conferred by him for no other reason but for the hatred which they bore each other according as they were of different parties for or against the proceedings of Formosus that was Pope before them And if the truth be fully examined into no other reason will appear for their like proceedings with us We are not of their party but after having long submitted to their unreasonable usurpations and unwarrantable impositions will now bear them no longer but having cast off this heavy yoke from our necks have thereby cut them short of a great part of their Empire and deprived them of vast incomes which they annually received out of those Kingdoms in larger sums then from any other nation under their bondage and therefore looking on us as the Egyptians did on the Israelites when they withdrew themselves from their bondage although it were to serve the living God pursue after us with the same malice and when out of the bitterness of it they have deprived so many of us of our Lives no wonder they will not allow us our orders But how bad soever either our orders our Liturgy or any other part of the Reformation establisht among us may at present be esteemed yet we have heard of the time when if his Holiness might but have had his Supremacy and his Peter-pence again all might have been allowed to be good and valid Pope Paul the 4th and after him Pope Pius the 4th having several times offered it Queen Elizabeth to confirm all that was done in the Reformation of this Church and allow both our orders and our Liturgy too provided she would again restore them to that Authority and Revenue which their Predecessors formerly had in this Land. And as long as there was any hope for the succeeding of this project Papists were permitted both to frequent our Churches and joyn with us in our Prayers and it was the General practice of that whole party for the first ten years of her Reign so to do But afterwards when the Court of Rome found that the Queen was immoveably fixed against what they proposed and all likelihood taken from them of again recovering their power in this Land by any Concession from her then first began they in the 11th year of her Reign to command their Votaries to make a total separation from us and to proceed in the most rigorous manner possible by Excommunications Sentences of Deposition underhand Treasons and open violences against the Queen and all that adhere to her to condemn our Church of Apostacy from the Faith and to denounce all her establishments which afore of their own accord they had offered to confirm and allow to be Heretical False Diabolical and what other like name they were pleased to affix thereto and all this for no other reason but because we would not again admit them to that Tyrannical supremacy over us which had on so just grounds been cast out of our Land by which it appears that Empire is the only thing in reality which those men look after and all things else are to be allowed or denyed as they may comport therewith I am Sir Your affectionate Friend Humphrey Prideaux The same Messenger that carryed this Paper to Mr. Norris brought from him this following in Answer to the first Paper I sent him it being on Fryday Night November the 25 th SIR THE ensuing are my promised thoughts upon your Paper which neither Mr. Acton nor any of those Gentlemen had the least hand in The exception amongst others which our Adversaries take against our Orders is that in the Ordinal of Edward the Sixth's days the power given by that Form of making Priests did not express for what office which our Church judged so necessary that it should that in the review of it in Charles the Second's Time that defect was supplyed by the addition of the word Priest which the Bishop is now to express in the Form when he lays his hands upon the person to be ordained unto that office In your paper you vindicate the former Ordinal by these several ways First That the addition did not suppose any defect in it before but was put in only to avoid the cavils of the Presbyterians who at that time were assembled by Commission with our Church-men upon review of our Liturgy Secondly For that it was before agreeable to Christs own practice Thirdly To the Practice of the Romish Church who also owned our Priesthood to be good by the Concessions of Cardinal Pool It being nothing but the truth which I look at have therefore fairly and candidly summed up and recited the utmost strength of your Paper To your first I say That for the word Priest and Bishop to be added to the new Form for avoiding all cavils from the Presbyterians who so much hated the name of both I will appeal almost to all the World whether that could be thought to be the true Reason Besides our selves do grant that even to those very men it was thought defective for the very same reason the Romanists did and therefore must necessarily conclude it to be very deficient being so apparent unto them as well as unto the others But the true reason of that addition I take to be from two books which came out not above a year before called Erastus Senior and Erastus Junior which did make appear that the power given at our Ordination of Priests was not expressed in the Form of that office by which they were no more Priests then any Lay-man confirmed by the Bishop If our Church had not thought it essentially necessary to have made that addition she never would so have exposed our Ordinal to the just censures of our adversaries in so high a concern for a meer circumstantial matter which alteration was not in the preliminary part of it or in the prayers before or after but in the very essential part of it and therefore by such an addition she could not but think it very defective before To your second I say That although our Saviour who also was God could conferre the whole office of Priest without any Form expressing the power given or could make any Form sufficient for that end yet doth it not therefore follow that we can do it but in the ordinary way But when our Saviour said Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins you remit c. They were not by those very words alone made compleat and intire Priests they were thereby so far as to remit sins but not to Consecrate or Make present the body and blood of Christ which power he gave them when he instituted the Eucharist and said this do in Remembrance of me Now though the word Priest was not expressed in our Saviours Form yet was it by equivalency by expresly giving them all the power that belonged to that office If our Saviour had only said be thou a Priest it had been as sufficient for all the offices of it as when he expresly gave them power
