Anglican Orders

THE claim of any body of Christians to be a portion of the Catholic Church, stands or falls by the Apostolic succession. Apart from this succession there is no reliable ministry of the Word and the Sacraments.[1] The possession of a ministry in direct line with the apostles, and the maintenance of the Catholic Faith, makes the difference between the Church and a sect. Thus the question of the validity of our orders, i.e., whether the clergy of the English Church are rightly ordained, is one of vital importance. Valid consecration is the corner-stone of the whole ecclesiastical edifice.

As an historical fact, the apostolic succession was continued without break in the English Church all through the Reformation times, by bishops of the old apostolic line. As this statement has been disputed, it is necessary to produce proofs of its truth.

i

On the death of Edward VI., Mary succeeded to the throne, and under her the breach with Rome was, for a time, healed. The pope sent over Cardinal Pole as legate to reconcile the Church and nation to the Roman see. Mary died November 17th, 1558, and her death was followed within a few hours by that of Pole, who had been consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in 1556. Thus the throne and the archbishopric of Canterbury were vacant at the same time. Elizabeth succeeded to the crown, and at once commenced to restore the reformed religion. Her first care was to fill the vacant archbishopric. Her choice fell upon Matthew Parker, a man who appeared likely to maintain the liberties of the English Church against Roman interference, and sound doctrine against the heretical teaching of the foreign reformers.

After the needful preliminaries, Parker was consecrated archbishop of Canterbury in the chapel of Lambeth Palace on December 17, 1559, by Barlow, sometime bishop of Bath and Wells, then elect of Chichester; Scory, sometime bishop of Chichester, then elect of Hereford; Hodgkins, suffragan bishop of Bedford; Coverdale, sometime bishop of Exeter.[2] The Lambeth register gives a long and minute account of this great event.

Broadly speaking, the consecration of archbishop Parker[3] was the connecting link by which the apostolic succession in the English Church was continued after the final breach with Rome. Objections have been, until recently, urged as to the validity of his consecration, which are met thus:

(1) It was not till many years after archbishop Parker’s consecration that the fact was questioned. A miserable charge known as the ‘Nag’s Head fable’ was trumped up to disprove the consecration. “In 1604, i.e. forty-five years after Parker’s consecration, an exiled Anglo-Romanist priest of the name of Holywood, in a controversial book printed at Antwerp, alleged that Parker and some of the other bishops were consecrated (so to call it) by a mock ceremony, all together at one time on a day unspecified at the Nag’s Head tavern, by Dr. Scory (who had been really consecrated bishop in 1551), who was himself in turn consecrated in the like mock way by them. To this story other subsequent writers of the same stamp and class added a specification of three or four names of the other bishops, and finally of fifteen in all… During the twenty years following 1604, every Anglo-Romanist writer, with scarcely a single exception, and with suicidal eagerness, repeats the story exultingly, although in varying and contradictory forms.”[4] The fact of Parker’s consecration is now placed beyond all doubt, and the Nag’s Head fable, which bears upon its face the mark of falsehood, is given up by all respectable controversialists. Educated Roman Catholics are now heartily ashamed of this baseless invention.[5]

As so often happens, God brings good out of evil; and this is true in the case of this unfortunate story, for there is hardly any fact of history which has been more carefully looked into than the consecration of archbishop Parker. As the result of a most searching examination, the record and evidences of the event have been made public in all their fulness.[6]

(2) The chief consecrator of archbishop Parker was Barlow. It has been questioned whether Barlow was really a bishop himself.

Before answering this objection, it is well to state, that, though the chief, he was not the sole consecrator of Parker. Barlow was assisted, as has been said, by three other bishops, who along with him laid their hands on Parker’s head, each of the four bishops repeating the words of consecration. We quote from the record of Parker’s consecration, - “After certain prayers and suffrages to God, … the bishops of Chichester and Hereford, the suffragan bishop of Bedford, and Miles Coverdale, laying their hands upon the archbishop, say in English, - ‘Take the Holy Ghost,’ thereby following the ancient use enjoined in the Exeter Pontifical.”

