ventions to deceive men, and to expose religion to mock- ART.
ery. But even severe and afflicting fasting, if done only XXV.
as a punishment, which when it is over, the penance is
believed to be completed, gives such a low idea of God
and religion, that from thence men are led to think very
slightly of sin, when they know at what price they can
carry it off. Such a continuance in fasting in order to
prayer, as humbles and depresses nature, and raises the
mind, is a great mean to reform the world; but fasting
as a prescribed task to expiate our sins, is a scorn put
upon religion.

Prayer, when it arises from a serious heart that is earnest in it, and when it becomes habitual, is certainly a most effectual mean to reform the world, and to fetch down divine assistances. But to appoint so many vocal prayers to be gone through as a task; and then to tell the world, that the running through these, with few or no inward acts accompanying them, is contrition or attrition, this is more like a design to root out all the impressions of religion, and all sense of that repentance which the Gospel requires, than to promote it. This may be a task fit to accustom children to; but it is contrary to the true genius of religion, to teach men, instead of that reasonable service that we ought to offer up to God, to give him only the labour of the lips, which is the sacrifice of fools. Prayers gone through as a task can be of no value, and can find no acceptation in the sight of God. And as St. Paul said, that if he gave all his goods1 Cor. xiii. to the poor, and had not charity, he was nothing; so the 1, 2, 3. greatest profusion of alms-giving, when done in a mercenary way, to buy off and to purchase a pardon, is the turning of God's house from being a house of prayer, to be a den of thieves.

Upon all these reasons we except to the whole doctrine and practice of the Church of Rome, as to the satisfaction made by doing penance. And in the last place we except to the form of absolution in these words, I absolve thee. We of this Church, who use it only to such as are thought to be near death, cannot be meant to understand any thing by it, but the full peace and pardon of the Church: for if we meant a pardon with relation to God, we ought to use it upon many other occasions. The pardon that we give in the name of God is only declaratory of his pardon, or supplicatory in a prayer to him for pardon.

In this we have the whole practice of the Church till the twelfth century universally of our side. All the Fa

ART. thers, all the ancient Liturgies, all that have writ upon XXV. the offices, and the first Schoolmen, are so express in this matter, that the thing in fact cannot be denied. Morinus has published so many of their old rituals, that he has put an end to all doubting about it. In the twelfth century some few began to use the words, I absolve thee: yet, to soften this expression, that seemed new and bold, some tempered it with these words, in so far as it is granted to my frailty; and others with those words, as far as the accusation comes from thee, and as the pardon is in me. Yet this form was but little practised: so that William, Bishop of Paris, speaks of the form of absolution as given only in a prayer, and not as given in these words, I absolve thee. He lived in the beginning of the fourteenth century; so that this practice, though begun in other places before that time, yet was not known long after in so public a city as Paris. But some Schoolmen began to defend it, as implying only a declaration of the pardon pronounced by the Priest: and this having an air of more authority, and being once justified by learned men, did so universally prevail, that in little more than sixty years time, it be came the universal practice of the whole Latin Church. So sure a thing is tradition, and so impossible to be changed, as they pretend, when within the compass of one age, the new form, I absolve thee, was not so much as generally known, and before the end of it the old form of doing it in a prayer, with imposition of hands, was quite worn out. The idea that arises naturally out of these words is, that the Priest pardons sins; and since that is subject to such abuses, and has let in so much corruption upon that Church, we think we have reason not only to deny that Penance is a Sacrament, but likewise to affirm, that they have corrupted this great and important doctrine of repentance, in all the parts and branches of it: nor is the matter mended with that

Rituale Ro- prayer that follows the absolution. The passion of our manum de Lord Jesus Christ, the merits of the blessed Virgin and all sacr. pœni- the Saints, and all the good that thou hast done, and the evil

tent.

that thou hast suffered, be to thee for the remission of sins, the increase of grace, and the reward of eternal life.

The third Sacrament rejected by this Article is Orders; which is reckoned the sixth by the Church of Rome. We affirm, that Christ appointed a succession of Pastors in different ranks, to be continued in his Church, for the work of the Gospel, and the care of souls; and that, as the Apostles settled the Churches, they appointed different orders of Bishops, Priests, and Deacons: and we be

lieve, that all who are dedicated to serve in these ministries, ART. after they are examined and judged worthy of them, ought XXV. to be separated to them by the imposition of hands, and by prayer. These were the only rites that we find practised by the Apostles. For many ages the Church of God used no other; therefore we acknowledge that Bishops, Priests, and Deacons ought to be blessed and dedicated to the holy ministry by imposition of hands and prayer; and that then they are received according to the order and practice settled by the Apostles to serve in their respective degrees. Men thus separated have thereby authority to perfect the Saints or Christians, that is, to perform the sacred functions among them, to minister to them, and to build them up in their most holy faith. And we think no other persons, without such a separation and consecration, can lawfully touch the holy things. In all which we separate the qualifications of the function, from the inward qualities of the person; the one not at all depending on the other; the one relating only to the order and the good government of the society, and the other relating indeed to the salvation of him that officiates, but not at all to the validity of his office or service.

