A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics

by Richard Baxter

And when the pope hath a resurrection after the longest intercision, so may all the bishops and priests in the world, because a new pope can make new bishops, and new bishops can make new priests. And where then is there any show of necessity of an uninterrupted succession of any of them? All that will follow is, that the particular churches die till a resurrection; and so doth the whole church on earth every time the pope dieth, till another be made, if he be the constitutive head.

2. But as they say that Christ only efficiently giveth the power to the pope, so say we to the bishops or pastors of the church. For there is no act of Christ's collation to be proved, but the Scripture law or grant: and if that standing law give power to the pope, when men have but designed the person, the same law will do the same to bishops or pastors; for it establisheth their office in the same sort. Or rather in truth there is no word, that giveth power to any such officer as a universal head or pope, but the law for the pastoral office is uncontrovertible.

And what the Spanish bishops at Trent thought of the Divine right of the bishop's office, I need not mention.

I shall therefore thus truly resolve the question.

1. In all ordinations and elections, man doth but first choose the recipient person. 2. And ceremoniously and ministerially invest him in the possession when God hath given him the power; but the efficient collation or grant of the power is done only by Christ, by the instrumentality of his law or institution. As when the king by a charter saith, Whoever the city shall choose, shall be their mayor, and have such and such power, and be invested in it by the recorder or steward: here the person elected receiveth all his power from the king by his charter, (which is a standing efficient, conveying it to the capable chosen person,) and not from the choosers or recorder; only the last is as a servant to deliver possession. So is it in this case.

2. The regular way of entrance appointed by Christ to make a person capable, is the said election and ordination. And for order sake where that may be had, the unordained are not to be received as pastors.

3. If any get possession, by false, pretended ordination or mission, and be received by the church. I have before told you that he is a pastor as to the church's use and benefit, though not to his own. And so the church is not extinct by every fraudulent usurpation or mistake, and so not by want of a true ordination or mission.

4. If the way of regular ordination fail, God may otherwise (by the church's necessity, and the notorious aptitude of the person) notify his will to the church, what person they shall receive; (as if a layman were cast on the Indian shore and converted thousands, who could have no ordination;) and upon the people's reception or consent, that man will be a true pastor.

And seeing the papists in the conclusion (as Johnson ubi supra) are fain to cast all their cause on the church's reception of the pope, they cannot deny reasonably but ad esse the church's reception may serve also for another officer; and indeed much better than for a pope. For, 1. The universal church is so great, that no man can know when the greater part receiveth him, and when not, except in some notorious declarations. 2. And it is now known, that the far greater part of the universal church (the Greeks, Armenians, Abassines, Coptics, protestants, &c.) do not receive the Roman head. 3. And when one part of Europe received one pope, and another part another pope, for above forty years together, who could tell which of the parties was to be accounted the church? It was not then known, and is not known yet to this day; and no papist can prove it, who affirmeth it.

As a church, e. g. Constantinople, may be gathered, or oriri de novo where there is none before, so may it be restored where it is extinct. And possibly a layman (as Frumentius and Edesius in the Indies) may be the instrument of men's conversion. And if so, they may by consent become their pastors, when regular ordination cannot be had.