there are but two Forms of Imperative words in the Roman Ordinal before this Receive Power to offer Sacrifice c. and both spoken by the Bishop at the Vesting of the person to be Ordained with the Priestly Vestments For in the putting on the first sort of those Vestments he says Receive thou the yoke of the Lord for his yoke is sweet and his burden light and then immediately after at the putting on of another sort of Vestment he says Receive thou the Priestly Garment by which Charity is understood for God is able to encrease unto thee Charity and every perfect Work But by neither of these any thing of Priestly Power is given or do any of that Communion ever say so and therefore according to your own concession it must follow and it is that which the Learnedest of the Roman Communion say that the last imperative words in the Roman Ordinal which are spoken at the last imposition of hands Receive the Holy Ghost whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven and whose sins thou dost retain they are retained are the alone essential Form whereby the Orders of Priesthood are conferred in that Church and this Form we had in our first Ordinal as well as they in theirs and much more fully because therein are also subjoyned these words And be thou a faithful dispencer of the Word of God and of his Sacraments in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost which are wanting in the Roman Ordinal which are not any such notorious and idle Tautologies as you are pleased to call them For although they express nothing more then what is comprehended in the foregoing words Whose sins thou dost forgive c. yet they are explanator of them and do more explicitly tell us what is contained in them For a Priest doth no otherwise remit our sins in the Church of Christ then as he administers to us the means in order thereto in the Word and Sacraments and the concomitant Offices belonging thereto Fourthly I further observe in your Paper that you quote Mr. Fox to prove that those who were ordained by King Edwards Ordinal were ordained again in Queen Maries Reign I must confess Mr. Foxes Book is too large for any one so throughly to know every particular of it as positively to deny what you say to be contained in it But when you convince me of this and show me in Mr. Fox where any such thing is said then will I believe that Dr. Burnet hath dealt falsly with us by telling us the contrary in his History of the Reformation Part II. Page 289. But be it so or be it not so the cause doth not at all depend hereupon Fifthly You infer the nullity of our Orders because in the conferring of them no power is given to Consecrate the Eucharist To this I answer that the words of our Ordinal giving power to Administer the Sacraments give power also to Consecrate the Elements in the Holy Eucharist and in all such Forms the more general the words are it is always the better provided they are such as include all the particulars as it is certain the words of our Form in the Ordination of a Priest include all the particulars that belong to that Office. But if you urge that it is not only necessary to express the power of Administring the Sacraments in general but that it must also be done in particular I must then ask the question why the Sacrament of Baptism ought not also in particular to be mentioned in the Form as well as the Sacrament of the Eucharist and why may we not from the omission of this in the Roman Ordinal infer the nullity of their Orders as well as they the nullity of ours from the omission of the other and that especially since the Sacrament of Baptism may be justly esteemed the nobler of the two as being that which first gives us Life in Christ whereas the other only adds Strength and Nourishment thereto But here you will object to what I have said that our Ordinal gives power only to dispence the Sacraments and not to consecrate the Eucharist To this I answer that by the word dispence the Church means the whole of what belongs both to the Consecration and Administration of that Sacred Rite and words are alwaies to be understood according to the meaning and receiv'd interpretation of them that use them and not as they shall be limited or forced by the impertinent cavils of every contentious Adversary and you may always take this for a certain Rule that when in the management of Controversie men come to cavil about words it is an evident sign that they are run on ground as to all things else· But to this point you further say that those that have Authority only thus to dispence the Elements have not power to make present the Body and Blood of Christ in the Holy Eucharist without which you hold this Sacrament cannot be administred To this I answer that if by making present the Body and Blood of Christ you mean a Corporeal presence by the transmutation of the Elements as the Church of Rome holds it is a monstrous opinion which we can never receive and I hope you are not gone so