It seems to us that the "EXCEPTION," which, equally with the rule, is admitted by the High Church doctrine to be fundamental law, answers this question once for all. For if, in any supposable emergency, presbyters may validly ordain, and if persons so by them ordained have power to preach the word and minister the sacraments, then either (1.) Necessity confers a power to ordain upon those who have it not, or else (2.) The power to ordain is resident alike in presbyters and bishops, and the restrictions on its exercise by presbyters are, by that necessity, removed. If the second of these positions truly represent the High Church theory, then, between them and Mr. Goode's adherents, there is no essential difference, and their war, with all its bitterness and pertinacity, is one of human words and human facts, and not of Christian doctrine. If, to avoid this fate, the first alternative be the one adopted, the following difficulties must be met and answered.
1. It overthrows the entire doctrine of "succession." This fundamental law of organic, collective, Christian life presupposes the existence of an unbroken chain of ministers, transmitting their authority, through generation after generation, from Christ's day to our own. It presupposes that every man, who has himself possessed and transmitted this authority, has received it in his turn from some other man who possessed it and transmitted it to him, and so on back to Christ himself. Christ thus becomes the sole source, and man the sole channel, of ecclesiastical authority, and the right or power of any individual to exercise the functions of the ministerial office depends on his reception of authority therefor from this only source and through this only channel.
But if necessity can also confer authority, or rather, to put the case in words more expressive of its real character, if, whenever the appointed channel cannot be had and necessity of ministers exists, God will himself from heaven confer the authority in need, the value of this "succession" amounts to nothing. Orders, wherever necessary, will be had as well without it as with it, and they who have it can never with any certainty deny the validity of orders which have it not. Christ still may be the sole source, but man is not the only, nay, nor the most perfect and available, channel of this authority. There is another, surer, nearer, more direct, conveying, only to proper persons, the gifts of God, and free from all the doubts and dangers which result from a residence of heavenly "treasure in earthen vessels," and the necessity which demands it is the sole condition of its use. The High Church party, if they adopt this position, must, therefore, become more radical than any Christian church upon the globe. They out-Herod even their great Herod, Mr. Goode, and are more dangerous to the cause of "apostolic order" and ecclesiastical authority than any Low Churchmen or Separatist that ever lived.
2. It elevates human necessity above divine law. The law, by which holy orders exist, and by which their transmission from man to man is regulated, is unquestionably divine. "Vox Ecclesiae" goes so far as to claim that their transmission, from bishop to bishop only, is of divine precept, but, waiving that, it is acknowledged by all parties, with whom we have to do at [{727}] present, that whatever be the human channel, it is of Christ's appointment, and rests upon divine authority. It is thus a divine law which "necessity abrogates," a positive institution and command of God which is to be disregarded and disobeyed, and that because "necessity" demands it.
But this necessity is a merely human one. Orders confers on the ordained only the power to preach and to administer the sacraments, and it is only that those things may be done, that God's law is despised and set aside. Yet, though the eternal salvation of the human soul may ordinarily depend upon the preaching of the word and on the sacraments, still nothing is absolutely necessary to eternal life that may not take place between the soul and God, independently of bishop, priest, or church. It is thus no necessity of God's creation, no necessity inevitably involving the eternal destinies of man, that substitutes itself for the admitted law of God, but a mere earthly need, a need based upon human views and customs and opinions, which never received endorsement from on high, and finds no sanction for its existence in Holy Writ. There is no irregularity which such a position would not justify, no departure from God's ordinances which it could consistently condemn. It would come with fearful self-rebuke from that portion of the Episcopal Church, who for three hundred years have practically ignored their brother Protestants, because they judged of their own necessities and set aside the institutions of God in order that those necessities might be supplied.
3. It legitimates every form of error and schism. For, if "necessity confers orders," the sole question in every case is, whether the necessity existed. If there was such necessity in Germany and Switzerland in the sixteenth century, then Lutheran and Calvinistic orders were as valid as Episcopal, and if that necessity continues, they are valid still. If there was such necessity in Scotland, after the abolition of the prelacy, and that necessity continues, the orders of the kirk are valid at this day. If there was such necessity when John Wesley ordained Dr. Coke, and that necessity continues, Methodist orders are as valid as his Grace of Canterbury's are. There is no stopping-place for these deductions. If "necessity confers orders," not even the channel of presbyters is necessary. No human instrument at all stands between God and the recipient of his extraordinary favor. In every case where the necessity exists, there God confers the power of orders, and there is no sect so wild and heretical, no ministry so dangerous and erratic, that may not claim validity upon this ground, and that must not, on these principles, when necessity is proven, be adjudged legitimate.
