theology it appears to him to be an undue materialization of the metaphors of St. Paul in 2 Cor. 1:22, Eph. 1:13, 4:30.  “To whom Christ hath imparted power both over that mystical body which is the society of souls, and over that natural which is Himself for the knitting of both in one (a work which antiquity doth call the making of Christ’s body); the same power is in such not amiss termed a kind of mark or character and acknowledged to be indelible.  Ministerial power is a mark of separation because it severeth them that have it from other men, and maketh them a special order consecrated unto the service of the Most High in things wherewith others may not meddle.  Their difference, therefore, from other men is in that they are a distinct order.” – Hooker, Eccl. Polity, V. 87. 2.]

 

III

      We now proceed to discuss in some detail the Ordination rites and ceremonies of the Middle Ages.

      Since the beginning of the seventeenth century “the Form and Manner of Making and Consecrating Bishops, Priests and Deacons according to the Order of the Church of England” has been commonly and conveniently spoken of as the “Ordinal”.  The mediaeval “Ordinale,” however, was a manual which by reference to a dominical letter showed the priest the festivals he was to observe in reciting the Divine office, or the changes he was to make in the ferial office.  Of the greatest importance for our subject is the tract called an “Ordo”.  In Mabillon’s Museum Italicum (1689) [Cf. Migne, P.L., lxxviii; and Andrieu, Les Ordines Romani du haut Moyen Age.] will be found a series of fifteen Ordines Romani which provide us with descriptions of liturgical functions of the Papal Court from at least the ninth century to the time when that Court was resident at Avignon.  These Ordines, however, at the most only give the first words of the prayers and formulas in order to show how the ceremonies, which it was the writer’s purpose to describe, should fit in with them.  For the text of the formulas and prayers we have to turn to the liturgical book called the “Sacramentarium” (liber sacramentorum, or simply sacramentorum), and here we find few if any directions as to ceremonial, but only the words which the celebrant himself has to say.  By segregating the rites which the Bishop alone is competent to celebrate, adding the things to be said or done by his assistants or the candidates, and by supplying directions as to the ceremonial, the mediaeval pontificals came into existence.  If we consult Feltoe’s convenient edition of the Sacramentarium Leonianum, we find, on p. 121 under the heading “Consecratio Presbyteri,” three formulas unaccompanied by any direction as to ceremonial, viz. a bidding (Oremus dilectissimi, [In the present Pontif. Rom. “carissimi” for “dilectissimi”.] etc.), a collective prayer (Exaudi nos, etc.), and a long prayer (Domine sancte Pater omnipotens, Deus honoium omnium, etc.).  As to what was to take place while these formulas were said, the Bishop would follow his own discretion or be guided by the custom of his Church, until at last the increasing complexity of the ceremonies rendered it necessary for an ordo to be compiled.

      “The pontifical of any Church,” Maskell observes, “is among the scarcest of its books existing.”  The reason for this scarcity is obvious: a book containing only rites which a bishop could celebrate would not be a necessary possession for ordinary priests.  The book might be the property of an individual bishop and be withdrawn from the safe-keeping of his cathedral after his death.  The materials which were taken over from the sacramentaries by pontificals of churches from Milan northwards were practically the prayers and formularies of the Roman books (as found in the Leonine or Gregorian sacramentaries) and those of the Gelasian sacramentaries used in the Gallican Church, into which the prayers and formulas in use at Rome had been already incorporated.  Into the Gelasian books had been imported the series of canons which are now called the Statuta ecclesiae antiquae, but which, owing to the circumstances of their having been inserted in Gallican collections of canons in such a way that they read on continuously with the anti-pelagian anathematizations of a council of 214 bishops at Carthage in 417 or 418, were for many centuries mistaken for the canons of a Council of Carthage at which St. Augustine himself assisted. [They are so referred to in The King’s Book.]  The authorship of these canons has by recent writers been ascribed to St. Caesarius of Arles; but as the canons were quoted at the Council of Agde in 506 with the words “sancti patres nostri synodali sententia consuerunt,”’ and as St. Caesarius only became a bishop in 503, that opinion cannot carry weight.  For ordination to the minor orders the canons prescribe ceremonies unknown at Rome.  The canons are now ascribed to a compiler at Arles in the fifth century.  Canons 2–10 read as follows:–

      2. When a bishop is ordained, let two bishops place and hold the volume of the Gospels over his head and neck; and while one pours forth the benediction on him let all the others who are present touch his head with their hands.

      3. When a presbyter is ordained, while the Bishop is blessing him, let all the presbyters who are present hold their hands on his head close to the hand of the Bishop.

      4. When a deacon is ordained, let the Bishop, who alone blesses him, place his hand on his head, because he is consecrated not to the sacerdotium, but to the ministry. [Compare with Hippolytus, Apost. Trad.: “Quia non in sacerdotio ordinatur, sed in ministerio episcopi.”]

      5. When a subdeacon is ordained, [At Rome in the ninth century there was no solemn ordination for a subdeacon.  The candidate brought forward an empty chalice which had been handed to him by either the Bishop or the Archdeacon, and received a simple blessing.  John the Deacon, early in the sixth century, however, mentions the tradition of the chalice to the subdeacon.] since he does not receive the laying on of hands, let him receive an empty paten from the hand of the Bishop and an empty chalice But from the hand of the Archdeacon a cruet with water, a bowl and napkin.

      6. When an acolyte is ordained, [At Rome, the candidate approached the Bishop, during Mass, carrying a linen bag, such as was used to carry the oblatae, or consecrated Hosts, at the time of the Fraction, and kneeling, received a blessing: “At the intercession of the glorious and ever virgin Mary and the blessed Apostle Peter, may the Lord save and guard and protect thee.”  In the Irish canons (Wasserchleben, pp. 23–26) the acolyte is not reckoned among the seven degrees.  Duchesne writes: “The order of acolytes seems not to have been everywhere in use in the Gallican countries. ... In the Missale Francorum a prayer only is found, and that, too, without an invitatory, and in an unusual place, viz. between the blessing of the doorkeepers and that of the lectors.  At Rheims, in the fifth century, there were no acolytes.”  The order does not exist in the Orthodox Eastern Church.  The acolyte is mentioned as the fourth order in AElfric’s Canons, A.D. 957 (?), and by the law of Wihtred, the weregeld for his murder was £4.] he should be instructed by the Bishop how he is to act in his office.  But from the Archdeacon let him receive a candlestick with candle in order that he may know that he is entitled to kindle the lights of the church.  And let him receive an empty cruet for pouring wine into the Eucharist of the Blood of Christ. [Ad suggerendum vinum in eucharistiam Sanguinis Christi.  This is evidence to attest the custom of supplementing the consecrated wine by pouring unconsecrated wine into the depleted chalice and thus consecrating the added wine per immixtionem.  See Andrieu, Immixtio et Consecratio, pp. 13–15.]

      7. When an exorcist is ordained, let him receive from the Bishop’s hand the booklet in which the exorcisms are written, the Bishop saying to him: “Receive and commit to memory and have power to lay on hand on the energumen whether baptized or a catechumen.”

      8. When a reader is ordained, let the Bishop make mention of him to the people, pointing out his faith and simplicity of life.  After this, in the sight of the people, let him deliver to him the volume of that which he is to read, saying: “Receive and be thou a reader of the word of God, to have, if thou faithfully and usefully fulfill (thy) office, part with those who have ministered the word of God.”

      9. When a doorkeeper is ordained, after that he has been instructed by the Archdeacon how he should behave in God’s house, let the Bishop, at the Archdeacon’s suggestion, deliver to him from the altar the keys of the church, saying: “So act as about to render to God account for those things which by these keys are brought to light.”

      10. The psalmist, that is, the singer, may, without the Bishop’s privity, at the sole bidding of the Presbyter undertake the office of singing, the Presbyter saying to him: “See that what thou dost sing by mouth, thou dost believe in heart: and what thou dost believe in heart, thou dost attest by deeds.”

      Prior to the adoption of Gallican ceremonies, the ceremonies at Rome appear to have been very simple.  At Rome, on either the Wednesday or Friday in an Ember week, the candidates were presented to the faithful during the stational masses in the churches of S. Maria Maggiore and the Holy Apostles.  The Pope, or a notary on his behalf, shortly after the commencement of Mass, ascended the ambo and published the si quis: “The Lord God and our Saviour Jesus Christ being our helper, we elect in the order of deacon (or presbyter) that subdeacon (or deacon) from that title.  If anyone has aught against these men, for God and on behalf of God, let him come forth with confidence and say it.  May he be mindful of his communion.”  The ordination itself took place at the Mass of the Vigil, anciently at nighttime, but from the eighth century in the afternoon.  Before the reading of the Gospel, the Archdeacon went to the candidates who were awaiting him beneath the ambo, and leading one of them by the hand, the other following, he presented them to the Pope at the altar.  Passing over the ordination of deacons, we come to that of the presbyters.  The Archdeacon, after he had invested the candidates in planeta and stole, arranged them before the Pope before the altar. [In the ninth century, whatever the case may have been elsewhere, at Rome the chasubles and stoles were worn by acolytes and subdeacons and were not tokens of the sacred orders.]  The Pope then pronounced the invitatory or call to prayer: Oremus dilectissimi, etc., and he and the whole assembly prostrated themselves, while the Schola Cantorum sang the Litany, which appears to be in this case substituted for silent congregational prayer.  At this point the evidence of the Ordines Romani becomes obscure.  The S. Amand Ordo has “accipiunt orationem presbyteri (or presbyterii) ab ipso.”  Mabillon’s Ordo VIII, which describes an ordination in which a single person is ordained subdeacon, deacon and priest on one and the same occasion, has “et tunc aliam illi dans orationem, consecrat eum presbyterum.”  Ordo IX might lead one to infer that the candidates for the diaconate and the presbyterate received the imposition of hands en bloc.  “Singillatim impones manus capitibus eorum” refers to the candidates for the diaconate, and if it does not include the candidates for the presbyterate, all Ordo IX would give for the latter is “complentur benedictiones eorum qui presbyteri ordinantur.”

      In the Gallican Churches, in which the Ember seasons were not as yet known, the presentation of the candidates took place at the Ordination itself.  The Bishop addressed the people, and they responded “Dignus est.”  The Bishop then called the people to prayer by the invitatory “Commune votum communis prosequatur oratio,” etc., in the case of deacons, and “Sit nobis, fratres communis oratio,” etc. in the case of priests.  The Ordination prayers which follow the invitatories are the Domine sancte, spec, fidei, gratiae for deacons, and Sanctificationum omnium auctor for presbyters.

      The two rites of Ordination for deacons and presbyters were therefore similar in structure, and not so very unlike the Byzantine rite, which in the case of each of the orders commences with a proclamation and call to prayer accompanied by the laying on of hands, to which two prayers (said secretly) by the Bishop follow.

      The canons of the Gallican Statuta ecclesiae antiquae, however, appear in the Gelasian Sacramentary and in the Missale Francorum.  In later pontificals the canons are detached from one another and set in the ritual before each order to which they apply.  Thus, therefore, after the Roman and the Gallican rites had been fused the canon of the Statutes directing the assistant presbyters at an ordination of presbyters to lay on hands together with the Bishop would appear immediately before the Roman invitatory Oremus dilectissimi.  This [So Dr. Frere thinks.] may account for the fact that, in the present Roman Pontifical, at the first laying on of hands by the Bishop in which the presbyters assist, no words are spoken.  In that rite, while the Bishop proclaims the invitatory Exaudi nos, he and the presbyters hold out their hands extended, and this extension of hands is now held to be morally a continuation of the first silent imposition of hands on the heads of the candidates.  Somewhat to the perplexity of liturgical scholars (e.g. Dom Guéranger) the Roman Congregation of Rites has ruled that this extension of hands during the invitatory, which is not strictly speaking a prayer, is not to be continued during the collective prayer Exaudi nos.  During the singing of the Eucharistic prayer, Deus honorum omnium,* the Bishop is directed to hold his hands extended before his heart.  The decision of the Congregation of Rites does not seem so extraordinary when one remembers that until comparatively recently Roman theologians looked elsewhere in the Roman pontifical for the form for the presbyterate.