far as to swallow with them so absurd an opinion Sixthly You say Christ made his Apostles Priests when he said unto them Do this in remembrance of me and that you take this clearly to be the sense of the Church If you mean by the Church the Church of Rome I acknowledge what you say to be true they having so defined it in the Council of Trent but that the Church of England ever held this I utterly deny for it is a Doctrine peculiar to the Church of Rome and but of late date among them being first invented by some of the Schoolmen to serve a turn For about Six Hundred Years since and not sooner the Church of Rome taking up that most Sacrilegious practice of denying the Cup to the Laiety and being afterwards pressed with the institution of our Saviour who commanded the Administration to be in both Kinds to evade this they framed this subtle invention of saying that Christ in the institution of this Holy Sacrament made his Apostles Priests by saying unto them Do this in remembrance of me and that therefore the Commandement given them of Communicating in both Kinds belongs to them only as Priests and that the Laiety from this Commandment can claim no right thereto But this is a fetch which some of the wisest and ablest Men among them are ashamed of and it is particularly disowned by Estius Suarez and Christophorus a Castro as being neither agreeable to the Antients nor of any solidity in it self Seventhly You allow our Form of Episcopal Ordination to be sufficiently perfect which if granted will infer the Ordination of Arch-Bishop Parker and all the other Bishops in the beginning of Queen Elizabeths Reign to be good and
to perform all the offices of it without expresly giving the Title But our Ordinal did not express the whole power given either by name or equivalency For it did not give power to Consecrate the Eucharist though it did to be dispencers and faithful Ministers of it which amounts to no more than distributers which every Deacon is as capable of as a Priest And if dispensing should import to be Stewards of the Mysterys of God that also imports no more then to be Conservators or Trustees of what should be committed to them not that they are thereby the makers of it That because I am intrusted or made Steward it should therefore necessarily follow that I have power to make that with which I am intrusted I hope our case depends not upon such a forced and unnatural a consequence If it should be objected that our Saviour did not then give the power to Consecrate the Eucharist when he said to his Apostles Do this in remembrance of me but was only a command to continue the Rite and Custom of it in the Church and therefore were compleat Priests from those words only by which he gave them power to remit sins To this I answer That if our Church had thought any sufficiently impowred to Consecrate the Eucharist by virtue only of those words to remit sins we then must make her highly guilty of notorious idle Tautology in her Form of Ordination when after she hath given power to remit sins should also at the same time distinctly give power to dispence the Sacraments But by her giving such distinct power to dispence the Sacraments after she had given power to remit sins she could not think that to be the sense of our Saviours words but the other that by bidding them do this in Remembrance of him that he did then give them power to Consecrate the Eucharist which I take clearly to be the sense of the Church whose Authority I shall preferre before any single persons whatsoever Besides that our Saviour should then command them to do that which they had power for to do is more like to a cruel Tyrant than a most Merciful and Compassionate Master To your Third and last I say That the Romanists making alteration in their Ordinals signifie nothing unless you can shew me where they have done it in such an essential part of it as we have Although they have added that to theirs of offering sacrifice for the living and the dead yet in regard they do before in their Ordinal expresly give all Priestly power which we did not the other is but an instruction to let them know what power they had received and for what they were to make use of it by virtue of that all Priestly power expresly given them before as appears by the words in their Ordinal which in ours was neither given in general nor in particular to Consecrate or make present Christs body and blood in the Holy Eucharist as was observed before If we had then as now but said be thou a Priest I grant it had been sufficient for all the offices of it although none of them had been particularly expressed in our Ordinal As to what Morinus hath said about the Greek and Roman Ordinals not giving distinct power expresly to Consecrate makes nothing at all so long as they gave them all Priestly power Unless you can prove any of their Ordinals do not expresly give them Priesthood the exceptions out of him of not giving power to Consecrate is nothing at all to the true state of the Question between us Sir As to what you say from Vasquez relates only to a Bishop who doth not thereby receive any new character then what he had afore as a Priest and is only the same power and character further extended which was before virtually in him from his Priesthood and therefore those words Receive the Holy Ghost and stir up the grace c. may be sufficient alone for that though not for a Priest who doth receive a new power and character Besides the same Author in the same Tome which you quote doth expresly say that by the words Receive the Holy Ghost and whose sins you remit c. doth not alone make an intire Priest and that he hath not power to Consecrate by virtue of them and you know Sir the point between us now is only that of Priesthood As to that Sir vvhich you say That they vvould