AN EXAMINATION OF THE THEORY OF SACERDOTAL FUNCTIONS IN THE RECENTLY PUT FORTH BY THE LORD BISHOP OF SALISBURY. It is very remarkable that the two ordinances instituted by our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ should be observed by His professed disciples in different forms, and with avowedly different purposes and results. It might have been supposed that His words, which were studiously adapted to the capacities of His hearers, and which were subsequently recorded under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, for the instruction and guidance of Christian disciples throughout all ages, would have been understood and obeyed in their ordinary significations, and that piety would have concurred with common sense to guard the observance of such commands from every form of corruption. In the degree in which any deviation, however slight, from an institution of Christ occurs, the purpose of its appointment is misrepresented to men; and the abettors of such deviation place themselves in a false position before Him whom they call Master and Lord. For a servant has no right to substitute his own pleasure for his Lord's will, and, at the same time, to pretend that the fulfilment of his own conception of what is fitting for him to do is dutiful obedience to the commands which he has received. However earnestly he may protest his eagerness to do honour to his Master, the fact of his not doing as commanded him remains; and until professions of loyalty can be used in bar of condemnation for acts subversive of the authority of a monarch, it will be impossible to admit that any piety, however fervid, any zeal for the glory of Jesus, however lofty and sustained, can be accepted as a palliation of disobedience to the Saviour. To this hour He appeals to all His disciples. with unanswerable power, and says, "Why call ye me Lord, "Lord, and do not the things which I say?"* The differences which have been so marked in relation to Baptism between ourselves and our fellow-disciples who administer it in different modes, to different subjects, and with a different signification and purpose, are re-appearing in this country in relation to the Lord's Supper. I say reappearing, because they are not now for the first time obtruded upon public notice: but, as in former times, they are avowed and defended by some of the Clergy of that miserable compromise between Evangelical truth and Patristic error which is styled "The United Church of England and Ireland." The undoubted learning of the leaders in this new movement, and the zeal and union of their followers, give to them, as a noisy party, considerable notoriety and influence. They boast of the attractiveness of their services to large masses of the people, and of the far more significant efficiency of those services in retaining as members of the Anglican sect many who would otherwise have sought and found rest in the bosom of the Roman Church; whilst, with eager hopefulness, they prognosticate that, ere long, the Established Church will be purged, by their influence, of what little Protestant leaven it contains. Their efforts in this latter direction may be more successful than their Luke vi. 46. opponents in that " United Church" expect; and the fact will then be established, beyond all further controversy, that a Church whose interpretation of Scripture is avowedly based upon tradition-whether upon that which is so often and so falsely called primitive, or that which is notoriously modern-has no good grounds upon which to reject Sacerdotalism, or to deny the Real Presence of Christ in the Lord's Supper, or to refuse submission to other and similarly unscriptural absurdities received by tradition from the Fathers. Meanwhile the attention of the public has, of late, been adroitly diverted from the enormous pretensions of the Anglican Clergy, by an inquiry into the Ecclesiastical costume prescribed to them by law. A Royal Commission has investigated the momentous question, and dutifully laid its report before the Queen:—a report which has been so carefully worded, that men of the most opposite opinions have agreed to it, and, by doing so, have tacitly admitted that the weight of evidence adduced on the part of the Sacerdotalists did not allow of a sweeping condemnation of the dress in which they minister at the so-called "Altars" of God. It is necessary, therefore, to raise the questions,—which were really preliminary to the inquiry that has just reached so impotent a conclusion-first, whether, according to the Scriptures of truth, any Ministers in the Churches of Christ have Sacerdotal functions entrusted to them on behalf of the Churches collectively, or of individual members in those Churches, or on behalf of any, or of all men; and, secondly, whether, if there be any such Sacerdotal ministers in the Churches of Christ, the Bishops and Priests of the Anglican sect are to be numbered in that class? The two questions are often dealt with as if they ran into one; but a little reflection is sufficient to show that they are distinct. To answer the one is not to settle the other also; for, if there be Sacerdotal ministers of Christ, it does not follow that Anglican prelates and priests are in that class. All the vapouring which we witness, and which is so supremely ridiculous on the part of these gentlemen, will not be a substitute for the proof which we demand from Scripture; and, until that proof is forthcoming, we denounce their Sacerdotal assumptions as unscriptural, and their pretended Sacrifice of the Body and Blood of Christ at their so-called Altars a blasphemous deceit. The duty assigned to me at the present meeting is to examine the Sacramental theory of the Lord's Supper, which is now being asserted and upheld by many of the Clergy of the Established Church. As they are the only Ministers in this country, not being connected with the Roman and Greek Churches, who pretend to "Sacerdotal "functions" in this service, it is right that he, of their number, who speaks with the greatest authority, should define their claims and prerogatives, and set forth the arguments by which he and they think them to be vindicated and established. I take it for granted that the Clergy who constitute this Sacerdotal party would unanimously, as well as gratefully, acknowledge the Lord Bishop of Salisbury to be their most eminent leader; and that they would accept his published opinions upon the "Sacerdotal functions" of the Ministers of Christ in the due observance of "the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper," as having greater authority than those of other men, because deliberately enunciated by his Lordship as a Bishop to his Clergy, and intended by him to form a complete and conclusive argument upon the subject. I am about, therefore, to examine his statements, and the reasons which he has given to support them: and, as I am desirous to pass by nothing which he has thought necessary to the support of his thesis, I crave patient attention to a review of his performance, because it gravely concerns all Ministers and servants of the Lord Christ. For, to use the Bishop's words to his Clergy, "the work which has been committed to us, " and its issues, are indeed bound up in the counsels and grace of God with great principles of truth, and so, with"out doubt, our work has been marred, if from any cause 66 we have used as instruments for our work other than "these principles." 16 66 The Bishop proposed, in his recent" Charge to the Clergy "and Churchwardens of the Diocese of Salisbury,"* to deal with "doctrines at this moment subjects of very special controversy;" and he said that "these doctrines are a part of that Divine Revelation which God has been "pleased to make to us about the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper. They embrace our functions as His members, "who is the Intercessor of the Church; and the charge "which He has committed to His Church about binding " and loosing, forgiving and retaining sins; or, as is commonly said, the Power of the Keys." I have quoted his words, although I am not sure as to their meaning throughout, because I am anxious not to misrepresent him. When he speaks of "our functions as His members who is the "intercessor of the Church," he seems to refer to the Clergy -i.e. the Sacerdotest-only; and when he refers to “the "charge which [our Lord] committed to His Church about binding and loosing," he seems to confound the "Church" with the "Ministers" of the Church, and to ignore all unofficial members of the body of Christ. He took care, however, "for the sake of greater clearness," to explain these doctrines in the following manner : 66 66 (1.) "That certain men have had entrusted to them by God, 'as fellow-workers with Him,' some supernatural powers and prerogatives. (2.) "That, for example, God has been pleased to give to "them as His ministers, the power of so blessing oblations "of bread and wine, as to make them the channels of con * P. 23. It is well known that in the Latin Articles of 1562 the Ecclesiastical term "Priests" is rendered "Sacerdotes."-Cfr. Art. xxx., and title of Art. xxxi. + Pp. 23-24. |