      [*The prayer Deus honorum omnium is spoken of as Eucharistic.  But it seems that it was not until the tenth century that it was prefaced by the Dominus vobiscum, Sursum corda, Vere dignum, etc.  It is now very widely regarded by Roman Catholic scholars as the essential form in the Roman rite for the ordination of presbyters, as the prayer sanctificationum omnium is believed to be that of the Gelasian rite.  Of it, Dom P. de Puniet writes: “Ces paroles sont ce qu’ils a de plus solennel dans l’ordination: elles énoncent clairement ce qu’elles produisent, de pair avec l’imposition des mains: elles transmettent le vrai sacerdoce du Christ avec son caractère indélebile, avec les prérogatives qui y sont attachées, celles en particulier d’offrir le saint sacrifice et de conférer les sacraments, avec les grâces nécessaires pour bien accomplir les functions sacerdotales”. – Le Pontifical Romain: Histoire et Commentaire, T. 1, p. 271 (Paris, 1930).]

      By the fusion of the Roman and Gallican rites two sets of originally separate “essential forms” appear in one and the same rite; and in the Gelasian sacramentaries, which represent that fusion, in the rite for the

 

Roman

Oremus dilectissimi

are headed Ad Ordinandos Presbyteros

Roman

Exaudi nos

are headed Ad Ordinandos Presbyteros

Roman

Deus honorum omnium

are headed Consecratio.

Gallican

Sit nobis fratres

are headed Consummatio presbyteri.

Gallican

Sanctificationum omnium

are headed Item benedictio.

 

      With these fused materials at their disposal, the compilers of the later pontificals set to work to enrich their Ordination services.  They seem to have felt that the ancient formularies did not sufficiently express (1) the sacrificial functions of the presbyter, (2) and his power to absolve sinners.

      In some pontificals, therefore, the power to offer sacrifice was connected with the vesting of the newly-ordained presbyter in the chasuble.  In the tenth-century Corbey pontifical of St. Eloi these words accompany that ceremony: “May the blessing of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost descend on thee, that thou may be blessed in the sacerdotal order and offer pleasing hosts to God for the sin and offence of the people: to whom be honour and glory for ever and ever.”  And so in the Egbert pontifical and the Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, the Cahors pontifical, etc.  In a Bec pontifical (Martène’s Ordo XI) the reference to sacrifice appears in connection with the anointing of the presbyter’s hands.  When the tradition of instruments was introduced, the formula for the chasuble was altered and its bestowal was shifted to another place in the rite.

      The feeling that it was desirable to express in the rite the Presbyter’s commission to remit and retain sins is betrayed by an addition to the rite made by marginal entries in two pontificals belonging to the Church of Rouen which Morin has described. [De sacris ordinibus, Pars III, C. 2 (Antwerp ed., 1688, p. 106).]  On the margin of a Rheims pontifical, which he believed to be of the twelfth century, Morin found written by a later hand: “And after partaking of the Body and Blood of Jesus Christ, before the post-communion is said, then let the Bishop draw down the chasuble of each by the shoulders, kissing him.”  In another Rouen pontifical, about a century later, is written, that after the Communion the Bishop successively lays hands on the inclined heads of each, and says to each what follows: “Receive the Holy Ghost, whose sins thou dost remit, etc.  Afterwards, extending the chasuble of any of them, he invests any one of them, their hands remaining joined, saying thus: “The stole of innocency,” etc.  In the Sarum pontifical translated by Maskell, before the post-communion is said, the Bishop lays his hand on each of the newly- ordained priests and says, “Receive the Holy Ghost, whose sins ye remit,” etc. and then draws down the chasuble of each in sinu per scapulas, kissing him and saying, “The peace of the Lord be always with thee.” [The final benediction is the blessing which once accompanied the investiture in the chasuble.  Maskell notes that this ceremony was “adopted into the use of the Church of Bangor before the end of the next century,” but “we have no trace of it in the Winchester pontifical.” – Monumenta, ii. p. 232.]

      This final laying on of hands with the words of our Lord in St. John 20:22, 23 finds its place in the present Pontificale Romanum.  After this final imposition of hands had been widely introduced in the medieval pontificals, the fact that it was a late introduction was lost to memory.  John de Burgo, in his influential manual, Pupilla Oculi, mentions that in his ordination of priests there are two partial matters and forms, viz. –

      1. The tradition of the instruments of the Mass and the accompanying words, conveying power to offer sacrifice.

      2. The laying on of hands with the words “Receive the Holy Ghost, whose sins, etc.”

      De Burgo is speaking of the final laying on of hands, but St. Ivo of Chartres (died 1116), in his sermon De excellentia sacrorum ordinum, is speaking of an imposition of hands which took place at the commencement of the Latin rite, when he says of presbyters: “Then when they are ordained, while the Bishop is blessing them and holding his hand on their head, all the presbyters who are present lift their hands close to the hand of the Bishop on their heads and invoke the Holy Spirit on those who are ordained: they (the newly-ordained), after the invocation of the Holy Spirit, receive the stole on either shoulder.”  Honorius of Autun (1106–35?) in his Gemma Animae (I. 181), writes of presbyters: “On these the Bishop in ordination lays on hands and bestows the power of loosing and binding, so far as they live in such a way that they may be able to loose and bind others; he places on them this yoke of the Lord while he binds their necks with the stole, so far as they should so obey the law of God that they may be worthy to rule others; he anoints their hands with chrism, that the things they bless may be blessed, so far as they keep themselves from every impure work, so that they may be able worthily to consecrate the Body of Christ.”*  Morin refers to a life of St. Lietbert, Bishop of Cambray, written by Rodulph, Abbot of St. Trudo (after 1031): “When at the imposition of the pontifical and at ordination it was said to the new priest: “Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins,” etc., he trembled.”

      [*Honorius (C. 185) writes: “The Lord in the Gospel laid hands on the Apostles and constituted them princes and priests of the Church, and the Apostles laid on hands when they gave the Holy Spirit.”  The Speculum ecclesiae, wrongly assigned to Hugh of St. Victor (Hittorp, Col. 1345), repeats the statement of St. Ivo; but the genuine Hugh writes (De Sacramentis, L. II, pars. iii, c. 12): “They after the invocation of the Holy Spirit receive the stole on either shoulder.”  Evidently Hugh is referring to an invocation that was made at the commencement of the service.]

      In regard to the first laying on of hands, a rubric of the pontifical of the College of Foix is cited by Morin: “The Bishop standing, saying nothing, lays on hands on the heads of each according to the custom of the Roman Church: and likewise all the presbyters who assist.  But according to the custom of certain Churches they say: ‘Receive the Holy Ghost, whose sins,’” etc.  This pontifical does not mention any laying on of hands at the end of the rite.

      A late Mainz pontifical directs “accipe spiritum sanctum” to be sung as an antiphon while the Bishop advances towards the candidates: the Bishop and presbyters are to go in a circuit and lay hands on each one of the candidates, the Bishop saying: “May the Holy Ghost come upon thee and the power of the Most High guard thee from sin.”  In the institutio ad pietatem christianam put forth by a Council held at Mainz under Archbishop von Heusseman in 1549, it is said: “A Bishop therefore, in conferring orders, looking attentively to the aforesaid promises and commands of the Lord, uses such a form of words as comes closest to promises and commands of such a kind.”  When about to bestow the sacerdotal order, he says, “Receive the Holy Ghost.”  Later on we read: “At the commencement, laying hands on their heads, the grace of absolution, and power of remitting and retaining sins, is communicated to them.”

      Through the Pontifical of Durand of Mende a final imposition of hands accompanied by the words “accipe spiritum sanctum, quorum,” etc., found its way into the place which it holds at the present day in the Pontificale Romanum.  It may perhaps represent a ceremony which took place elsewhere at the beginning of the rite, the alteration of the chasuble being substituted for the investiture in the stole.*  From what has been said it is clear that the association of the laying on of hands with the words of our Lord conveying the power of absolution was no novelty when it appeared in the Edwardian Ordinal, and there is much evidence to support the belief that it in many places accompanied the laying on of hands, as a marginal insertion in a Bamberg pontifical directs.

      [*In the Pontifical of Egbert the investiture in the stole with the words, “May the Lord encircle thy neck with the stole of justice and may the Lord purify thy mind from all corruption of sin,” follows immediately the Statuta eccl. antiq. clause enjoining the laying on of hands, and before the Invitatory.  In Martène’s Ordo III it comes with the same formula between the Exaudi nos and the Deus honorum omnium.  In the Cahors pontifical after the invitatory, but without a formula.  In the Bec pontifical (Martène’s Ordo XI) after the Exaudi nos, but without a formula, and so in the Benedictional of Archbishop Robert.  In the Sarum pontifical, the benediction that accompanies the investiture in the chasuble in the Pontifical of Egbert comes after the newly-imported final laying on of hands.  In the modern Roman Pontifical the words “Stola innocentim induat te” follow the words “Accipe Spiritum sanctum, quorum,” etc. at the end of the rite.]

      The sixteenth-century pontifical of Archbishop Bainbridge (died at Rome in 1514) brings us within forty years of the Edwardian Ordinal.  In this book we find a very striking instance of the freedom mediaeval churches exercised in liturgical matters.  In this book, at the ordination of presbyters, the Gelasian invitatory for the ordination of deacons, altered by the institution of “sacerdotii” for “diaconatus” and “sacerdotiali” for “Leviticae” is said while the Bishop and Presbyters lay hands on candidates for the presbyterate, and the Bishops and Presbyters again lay on their hands at the Eucharistic prayer Deus honorum omnium.  On any strict theory of matter and form, the Bishop in using this pontifical ordained the new presbyters at least twice. In this pontifical a final laying on of hands by the Bishop occurs at the end of the rite.