not degrade Bishop Ridley of his Episcopal office vvas not upon account that they thought him no Bishop but for the benefit of the Leases to his Successor Bonner But why then did they at the same time degrade Latimer of his Episcopal office who was made such by the Roman Ordinal which Ridley was not by which Sir you may plainly see what the true reason was of both which I take not at all to be what Sir you were pleased for to surmise Finally whereas you were pleased to say our Priests were owned for good by the Romanists themselves when you shall be pleased Sir to make proof thereof I shall think it then time and not before to take it into my consideration in the mean time Sir if you please to look into Mr. Fox and do believe what he says you shall find what complaints he makes of the Roman Clergy against the Protestant Clergy in Queen Mary days what havock they made with the latter in that they would force them all to be Re-Ordained again Sir I am still in the same Communion which if I should ever change it can be imputed to nothing more then from some of our own Clergy-men of whom I do expresly exempt your self SIR I am your most humble Servant A. N. Three days after I had also this following paper sent me by the same Gentleman in answer to the last I sent him SIR I Could not conveniently before yesterday read over your second Paper supplemental to your first As to Bishop Ridley you may find by Mr. Mason's Vindication of him by the reasons he urg'd that he did account him to be Consecrated not by the Old but by the New Ordinal and the Popes Commissioners refusing to degrade him as to that Office and yet did Bishop Latimer in both is a clear Testimony that they would not do it to the one because they thought him consecrated by the New Ordinal Besides Dr. Burnet hath expresly declared that Ridley was made Bishop by the New Ordinal in King Edward's time Besides other Bishops they did not degrade As to their coming to our Churches until the 10th of Queen Elizabeth so to my knowledge did most of the Prebendarys of your Cathedral with the rest of the Episcopal party constantly frequent the Presbyterian Churches all along in the late times and yet they did not think those mens Orders to be good who officiated that took them not from the Bishop As to the Persecutions and Cruelties of our Adversaries they were much to blame for them but as it
was not used in their Ordinals yet he doth not say it did not expresly give all Priestly power in other words or by equivalency by giving full power to perform all the Offices of it which Sir I told you ours did not and that it did not give power to Consecrate and make present the Body and Blood of Christ in the Sacrament not by way of Transubstantiation I meant but only in the sence and words of our own Church that is verily and indeed which is more than to be present only by a meer Figure or to be only Commemorative And although he further tell us that the whole Rite was performed by Prayers and imposition of hands This doth no way exclude the other which I said before for when St. Paul minded Timothy to stir up the gift given him by imposition of hands he named nothing else but imposition of hands yet can any think there was not also Prayers and a form of words used at the laying of hands upon him And whereas Sir you say the Council of Carthage which is the Antientest hath directed concerning this matter prescribes herein nothing but imposition of hands and prayers only You should Sir have given me the very words of that Councel whereby I might have seen whether any such thing could have been inferred from them and since you were not pleased to recite them I will take upon me to do them for you which words are these When a Priest is Ordained the Bishop blessing him and laying his hands upon his head all the Priests that are present shall likewise lay their hands upon his head about the Bishops hand Doth this Canon prove any thing more than that it is a command only for the Priests then present to lay their hands also upon the head of the person Ordained about the Bishops hand at the same time he bless him and lay his hand upon him This doth no way shew us what the Ordinal of the Church was in those dayes This Canon had been proper to have been offered in case any had denyed imposition of hands which being required doth it therefore follow nothing else was essential because the rest of the Priests present were required also to do it with the Bishop If a learned Papist should have offered me such an Argument or Authority as this I might then have concluded Sir with your self that I thought him about to impose upon me I will also tell you the words of Dionisius whom you quote but not recite That the Priest who was to be Ordained kneeled before the Bishop who laid his hand on his head and did Consecrate him with an Holy Prayer and then marked him with the sign of the Cross and the Bishop and the rest of the Clergy then present gave him the Kiss of Peace Although he mentions all these yet where doth he say that these were the only things as you were pleased to say he said they were Can any one rationally conclude from this that there was no form of words used when the Bishop laid his hand upon the Ordained or that he should then say nothing it must be thought at the least that at that very time he used such a Prayer in which might be contained the very essential Form for any thing that Dionisius hath to the contrary And now Sir give me leave to mind you of this distinction for the better understanding my meaning in what I have formerly said and shall have occasion hereafter to mention That where the essential Form or any part of it be contained in the Prayers Prayers and Imposition of hands is all that is necessary but the Prayers of the Roman Ordinal have the