Now we before observed, that the popular notions, such as these just considered, concerning the Christian Ministry, seem, with all their variations, to be the result of a common principle. The principle, that is, of reducing Christianity to a bare code, or system, of intelligible precepts or dogmas. And the advocates of these various notions are obliged, in some way, to lay out of consideration whatever they meet with, in Scripture or elsewhere, which is inconsistent with this principle. The further development of these remarks may serve more clearly to elicit, and by contrast elucidate the Catholic doctrine of the Ministry.
The advocates, for example, of the “inward call,” seem generally to regard Christ’s religion as a code of doctrines; while the maintainers of a government call, i.e. the Erastians, regard it chiefly as a code of morals. They both “simplify;” they both systematize; and their systems, as such, proceed on very similar grounds. The former system would naturally consider all things subsidiary to what is called “the application” of the revealed doctrines to individuals. Whatever agency seems calculated most powerfully to bring home the doctrine to the mind of a man, that is the most desirable; and with a reference to this, and as so viewed, every thing in Scripture is forthwith explained. Thus: Are Christians commanded in Scripture to be ONE? This system interprets it to mean, that they must have one general “doctrine.” Are we said to be united to Christ as “members” to a body? This system calls it a “metaphor,” designed only to inculcate charity and kindness. Are we said to be saved by the “washing of water?” This system tells us to understand it “spiritually:” for ‘that the water only represents the Spirit.’ In a word, it simply regards Christianity as a divine mental philosophy; and only values the visible Church as a useful means, in such proportion as it effectually “applies” this to individuals. Of course there are countless varieties of this species of religion, yet they agree in this, that they all regard it as an abstract code of principle, and whatever they find in the Bible beyond this, they bend to their system in one way or another. Calvinists, Semi-calvinists, Arminians, and Pelagians, all seem to believe in a kind of essence of Christianity, the existence of which in an individual is to be tested by his possession of a sort of religious sense, to which religious sense they indiscriminately apply every expression of Scripture concerning the various states of the true Christian. Accordingly the possessor of this sense is “regenerated,” “elect,” “enlightened,” “renewed,” “born again”—and whatever else they can “accommodate” in any verse of the Bible. A new and intangible meaning is found for every term; every thing must be sublimely doctrinal. The very precepts of Holiness are looked on as “consequences,” which need not, therefore, be too formally insisted on. The Sacraments of Christ are “elevated,” or extenuated, into “shadows,” and “signs.” The Church itself is evaporated into an “invisible” essence!
The other system, that of the Moralist, is rather more difficult thus to maintain and adapt to Scripture. Considering Christianity as a sort of republication of the law of natural morality, with, perhaps, the announcement of the necessity of repentance, and the assurance of consequent forgiveness with the Deity; all beyond this is regarded as mere enthusiasm. The defenders of this system would allow the existence of a Ministry to be exceedingly “useful,” and so come to think it the duty of the State to support it. These, like the former class, would maintain a visible Church, because it is “useful;” and so they themselves will go to Church, they tell us, “for example’s sake.” These, if they are a little educated, soon become Socinians, [30] and find it necessary to attribute something much less than inspiration to the Bible, and so avoid its plain testimony against their system; and then their course is a very plain one. Those of the party who are more ignorant, are generally found lulled in a complete religious torpor, from which it seems almost impossible to wake them; for if disturbed they only shut their eyes the closer, and more inflexibly, as if it were the duty of “plain Christians,” and “sound old Churchmen,” to understand nothing.
Now in contrast to these and all other simplifiers of the Catholic truth, we neither would attempt on the one hand, to reduce the Bible to a code of spiritual principles, nor on the other to reject spirituality altogether as extravagance. Consequently we have no need to get rid of any part of Scriptural truth, either by “explanations” or “criticisms.” We see that Scripture does declare spiritual doctrines, and that it does enforce practical morals. But we see much more than this in the Bible; for we take it all literally, and plainly. We think that the Scripturally recorded means, for applying the grace of Christ’s religion are just as divine, and therefore, for aught we know, just as essential, as either the doctrines or precepts of that religion. Neither those doctrines nor precepts may be rightly received, except in connexion with, and as parts of, the WHOLE Divine Revelation; and of this the means of heavenly grace included in the Church, are an undoubted portion. Indeed what may be called the Doctrine of the Church, may be seen in a manner to comprehend every other, so that even the truth of the Ministerial Succession is but a part of that Doctrine.
