Church Ministry in Kensington / A Recent Case of Hieratical Teaching Scripturally Considered

by John Philip Gell

One of your three arguments in the affirmative, taken from Scripture, is that our Lord would not have said, “Leave there thy gift before the altar,” unless we all had altars (p. 48). Nor in the same strain, could you forbear to add, would He have said, “Cast not your pearls before swine,” unless we all had pearls. But to proceed to your more serious proofs.

“We have an altar” (Heb. xiii. 10) is a strange text for you to adduce in the second place (p. 97); for it is S. Paul’s illustration of the fact that Christian hearts are “not established with meats, which do not profit those who have been occupied therein” (v. 9); as we find in parochial experience, when a more than Scriptural emphasis is put upon the Eucharistic bread and wine. The Apostle simply observes, in the text you quote (v. 10), that the ministers of the (Christian) tabernacle cannot eat, like Jews, of their altar; because the body of the single Christian sacrifice was, ritually speaking, wholly burnt without the camp. Granting, therefore, that we have an altar, it is not a Eucharistic one, whereof we eat.

And this further shows that in your third Scriptural proof (p. 45): “Are not they which eat of the altar, partakers with the altar?” (1 Cor. x. 18,) no altar but the Jewish is meant; and you should not suppress the beginning of the sentence, “Behold Israel after the flesh,” but permit the Apostle to limit his remark to Jews, as distinct from Christians, exactly in the way he himself proposes. And here you come to the end of your Scriptural arguments for altars in church.

Passing from Scripture, the belief of the Church is not, as you assume (p. 53), continuous in favour of our having a ritual altar. The Gentile heathens blamed the early Christians for having no altars in their churches, and the Christians admitted the truth of the allegation. (Origen, c. Cels. 8. 17; Minucius Felix, Octav. 32; Arnobius, adv. Gentes, 6, 7. I borrow these references from the Bishop of Chester’s Patres Apostolici.) The earliest meaning of “altar” in a Christian sense seems derived from the Jewish idea, that the Lord took equal pleasure in the several portions of the sacrifice, whether burnt or eaten; and that the eaters were as much his altar, as was the altar of burnt-offering itself. Hence Polycarp (Phil. 4) says the widows are an altar; and Ignatius, probably in one place (Philad. 4), and certainly elsewhere (Trall. 7), calls the clergy, and (Eph. 5) the congregation, the altar. It was left to after ages to suggest, in the last passage, “the society where sacrifices are offered.” But before they admitted the propitiatory character of such sacrifices, men had lost S. Paul’s doctrine (Heb. xiii. 11), that Jesus was a sin-offering, wholly burned without the camp; and they had become insensible to the incongruity of a symbolism which could imply the eating of such an offering. Far from blending the idea of an altar, whether Jewish or heathen, with that of a Christian table, as you seem to assume that he did (p. 54), S. Paul was too learned a ritualist not to keep them distinct. And as the point of comparison, throughout the passage which you discuss (1 Cor. x.), was not the offering, but the eating; as it was eating which joined Christians to Christ, Jews to their altar, and Gentiles to demons; S. Paul had no need to speak of a Christian altar. A table was the symbol which he required, and to that he carefully adhered. He certainly knew of a Christian altar, but it was one of which neither he, nor any other servant of the true tabernacle (Heb. viii. 2; xiii. 10), had a right to eat; and I cannot see how you are enabled to say (p. 98), “of course, it is in the celebration of the Holy Eucharist that this altar,” on which Jesus died (Heb. xiii. 12), “is used, and the sacrifice made;” after all the pains with which the Apostle has set forth the premises which forbid your conclusion.