nus de Or

But in all this we see nothing like a Sacrament: here is neither matter, form, nor institution; here is only prayer: the laying on of hands is only a gesture in prayer, that imports the designation of the person so prayed over. In the Greek Church there is indeed a different form; for Haberti though there are prayers in their office of Ordination, yet pontif.Grathe words that do accompany the imposition of hands are cum. Morionly declaratory; The grace of God, that perfects the feeble dinat. Saand heals the weak, promotes this man to be a deacon, a cris. priest, or a bishop; let us therefore pray for him: by which they pretend only to judge of a divine vocation: all the ancient rituals and all those that treat of them for the first seven centuries, speak of nothing as essential to orders but prayer and imposition of hands. It is true, many rites came to be added, and many prayers were used that went far beyond the first simplicity. But in the tenth or eleventh century a new form was brought in, of delivering the vessels in ordaining Priests; and words were joined with that, giving them power to offer sacrifices to God, and to celebrate masses, and then the orders were believed to be given by this rite. The delivering of the vessels looked like a matter, and these words were thought the form of the Sacrament; and the prayer that was formerly used with the imposition of hands, was indeed still used,

ART. but only as a part of the office; no hands were laid on XXV. when it was used: and though the form of laying on of hands was still continued, the Bishop with other Priests laying their hands on those they ordained, yet it is now a dumb ceremony, not a word of a prayer being said while they lay on their hands. So that though both prayer and imposition of hands are used in the office, yet they are not joined together. In the conclusion of the office, a new benediction was added ever since the twelfth century. The Bishop alone lays on his hands, saying, Receive the Holy Ghost: whose sins ye remit, they are remitted; and whose sins ye retain, they are retained. The number Seven was thought to suit the Sacraments best, so Orders were made one of them, and of these only Priesthood; where the vessels were declared to be the matter, and the form was the delivering them with the words, Take thou authority to offer up sacrifices to God, and to celebrate masses, both for the living and the dead; in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.

The Schoolmen have taken a new way of explaining this whole matter, borrowed from the Eucharist, that is made up of two parts, the consecration of the bread and of the wine; both so necessary, that without the one, the other becomes void: so they teach that a Priest has two powers, of consecrating and of absolving; and that he is ordained to the one by the delivery of the vessels, and to the other by the Bishop's laying on of hands, with the words Receive the Holy Ghost; and they make the Bishop and the Priest's laying on of hands jointly, to be only their declaring as by a suffrage, that such a person ought to be ordained: so totally have they departed from the primitive forms.

If this is a Sacrament, and if the Sacrament consists in this matter and form by them assigned, then since all the rituals of the Latin Church for the first ten centuries had no such form of ordaining Priests, this cannot be the matter and form of a Sacrament: otherwise the Church had in a course of so many ages no true Orders, nor any Sacrament in them. Nor will it serve in answer to this to say, that Christ instituted no special matter nor form here, but has left the specifying those among the other powers that he has given to his Church: for a Sacrament being an institution of applying a matter designed by God, by a particular form likewise appointed; to say that Christ appointed here neither matter nor form, is plainly to confess that this is no Sacrament. In the first nine or ten ages there was no matter at all used, nothing but an im

position of hands with prayer: so that by this doctrine ART. the Church of God was all that while without true or- XXV. ders, since there was nothing used that can be called the matter of a Sacrament.

Therefore, though we continue this institution of Christ, as he and his Apostles settled it in the Church, yet we deny it to be a Sacrament; we also deny all the inferior orders to be sacred, below that of Deacon. The other orders we do not deny might be well, and on good reasons, appointed by the Church as steps through which Clerks might be made to pass, in order to a stricter examination and trial of them; like degrees in Universities: but the making them, at least the subdiaconate, sacred, as it is reckoned by Pope Eugenius, is, we think, beyond the power of the Church; for here a degree of orders is made a Sacrament, and yet that degree is not named in the Scripture, nor in the first ages. It is true, it came to be soon used with the other inferior orders; but it cannot be pretended to be a Sacrament, since no divine institution can be brought for it. And we cannot but observe, that in the definition that Eugenius has given of the Sacraments, which is an authentical piece in the Roman Church, where he reckons Priests, Deacons, and Subdeacons, as belonging to the Sacrament of Orders, he does not name Bishops, though their being of divine institution is not questioned in that Church. Perhaps the spirit, with which they acted at that time in Basil, offended him so much, that he was more set on depressing than on raising them. In the Council of Trent, in which so much zeal appeared for recovering the dignity of the episcopal order, at that time so much eclipsed by the papal usurpations, when the Sacrament of Orders was treated of, they reckon seven degrees of them, the highest of which is that of Priest. So that though they decreed that a Bishop was by the divine institution above a Priest, yet they did not decree that the office was an Order, or a Šacrament. And the Schoolmen do generally explain episcopate, as being a higher degree or extension of priesthood, rather than a new Order, or a Sacrament; the main thing in their thoughts being that which, if true, is the greatest of all miracles, the wonderful conversion made in transubstantiation, they seem to think that no order can be above that which qualifies a man for so great a performance.

I say nothing in this place concerning the power of offering sacrifices, pretended to be given in orders; for that belongs to another Article.

CC