essential Form contained in them which in ours is not therefore with us Prayers and Imposition of hands are not sufficient though they may be with them And this is my Answer to what else you quote from Morinus de Ordinationibus and also to that of the seven Deacons and Disciples which you say were made such only by imposition of hands upon them which you tell me there was nothing said or any words used which if there were not but only hands imposed you must give me leave to tell you that it look'd then but like a dumb sign and do not see how it could be more operative than if the same person had stroaked a good Boy on the head and said nothing but if there were words used at the imposition of hands then was it not done by imposition of hands only as you affirm and if words were used as it is not to be doubted then must they certainly be such as be pertinent unto that Ceremony which must express the power thereby given Sir you tell me that I have conquered the Objection and brought the Controversie to an end by granting That the offering Sacrifice to God and celebrating Mass for the Living and Dead was a novel thing and therefore not essential to Orders But I deny that I ever granted any such thing although I did that for the celebrating Mass for the Living and Dead to be within these Five Hundred Years expressed in the Roman Ordinal but not for offering Sacrifice unto God which I said no such thing but am assured that it was ever in their Ordinal and also their celebrating Mass for the Living and Dead was all along before the practice of that Church and therefore the Objection remains still in as much force as ever and the Controversie as far distant from an end as ever it was before Might I take leave to add to a Proposition and make it run contrary to the true intent and meaning it were an easie matter soon to salve any Questions but that way would never give the Proposer any satisfaction at all You also tell me That whereas I say all Priestly power is given in the Roman Ordinal in the words before speaking this Receive power to offer Sacrifice will appear by examining the Ordinal it self to be altogether a mistake because if it be good it must be in the prayers of the office or in the imperative words spoken by the Bishop to the Ordained in the prayers you will not say for then the prayers of our Ordinal might be allowed to be as valid for this purpose in which the Priestly Office is fully expressed both by Name and Description as in theirs To which I Answer That in examining the Roman Ordinal I say it will not appear to be a mistake which lay on your part to prove that it is in their prayers This I deny for I say that it is and that therefore the prayers of our Ordinal must be as valid this also I deny because they do not give such power and also that the Priestly Office is as fully expressed both in name and description to as good purposes as in theirs for our prayers before doth only give God thanks for calling them to the Office and Ministry appointed for the Salvation of Mankind it doth
this outward Rite or Sign of Imposition of Hands and this Form of words annex'd thereto was the whole manner appointed by our first Reformers for the conferring of the Office of Priesthood on those that were Ordained to it and so it continued till in the first Convocation after the late King's Restauration Anno 1662. after Receive the Holy Ghost these additional words for the office and work of a Priest in the Church of God now committed to thee by the Imposition of our Hands were for the reasons which I have aforementioned unto you also inserted in that Form. 4. Therefore you are to understand that the second Matter and Form of our Ordinal abovementioned were not at all intended to conferr the Order or any part thereof but only to assign the place for the execution of the Office already received For by the first Matter and Form Imposition of Hands and the Form of words annexed the person Ordained thereby is fully and wholly made a Priest or Presbyter of the Church of Christ and all that is done by the second Matter and Form is to admit him thus Ordain'd to be a Priest or Presbyter of that Congregation that is of that Diocess the whole Diocess being as one Congregation or Parish in respect of the Bishop Ordaining to execute the Duties of his Office express'd by Preaching of the Word and Administering the Holy Sacraments in the place where he shall be appointed thereto and this was so order'd conform to the Ancient Canons of the Church which very severely forbid all absolute Ordinations that is all such Ordinations whereby Orders are given at large without intitling the Person Ordained to any particular Church for the executing the Duties of the Office received For it was the Ancient Custom that every Bishop should Ordain his own Presbyters and none other and that when he Ordained them he should admit them to be Presbyters of his Church either to officiate in the Mother Church it self where the Bishop had his Chair or else in some of the other inferiour Churches of the Diocess which all belonged thereto and whether they did the one or the other they were all reckoned as Presbyters of that one Church the Diocess anciently being looked on as one Parish and all the Christians of it as one Congregation united together under their Bishop and conformable hereto is it that the Bishop saith in the Ordinal above-mention'd Take thou Authority to Preach the Word of God and to minister the Holy Sacraments in the Congregation where thou shalt be so appointed i.e. Take thou Authority to execute the Office of a Priest in this Diocess in that particular Church or Parish thereof where thou shalt be appointed so to do But since the Ancient Canons which forbad Presbyters ever to forsake that Church or Diocess whereof they were