The three bishops were present not only as witnesses, but as consecrators. Martène, a Roman Catholic of great repute as an authority on ritual, says, - “All the bishops who are present are not only witnesses but also cooperators, this is to be asserted beyond all manner of doubt.”[7] Thus, even if it were true that Barlow was not consecrated, the defect would have been made good by the bishops who assisted him. The objection to Barlow’s authority rests on the fact that the record of his consecration is missing in the register at Lambeth. But this omission need cause no uneasiness, for, at the period of which we are speaking, there is evidence that the Lambeth registers were most carelessly kept. During the archiepiscopate of Cranmer, in whose time Barlow would be consecrated, out of a total of forty-five consecrations, eight other consecrations are also omitted, besides five omissions out of eleven translations from see to see. In the case of Pole, the previous archbishop in Mary’s reign, three of his seven consecrators have no records.

But though the particular record is wanting, there is ample evidence that Barlow was consecrated; the various steps of his advancement to the episcopate are clearly traceable, and good evidence exists that he acted and was treated as a bishop. As Dr. Lingard, a Roman Catholic writer, observes, - “For ten years Barlow performed all the sacred duties, and exercised all the civil rights of a consecrated bishop; he took his seat in Parliament as Lord Bishop of St. David’s. He ordained priests: he was one of the officiating bishops at the consecration of Bulkley.”[8]

It is worthy of note that bishop Barlow’s consecration was never disputed until eighty years after the event.

ii

One of the earliest results of the Reformation was the translation and formation of the Prayer Book in English, and with it, and as part of it, the services for the ordination of the clergy, - named the Ordinal. This was completed in the year 1550, in Edward VI.’s reign. This Edwardine Ordinal, with very slight alteration, has been in use in the English Church from that time to the present, and the Anglican clergy have been ordained with it.

In 1896, Pope Leo XIII. issued a bull in which the Orders of the English Church are condemned as invalid, on the assumption that the Edwardine Ordinal was defective in form and intention. This supposed defect is alleged as the sole ground of condemnation.

Ordination, as a sacramental rite, has an outward and visible sign of the grace which is given for the office and work of the Christian ministry. The outward sign is the laying on of hands, accompanied by certain words which fix the true spiritual meaning of the act. These words are known as the form. Leo XIII. asserted that the form of the Anglican Ordinal in use from 1550 to 1662 was defective, because no explicit mention was made at the moment of the laying on of hands, of the particular grade of the ministry which was being conferred. But this objection is crushed at once by the fact that the ordination services in question (‘The form of ordering of priests,’ and ‘The form of consecrating of an archbishop or bishop’) are quite distinct, as their titles and contents show. In each service the grade of the ministry which is being conferred is plainly indicated again and again. In the one case the matter in hand is the ordination of a priest, and nothing else: in the other case it is that of the consecration of a bishop, and nothing else. At the last revision of the Ordinal in 1662, the words ‘for the office and work of a priest,’ and ‘for the office and work of a bishop’ were added, to be used during the laying on of hands, at the ordination of a priest or a bishop, as the case might be. This addition was made, not because it was felt that the form previously used was inadequate, but simply to meet the objections of the Presbyterians, who held that the offices of bishop and presbyter were identical It was thought advisable to add the words in question to accentuate the distinction which the English Church had ever made between the episcopate and the priesthood.