      A tenth or eleventh century MS. preserved at Paris bears the name of the Pontifical of Egbert, [Published by the Surtees Society.] Archbishop of York (735–766), and is an attempt to collect episcopal rites in a single volume.  If the Gelasian Sacramentary in its essence is of Roman provenance there is little reason for challenging the heading “incipit ordo de sacris ordinibus qualiter in Romana ecclesia presbyteri, diaconi, subdiaconi, vel ceteri ordines clericorum benedicendi sunt,” although a very great deal of the contents – notably the ceremonies and formulas for the ordination of clerks in minor orders – never came into use at Rome until Rome, after giving so much, began in her turn to borrow.  The Benedictional of Archbishop Robert, [Edited for the Henry Bradshaw Society by H. A. Wilson, 1902.  Written during the latter half of the tenth century at the New Minster of Winchester, this book passed to the Abbey of Jumièges, either with Robert of Jumièges, the expelled Archbishop of Canterbury in 1052, or with Robert of Normandy (brother of Queen Emma, the mother of Edward the Confessor, Archbishop of Rouen 990–1037).  The contents have been added to in Normandy.] now in the Public Library at Rouen, is more than a collection of episcopal benedictions: it verges on being a pontifical.  The word “Alia” is so frequently placed over kindred formulas that one cannot but suppose it was the compiler’s intention that the Bishop was to select those formulas which he thought the most suitable.  The two pontificals [One is that of Poitiers, and the other of Constance.] edited by Metzger in 1914 afford early examples of attempts to produce a volume of episcopal rites.  Recently Professor Andrieu has rehabilitated the reputation of the Ordo Romanus Vulgatus, first printed by Cassander at Cologne in 1561, and included by Melchior Hittorp in his De divinis catholicae ecclesiae officiis in 1568.  From the time of Tomasi, who described this Ordo Romanus as a “farrago diversorum rituum secundum varias consuetudines,” liturgical scholars have given this Ordo a cold shoulder.  Professor Andrieu, however, has called attention to the wide dissemination of copies of this work, particularly in Italy, into which country it appears to have been imported by the clergy who followed in the train of the “Holy Roman” emperors.  We can now see how justly the expression “farrago diversorum rituum” describes almost any pontifical from the ninth to the thirteenth century.  It would have been a serious thing for a bishop to change the use of his diocese in regard to the ceremonies of the Mass or Baptism, for that would, to say the least of it, have involved the labour and expense of altering the service books of many churches and chapels; but in the case of Ordination rites it was no difficult matter to rearrange the parts of a single pontifical or to impart some new and impressive ceremony by a few strokes of the pen on the margin.  A salient instance of how a bishop would, on his own authority, introduce new ceremonies into diocesan usage, is supplied by Durand of St. Pourçain, who, after having held the office of Master of the Sacred Palace at Avignon, was consecrated bishop of Le Puy-en-Velay in 1318, and was translated to Meaux in 1326.  Nearly half a century after St. Thomas Aquinas had given his authority to the opinion that character is impressed on the candidate for the diaconate by the delivery of the Book of the Gospels, we find Durand of St. Pourçain recording the fact that in the “most ancient Ordinarium’ of the church of Annecy there was no direction given for this ceremony.  With his own hand he added such a direction in the margin of the Ordinarium.  He did this because he desired to conform with other churches, but his own view was that the delivery of the Gospel Book cannot express the principal function of a deacon, for that is to carry the Sacrament.  It was, however, impossible to make the delivery of the empty chalice to the deacon the essential matter of his ordination, for the empty chalice was delivered to the candidate for the subdiaconate.  The deacon is par excellence the minister: his principal function is therefore expressed by the laying on of hands, for the hand is “the organ of organs”.  In this matter of private opinion Durandus follows St. Bonaventura.

      The Egbert Pontifical and the Benedictional of Archbishop Robert provide an anointing of the hands of a deacon and of both head and hands of both priests and bishops.  In the Gelasian Sacramentary, after the “benedictio subdiaconi,” there is given a form for the consecration of his hands: “May these hands be consecrated by this unction and our benediction, so whatever they bless may be blessed, and whatever they sanctify may be sanctified”; but in the Gelasian Sacramentary the Ordination rites have been separated.  In Book I. xx we are given the rites for the ordination of presbyters and deacons, and in I. xcvi–xcix the rites for the ordination of the subdeacons, the minor clerks and the Bishop.  Thus the formula for the anointing of hands lost its way.  That the ceremony of anointing the hands of deacons and priests had been introduced into Gaul in the ninth century, and that it was not the use at Rome, we know from a letter of Pope Nicholas I (died 867).  At the commencement of the following century there was at Rome a period described by M. Andrieu as one of indecision, during which, “without altogether abandoning their ancient customs, the Roman clergy forced themselves to set them in harmony with those described in the Franco-German books.”  It was then that the Roman Church adopted the ceremony, probably of British origin, of anointing the hands of the newly-ordained priests. [The question whether the anointing of Christian emperors and kings is older than that of anointing in Ordination has not yet been answered.]  As to bishops, M. Andrieu points out, two cases would arise: (1) bishops elect whose hands had been anointed when they were ordained presbyters, and (2) those whose hands had not been anointed.  In the first case it was considered unnecessary to re-anoint the hands of the Bishop elect.  But there were deacons who were to be ordained per saltum to the episcopate, and as they would not be first ordained presbyters, it was decided that they should receive the presbyterial unction of the hands at their consecration to the episcopate.  M. Andrieu cites an Ordo preserved at the British Museum (Cod. Add. 15222, F. 11) which directs that the hands of the Bishop elect, if not already consecrated, are at his ordination to the episcopate to be consecrated by the form used for presbyters.  At a later date the Roman clergy learned that in the Franco-German books there was a form for the consecration of a bishop’s hands different from that for the consecration of a presbyter’s: they consequently adopted that form, and the former compromise was abandoned.

      The chapter of the Statuta which relates to the ordination of a subdeacon makes it quite clear why the subdeacon is ordained by the delivery of instruments signifying the functions of his office – “because he does not receive the laying on of hands.”  Yet the tendency of the Western mind to express ideas by material symbols was too strong to be held in check by the authority of the Statuta.  The delivery of this book of the Gospels to the deacon appears to have been, like unction, a contribution from the British Church.

      The introduction of the ceremony of delivering to the newly-ordained priest the paten with the bread and the chalice with the wine and saying to him in so doing: “Receive power of offering sacrifice to God, and celebrate Masses both for the quick and the dead,” enters into the pontificals in a highly significant way.  In a Vatican MS. of the Gregorian Sacramentary of which Morin gives an excerpt is to be found this surprising direction: “When a bishop is ordained, let two bishops place and hold the volume of the Gospels on his head, and while one pours forth the benediction, let all the other bishops, who are present, touch his head with their hands.  When this has been done let him receive the paten with the oblatae and the chalice with wine, and let him say to him: ‘Receive power to offer sacrifice to God, and to celebrate Mass both for the quick and the dead.’”  In a tenth- century MS. “composed by an Italian in the neighbourhood of Rome,” which Morin studied when he was at Rome, it is the Archdeacon who lays on (imponat) the Gospel Book on the deacon, and the delivery of the instruments to the newly-ordained priests is made by the Bishop.  A direction in a pontifical of the Colbertine Library, printed by Martène, directs the Bishop to place the instruments in the hands of any of the ordained (ordinati cujuslibet per se), although the words accipe potestatem offerendi, etc. are to be said to all, if there be many.  In a Mainz pontifical, from which Morin gives extracts, the Bishop offers the prepared chalice and paten to “two or more to touch,” and the formula is given in the plural.  Of two Beauvais pontificals cited by Morin, the first, belonging to the tenth century, does not mention the delivery of the instruments to the priest; in the second, belonging to the eleventh century, in the margin, and in a different handwriting and character, the Bishop is directed to give the chalice, [It is at least curious that St. Thomas in his De articulis fidei writes that the matter of the sacrament of ordination is in the case of a presbyter the tradition of the chalice, and the form “accipe potestatem offerendi sacrificium,” etc.  Similarly, in the Supplementum to the Summa worked up by his disciples out of his Commentary on the Sentences, he speaks only of the tradition of the chalice.] and the formula is in the plural: “accipite calicem et habete potestatem atque licentiam offerre sacrificium,” etc.

      Of the ceremony of the tradition of the instruments, Cardinal Van Rossum has very truly said: “As is usual in such a case, its commencement is found in this place or that: slowly it is added elsewhere – a beginning in a margin, then in the case of new volumes in the text itself: so step by step it creeps on, and at last is found everywhere.” [De essentia sacramenti ordinis, p. 128]  The ceremony is first introduced not as an essential, for that would be tantamount to a declaration that all previous ordinations were null and void, but as an edifying accessory ceremony.  Hugh of St. Victor (died 1141), describing the added accessory ceremonies, implies that the presbyters were ordained when the Bishop and the assistant presbyters imposed their hands He writes: [De Sacramentis, II, pars iii, c. 12.]

      “Presbyteri cum ordinantur, episcopo eos benedicente, et manus super capita eorum tenente, omnes presbyteri qui praesentes sunt manus juxta manum episcopi super capita eorum, et Spiritum Sanctum super eos qui ordinantur invocant.  Unguntur presbyteris manus sicut episcopis, ut cognoscant se hoc sacramento gratiam consecrandi accipere, et opera misericordia erga omnes pro viribus exercere debere.  Unctio capitis specialiter ad episcopum pertinet, ut intelligat se vicarium esse de quo scriptum est: ‘unxit te Deus, Deus tuus te oleo laetitiae.’  Hi post invocationem Sancti Spiritus stolam super utrumque humerum accipiunt, quae in modum sustentaculorum dextrum latus munit et sinistrum, ut ex hoc intelligant se per arma justitiae a dextris et a sinistris esse munitos, ut eos nec adversa tangant, nec prospera extollant.  Accipiant et calicem cum vino, et patenam cum hostiis de manu episcopi, quatenus his instrumentis potestatem se accepisse agnoscant placabiles Deo hostias offerendi.”

      In St. Ivo’s sermon the past “accepisse” (have received) is used instead of the subjunctive “accipiant” (may receive).  It must, however, be remembered that Ivo uses the word sacramentum as St. Augustine did, to denote the minor ceremonies, and that the sevenfold enumeration of the sacraments had not in his day become an established doctrine. [St. Augustine calls the salt of the catechumens a sacrament, and St. Ivo speaks of “the Sacraments of Baptism”.]  It was thus possible for him to conceive of the various attributes of the priesthood being bestowed each by its own matter and form, for the consideration of Order as a sacrament with a single matter and form (although it is implicit in his words “hi cum ordinantur, episcopo eos benedicente,” etc.) had not been worked out by him.  Peter Lombard draws his matter from the same sources as do Hugh and St. Ivo, but although he strangely omits to mention the imposition of hands at the ordination of presbyters, he yet makes it clear that the presbyter’s hands are anointed in order that the newly-ordained priests may understand that they have received (accepisse) the grace of consecration, and the instruments are delivered to them that they may know that they have received the power of offering sacrifice. [Sententiarum Libr. iv: Lib. iv, dist. 24.]  The disfigurement of the doctrine of Holy Order, represented by Pope Eugenius’ instruction to the Armenians, is subsequent to the time of the Master of the Schools.

      The introduction of the Veni Creator into the mediaeval rite of Ordination, immediately before the ceremony of anointing, could not but have the effect of obscuring the significance of the imposition of hands, and also of augmenting the importance of a comparatively recent innovation.  There is evidence to show that for a period, prior to St. Thomas Aquinas, the belief became widespread that unction is the essential matter of the sacrament of Holy Order. [See Saltet, Les Réordinations, p. 233.]  The lack of historical knowledge which rendered such errors possible must have been largely due to the dependence of scholars on manuscripts, and the danger was increased by what today we should call plagiarism. [Hugh of St. Victor incorporates in his master work long passages by other writers without any acknowledgment of his borrowing.  A large portion of Innocent III’s book on the Eucharist is similarly an excerpt from Hugh, and another treatise ascribed to Innocent is almost in its entirety by Hugh.]  In an age of printed service books, such errors would hardly be likely to arise.

      Sufficient perhaps has now been said to show that the ceremonies added to the rites of Ordination had the grave result of obscuring the truth that according to Apostolic tradition the laying on of hands is the outward and visible sign of the sacrament of Holy Order.  The great Spanish commentator, Maldonatus, in the sixteenth century complained that so long as it was not acknowledged that the laying on of hands is the sacramental sign, so long would it be impossible to convince Protestants that the sacrament of Order can trace its origin in the New Testament.