first admitted Presbyters to go into another Diocess is now through the whole Christian World grown quite obsolete and would be of much more prejudice than benefit now to be observ'd At the aforesaid review of our Ordinal in the Year 1662. this Form also hath received an Alteration and what was afore in this Congregation where thou shalt be so appointed is now in the Congregation where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereto and thereby that Faculty or License to Preach the Word and Administer the Sacraments which was afore given as to the Diocess only where the Person was Ordained is now made General as to the whole National Church in any part thereof whereof the Person thus Ordain'd to the Priesthood shall be lawfully called to execute the Duties thereof And having premised these things unto you concerning the Matters and Forms made use of in the Ordinals of both Churches for your clearer understanding of what is on either side intended by them I now come to your Objection which according to the best advantage that it can be stated I apprehend to be thus You looking on a Form of Words fully expressing the whole Priestly power to be indispensably necessary and absolutely essential to all Ordinations of Priests think our Orders of Priesthood invalidly administred as failing in an essential because we have no such Form expressing the whole Priestly power at our Ordinations of Priests For the Form which we use you say is not such as by no means expressing the whole Priestly power because it makes no mention of Consecrating the Sacrament of the Eucharist and making present the Body and Blood of our Saviour as you term it which you look on as the chiefest and main power of the Priestly Office but only impowers to forgive Sins And although you allow our Form at present since the insertion of those words for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God to be sufficiently perfect because in the word Priest you think may be included all that belongs to him yet still judge our Orders to be invalid by reason of the former defect because say you if the Presbyters of the Church of England were not validly Ordain'd by the first Form till the addition above-mentioned was inserted in the Year 1662 then through this defect those who were chosen out of them to be Bishops could not validly be ordained such because they were not afore Presbyters or Priests none being capable in your opinion to be Bishops who have not been first made Priests and consequently could not have Authority to Ordain others by any Form of Words how perfect soever afterwards devised And this being your Objection urged in its utmost strength for the Cause you argue for I am now to tell you in Answer thereto that the whole of it goes upon three very great Mistakes The First is That any such a Form of Words is Essential to Orders Secondly That the Order of Priesthood is absolutely necessary to qualify a man for the Order of Episcopacy And Thirdly That our Form of Priestly Ordination doth not include the whole Priestly power As to the First Although we allow such Formes very useful to make a more clear declaration of the intent and meaning of that act whereby the Office is conferr'd and therefore do our selves retain them in our Church yet that any such should be essential to the Administration so as to null and make void the Orders that are conferr'd without them is that which wants all manner of Evidence either from Scripture Ancient Practice the nature of the thing it self or any other reason whatever which I have already made sufficiently clear unto you And therefore without repeating what I have before said I shall pass on to the other two particulars in which you are equally mistaken For Secondly That the Order of Priesthood is absolutely necessary to quallify a man for the Order of Episcopacy so that none can be made a Bishop unless he were first a Priest is that you can have no ground for The Holy Scriptures from whence alone the essential requisites of Christ's Institutions are
his Holy Apostles for the Ministry to which he had chosen them And therefore those words that follow Whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them and whose soever sins ye retain they are retained must be they whereby the whole power and Authority of that their Ministry was given unto them and not a part of it only as the Romanists say and consequently these words must be the perfectest and most authentic form whereby to Ordain others also to the same Ministry III. But our Church in the first establishing of this Form for Preistly Ordination did not only appoint these words of our Saviour whereby he Ordained his Apostles but also out of their abundant caution as if they foresaw the Cavils our Adversaries now make by way of Explication subjoyned these other words also And be thou a faithful Dispenser of the Word of God and of his Sacraments by them explicitly expressing all the Priestly power in particular which we understand in general to be implicitly contain'd in the other that go before as I have already made out unto you that they are And although this should not be the true Explication of them as our Adversaries contend yet since the words are part of the Form they must give all that they express and therefore since they express the whole Priestly power though the other should not they must give it also to all those that are Ordain'd thereby and consequently the Form must be fully sufficient even in all that which you your self require to make it so But to this you object that those later words give power only to Dispense the Sacraments and not to Consecrate and therefore cannot give power to Consecrate the Sacrament of the Eucharist and make present the Body and Blood of our Saviour as you term it which you look