creased — in that proportion has the principle implied in these passages received a deeper, wider signification.

There have been ages when the clergy were coextensive with the educated class of mankind, and were thus the chief means of stimulating and purifying the moral standard of their age. But at all time, and specially since other professions have become "clerks," - that is, scholars and instructors, — the advancement of learning, the opening of the gates of heaven, has been as much the work of the Christian Church—that is, of the laity - as of the priesthood. By the highest rank of the whole profession of the clergy- the Pontificate of Rome - the key of knowledge has been perhaps wielded less than by any other great institution in Christendom. Of the 256 prelates who have filled the bishopric of Rome, scarcely more than four have done anything by their writings to enlarge the boundaries of knowledge and to raise the moral perceptions of mankind — Leo the Great, Gregory the Great, and (in a higher degree) Benedict XIV. and Clement XIV. Occasional acts of toleration towards the Jews, the rectification of the calendar, and a few like examples of enlightenment may be adduced. But, as a general rule, whatever else the Popes have done, they have not, in the Biblical sense, bound or loosed the moral duties of mankind.

And, again, as to the clergy generally, the abolition of slavery, though supported by many excellent ecclesiastics, yet had for its chief promoters the laymen Wilberforce and Clarkson. What these virtuous and gifted men bound on earth was bound in heaven, what they loosed on earth was loosed in heaven, not because they had or had not been set apart for a special office, but because they had received a large measure of the Holy Spirit of God, which enabled them to see the good and refuse the evil of the times in which they lived.

If the aspirations of one half of medieval Christendom after goodness were guided by the clerical work of Thomas à Kempis, another half must have been no less elevated by the lay work of the divine poem of Dante. If the revelation of God in the universe was partly dis- \ covered by Copernicus the ecclesiastic, it was more fully disclosed by the labors of Galileo the layman, which the clergy condemned. If the religion of England has been fed in large part by Hooker, by Butler, by Wesley, and by Arnold, it has also been fed, perhaps in a yet larger part, by Milton, by Bunyan, by Addison, by Cowper, and by Walter Scott.

If we study the process by which false notions of morality and religion have been dispersed, and true notions of morality and religion have been introduced, from Augustus to Charlemagne, from Charlemagne to Luther, from Luther to the present day (as unfolded in Mr. Lecky's four volumes), we shall find that the almost uniform law by which the sins and superstitions of Christendom have been bound or loosed has been, first, that the action of some one conscience or some few consciences whether of statesmen, students, priests, or soldiersmore enlightened, more Christ-like, than their fellows has struck a new light, or unwound some old prejudice, or opened some new door into truth; and then, that this light has been caught up, this opening has been widened by the gradual advance of Christian wisdom and knowledge in the mass.

What is called the public opinion of any age may be in itself as misleading, as corrupt, as the opinion of any individual. It must be touched, corrected, purified by those higher intelligences and nobler hearts, which catch the light as mountain summits before the sunrise has reached the plains. But it is only when the light has reached the plains, only when public opinion has become.

so elevated by the action of the few, that Providence affixes its seal to the deed that the binding or loosing is ratified in heaven. It is thus that Christian public opinion is formed; and when it is formed, the sins, which before reigned with a tyrannical sway, fade away and disappear.

Such, for example, was the drunkenness of the upper classes in the last century. It penetrated all the higher society of the land. But when by But when by a few resolute wills, here and there, now and then, there was created a better and purer standard of morals in this respect, it perished as if by an invisible blow. The whole of educated society had placed it under their ban, and that ban was ratified in heaven was ratified by the course of Providence. It is this same public opinion, which, if it can once be created in the humbler classes, will also be as powerful there. They also have, if they will, the same power of retaining, that is, of imprisoning, and condemning, and exterminating this deadly enemy; and by this means alone will it disappear from them as it has disappeared from the society of others who were once as completely slaves to it.

So again, to pass to quite another form of evil, the violent personal scurrility that used once to disgrace our periodical literature. That, as a general rule, has almost entirely disappeared from the great leading journals of the day. On the whole they are temperately expressed, and conducted with reasonable fairness. The public has become too highly educated to endure the coarseness of former times. But in the more confined organs of opinion the old Adam still lingers. In some of those newspapers, which are called by a figure of speech our religious journals, the scurrility and personal intolerance which once penetrated the great secular journals still abide. That also, we may trust, will gradually vanish as the religious

or ecclesiastical world becomes more penetrated with the true spirit of Christianity which has already taken possession of the lay world.

III. It might be enough, for the purpose of this argument, to have pointed out the original meaning of the sacred words, and their correspondence to the actual facts of history. But the subject could not be completed without touching, however slightly, on the curious limitation and perversion of them which have taken place in later times. This has in great part arisen from their Ordination. introduction into the liturgical forms by which

1

in some Christian Churches some of the clergy are appointed to their functions. The words from St. John's Gospel are not, nor ever have been, used to describe the consecration of Bishops or Archbishops. They are not, nor ever have been, used in the ordination of Deacons — an order which, in the fourth century, exercised in some respects a power almost equal to that of the Episcopate, and in our own country has often been intrusted with the most important and exclusively pastoral functions — of instruction, visiting, and preaching. Where used, they are only used in the ordination of Presbyters or (as in the abridged form they are unfortunately called) Priests. And even for this limited object the introduction of the words is comparatively recent, and probably the result of misconception. It is certain that for the first twelve centuries they were never used for the ordination of any Christian minister. It is certain that in the whole Eastern Church they are never used at all for this purpose. It was not till the thirteenth century- the age when the

1 In the English Office of Consecrating Bishops and Archbishops, the portion of the chapter which contains those words is one of the three alternative Gospels. But the fact that it is an alternative, and one rarely used, shows that it is not regarded as essential. They are also incorporated in a general prayer in the Consecration of Bishops first found in the Poitiers Ordinal, A. D. 500, reprinted by Baronius and Martene. It is contained in the Roman Pontifical.

materialistic theories of the sacraments and the extravagant pretensions of pontifical and sacerdotal power were at their height — that they were first introduced into the Ordinals of the Latin Church. From thence they were, at the Reformation, retained in the Ordination Service of the Episcopal Church of England, and of the Presbyterian Church of Lutheran Germany.1

The retention of these words in these two Churches may have been occasioned by various causes. It is clear that they have become a mere stumbling-block and stone of offence, partly as unintelligible, partly as giving rise to the most mistaken conclusions. Their retention is confessedly not in conformity, but in direct antagonism, with ancient and Catholic usages. It is a mere copy of a mediæval interpolation, which has hardly any more claim, on historical or theological grounds, to a place in the English or Lutheran Prayer Book than the admission of the existence of Pope Joan or of the miracle of Bolsena. And, so far from these words being regarded as a necessary part of the validity of Holy Orders, such an assertion, if admitted, would of itself be fatal to the validity of all Holy Orders whatever; for it would prove that every single ordination for the first twelve hundred years of Christianity was invalid, nay, more, that every present ordination in the Roman Church itself was invalid, inasmuch as in the Ordinal itself these words do not occur in the essential parts of the office, but only in an accidental adjunct of it.

IV. But further, the phrase indicates, even in reference to the subject of Confession and Absolution, with which it has no direct connection, the fundamental and Absolu- truth which is incompatible with the exclusive possession of this privilege by the clergy.

Confession

tion.

1 The whole antiquarian and critical side of the introduction of these words into the Latin and English Ordinal has been worked out with the utmost exact. ness and with the most searching inquiry by Archdeacon Reichel in the Quar. terly Review of October, 1877, "Ordination and Confession."