In the service for consecrating bishops, as it stood between 1550 and 1662, during the laying on of hands, the archbishop was directed to say, “Take 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.” These words are a quotation from St. Paul’s charge to St. Timothy, bishop of Ephesus,[9] and, as was generally believed by the commentators and theologians of the sixteenth century, definitely refer to the episcopate, to which he was consecrated by St. Paul. It is carefully to be noted that the corresponding form in the Roman Pontifical is quite vague and undeterminate: the consecrating bishops, when they lay their hands upon the bishop-elect, simply say, “ Receive the Holy Ghost”: nothing further is added, the purpose being fixed by the context only. Thus, in condemning the Orders of the English Church on such grounds, Leo XIII. equally condemned those of the Roman Church.

Leo XIII. further urged that in the Anglican Ordinal there is no intention to consecrate bishops, or to ordain priests, in the Catholic sense. He rashly asserted that the framers of the Edwardine Ordinal deliberately removed from the service of ordination whatever sets forth the dignity and office of the priesthood. This objection refers to the omission from the Anglican rite of the charge “Receive authority to offer sacrifices to God, and to celebrate masses as well for the quick as the dead,” accompanied by the delivery of the chalice and paten to the newly ordained priest. In place of this charge, which was only added to the Roman Ordinal about the eleventh century, the Anglican service has, “Take thou authority to preach the Word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments.” This change was made advisedly, and for good reasons. In defence of the action of the framers of the Anglican rite in making the change, it may be said: First, that the consecrating and offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice, though a most important function of the Christian priesthood, is yet only one of the duties of a priest.

The duty of offering the Eucharistic sacrifice had been so greatly exaggerated in the middle ages, as to overshadow the further offices of a priest in baptizing, absolving, preaching, teaching, and blessing. It was the common idea of the time that a priest was ordained for the sole purpose of saying mass, regardless of other pastoral duties. In giving authority to minister the Word of God and his holy Sacraments, the reformers deliberately restored the lost balance. The Word and the Sacraments comprise the whole treasure of the Church, as the sphere of grace and truth. In ordaining men to be “faithful dispensers of the Word of God, and of his holy Sacraments,”[10] the Church commits her whole treasure to their stewardship. In “ministering the Sacraments as the Lord hath commanded,”[11] a priest necessarily consecrates and offers the Eucharist. Secondly, it must be remembered that the framers of the English Ordinal were face to face with grave errors concerning the relation of the Eucharist to the Sacrifice of the Cross. These errors [12] were current even amongst learned divines of the time, and more common still amongst the people. It cannot be doubted that popular misconceptions of the true doctrine of the Eucharist, both as regards the real presence and the sacrifice, had their weight with the reformers in making the change we are discussing. In this case, the English Church only reverted to an earlier type of ordination service, such, for example, as is found in the primitive Roman service for the ordination of a priest in the Sacramentary of St. Leo the Great. In that service there is no allusion to the offering of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Thirdly, it is on no account to be supposed that in thus hesitating to permit sacrificial terms to remain in the Ordinal, there was any intention of denying the truth of the Eucharistic sacrifice. Archbishop Cranmer, the chief framer of the English Ordinal, writing in 1551, expressly declared that he never intended to deny that the Holy Eucharist is a sacrifice.[13] As Dr. Pusey pointed out, “the doctrine of a commemorative sacrifice in the Holy Eucharist has been maintained by a current of our divines ever since the Reformation.”[14]

The intention in ministering the sacraments is the intention manifested externally. When any one seriously uses the due form and matter requisite for effecting or conferring a sacrament, he is considered by the very fact to do what the Church does. And it cannot be doubted that the reforming bishops, in ordination, seriously intended to do all that our Lord proposed, and the apostles authorized, as the Church has ever done. The intention of the English Church in the matter of ordination is clearly and fully set forth in the preface to the Edwardine Ordinal. In this preface it is stated that “it is evident to all men diligently reading the 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.” The preface goes on to say that it was the Intention of the framers of the Ordinal that these orders should be “continued, and reverently used and esteemed, in the Church of England.” It would be impossible to find words which more clearly express the deliberate intention of the English Church to continue the three orders of the Christian ministry as they had existed from the apostles’ times, and as they had been perpetuated all through the long period which intervened between the first century and the sixteenth.