on as the main of the Priestly power but only to Dispense it that is to distribute the Elements when Consecrated which a Deacon only can do To this I Answer 1. That the word Dispense is here made use of as a general Term which reacheth both Word and Sacraments and therefore cannot be limited to that particular sense of distributing the Elements only in the Sacrament of the Eucharist as you will have it but must comprehend whatsoever the Ministers of Christ who as his Stewards are intrusted with his Word and Sacraments are commanded by him to do in order to the giving out and dispensing of both for the Salvation of those to whom they are sent 2. The whole Objection being concerning the signification of the word Dispense you must not go for that to the Cavils of Adversaries but to the intent and meaning of our Church in the use of it For words have no otherwise their signification than according to the appointment and acceptation of those that use them and must always express that sense which by common consent and usage is intended by them And therefore since you plainly acknowledge as doth also your Erastus Senior whom you follow herein that the Church of England means and intends Consecration as well as Distribution by the word Dispense it necessarily follows that that must be the signification of it in this Form. For certainly a whole National Church intending such a sense by such a word for an hundred and fifty years together it is enough to make it signifie so though that were never the sense of it before because words not being necessary but only Arbitrary signs of things must always so signifie as is intended by the common consent of them that use them But 3. To come to the main solution of the matter the case is plainly thus Our Reformers making Scripture the Principal Rule of all their Establishments did in the appointing of this Form take the very words of it from thence as near as they could and therefore as they had the former part thereof out of the 20th Chapter of the Gospel of St. John Verse 22 23. so had they the latter from the 4th Chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians Verse the first only with this difference that whereas the former are the very words of Scripture the latter instead of the very words Dispensers of the Mysteries of God to make the thing more plain and clear is express'd by other words equivalent thereto Dispensers of the Word of God and of his Holy Sacraments the Word of God and his holy Sacraments being on all hands acknowledged to be the whole of what is there intended by the Mysteries of God. And although the Original word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is better rendred Stewards as in our Translation than Dispensers yet the Gentlemen of Rome can have no reason to find fault with us in this particular since herein we follow their own Bible the vulgar Latin which their Council of Trent hath decreed to be the only Authentic Scripture For at the first Reformation of our Church the Original Languages of the Holy Scriptures being but little known the Vulgar Latin Version was that which was then generally used among us and therefore the expression is put in our Form according as it was found in that Version for there it is Dispensatores Mysteriorum Dei and accordingly the Rhemists translate it The Dispensers of the Misteries of God and therefore the whole Controversie between us must be brought to this point only whether Dispensers of the Mysteries of God in that place doth signifie Priests or no and if it doth it must necessarily follow that it signifies the same also in our Form of Ordination where it is used And I doubt not if you will be pleased to look upon that Text of Scripture even as translated by our Adversaries themselves it will not be possible for you to perswade your self that when the Holy Apostle St. Paul there says of himself and the other Apostles So let a man esteem us as the Ministers of Christ and the Dispensers of the Mysteries of God he means it only as Deacons No certainly both those phrases Ministers of Christ and Dispensers of the Mysteries of God are equivalent Expressions denoting them as invested with the whole Ministry of the Gospel committed to them And if you will commit the decision of this Cause to Estius an Eminent and Learned Doctor of the Church of Rome he will plainly tell you so for on that Text of Scripture he so explains those phrases And on the 7th verse of the first of Titus he interprets Dispensatorem Dei i. e. the Dispenser of God to be Dei Vicarium ac Ministrum in Dispensatione Evangelii Sacramentorum i. e. Gods Vicar and Minister in the Dispensing of his Gospel and Sacraments and then immediately after he repeats the forementioned Text 1 Cor. 4.1 denoting Dispensers of the Mysteries of God in that place and Dispenser of God here to be both understood in the same sense And therefore according to him who was as Eminent a Doctor of their Church as any