      In the First Edwardian Ordinal the tradition of instruments to the Presbyter and that of the pastoral staff to the Bishop were retained, and their disappearance in the Second Edwardian Ordinal may be sincerely regretted, for the spirit of historical inquiry, with which the Schoolmen were so poorly supplied, has come to stay, and the danger of these beautiful accessory ceremonies being regarded as essentials has ceased to be a real one.  The same thing also may be said as to the thoroughly scriptural ceremony of anointing.  To judge the Edwardian books, however, we have to remember that the controversies to which the added ceremonies had given rise were prejudicial to the cause of Catholic truth.  “Last of all,” wrote a sturdy Protestant wit, “one singular doubt have they: what maketh the priest, the anointing or the putting on of hands, or what other ceremony or what words?  About whom they howl and scold, one ready to tear out the other’s throat.  One saith this and another that: but they cannot agree.  Neither can any of them make so strong a reason which another cannot improve.” [W. Tyndale, The Obedience of a Christian Man.]

      The earliest extant Ordination rites belong to a time when in the West the Bishop was the sacerdos, the parish priest par excellence, the minister of Baptism, Confirmation, the Eucharist and Absolution.  From St. Cyprian to St. Ambrose the word sacerdos is most frequently used to denote not the Presbyter but the Bishop.  As the number of Christians in the great cities increased and the faith spread over the countryside, the central city church was no longer adequate and “parish” churches came into existence.  First more frequent liturgical days and then the daily celebration of the Eucharist necessitated a devolution of the functions of the Bishop as sacerdos.  The far-reaching influence of the development of ecclesiastical organization on liturgical practice and the conception of the Ministry may be studied in Dr. C. H. Turner’s Essay in the first volume of The Cambridge Medieval History.  As the early collegiate character of the Ministry became obscured, the sacerdotal character of the Presbyter came more clearly into view.  In protest against the overbearing pride of the Roman deacons, St. Jerome asks: “When the Apostle clearly teaches that presbyters are the same as bishops, must not a mere server of tables and of widows be insane to set himself up arrogantly over men through whose prayers the Body and Blood of Christ are consecrated (conficitur)?” [Ep. cxlvi (ad Evangelum).]  He proceeds to enumerate passages of the New Testament showing that episcopos and presbuteros are terms which can be applied interchangeably.  The prevalent theory of the Schoolmen, which denied that a new “character” is imparted by consecration to the episcopate and held that the episcopate is not an order distinct from the presbyterate, is an inversion of the ideas of the third century. [Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol., Supp. Q. 38, Art. 2  “When a man is raised to the episcopate he receives a power which he retains for ever.  This, however, cannot be called a character, because a man is thereby placed not in direct relation to God, but to Christ’s mystical body.”]

      Our survey of the history of the pontificals has thus brought us to a period in which the essential importance of the laying on of hands had been obscured, and the nature of the episcopate widely misrepresented.  Thanks to frequent quotations from St. Jerome in official works, Presbyterianism had come into full being within the pale of the Latin Church.  Perhaps the most significant action of the Roman Church in regard to the episcopate was taken in 1400, when Boniface IX bestowed on the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery of St. Osyth at Chich in Essex the right of bestowing, not only the diaconate, but the priesthood.  On the 6th February, 1403, Boniface, at the representation of the Bishop of London of loss of rights of patronage and jurisdiction, revoked the concession. [Hocedez, “Une découverte théologique” (Nouvelle Revue Théologique, June 1924).]  In after years, William Barlow was a member of the community at St. Osyth!

      The English divines in 1543 were still under the influence of the scholastic doctrine that the only sacred orders spoken of in the New Testament are the presbyterate and the diaconate.  They read this doctrine in the textbook set for their graduation at the Universities: “Although all orders are spiritual and sacred,” wrote the Master of the Schools, “yet excellently the canons agree that two orders only are to be called sacred: the diaconate and presbyterate to wit; because these two only the primitive Church is read to have possessed, and concerning these only have we the Apostles’ precept” (Lib. Sentent. IV, Dist. 24).*

      [*Cf. also these two passages:

The King’s Book.

The Council of Benevento (1091) under Urban II.

      And of these two orders, that is to say, priests and deacons, Scripture maketh express mention, and how they were conferred by the Apostles by prayer and the imposition of their hands.

      Sacros ordines dicemus diaconatum ac presbyteratum.  Hos siquidem solos primitiva legitur ecclesia habuisse: super his solum praeceptum habemus Apostoli.

]

 

      The Edwardian Ordinals must be admitted to have the merit of being based on the truth that the sacramental sign of Holy Order, handed down by apostolic authority, is the laying on of hands and prayer.  In 1549 the English divines returned also to a more ancient view as to the Episcopate.  In the Preface to the new Ordinal, instead of saying that Scripture maketh express mention of two orders only, they said: “It is evident unto all men, diligently reading Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apostles’ time there have been these orders of ministers in Christ’s Church, Bishops, Priests and Deacons.”

      We may close this section by briefly tracing the history of the authoritative Pontificale Romanum.  About the year 1292, William Durand, Bishop of Mende, had compiled a Liber pontificalis ordinis, which he designed to be in complete accord with the usage of Rome, where he had been ordained and where also he was a member of the Papal curia.  Until quite recently so little has been known of this important pontifical, that Dr. Fortescue, in his article on Durand of Mende in the Catholic Encyclopedia, described it as “now lost”.  As a matter of fact, although the book has never been printed, a large number of copies of it exist, and it has been described by the late Mgr. Batiffol.  In 1485 Augustin Patrizi, called Piccolomini after AEneas Silvius Piccolomini (the future Pius II), by whom he had been adopted, in collaboration with John Burchard, the famous Master of Ceremonies of Sixtus IV, Innocent VIII, and Alexander VI, and the scribe who drew up the general rubrics of the Missal, published in print a Liber Pontificalis based on Durand’s work.  In a new edition published at Venice in 1511 the title of Pontifical is given to Piccolomini’s work.  In 1595, at last, under Clement VIII, the title Pontaficale Romanum was officially accorded to a new edition prepared by a special commission.  Again, in 1645, under Urban VIII, a revision took place, and it is on this edition Joseph Catalani wrote his well-known commentary.  Benedict XIV in 1752 made additions.  Thus it was after the Council of Trent that the Roman Church, by issuing a fully authorized version of the Pontificale Romanum, set within its own obedience a termination to the long-continued process of evolving new Ordination ceremonies by diocesan innovations and local fashions.

 

IV

      An Act of Parliament, January 31st, 1549–50, empowered the King to appoint six prelates and six other men learned in God’s law to prepare and set forth a “Form and Manner of making and consecrating Archbishops, Bishops, Priests and Deacons and other ministers of the Church.”  Nine bishops voted in favour of the Bill, and five against it.  On February 2nd the Commissioners, whose names are not recorded, were appointed by Order of Council.  It is not unlikely that they were the divines who in September 1548 assembled at Cranmer’s house at Chertsey for the consecration of Ferrar (appointed to the see of St. David’s in the place of Barlow, translated to Wells), and who also met at Windsor to discuss “a uniform order of prayer”.  In that case they would be Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Ridley of Rochester, Holbeach of Lincoln, Thirlby of Westminster, Goodrich of Ely, May, Dean of St. Paul’s, Haynes, Dean of Exeter, Robertson, afterwards Dean of Durham, and Redman, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.  Cranmer, in his letter to Queen Mary in September 1555, describes the Conference at Windsor as consisting of “a good number of the best learned men reputed within this realm, some favouring the old and some the new as they term.”

      The record of Ferrar’s consecration in Cranmer’s Register states: “Lectis publice communibus suffragiis de more Ecclesiae Anglicanae usitatis, consecratus et benedictus, per impositionem manuum episcoporum praedict fuit.”  The reference is no doubt to the “Litanie with suffrages” put forth in 1544, and reprinted in the year following as the “Common Prayer of Procession”.  The Register continues: “Qua peracta idem Reverendissimus publice et palam recitatis quibusdam Psalmis, Hymnis et Orationibus, una cum Epistola Pauli et Evangelio Matthaei. ...”  Here in parentheses it is to be noticed that, according to the usage of the majority of pontificals, the Epistle and Gospel would be those for the day and not ones specially chosen for the Consecration Service.  The “qua peracta” implies that Ferrar’s consecration took place before the recitation of the Introit, Collect, and Epistle; but this loose way of speaking is paralleled by a rubric in the Sarum pontifical in which the consecration of a bishop is directed to take place “antequam missa celebretur”.  According to the Sarum pontifical the consecration would take place before the Gospel: according to the Edwardian Ordinal it would take place after it.  The Register continues: “Consecrata, in lingua vernacula, sacra Eucharistia.”  Again in parenthesis, we notice that the Order of Communion, issued on March 8th, 1548, would have been in use since the previous Easter, and so “at the time of Communion,” and “after that the priest himself hath received the sacrament,” and “without varying of any other right or ceremony of the Mass,” he would proceed to communicate the people according to the New Order, which provided an exhortation which is practically identical with our present one at the time of the celebration, the invitation, general confession, absolution, comfortable words, and words of administration.”  Cranmer, in his letter to Queen Mary, says that the men of the old and new learning “agreed without any controversy (not one saying contrary) that the service of the Church ought to be in the mother tongue.”  Certainly the Canon of the Latin Mass must have been said in English at Ferrar’s consecration: and that would have been an innovation; but what was then done was done with the implied consent of Thirlby, who under Queen Mary was Bishop of Norwich, and afterwards of Ely.  Although not one of the three consecrating bishops, Thirlby was present at Ferrar’s consecration, and on that occasion received the Holy Communion at Cranmer’s hands.  After the accession of Queen Mary, Ferrar was degraded not from the episcopate, but from the presbyterate. [On the other hand, Scory, who had been translated from Rochester to take the place of Day at Chichester, and had been consecrated by Ridley and by the Edwardian rite, was under Mary restored by Bonner: “Our beloved confrere ... John, late Bishop of Chichester ... to the public performance and execution of his ecclesiastical ministry and pastoral office.”]  But why?

      On February 2nd, 1550, in accordance with the Act of January 31, by Order of Council the Commissioners were appointed to prepare the Ordinal: their names, however, are not recorded in the Council Book.  These steps were probably taken in order to legalize a book which had been already completed, and perhaps had even been experimentally used at an Ordination held by Cranmer and Ridley at St. Paul’s before the end of 1549.  The fact that in so short a time as one week after the appointment of the Commissioner, Heath, Bishop of Worcester, “wolde not assent to the boke made by the reste of the bishops and clergy,” seems to confirm the belief that the book had been in existence for some time.  The book was actually published in March by Grafton, nearly a year after the appearance of the First Edwardian Book of Common Prayer.  The colophon of the Ordinal showed that it was intended to be bound up with the Prayer Book; but it was in fact, legally speaking, an independent publication.

      On March 4th, Heath, on his refusal to subscribe to the Ordinal, was sent to prison, and eighteen months later was deprived of his see. [In September, Heath stated before the Council that he would not disobey the book, but he refused to subscribe to it.]  Hooper, on the other hand, who had been appointed to the bishopric of Gloucester, stood out against the vestments and the ceremonies, and only after some months in the Fleet Prison accepted a compromise and was consecrated.