III. But without your Sacrifice and Altar, what becomes of your Priest? “The priesthood,” you say (p. 6), “is the chiefest means for applying to us the pardon of the Cross.” In the priesthood you also find (p. 16) “the appointed mode of our applying to Christ for his intercession;” and you indicate a danger which may arise from shaking men’s confidence in such opinions, “that they would, no doubt, begin to fail in their allegiance to the Church, and be afraid longer to trust their souls to her teaching or her keeping” (p. 16). I should recommend such adherents to be fed on very little of S. Paul, less of our judicious Hooker, and no Church history. And even could they be thus dieted and kept, I should be inclined to question whether they would prove worth their feed. Access to the Jewish ritual would be sure to awaken their suspicions as to the meaning of a Christian ordination. For who ever heard of a real sacrificing priest of God being ordained by the imposition of hands? On the contrary, when the people laid hands on the Levites’ heads (Numb. viii. 10), it meant quite a different thing from ordination. Melchisedec was not so ordained, nor Aaron, nor any of his race, nor our Great High Priest, though He condescended to every form of the Law for man. Yet laying on of hands was well used and understood, as conveying a divinely authorized ministry in the congregation to such men as Joshua (Deut. xxxiv. 9), “in whom was the Spirit” (Numb. xxvii 18), and the church elders and ministers of a later age (Acts xiv. 23). But none of these ordained men sacrificed as priests.

And now, taking up your own appeal (p. 43), “if it be true that a Christian priesthood and . . . these sacrificial powers . . . remain, and must remain ever in Christ’s Church, what words shall describe”—the error of saying with S. Paul (Heb. x. 26), “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin,” nothing that calls for the exercise of these sacrificial powers in the Church.

But, leaving S. Paul, “the whole sense,” you say (pp. 60, 77), “and usage of the Church from the beginning is explained and justified,” will we but see more in Scripture than Scripture says, and assume the existence of the Christian priesthood. But your “beginning” is not the very beginning. You omit the Apostolical Fathers again, a generation of good men, who never mention Christian priests. Perhaps you will rather commence with a later age, and will prefer applying your theory to mitigate such lofty flights as we find in S. Chrysostom (On the Priesthood, iii. 2): “When you behold the Lord sacrificed and prostrate, and the Priest standing over the sacrifice and praying, and all stained with that precious blood, do you then suppose you are among men, and standing upon the earth?” But why attempt to explain or justify such perilous matter as this? Why admit its eloquent author to the privilege of developing S. Paul, or lightening the darkness of the Apostolical Fathers? And if not S. Chrysostom, whom can we admit besides? Often do I wonder at the artless boldness with which our homilists quote those Nicene Fathers, whose uncertain authority is just as much opposed to the Scriptures in some places, as it sustains them in others.

Such variations and discrepancies must be perplexing to those who expect to find safe guidance in the early Church. You and I, however, “are persuaded that Holy Scripture contains sufficiently all doctrine required of necessity for eternal salvation, through faith in Jesus Christ. And we have determined, by God’s grace, out of the said Scriptures to instruct the people committed to our charge; and to teach nothing, as required of necessity to eternal salvation, but that which we shall,” each of us, “be persuaded may be concluded and proved by the Scripture.” (Ordination Vow, II.)

The Established Church of England knows only of the “lawful” priest, whose character is evident to all men reading Holy Scripture and ancient authors. He has been spoken of from the time of the Apostles, at first by the name of Elder, and afterwards by that of Priest; and, like every other member of Christ, he is God’s fellow-worker, he has a share in Christ’s priesthood, and he has received the Holy Ghost for his particular ministry.

You truly observe (p. 94), that “if we can discover what are the truths which have been held always, everywhere, and by all, we may be certain we shall run into no serious error nor perverted interpretation of Holy Scripture dangerous to our souls.” Caution, therefore, is requisite in handling the divine words used by our Bishops for the ordination of our lawful clergy: “whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained;”—this form not having been employed always, for we do not find our Church using it till the twelfth century; nor everywhere, since it only appears as a prayer in the Eastern churches; nor by all, never having been used at the ordination of some of our most eminent pastors of non-conforming churches, who, though not lawful ministers in our sense, have been clearly blessed in their spiritual work.