iii

There remains a further objection which is to be met, which we give and answer in the words of Canon Carter, - “There are Roman Catholics, who, allowing our orders, yet demur to our possessing jurisdiction - that is to say, the power of exercising the spiritual gifts conveyed by holy orders, - the reason given being that, as they suppose, jurisdiction is conveyed only through the papal see. Jurisdiction is sometimes regarded as a gift or power superadded to the gift of orders. But it is really nothing more than the apportioning the limits within which this gift may be exercised. It is mapping out the different fields of labour in which a bishop or a priest is free to do his proper work, so long as he is true to Catholic faith and practice. To say that our bishops and priests have no jurisdiction, is simply to claim that the pope has the right and power to fix for English bishops and priests their spheres of labour. Bishops and priests have, in themselves, as a consequence of order, their full inherent powers. All that is needed is to say where they are free to exercise them… All bishops are the successors of the apostles, and, as a ‘co-equal power,’ to use St. Cyprian’s language, was given to all the apostles alike, so to all bishops alike are full powers given. Such powers were involved in our Lord’s commission, and cannot be separated from it; so necessarily they pass, whole and undivided, to their successors, the Catholic episcopate… It is surely ridiculous to say, that English bishops, who trace down from the first settlement of Christianity in England, still possessing the original sees, though under new arrangements, cannot give to English priests their place of work!”[15]

The idea that all jurisdiction proceeds from the pope was unheard of until the twelfth century.[16]

We will close this chapter by quoting the weighty words spoken by one of the greatest Catholic theologians and historians of the last century. At the Reunion Conference held at Bonn in 1874, Dr. Döllinger, speaking of Anglican Orders, said, - “The solution of the question depends solely on an examination of historical evidence, and I must give it as the result of my investigations, that I have no manner of doubt as to the validity of the episcopal succession in the English Church.”[17]

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[1]

“The principle of apostolic succession is that no man in the Church can validly exercise any ministry, except such as he has received from a source running back ultimately to the apostles, so that any ministry which a person takes upon himself to exercise, which is not covered by an apostolically received commission, is invalid.” - Gore, The Mission of the Church, p. 31.

[2]

Of these Barlow and Hodgkins had been consecrated with the old Pontifical, whilst Scory and Coverdale had been consecrated with the English Ordinal.

[3]

Even if there were any doubt as to archbishop Parker’s consecration, the apostolic uccession would have been recovered in the next century in the consecration of archbishop Laud, in whom the three lines of the Italian, Irish, and English successions met. See The Priest’s Prayer Book, Anglican Orders, 5th Ed. p. 204.

[4]

Haddan, Apostolic Succession in the Church of England, p. 180.

[5]

See Lingard, History of England, vol. vi. Appendix D.D. p. 328.

[6]

See Appendix, Apostolical Succession; also Courayer, The Validity of the Ordinations of the English, 1844. pp. 328, etc.

[7]

de Antiquis Ritibus, l. 8. 10. 16.

[8]

Catholic Magazine, 1834.

[9]

2 Tim. i. 6, 7.

[10]

Anglican Ordinal.

[11]

Ibid.

[12]

See pp. 268, ff. : also the author’s Expositions of Catholic Doctrine, pp. 163, ff.

[13]

See on the Lord’s Supper, p. 369, ed. Parker Soc.

[14]

Letter to the Bishop of London, p. 30. See also the catena of authorities given by Dr. Pusey in The Tracts for the Times No. 81.

[15]

The Roman Question, pp. 88, 89.

[16]

“That very late monition, that bishops receive their jurisdiction from the pope ought to be banished from Christian Schools, as unheard of for twelve centuries.” - Bossuet, quoted by Pusey, Eirenicon, i. p. 271, note.

[17]

Report of the proceedings of The Reunion Conference at Bonn in 1874, pp. 50, 51.