      In his prison in the Tower, in July 1550, Bishop Gardiner told the members of Council who visited him that, although he himself would not have made the First Prayer Book of Edward VI, yet, as it was, he could with conscience keep it, and cause others in his diocese to keep it.  “The truth of the very presence of Christ’s most precious Body and Blood in the sacrament,” he said, “there was as much spoken in that book as might be desired ... there never was more spoken for the Sacrament than in that book.”  Gardiner also “showed them how he liked the declaration of the cause of the changes in the end of the book, whereby appeared the Catholic doctrine not to be touched, but only ceremonies removed,” which “the Bishop said was wisely handled.”  Pressed by Somerset for an opinion about the new Ordinal, Gardiner deplored the omission of the ceremony of anointing, but added that as the new Form had been legally established, the only alternative to it was to accept the consequences of noncompliance.  The choice that Gardiner had made is revealed by his actions.  In expectation of his release from the Tower, he gave a farewell party, made presents to the ladies, and directed his servants to prepare his house in Southwark for his return.  But the star of Somerset was on the wane, and that of Warwick was in the ascendant.  Bishop Gardiner was left in the Tower; and with the fall of Somerset (executed January 23rd, 1552) the entente between the men of the old and new learnings was broken up.  In April the Second Act of Uniformity was passed, and the Second Prayer Book with a Second Ordinal was ordered to come into use on the Feast of All Saints.

      The Compilers of the First Ordinal had not availed themselves of the permission to draw up rites of ordination “for the other ministries of the Church”.  The matter of the Minor Orders had been involved in the provocation caused by the immunity claimed by the clergy from the criminal jurisdiction of the secular courts.  The reader will recall the fact that a criminal condemned in those courts could by reading the first verse of the 51st Psalm (the “neck verse”) make good his claim to be handed over to the jurisdiction of the Bishop.  By directing the ordinaries that the Minor Orders should be given simultaneously with the subdiaconate, Wolsey had hoped to bar the way to this method of escaping the justice of the land, for ordination to the subdiaconate carried with it the obligation of celibacy, which would have served to restrain pretenders to ecclesiastical privilege.  Dr. Pollard states that it was Wolsey’s aim to abolish Minor Orders and so stay the creation of criminous clerks. [Wolsey, p. 54.]  In 1516 the Pope himself, Leo X, prohibited in England ordination to the Minor Orders, in all cases save those in which the subdiaconate was also to be bestowed.

      Referring to the First Ordinal, the Venetian Envoy, Daniele Barbaro, observed: “Nor do they differ from those of the Roman Catholic religion, save that in England they take an oath to renounce the doctrine and authority of the Pope.”  Even of the Second Prayer Book, John Knox wrote: “The whole order of your booke appeareth rather to be devised for upholding of massing-priests than for any good instruction which the simple people can receive thereof.  Your sacraments were ministred for the most part without the soule, and be those to whom Christ Jesus were no true minister; and God grant that so yet they are not.”  A separatist Nonconformist in the first half of the seventeenth century wrote: “All authority is given into the hands of the prelates alone, and their book of ordination, whereby they make bishops, priests and deacons, is against the very form of ordination of the ministry presented in the Scriptures, and nothing else but a thing word for word taken out of the Pope’s pontifical, wherein he sheweth himself to be anti-Christ most lively.”  The fact is that, whatever difference there may be in ceremonies or the language of the formularies, the English Ordinal has precisely the same aim in view as the Pontifical, namely, the setting apart of persons for those Orders of Ministers which from the Apostles’ time there have ever been in Christ’s Church.  The Preface to the Ordinal definitely excludes the idea that one kind of ministry was to be substituted for another.

      “To the intent these orders should be continued, and reverently used, and esteemed, in this Church of England, it is requisite, that no man (not being this present Bishop, Priest or Deacon) shall execute any of them, except he be called, tried, examined, and admitted, according to the form hereafter following.” [The archaic spelling is not followed.]

      In the revised form Ordinal of 1661–2, the last words are altered to “Or hath had formerly Episcopal Consecration, or Ordination.” [This touches a very sore point with the Presbyterians and Nonconformists – the recognition by the English Church of Orders bestowed by Roman rite.]  The direct implication of these words is that the continuance of Holy Order is dependent on Episcopal Consecration or Ordination.  The intention of the Ordinal is not different from that of the Pontifical.

      When we come to consider the actual changes made, we should notice, in the first place, that the Edwardian Ordinal by placing the laying on of hands in its true position as the essential sacramental sign varies from the pontificals, in which the repeated laying on or of extension of hands tends to obscure the truth that the laying on of hands is the essential sacramental sign of ordination to Sacred Orders.  The doctrine of ordination to the presbyterate, to which the rubrics of the Roman pontificals give formal expression, is the doctrine propounded by Pope Eugenius IV, and it is very significant that Cardinal Pole in his Legatine Constitutions of 1552 promulgated that Pope’s erroneous definition of the matter and form of Order. [The Marian bishops seem to have been more concerned with the omission of the ceremony of anointing, yet in some cases of priests ordained by the Edwardian rite, they supplied the anointing, but did not re-ordain.  See Priesthood in the English Church, Church Historical Society, p. 20; Frere, The Marian Reaction, p. 153.]  Following the received scholastic fallacy that a sacramental form must of necessity be imperative, the compilers of the first Edwardian Ordinal chose imperative words from the New Testament, and, in doing this, they no doubt were influenced by St. Augustine’s doctrine of a sacrament as a kind of “visible word”.

      There is a significant passage in the Bull Apostolicae Curae in which Pope Leo XIII writes: “The words which until quite recently were commonly held by Anglicans to constitute the proper form of priestly Ordination, ‘Receive ye the Holy Ghost,’ certainly do not in the least definitely express the sacred Order of the Priesthood.”  Surely Pope Leo was misinformed and had been led to suppose that the words “Receive the Holy Ghost” are the whole of the English imperative form.  Let us refer to the First Edwardian Ordinal.

      After a prayer in which reference is made to the gift bestowed by the ascended Lord (Eph. 4:10–12) the sending abroad into the world of “Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, Doctors, and Pastors,” and thanks are ascribed to God for having called His “servants here present to the same office and ministry,” there follows:

      When this prayer is done, the Bishop with the priests present, shall lay their hands severally upon the head of every one that receiveth orders.  The receivers humbly kneeling upon their knees, and the Bishop saying:

      “Receive the Holy Ghost; whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven: and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained; and be thou a faithful dispenser of the word of God, and of his holy sacraments.  In the name of the father, and of the son, and of the holy ghost.  Amen.”

      The Bishop shall deliver to every one of them the Bible in the one hand, and the Chalice or cup with the bread, in the other hand, and saying:

      “Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and to minister the holy sacraments in this congregation.”

      In the Second Ordinal the direction to the Bishop to deliver the Chalice and the Bread was omitted.

      The imperative form for the consecration of a bishop is preceded by a prayer which refers to the gifts of the ascended Lord (Eph. 4:10–12).  “The authority given unto him not to destroy but to save, not to hurt but to help,” speaks of the Episcopal office.

      Take [“Receive” in the ordination of a presbyter to express St. John 20:22.  “Take” in the consecration of a bishop so as to recall 2 Tim. 1:5.] the holy ghost, and remember that thou stir up the grace of God, which is in thee, by imposition of hands: for God hath not given us the spirit of fear, but of power, and love, and of soberness.

At this point in the First Ordinal, the Archbishop is directed to lay the Bible on the neck of the consecrand.  In the Second Ordinal this is altered to: “Then the Archbishop shall deliver him the Bible saying, ‘Give heed unto reading, exhortation, and doctrine, etc.’”  The words which follow the exhortation to study the Scriptures cannot possibly be regarded by any student of Ordination prayers as aught else but as an admonition to a bishop:

      Be to the flock of Christ a Shepherd, not a wolf: feed them; devour them not; hold up the weak, heal the sick, bind together the broken, bring again the outcasts, seek the lost.  Be so merciful, that you be not remiss, so minister discipline, that you forget not mercy: that when the Chief Shepherd shall come, you may receive the immarcescible crown of glory, through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

      These words were in the First Edwardian Ordinal accompanied by the tradition of the pastoral staff, but not of the ring.*  In the Second Ordinal the investiture with pastoral staff disappeared. [The ring is a non-Roman ceremony of investiture; and it came into vogue in the Gallican Church prior to the struggle between the imperium and the sacerdotium.  Cf. the letter of Charles the Bald to Pope Nicholas I in 867 relative to Abp. Ebo: “Anulos et baculos et suae confirmationis scripta more Gallicarum ecclesiarum ab se acceperunt,” P.L., cxxiv, Col. 874.  The ceremony can be traced back to Spain in the seventh century.  It is mentioned by St. Isidore, De eccl. offic., ii. 5.  In the middle of the eleventh century the miter was bestowed on lay princes by the Popes, and (see Ordo Romanus XIV) a miter was placed on the head of the Emperor and Empress at their coronation in the thirteenth century.]

      The ceremony of placing the Gospels open on the head, neck or shoulders of the Bishop elect seems to have occasionally afforded an opportunity for prognostications, and perhaps for this reason the Salisbury, Bangor and Exeter pontificals direct that the book should be held closed. [Maskell gives the following instances.  The open book at the consecration of Lanfranc showed “Date eleemosynam et ecce omnia munda sunt vobis.”  Lanfranc was famous for his almsgiving.  At Wulfstan’s, “Ecce vero Israelita, in quo dolus non est.”  At St. Anselm’s, “Vocavit multos, et misit servum suum, et coeperunt omnes se excusare.”  Catalani says that at the consecration of St. Athanasius the Saint’s future expulsion from his see was foreshown by the words occurring: “Qui preparatus est diabolo, et angelis eius.”]  As the ceremony of the imposition of the book is prescribed in what the English divines took to be the Canons of the Fourth Council of Carthage (i.e. the Statuta Ecclesiae antiquae) the presentation of the book instead of an imposition may be regretted.  Amalar, in the tenth century, who wrote ironically of the compiler of these Canons (“scriptor libelli doctior atque sanctior Apostolis”), and who also was scandalized by the direction that presbyters should lay on hands on an ordinand to the presbyterate, but not on the ordinand to the diaconate, objects that this laying on of the Gospels has neither “ancient authority, apostolic tradition, nor canonical authority”.  The Pseudo-Alcuin repeats this.  The ceremony, however, is alluded to by Palladius in his life of St. John Chrysostom, and by that Saint himself (Homil. de laude evangelii).  Ordo Romanus X mentions the ceremony at the consecration of a Pope, but does not explicitly mention a laying on of hands.  In Ordo Romanus XIII the book is held by two cardinal deacons.  In the Eighth Book of the Apostolical Constitutions the deacons hold the Gospels open on the head of him who is being consecrated while the prayer is said by the principal bishop, and here again there is no explicit mention of a laying on of hands.  There is nothing to show that the Pope in consecrating imposed the Gospels on the heads of the bishops whom he consecrated.  The ceremony appears in the ninth-century Milanese pontifical edited by Magistretti, and in the Ordo Romanus antiquus.  Mgr. Batiffol supposed that it was introduced at Rome by one of the Syrian or Greek-born Popes, at the end of the seventh century, and that its purpose was to show that the Pope derived his order from Christ, and not from the Bishop of Ostia and the other suffragans. [Canon Lacey, in the Revue Anglo-Romaine (T.I. pp. 193 ff.), argued that a similar practice was followed at Alexandria.]  In Gaul the mid-eighth century sacramentary of Gellone attests the existence of this ceremony.  In the Salisbury pontifical the direction that the consecrating Bishop and the assisting Bishop are to lay their hands on the Bishop elect follows after the direction to impose the Gospels; the Bishop in so doing says the Veni Creator. [In a rubric of the Sarum Pontifical the assistant bishops are called “Episcopi consecrantes”.]  The Roman pontifical, on the other hand, has for the moment of the laying on of the Gospels “Nihil dicens”; and then, when the actual laying on of hands takes place, all the bishops say “Receive the Holy Ghost.”  The Exeter pontifical agrees with the Roman in this.  Although the words “Receive the Holy Ghost” do not appear in very many pontificals, Catalani, the most eminent of all commentators on the Pontifical, has said: “Nearly all the Schoolmen who have discussed the matter and form of the episcopate constitute the form in these words: Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, which are said by the consecrator and the assisting bishops, when the book of the Gospel has been placed on the head.”