nothing of the Priestly power can confer nothing of the Priestly power in Ordination but the first Form expresseth nothing of the Priestly power for all that it expresseth is only an imaginary power of their own invention the power of offering their Sacrifice of the Mass and applying the merits of it to the living and the dead a power which Christ never instituted or can be warranted by any ancient practice but is contrary to the whole tenor of the Epistle to the Hebrews and is in as plain Terms as can be expressed by several passages therein directly contradicted But to this perchance you will reply that the first Form doth not only give power to offer the Sacrifice of the Mass but also to Celebrate Mass for the Living and the Dead and that by this last expression is implyed the performance of the whole Office and consequently that the whole power of Consecrating and Administring the Eucharist is included therein But against that there is this Objection these words for the Living and the Dead seem to limit the expression to so much only of the Mass as is Celebrated for the living and the dead that is the applying of the merits of the Sacrifice which they pretend to offer at their Mass to the living and the dead which is a power as totally fictitious as the former And their Council of Florence which declared this Form to be an Essential Form of Priestly Ordination seems plainly to understand it in this sense For it expresseth not the whole Form as it is in the Roman Ordinal but the sum of it in these words Accipe potestatem offerendi Sacrificium in Ecclesiâ pro vivis defunctis i. e. Receive power to offer Sacrifice in the Church for the living and the dead Which plainly interprets the latter Expression in their Ordinal of Celebrating Mass for the Living and the Dead to belong to the former and to extend no farther than the offering their pretended Sacrifice for them which can by no means include the Consecrating of the Eucharist because most of them hold the Act of Consecrating to be different from the Act of Sacrificing and therefore it cannot be included in it for they will have the Act of Consecrating to be precedent to that of Sacrificing because say they the Body and Bloud of Christ cannot be offered up in Sacrifice till by the words of Consecration the Bread and Wine is converted thereinto But notwithstanding if they will needs have the power of Consecrating contained in these words I shall not lay such stress upon this matter as to make any great contest about it Only this which hath already been said may be sufficient to let you see that if the power of Consecrating the Sacrament of the Eucharist cannot be contain'd under the words of our Form which give power to dispense the Sacraments as our Church intends it is much more difficult to reconcile it how this power can be contain'd in those words of their Form whereby they intend to give it their 's being much further from making any express mention of this power of Consecrating the Eucharist than possibly it can be said of ours But be it as to this how you will have it still your Objection remains as strong against their Forms as against ours For say you our Form is not sufficient validly to confer the Order of Priesthood because it doth not expresly give the whole Priestly power But by which of theirs I beseech you is it all expresly given Not by the first Form for therein they pretend not to express any more than the Celebrating the Mass not by the second for in that they violently contend against us nothing else can be expressed but the power of Absolving penitents So then if this be all their Forms express as they themselves acknowledge where do they give the power of Administring the Sacrament of Baptism where the power of Preaching the Word and if Marriage and extream Unction be Sacraments as they will have them to be Administred by the Priest where do they give the power of Administring them no where at all they being neither express'd in particular nor comprehended in general in any of the words of the said Forms And therefore if the not expressing the whole Priestly power in the Forms of Ordination must null and invalidate the Orders conferr'd thereby let any of them answer how their Orders of Priesthood can be good and valid which are Administred by Forms so defective herein How we come off of this Objection I have already shown and hope have sufficiently convinced you that it cannot lye against us but how they can clear themselves of it that make it I can see only two ways possible 1. That they say the whole Priestly power is given by those principal Branches of it express'd in their Forms with which their Priests being in express word Invested at their Ordinations they do therewith receive all the rest as inseparably annex'd thereto by the Institution of our Saviour in the same manner as when in taking Livery of Seisin of an Estate the giving any part thereof invests with the whole Fee. Or else 2. That they come over also to the true Interpretation of the second Form and acknowledge with us that in that alone the whole Priestly power is comprehended in the same manner as I have above explain'd unto you If they say the first this Objection is very impertinently rais'd against us since they cannot but acknowledge some branches of the Priestly power are also express'd in our Form according to their own interpretation of it which may serve for this purpose as well as those express'd in theirs If they say the second then they must give the whole Priestly power by the same Form that we do and therefore whatever is said against our manner of Ordaining Priests from the insufficiency of the Form of that Ordination if it conduceth any thing to the nulling and invalidating of the Orders conferr'd among us it must as much conduce to null and invalidate theirs also And now Sir I hope I have said sufficient to give you full satisfaction that our Form of Priestly Ordination can have no such defect therein as you charge it with or our Orders be liable to the least suspition of nullity on this account I have not spared my pains to make this out as clear to you as I can and all now that I desire of you is impartially to consider what hath been said and where you find reason to hearken to it and if you do so I doubt not you may find sufficient to convince you in these Papers I send you But if you are so obstinately set upon this point that nothing shall have any force with you which is said on this subject as from what I am told of your daily Discourse concerning it I have abundant reason to fear but that right or wrong you are resolved to condemn all the Orders of our