A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics

by Richard Baxter

I. This is resolved on the by before. 1. Ordination performeth two things: (1.) The designation, election, or determination of the person who shall receive the office. (2.) The ministerial investiture of him in that office; which is a ceremonial delivery of possession; as a servant doth deliver possession of a house by delivering him the key, who hath before received the power or right from the owner.

2. The office delivered by this election and investiture, is the sacred ministerial office in general to be after exercised according to particular calls and opportunities; as Christ called the apostles, and the Spirit called the ordinary general teachers of those times; such as Barnabas, Silas, Silvanus, Timothy, Epaphroditus, Apollos, &c. And as is before cited, 2 Tim. ii. 2. As a man is made in general a licensed physician, lawyer, &c.

3. This ordination is ordinis gratia, necessary to order; and therefore so far necessary as order is necessary; which is ordinarily, when the greater interest of the substantial duty, or of the thing ordered, is not against it. As Christ determined the case of sabbath keeping, and not eating the shewbread. As the sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath, and the end is to be preferred before the separable means; so ordination was instituted for order, and order for the thing ordered, and for the work of the gospel, and the good of souls, and not the gospel and men's souls for that order. Therefore when, 1. The death; 2. Distance; 3. Or malignity of the ordainers depriveth a man of ordination, these three substitutes may notify to him the will of God, that he is by him a person called to that office: 1. Fitness for the works, in understanding, willingness, and ability; 2. The necessity of souls; 3. Opportunity.

II. The power of ordaining belongeth not, 1. To magistrates; 2. Or to private men, either single or as the body of a church; but, 3. To the senior pastors of the church (whether bishops or presbyters of a distinct order, the reader must not expect that I here determine).

For, 1. The power is by Christ given to them, as is before proved; and in Tit. i. 5.

2. None else are ordinarily able to discern aright the abilities of a man for the sacred ministry. The people may discern a profitable moving preacher, but whether he understand the Scripture, or the substance of religion, or be sound in the faith and not heretical, and delude them not with a form of well-uttered words, they are not ordinarily able to judge.

3. None else are fit to attend this work, but pastors who are separated to the sacred office.[261] It requireth more time to get fitness for it, and then to perform it faithfully, than either magistrates or people can ordinarily bestow.

4. The power is no where given by Christ to magistrates or people.

5. It hath been exercised by pastors or church officers only, both in and ever since the apostles' days, in all the churches of the world. And we have no reason to think that the church hath been gathered from the beginning till now, by so great an error, as a wrong conveyance of the ministerial power.

III. The word jurisdiction as applied to the church officers, is no Scripture word, and in the common sense soundeth too big, as signifying more power than the servants of all must claim; for there is "one Lawgiver who is able to save and to destroy."[262] But in a more moderate sense it may be tolerated; as jurisdiction signifieth in particular, 1. Legislation; 2. Or judicial process or sentence; 3. Or the execution of such a sentence, strictly taken; so ordination is no part of jurisdiction. But as jurisdiction signifieth the same with the power of government, jus regendi in general; so ordination is an act of jurisdiction. As the placing or choosing of inferior officers may belong to the steward of a family, or as the calling or authorizing of physicians belongeth to the college of physicians, and the authorizing of lawyers to the judges' society, or the authorizing of doctors in philosophy to the society of philosophers or to particular rulers. Where note, that in the three last instances, the learning or fitness of the said persons or societies, is but their dispositio vel aptitudo ad potestatem exercendam; but the actual power of conveying authority to others, or designing the recipient person, is received from the supreme power of the land, and so is properly an act of authority, here called jurisdiction.