      Archbishop Parker’s Register at Lambeth shows that at his consecration on December 17th, 1559, the four bishops by whom he was consecrated, according to the use of the Church of Exeter, all pronounced in English the imperative forth, “Take the hollie gost,” etc.  Writing of concelebration at the Sacrament of the Altar, St. Thomas has explained: “Because the priest only consecrates in the person of Christ, and the many are one in Christ, therefore it matters not whether the Sacrament be consecrated by one or many.”  The rule that at least three bishops should join in the laying on of hands when a bishop is to be consecrated has been explained by the theory that it originated in a desire to preclude clandestine action, or to protect the rights of the province, and that therefore the assistant bishops are witnesses rather than co-consecrators. [Martène: De antiquis ritibus, Lib. I, Cap. VIII, Art. X. 16: “The assertion must be made that they [i.e. all the bishops] are not only witnesses but cooperators.”  He cites St. Isidore: “Episcopus non ab uno, sed a cunctis comprovincialibus episcopis.”  Cf. Card. Gasparri, Tractatus canonicus de sacra Ordinatione, Cap. V, Sec. II, Art. II. 3.  Dom Pierre De Puniet (Le Pontifical Romain, T.I. p. 266) has suggested that the participation of presbyters with the Bishop in the imposition of hands in the ordination of a presbyter may be a relic of the presbyter’s primitive episcopal power.]  The rule certainly secures this safeguard, but the precautionary motive does not exclude the consequence that the cooperation of the several bishops is an act of co-consecration as well as an act of testimony.  Father Puller, who has discussed the subject in his Orders and Jurisdictions, cites the high authority of Mgr. Carinci, a Prelate of the Curia, a Papal Master of Ceremonies, and Professor of Liturgy at the Propaganda, who says: “The assistants must do and say everything that appertains to the essence of the consecration, and must have the intention of consecrating: hence they are ministers.”

      It should be noticed that in the first Edwardian Ordinal, before the imperative form for the ordination of a presbyter, there is a prayer, “Almighty God and Heavenly Father,” which, preceded by the Dominus vobiscum, is a recital of redemptive acts, and with its “We render unto thee moste hartie thanks, we worship and praise thee,” is almost Eucharistic in form, and by its reference to the sending forth of the ministry into the world is reminiscent of the Deus honorum omnium of the Pontifical; and that there is a prayer of a very similar kind preceding the imperative form for the consecration of a bishop.  It is not improbable that these prayers represent what in the fused Gallican and Roman pontificals were styled the “Consummatio,” and that the imperative form for the ordination of a presbyter represents the third prayer and corresponds with the Accipe Spiritum Sanctum, quorum peccata, etc., at the third (or exclusive) laying on of hands in the mediaeval rite.  In the case of the prayer which precedes the imperative form of consecration to the episcopate we notice that, while its exordium is similar to the prayer for the presbyterate, in its conclusion it takes up the language of the ancient pontifical.

 

      Grant, we beseech thee, to this thy servant such grace, that he may be evermore ready to spread abroad thy gospel, and glad tidings of reconcilement to God, and to use such authority given unto him, not to destroy, but to save, not to hurt, but to help: so that he as a wise and a faithful servant, giving to thy family meat in due season, may at the last day be received into joy.

      Sint speciosi, munere tuo, pedes ejus ad evangelizandum pacem, ad evangelizandum bona tua. ... Da ei, Domine, ministerium reconciliationis.  Da ei, Domine, claves regni caelorum, ut utatur, non glorietur, potestate quam tribuis in aedificationem, non in destructionem.  Sit fidelis servus et prudens, quem constituas tu, Domine, super familiam tuam; ut det Hits cibum in tempore opportuno.

 

      The intention of the imperative form was further defined in the Edwardian Ordinals.  After the Bishop had announced to the people his intention to receive this day the ordinands “unto the holy office of Priesthoode,” he prayed to “Almightie God, geuer of all good thinges, which by thy holy Spirit hast appointed divers orders of ministers in thy churche,” to behold mercifully His servants now “called to the office of Priesthoode.”  In 1661–62, after the imperative forms had been made more ample, this prayer was transferred to the commencement of the services that it might serve as the Collect for the Ordination Mass.

      In his book against Anglican Orders, [The Question of Anglican Orders Discussed, pp. 209 ff.] Canon Estcourt endeavours to prove that the Ordinal is “founded upon the Lutheran doctrine, namely, Ordination is only the public recognition and admission of a person to an office, with prayers that he may have grace to discharge faithfully the duty imposed upon him, and to live in a manner consistent with the same; and thus it excludes the idea of a sacrament, or any sacramental grace being conferred therein.”

      Estcourt, to bring home his point, comments at length on the words “called,” “tried,” “examined,” and “admitted”.  He refers to the Lutheran mode of examining the candidates before the magistrates or other electors, [Ex his omnibus credo confirmatum esse eos qui sacramentis ac verbo inter populos praesunt, non posse nec debere sacerdotes vocari.” – Luther, De institution Ministrorum.  In this document Luther refers to the Ordination form “Accipe Spiritum Sanctum,” and ironically connects it with the “potestas gloriosissima” of the priest in pronouncing absolution.] and the Calvinist mode of examination in the presence of the people, and tells us that “as it was not convenient to have a real popular election,” [As to called, Estcourt writes: “This does not mean ‘vocation’ in the Catholic sense, which is the interior attraction by which a person, moved by Divine grace and the signs of God’s will, is led to embrace the ecclesiastical state for motives of promoting God’s glory and his own and others’ sanctification” (p. 210); but he admits that “in the Anglican rite the interior vocation is alluded to in the first question put to the candidate for the diaconate, whether he is moved by the Holy Ghost.”  We find references to an election by the people in the ancient Latin rites.  In Ordo Romanus IX the reader from the ambo proclaims: “Cognoscat fraternitas vestra quia illi et illi vocantur in tali officio.  Si quis habet contra hos viros aliquam querelam,” etc.  The Gelasian rite for ordaining a deacon inquires of the people “si vestra apud meam concordat electio, testimonium quod vultis vocibus adprobate,” and the congregation exclaim “Dignus est.”  Then follows the bidding, “Let common prayer follow the common vote,” etc.  Pope Cornelius ordained Novatus, “meeting the opposition of all the clergy and many lay persons as well,” Eusebius, H.E., vi. 43.] the call in the Ordinal is simply announced to the people.  He writes that admitted is a “perfectly novel word that came in with the Lutheran doctrine.  It finds its first appearance in this country in the Declaration concerning Bishops and Priests, published in 1537.”  On the contrary, Canon VI of the Council of Lambeth, A.D. 1330, runs: “Prohibemus ut nullus ad ordines accedat, vel admittatur, nisi canonice fuerit examinatus.” [Lyndwood, Provinciale, Lib. I, Tit. 5.]  Logically, the expression “admitted to the priesthood” contradicts the Lutheran doctrine that all Christians are priests.  Dr. Frere, in his revised edition of Procter’s History of the Book of Common Prayer, writes that the compilers of the Ordinal had before them a draft of an Ordination Service drawn up in 1549 by Martin Bucer for their special benefit.  Dr. Frere holds that “while they rejected Bucer’s doctrinal standpoint, they accepted much of his plan, and drew largely upon him for the exhortations and examinations,” and he notices that psalms selected by Bucer appeared in 1549 for the Introit of the Ordination Mass at the ordering of priests, that some of the Epistles and Gospels were suggested by Bucer, and that in the Bishop’s exhortation preliminary to the examination of the candidates for priesthood, and the prayer which follows it, his influence is also conspicuous.  Bucer’s draft, De Ordinatione legitima ministrorum ecclesiae revocanda, was published 1577 among his Scripta Anglicana; but was it written, as Dr. Frere supposes, in 1549?  In 1551, at Archbishop Cranmer’s request, Bucer in his Censura gave his considered judgment on the First Book of Common Prayer.  Bucer states that he studied the Book “per interpretem” and it is clear that the Ordinal had not been submitted to him.  He refers, however, to the “nuper edita ordinationis formula,” and complains that, in it, of the canonical examination he deemed so essential something is prescribed.”  At the close of the Censura he begs leave to go beyond the task assigned to him and add an appendix “de querendis, formandis, examinandis ecclesiae ministris”; since in his opinion it was not possible to restore only in part, when Christ demands a restoration of the whole.  His editors in the margin say that they have included Bucer’s appendix to the Censura under the heading “De ordinatione legitima,” etc.

      The passages of Bucer’s appendix which Dr. Frere thinks influenced the compilers are therefore Latin translations of the First Edwardian Ordinal, and not a draft which lay before the compilers of the First Ordinal.  But although the draft, which Bucer submitted to the Bishop of Ely, does not possess the importance assigned to it, yet it does show what an Anglican Ordinal, “founded on Lutheran doctrine,” might have been.  Contrast with the Edwardian imperative forms the one formula that Bucer provided for all three orders:

      Manus Dei omnipotentis, Patris, Filii et Spiritus sancti, sit super vos, protegat et gubernet vos, ut eatis, et fructum vestro ministerio quam plurimum afferatis, isque maneat in vitam aeternam.  Amen. [Bucer recognizes three orders of “presbyters and curates,” viz. the order of bishops, of presbyters whom the ancients used to call cardinals who governed the Church in places in which there were no bishops, and those assistant presbyters who “amongst us are called deacons.”  For the ordination of a “superintendent, that is bishop,” he advised that the rite should be tempered (attemperatur) and be fuller and graver than an ordination of a presbyter of the second order, and that “some distinction” should be made between the ordination of a presbyter of the second and the third order.  Bucer’s draft was therefore tendered as a revision of the First Edwardian rite for the ordering of priests, altered so as to make it available for the ordination of bishops, priests and deacons.]

      The principal alterations effected in the Second Ordinal were the omission of the tradition of the “chalice or cup with the bread” in the ordination of priests, and of the pastoral staff in the consecration of bishops: the omission of the direction that the candidate for the diaconate should have “upon hym a playne albe”; and the omission of introit psalms in the ordering of priests.

      During the reign of Queen Elizabeth the Puritans attacked the Ordinal, not only because it embodied an Episcopalian conception of the ministry, but because they took exception to the sacramental character of the Ordination forms.  “A thing much stumbled at in the manner of giving orders,” writes Hooker, “is our using those memorable words of our Lord and Saviour Christ, ‘Receive the Holy Ghost.’  The Holy Ghost they say we cannot give, and therefore we ‘foolishly’ bid men receive it.”  When, however, after the failure of Cromwell’s rule, the restoration of the episcopate and episcopal ministry came into view, the Puritan estimate of the Ordinal underwent a change, and an attempt was made to prove that the Edwardian Ordinal gave expression to the identity of the episcopate and the presbyterate.  But as early as 1641, in that scheme for “the Reduction of Episcopacy,” with which the name of Archbishop Ussher has perhaps been wrongly associated, the Ordinal had been appealed to show that presbyters, no less than bishops, are invested with power to shepherd the congregation of God.  The changes made in the Ordinal in 1661–62 [The text of the Ordinal subjected to revision was that printed in 1639 by Robert Barker, the King’s Printer, and it differs occasionally from the text of the Edwardian and Elizabethan books.  The text used for the revision of the Prayer Book was one printed by Barker in 1636.] were thus made deliberately, in despite of that appeal.

