BOOK II.
F. Ignatius, an Anglican Minister.
CHAPTER I.
He Is Ordained, And Enters On His Clerical Duties.
The Establishment retains in her written formularies a great deal of what looks very like Catholic. She has an attempt at a profession of faith; a kind of a sacramental rite, as a substitute for the Mass; a mode of visiting the sick, a marriage service, baptismal service, burial service, and an ordinal; even something like the Sacrament of Penance can be gleaned from two or three clauses in the Book of Common Prayer. How much of sacramental power there may be in those several ordinances is very easily determined; we admit none whatever in any except baptism—the judicial voice of the Establishment leaves its efficacy an open question—and matrimony. Of late, some amongst them have felt their want of sacramental wealth so keenly, that they would fain persuade themselves the shells of Catholic rites, which the Reformers retained, were filled with sacramental substance. To give this theory some show of plausibility, they claimed valid orders. Pamphlets and books have been written on two sides of this question until there seems scarcely any more to be said upon it, so we just mention what is the Catholic opinion on the validity of Anglican orders.
With what Protestants think of them we have no immediate concern; nor would it be an easy matter to extract anything definite from the multitude and contrariety of opinions on this one point.
We hold them to be simply null; they do not even come up to doubt; for if the Archbishop of Canterbury became a Catholic to-morrow, and wished to exercise any ministry, he would be obliged to receive all the orders from the first tonsure upwards, absolutely, and without even an implied condition. This has always been the practice: and, the Church's acting thus, at the period which is now involved in obscurity, is the best de facto argument that the orders of the Establishment were then, as they are now, a human designation, and nothing more. There is nothing sacramental in Anglican orders, and there never was, since England broke away from the Church, and, consistently enough, orders were expunged from the Protestant catalogue of sacraments in the very infancy of the Reformation. They still keep up a semblance of orders: they have what they call the diaconate, the priesthood, and the consecration of bishops. A deacon is ordained much in the same way as our own deacons, and he can perform all the duties of the parish, with the exception of the Communion Service.
We see a man marked out by an Anglican bishop for ecclesiastical duties, without any sacramental grace, spiritual character, or jurisdiction, for no less a work than the care of immortal souls. Let us see now what instruments he has wherewith to accomplish this.
He had once two Sacraments—the Lord's Supper and Baptism; the former, Catholics know to be an empty ceremony, and perhaps it would nearly be a Protestant heresy to say it was much more. Baptism they had as Turks have, and as every lay man and woman in the world, who performs the rite properly, has. Now their judicial decisions do not consider it worth the having; so, as far as in themselves lies, they have tried to deprive themselves of it. The practical means of sanctification a minister has to use are chiefly four: prayer, preaching, visiting, and reading. The reading part may evidently be performed as well, if not better sometimes, by a layman. The visiting is often better done by the clergyman's wife or daughter than by himself, for, in attention to sickness and sweet words of consolation, the female gifts seem the more effectual. All that remains to him, peculiarly for his own, is the preaching, and the respectability of character his own conduct and regard for his position may give him. His power is altogether personal, and if he be an indifferent preacher or a careless liver, he loses all.