But of this necessity who shall be the judge? Shall God, who, of course, knows all the circumstances of mankind and estimates them at their proper value? But then, to us his judgment is useless without expression, and his expression is revelation. Are those who allow the force of this plea of necessity prepared to admit all who claim it, for the sake of Christian charity, or will they demand a revelation from God to satisfy them that the "necessity" was real? Yet, if God be the only Judge, they must admit all or reject all until he speaks from heaven, and in the latter case, the "EXCEPTION" might as well have been left unmade. Or shall the church judge? And if so, what church? The church, from which Luther, and Calvin, and Cranmer, and Parker separated? She had her bishops ready to ordain all proper men, and if her judgment had been taken, there would have been no occasion for men to plead necessity. The church, from which came forth the Puritans and Methodists? She also had her bishops, and in her view no necessity could ever have existed. So with every church. None that are founded in Episcopacy could ever [{728}] admit a necessity without supplying it in the appointed way. And none that reject Episcopacy would care to inquire whether or not there was any such necessity. The church could, therefore, be no judge. She is, in every issue of this sort, a party, not an umpire; but, were she competent to judge, wherein is her decree less valid, when from Rome she excommunicates the Church of England, than when from London or New York she denies ministerial authority to Presbyterians and Universalists? Or is it the individual? There can be no doubt in this answer. It must be. No man can judge of a necessity except he who is placed in it. A little colony of Christians, cast away on some Pacific island, must decide for themselves, whether they will ordain a pastor for their flock or utterly dispense with Christian teaching. A man, whose creed differs from that of the church in which he lives, and yet who feels an inward call to preach the Gospel, as he understands it, must be the sole judge of the necessity of call, upon the one hand, which commands him to preach, and of conscience, on the other, which forbids him to subscribe the creed which is the unrelenting condition of his ordination by authority. Extend it to societies and communities of men, and the rule is the same. These societies become themselves the judges, whether or not, in their case, necessity exists, and no other can judge for them. The law is universal. If necessity be a justification, it must be necessity as judged of by the parties in necessity, and not as judged of by God, unknown to men, or by a church which either will supply the need or treat the whole matter as of little moment. There thus becomes no limit to necessities. They are moral as well as physical. They grow out of duties and responsibilities, as well as out of distances and years. Obedience to the voice of conscience is an indispensable condition of salvation, and no necessity is greater or more potent than the necessity of that obedience. When the Rev. Gardiner Spring was moved, as he believed it, by the Holy Ghost, to do the work of a minister in the church of God, there was not a regularly ordained bishop in the world who would have ordained him, while holding the doctrines he professed. In his case, without a violation of his conscience and the loss of his soul, bishops "COULD NOT BE HAD," and presbyters must have validly ordained. When Charles Spurgeon, rejoicing in the new-found light of the Gospel, burned to tell other men the good that God had done to him, the moral necessity was the same, a necessity which compelled him to disobey what he believed to be a command of God, or to receive orders from non-Episcopal hands. Is there any need of multiplying instances? Where is the imaginable limit to which validity must be acknowledged and beyond which it must cease? The High Churchman who starts with the admission, that in case of "necessity," God confers the power of order, can never stop till he has bowed the knee before every Baal which claims the name of Christian and opened the gifts of God to every man who demands priestly recognition at his hands.
There are other objections to this theory, equally insuperable with those already suggested. It can hardly be necessary, however, to mention them. No candid mind, after seeing the real bearing of this position on the whole question of a visible church, can hesitate a moment to reject it. There remains only the other alternative, namely, that necessity renders operation in presbyters a power possessed by, but latent in, them, by removing the restrictions which, in ordinary circumstances, apostolic precedent and ecclesiastical usage have imposed; and as this is essentially the position advocated by Mr. Goode, and as the difference between these parties is thus reduced, in every case, to a question of historic or contemporaneous fact, which no one but the individuals who plead it can adequately settle, we conclude that [{729}] the sole contest as to doctrine is one of words and definitions, and that on all material points of theory and faith they perfectly agree. We thus feel justified in the conclusion that the Episcopal Church of the present age has a doctrine concerning the necessity of episcopal ordination, and that her doctrine is no less, no more, than this: "The power of order is resident in bishops and presbyters both, ex ordine, and is operative, under ordinary circumstances, in bishops only, though in cases of necessity, presbyters may exercise that power and validly ordain."
This doctrine is logical, coherent, and conservative. No divine institution is thereby set aside for a mere human necessity. No destructive principle antagonistic to the doctrine of "succession" is thereby introduced; no gate is thereby opened for a multitudinous throng of orthodox and heretics, ordained and unordained, to bring disorder and confusion into the Church of God. However fatal to the high pretensions of the Episcopal Church in generations past, and to any claim of exclusive apostolicity at present, this doctrine is, nevertheless, most consistent with her actual status in the religious world. Thoroughly Protestant in doctrine and in worship, all her affinities and tendencies are toward the Presbyterian and other non-Episcopal denominations of the age. No church on earth, whose episcopal succession can be traced to any apostolic source, has ever recognized hers as beyond question, or admitted her claim to be a portion of the Catholic Church of Christ. Her very episcopate itself is, practically, as the recent events in New York have shown, a rank of honor and of office not of power. Her alleged superiority, for her bishops' sakes, can never bring her one step nearer to the Catholic Church, while she retains her heresies or remains in schism; and, on the other hand, her alienation from her protesting sisters must increase with every generation while this allegation is maintained. Far better, far more accordant with her actual position, is her doctrine as thus evolved by Mr. Goode and "Vox Ecclesiae," and while its enunciation cannot change her in our estimation, it will doubtless draw nearer to her, in the bonds of love and brotherhood, all those by whom she is surrounded and to whose fraternity she naturally belongs. It is only a matter of regret that the barrier now destroyed was not broken down long ago, and that the good influences, which the Episcopal Church is so well calculated to exert, have not been working on the masses of our non-Catholic brethren in America during all the past eighty years.
Nothing now remains but to retrieve that past. Let it be understood that the Episcopal Church does not deny the validity of presbyterian orders, but that at most she holds them irregular, and only that when not given in necessity; that men of other denominations have clergymen and sacraments equally beneficial with her own. Let her throw open her doors to all religious bodies who thus preserve the "succession," and unite with them in prevailing on those to receive it who have it not, and make common cause with all such in stemming the tide of infidelity and "liberalism" which is deluging our land. Then may her self-adopted mission, however faulty in its origin, however riskful in its progress, fulfil at least one portion of the work of Christ's Church in the world, and, if she cannot feed men with the bread of truth, she may preserve them from the more fearful poisons.