      A.  In the ordaining of Deacons:

      The word “pastor” as applied to a presbyter was held by the Presbyterians and Nonconformists to be an admission that the right to shepherd or rule God’s flock belonged to the presbyter as well as the bishop.  All Bishops, pastors and ministers “in the suffrage in the Litany was made to read All Bishops, Priests and Deacons.”

      B.  In the ordaining of Priests:

      1.  In the Edwardian Ordinal the alternative epistles at the ordering of priests, (1) Acts 20 in which the words occur, “Take heed therefore unto yourselves and to all the flock among whom the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers, to rule the congregation of God,” etc., and (2) 1 Tim. 3: “This is a true saying, If any man desire the office of a bishop,” etc., were transferred to the service for the consecration of bishops, and the present epistle from Ephesians 4 was substituted.

      2.  In the Exhortation the word “Pastors” was erased, and before the words “ministry of Priesthood,” “Order and” inserted.

      3.  To the imperative form, after “Receive the Holy Ghost,” was added, “for the office, and work of a Priest, in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.”

      C.  In the consecration of Bishops:

      1.  At the presentation of the Bishop elect, “ordained and” was added before “consecrated Bishop”.

      2.  In the imperative form, for “Take the Holy Ghost and remember that thou stir up the grace of God which in thee by imposition of hands,” was substituted “Receive the Holy Ghost for the office and work of a Bishop in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.  In the Name,” etc.  This excludes the Presbyterian contention that a bishop at his consecration is charged to stir up a grace already bestowed on him at his ordination to the presbyterate. [See Reasons Shewing the Necessity of Reformation, etc., which was addressed to Parliament by “divers Ministers of Sundry Counties in England,” and was probably drawn up by Cornelius Burgess.  “The very Book of Ordination ... doth more than tacitly admit a Bishop and Presbyter not to differ in order.”  For the Nonconformist interpretation of the alterations in the Ordinal in 1661–62, see The Healing Attempt, 1689.]  So do the following words inserted in 1661–62: “And remember that thou stir up the grace of God which is given thee by this imposition of our hands.”

      As to the prayer “Almighty God, Giver of all good things,” [Perhaps this is due to a current misreading of “bonorum” for “honorum” in the Gregorian Ordination prayer.] we have already noticed that it had stood immediately before the exhortation of candidates for the priesthood: in 1661–62 it was given a different place as the special Collect for Ordination Mass, the words “for the edification of the Church” being substituted “for the profit of the congregation”.  Similarly in the prayer in the Consecrating of a Bishop, “Almighty God, Giver,” “the edifying and well-governing of thy Church” is substituted for “profit of thy congregation”.

      These alterations, as Dean Prideaux wrote in 1608, were made to meet the contention of the Presbyterians, “that the office of a bishop and a presbyter or priest is one and the same, and not at all distinct, but that both names belong to every presbyter,” a contention which they endeavoured to support by alleging that the Edwardian Ordinal “added no new authority to that which was often given him by the priests, and that both orders were the same according to our old Ordinal.”  It has, however, been asserted in the Bull Apostolicae Curae that these alterations were made because “the Anglicans” had come to believe that their Ordination forms as they stood were defective and unfit: but, as long ago Bishop Burnet pointed out, our divines could not possibly have imagined that such alterations would have a retrospective effect and ex post facto validate invalid orders.  It is true that on a page pasted into at least some copies of a book called Erastus Senior, [The writer, a Roman Catholic priest, John Lewgar, under the guise of a sectary, had two years before published under the name of “John Web, Gent.: A Serious Detester of the Dregs of the Anti-Christian Hierarchy yet remaining among us.”  It is an attack on both Episcopalian and Presbyterian ordinations.] and published in 1662, the writer claims that “they have acknowledged the greatness of our (Roman Catholic) exception against these forms, by amending them in their new book,” and adds, “being no bishops now they cannot ordain validly, by any form whatsoever”; but it is certain that the Revisers could not have had the benefit of a book which was published only after they had completed their work.

 

V

      We have discussed these problems at some length because of their importance in the vindication of the Anglican position.  It remains to treat various practical matters.

      The Preface to the Ordinal prescribes: “and none shall be admitted a Deacon except he be twenty-three years of age, unless he have a faculty.  And every man which is to be admitted a Priest shall be full four-and-twenty years old.  And every man which is to be ordained or consecrated a Bishop shall be fully thirty years of age.” [See the 84th Canon of 1604: “not under four-and-twenty years old.”  By Statute law (13 Eliz. C. XII, § 5) “all dispensations, qualifications, and licenses” for Ordination to the priesthood of a person under the age of twenty-four are “merely void in law, as if they had never been.”  44 Geo. III, C. 43, § 1, declares the ordination of a person under the age of twenty-three complete “as merely void in law, as if such admission had not been made,” but protects “any argument of granting faculties heretofore lawfully exercised, which may be now lawfully exercised by the Archbishop of Canterbury.”  The faculty is granted to “persons of extraordinary abilities” (Gibson, Codex, Tit. VI, C. V.).]

      In its Edwardian shape, the Preface had ruled: “none shall be admitted a Deacon, except he be XXI years of age.”  The Rule at the end of the Form for the Ordination of a Deacon requires that a Deacon must continue in that office “the space of a whole year (except for reasonable causes it shall otherwise seem good unto the Bishop), to the intent that he may be perfect, and well expert in the things appertaining to the ecclesiastical administration.”

      The institution of Minor Orders, [In 251 Pope Cornelius had about him 46 presbyters, 7 deacons, 7 subdeacons, 42 acolytes, 52 exorcists, readers and doorkeepers, and over 1500 widows and persons in distress (Eusebius, H.E., vi. 43).] provided that the Orders were bestowed not as merely initiatory – all at one time, or in rapid succession – would secure the purpose of the injunction, “Lay hands [The words may perhaps apply to the laying on of hands in penance.] suddenly on no man” (1 Tim. 5:22), and also a riper experience of “things appertaining to the ecclesiastical administration.”  The intervals of time canonically prescribed to intervene between ordination to a lower and to a higher Order are technically called interstitia.  A primitive ideal is expressed by the eleventh canon of Neocaesarea (A.D. 315): “Let not a presbyter be ordained before he is thirty years of age, even though he be in all respects a worthy man, but let him be made to wait.  For our Lord Jesus Christ was baptized and began to teach in his thirtieth year.”  This Canon is included in the Collection of Canons made for Archbishop Egbert of York.  De Burgo, in his handy Pupilla Oculi, gives (Pars. VI, Cap. 4) “‘major xix” for the diaconate, “major xxiv” for the priesthood, and “major xxx” for the episcopate. [Pope Siricius (385), in a letter to Himerius of Tarragona, describes the ascent of a man vowed to the service of the Church from his infancy.  He is to remain a reader up to the “accessus adolescentiae”: up to the age of thirty he may be an acolyte or subdeacon; if unmarried he may then be a deacon for five years and a presbyter for ten, and seemingly at forty-five he is eligible for the episcopate.  If baptized in mature age, he will remain a reader or exorcist for two years, an acolyte and subdeacon for five, and then after intervals, deacon, presbyter, bishop.  Pope Zosimus (418), on writing to Hesychius, Bishop of Salona in Dalmatia, lays down a less exacting cursus by which “the sacerdotium of the presbyterate could seemingly be reached at the age of twenty-nine.”  See Wordsworth, Ordination Problems, p. 76 et seq.  This legislation must have been of an ideal kind.]

      The Preface mentions the times appointed in the Canon for the ordination of a deacon.  The Ember (Anglo-Saxon ymbren = recurring) Seasons, Quatuor Tempora, originated at Rome in the fifth century, in a revival of the fast on Wednesday and the prolongation of the Friday fast over Saturday.  Mediaeval writers attribute the limitation of general ordinations to Pope Gelasius (492–96), in whose time the December Ember season was added to the three original seasons corresponding with the seasons of sowing, reaping, and the vintage. [Gelasius, Ad Episcopos per Lucaniam, Ep. 1. c. 13.  Gratian, Decret. Dist. lxxv, c. 7.]  Before that time ordinations at Rome to the presbyterate and diaconate took place at Easter.  In the Excerptions of Archbishop Egbert we read: “But [let the ordination of] priests and deacons be on the Sabbaths of the four seasons; that this ordination being performed in the presence of the people, the reputation of the elect and the ordained may be debated under the testimony of all.”  As a matter of fact ordination, at least at Rome, took place at the end of the Saturday vigil, practically on the Sunday morning.  The choice of a time of fasting as a season of ordination is in keeping with apostolic practice (Acts 13:2, 3).  The use of special Ember Collects – the first appears to be an original composition by Bishop Cosin – for the whole Ember week is peculiar to the English Church since 1661–62.

      The Eucharist must be regarded as an integral part of the Form and Manner of making Deacons and Priests.  It is perhaps permissible to express a deep regret that the ancient custom of the newly-ordained presbyters concelebrating with the Bishop who has ordained them – a custom which is still maintained by the Roman Pontifical* – is not enjoined by the Ordinal.  Yet it should be noticed that in the Salisbury rite, the newly-ordained presbyters do not concelebrate, nor does the newly-consecrated Bishop, although the latter at a separate altar celebrates contemporaneously with the Bishop who consecrated him.  In the Roman Pontifical the Collects, Epistles and Gospels at the Ordination Masses are those of the day.  In the Lectionary (Comes) of Jerome, the work of Alcuin at the Court of Charles the Great, special Epistles and Gospels are appointed.  Hittorp’s Ordo Romanus gives the passage about the sending of the Seventy (St. Luke 10:1) as the Gospel for the ordination of presbyters, and 1 Tim. 3:1–7 as the Epistle at the consecration of a bishop.  In the Salzburg pontifical (Martène’s Ordo IX) the Gospel at the consecration of bishops is St. Luke 10:1 et seq.

      [*“But let the ordained Presbyters, kneeling on the ground here and there where it is most convenient, have their books before them, and say after the Pontiff, Suscipe Pater, etc., and all the other things of the Mass, as the Pontiff says them: and let him take good heed to say the Secreta carefully, and somewhat loudly, so that the ordained Priests may be able to say all with him, and especially the words of Consecration, which ought to be said at the same moment by the ordained as they are by the Pontiff.”  The ordinati, however, kneel at the consecration and are communicated in one kind.  In the Apostolic Tradition the newly consecrated Bishop says the Mass.  In the later medieval Roman rite the newly consecrated Bishop begins Mass in a separate chapel, but after the Offertory returns to the consecrating Bishop and concelebrates with him.  With the primitive custom of Apostolic Tradition, cf. the words of the Bishop’s ordination prayer, “offerre dona sanctae ecclesiae”.  The Sarum custom differs from the modern Roman in this respect.]

      The first rubric in the Forms for making Deacons and Priests requires that “after Morning Prayer is ended, there shall be a Sermon, or Exhortation, declaring the duty and office of such as ;come to be admitted (deacons/priests) how necessary that order is in priests the Church of Christ; and also how the people ought to esteem them in their office.”  This is in the spirit of the Preface to the Ordinal.  The rubrics of the mediaeval pontificals connect the sermon with declarations of canonical impediments and moral prohibitions and the danger that visits simony.  As to the high dignity and weighty office and charge of the priesthood, the Bishop himself admonishes the ordinands when they have been instructed by “the holy Lessons” taken out of the Gospel: “And if it shall happen the same Church, or any member thereof, to take hurt or hindrance by reason of your negligence; ye know the greatness of the fault, and also the horrible punishment that will ensue.”  This address contains several passages reminiscent of the Latin pontifical.  Sent forth to be “Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord; to teach, and to premonish, to feed and provide for the Lord’s family; to seek for Christ’s sheep that are dispersed abroad, and for his children who are in the midst of this naughty world, that they may be saved through Christ for ever,” the priests are never to cease their labour, their care, their diligence until they bring all such as are committed to their charge “unto that agreement in the faith and knowledge of God, and to that ripeness and perfectness of age in Christ...  Compare the words of the Gelasian prayer: “et per obsequium plebis tuae – et inviolabili caritate, in virum perfectum, in mensuram aetatis plenitudinis Christi in die justi et aeterni judicii, conscientia pura, fide plena, Spiritu Sancto pleni persolvant.”

      At Rome in the eighth and ninth centuries the presentation of the ordinands before the people took place on a day prior to their ordination. [In the Armenian Church ordination to the priesthood is preceded by a Calling Service.]  In countries where the Gelasian Sacramentary was in use, on the day of the ordination the Bishop addressed the people and demanded in the case of deacons: “si vestra apud meam concordat electio, testimonium quod vultis vocibus adprobate.”  In the ordination of priests, in a rather longer address, he called on the people to proclaim their election by their voice, “quod est acceptabilius Deo, aderit per Spiritum Sanctum consensus unus omnium animarum.”  The people responded “Dignus est.”  In the earliest of all Ordination rites, the Apostolic Tradition, the election of the Bishop and of the deacon is mentioned.  The suffragium thus given by the people is different from the formal judicium given by the bishops in electing a bishop to a vacant see within their province.  The consensus of the bishops secured the transmission of the apostolic succession, for, as Dr. Turner says, [Early History of the Church and Ministry, p. 107.] “to belong to the succession, a bishop had first to be lawfully chosen by a particular community to occupy the vacant cathedra of its church, and secondly to be lawfully entrusted with the charisma of the episcopate by the ministry of those already recognized as possessing it.”  The succession passed from holder to holder: the charisma through the consecrators to the consecrated.  In the consecration of a bishop the bishops not only ratified the choice of the individual community, but also placed the Bishop-elect in the episcopate of the whole Church.  The request for the concurrence of the people in our Ordinal shows that “according to the constitution of the Church, the Bishop cannot arbitrarily ordain whom he will.  The whole congregation, or body of Christ, must be consentient to his act, or rather set him in motion.  A bishop ordains those whom the Church offers to him” (Bp. Woodford, The Great Commission, p. 129).

      The presentation is made by the Archdeacon or his deputy.  The first mention of this officer occurs in the work of St. Optatus (c. 370) against the Donatists in recounting (I. 16) the quarrel of Lucilla with the Archdeacon Caecilian.  In the Pilgrimage of Etheria (c. 385) the Archdeacon is the officer who calls the faithful to prayer.  The Testament of Our Lord mentions “chief deacons,” and enjoins: of the deacons “let him who is considered among them to be most earnest and best in governing, be chosen to be the receiver of strangers.  Let him always be in the place of the guest-house which is the Church, clothed in white garments, a stole only on his shoulder” (I. 34).  It seems, however, that neither the title nor the office of the Archdeacon was yet in view.  The Gallican Statuta ecclesiae antiquae bears witness to the part taken by archdeacons in ordinations to the Minor Orders.  Ordo Romanus VIII describes the Archdeacon divesting the recently ordained deacon of his dalmatic, vesting him in the planeta, and then leading him to the Bishop to be ordained presbyter.  According to this same Ordo, the Archdeacon, on the day before the consecration of a bishop, after the letters dimissory are read, canonically examines the elect as to his immunity from four particular vices. [One of the questions the Pope asks the Elect in the subsequent examination is, “How many years are you in the Diaconate or Presbyterate?”  In the preconization which the Pope makes when the Elect is presented to him by the Archdeacon (a formula resembling the Greek), he says that the clergy and people have “elected him, a deacon or presbyter, to be their Bishop.”  This is evidence of consecration per saltum.]  At the consecration on the morrow, while the gradual is being sung, the Archdeacon, assisted by the subdeacons and acolytes, robes the Elect in dalmatic, planeta, and sandles, and then presents him to the Pope.  After the consecration is over the Archdeacon places the pallium on the new Bishop’s shoulders.

      In the Orthodox Church also the Archdeacon presents the candidates for the diaconate and presbyterate.  In the East, where the diaconate is often a lifelong career, the Archidiakonos is not, as is usually the case in the West, a presbyter.  Bishop John Wordsworth remarks that the first notice of archdeacons chosen from the presbyters is found in the letters of Hincmar of Rheims, A.D. 874.  In the Maronite Communion the Archidiaconate is regarded as one of the nine Orders recognized by their Church, and is bestowed sacramentally by laying on of hands, an imposition of the book of Gospels, etc.  According to the elder Asseman, the Syrian Jacobites follow the Maronite practice in this respect, with the exception of the tradition of the Gospel book, but it is not certain whether imposition of hands on the Archdeacon takes place in the Syrian Jacobite rite.  In the Nestorian Church, in which the Archdeacon has certain minor episcopal functions entrusted to him, the Archdeacon appears to be “princeps presbyterorum,” and his ordination is sacramental.

      In accordance with the Canon Law, the Archdeacon presents the candidates.  As he does but act on behalf of the Church, it may be regretted that the ancient formula has been altered: it was: “Postulat haec Sancta Ecclesia, reverende Pater, hos viros ordinibus aptos consecrari sibi a vestra Paternitate.”

      Before the solemn examination of the ordinands takes place, and after the Bishop has commended “such as be found meet to be ordered, to the prayers of the Congregation,” [This commendation corresponds with the Gregorian Oremus, dilectissimi or the Gelasian Commune votum communis prosequatur oratio.  In the mediaeval pontifical there is a shifting about of these invitatories.] the Litany, with the added suffrages and special prayers; is sung or said.

      The Litany, in our Ordinal, leads up to the Eucharist.  The rubric which follows the Epistles in the rite for the diaconate in the 1661–62 Book has now become obsolete, and is no longer printed. [See the Clergy Subscription Act of 1865.]  With the exception of the oath of due obedience to the Archbishop taken by Bishops at their consecration, oaths are not now administered during the Service of Ordination.  So now the public examination of the candidates for the diaconate follows immediately on the reading of the Epistle.

      By some expositors the public examination of the ordinands is considered to be a practical application of St. Paul’s words: “But thou, O man of God ... fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on the life eternal, whereunto thou wast called, and hast professed a good profession in the sight of many witnesses.”  The Sarum rite for the consecration of a bishop begins with a solemn examination of the Bishop elect, who is asked such questions as:–

      Will you teach those things which you understand from divine Scripture to the flock for which you are to be ordained, both by word and example?

      Will you show subjection and obedience through all to the holy Church of Canterbury and to me and my successors, according to canonical authority and the decrees of holy Pontiffs?

      Will you preserve humility and patience in yourself; and teach others likewise?

      Do you believe the One Author of the New and Old Testaments, the Law and the Prophets, and the Apostles to be God and Almighty Lord?

      For the Bishop there could be no private examination such as there can be for candidates for the diaconate and presbyterate. [Precedents for the public examination of candidates for the diaconate and the priesthood can he found in some mediaeval pontificals; e.g. Martène, T. II., Orders VII, VIII, XIII.  And see the Pontificale Thuani cited by Morin, who speaks of an examination of ordinands “in conspectu episcopi, vel cleri, sive populi.”]  The Anglican compilers have, with necessary modifications, carried back the questions addressed to the Bishop elect, to the rites for the Ordination of Priests and Deacons.  The answers, as Bishop Woodford rightly says, are vows : made vocally to the Bishop, they are “the soul’s promises to God,” first, to a pattern life, second, to a life of belief, third, to a life of ministering. [See The Great Commission.]

      A very beautiful feature in the English rite is the time for silent prayer which intervenes between the examination and the singing of the Veni Creator Spiritus. [Cf. Keble’s poem “Ordination” in The Christian Year.]  Such a time for silent prayer would in ancient times have intervened between the invitatory of the Gregorian Sacramentary, Oremus dilectissimi, and the deacon’s call, Levate, and would have been followed by the Collect in which the Bishop expressed in words the secret prayer of the whole congregation, “Hear, O Lord, our prayers, and on these thy servants send the Spirit of thy Benediction.”

      In the Edwardian Ordinals the hymn “Come, Holy Ghost, eternal God,” which is an expanded paraphrase rather than a simple translation, is placed before the examination of the candidates for the priesthood.  In 1661–62 the Veni Creator Spiritus was transferred to its present position, where it stands after the silence and before the prayer which immediately precedes the laying on of hands; but two alternative translations are substituted for the Edwardian translation.  The first and most familiar comes from Bishop John Cosin’s Collection of Private Devotions (1627): the second is a revised revision of a translation in Archbishop Parker’s Psalter.  The author of the original remains unknown.

      The prayer “Almighty God, and heavenly Father,” which recounts our Lord’s redemptive acts, His Ascension, and His sending abroad into the world His Apostles, Prophets, Evangelists, and Doctors, and dwells on the fact that it is the same Office and Ministry to which the ordinands are called, is very similar to the ancient Ordination prayers, and also most effectively sets forth the intention expressed in the Preface to the Ordinal of continuing and using the same Office and Ministry in the Church of England.

      The words “Be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments,” recall St. Paul’s description of ministers as “ministers of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God” (1 Cor. 4:1).  The Edwardian rubric which precedes the laying on of hands in the ordination of priests speaks of “every one that receiveth orders,” [1661–2 “receiveth the order of Priesthood.”] and this word in itself makes it difficult to understand how anyone can possibly maintain that the Ordinal is consistent with the view that ordination is but the public recognition of a call antecedently given and received, and not in itself what Hooker describes as “a gracious donation which the Spirit of God doth bestow.”  “The Hand which imposeth upon us the function of the Ministry doth, under the same form of words, so tie itself thereunto, that he which receiveth his burden is thereby for ever warranted to have the Spirit with him and in him for his assistance, and, countenance, and support, in whatever he faithfully doth, to discharge duty.”

 

Note on Revisions

      The changes in the Ordinal made at recent revisions are very slight.  The following are worthy of notice:–

      (i) The question at the Making of Deacons, “Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and New Testament?” is treated as follows: – English 1928 and Scottish, “Do you unfeignedly believe all the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, as given of God to convey to us in many parts and in divers manners the revelation of himself which is fulfilled in our Lord Jesus Christ?”; Irish, no change; American, “Are you persuaded that the Holy Scriptures contain all Doctrine required as necessary for eternal salvation through faith in Jesus Christ?”; Canadian, “Do you believe the holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament to be the Word of God, and to contain all things necessary to salvation?”

      (ii) The American Ordering of Priests since 1793 has had an alternative formula: “Take thou Authority to execute the Office of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed to thee by the Imposition of our hands.  And be thou ...”

      (iii) The English 1928 and Scottish Books in all three Orders introduce a prayer of Eucharistic form.  The Bishop (or Archbishop) says, “Lift up your hearts,” etc., continuing, “It is very meet, etc,” which introduces the long prayer before the Laying on of Hands in the 1662 Rite, in the case of priests and bishops; a new prayer of considerable beauty for deacons brings this Order into line with the other two. – [Ed.]