It is very easy to mystify a plain subject, and to represent that the word Church is of doubtful meaning; but let any reader of the Bible answer this question:—When St. Paul wrote a letter to “the Church of Philippi,” was there any difficulty in deciding whom he meant to address? It is plain that there existed in that city a number of families BAPTIZED in the name of Christ; and that number was ruled over by certain spiritual officers; and, as a whole, was called the Church. Wherever, then, we find a similar body of men, we say, there is a Church. Now, we believe that such bodies of men, so organized, and constituting, in the aggregate, the Church Universal, or Catholic, must exist to the end of the world; because, at the very time when Christ promised to set up such an institution, He promised to it a perpetuity. “I will build My Church;” and the “gates of hell shall not prevail against it.” All this we believe simply as it stands, putting no invisible meanings upon it. Wherever, indeed, we meet with a spiritual truth, we receive it; but we desire not to make or imagine one where it exists not, just to carry out an hypothesis of our own.
We know that the spiritual rulers of the Church were made so at first by Christ personally, and that all the members of the Church were made so in one way, namely, by Baptism. (Gal. iii. 27.) We think that to the Church alone the peculiar promises of the Gospel were made. (2 Peter i. 4.) We believe that there was an awful power lodged in the Church, and exercised from the beginning, through her Rulers, a power which, for example, could exclude unworthy members from Communion, and that those so excluded were cut off from the Church’s peculiar blessing. (Matt, xviii. 18.) We think that how much soever Excommunication might now be called a “form,” it was no mere form in the Apostles’ days. (1 Cor. v. 5; Gal. v. 12; 1 Tim. i. 20, and v. 20.) We look with reverence therefore on the powers of the Church, in her Ministers. We dare not hastily pronounce any thing to be “a mere matter of discipline” or “only a form,” because we feel that we are ignorant of the mysterious ways of God: and none can determine the limit which separates Divine Doctrine and Discipline. In fine, we look upon the Church herself as One Eternal Sacrament: the One great outward and visible Institute, set up by Christ, conveying to its members His invisible grace, through many consecrated channels.
The permanent continuance of this One Church on earth we see to have been, in point of fact, connected, from the beginning, with One permanent Ministry or Priesthood, with which, at the first, Christ the great High Priest promised to be virtually present “to the end of the world.” So that, as it was promised that the Church should never be prevailed against; so also that Ministry which was essential to it, should never cease. To the Church we know the New Testament was addressed: and by the Church (with all other means of grace) it was preserved. By the Church’s instrumentality we, individually, are brought to that Font where the “stewards of God’s mysteries” received us to the mystic body of the faithful. By the Church we really are taught in the truth; for notwithstanding every boast of independent thinking, the Church is practically to us, what it was to the first Christians, “the pillar and ground of truth.” (1 Tim. iii. 15.) From the Church’s voice we learn even the lessons of Holy Scripture. And not only the transmitted Wisdom, but the transmitted Grace of Christ is thus ours; for the Church is the “fulness of Him that filleth all in all!” (Eph. i. 23.)—On our head the Church directs that holy hands be laid. In the Church we obtain that grace, whereby we go on “from strength to strength:” and in our partaking of the mysterious Sacrifice which “showeth forth the Lord’s death,” glory is given “unto God in the Church, by Christ Jesus, throughout all ages.” Nay we doubt not, that even “unto the principalities and powers in heavenly places there is made known by the Church the manifold wisdom of God!”
This is the Catholic faith. We trust in God—we rely on His word, and His appointments; as being anxious to recognise His presence among us, as really and truly as the Holy Apostles did, when their Lord stood visibly before them and said, “Lo! I AM WITH YOU always!” And it may safely be left to any man to judge, how far these thoughts and feelings are in harmony with the literal word of God. Every one may see that we have nothing there to explain away—nothing to “account for.” It is such as we might have written ourselves, so far as the sentiments are concerned, to the full extent that those sentiments may be apprehended. How simple and natural to us sounds the injunction, “Obey them that have the Rule over you, for they watch for your souls!” and how awkward, to say the least, when spoken of self-sent teachers, or those whom the people have commissioned and “called.”—Believing that the Church is the perpetual depositary of those awful gifts, which Christ gave to men when He “ascended up on high,” knowing that He gave some Apostles, “some prophets, some pastors, and teachers,” for the perfecting of the saints, “till we all come in the Unity of the faith, . . . unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ”—Not doubting that these, Christ’s gifts, have remained and ever shall remain in His Church; with what thoughts must we regard the Church’s Ministry! How can we feel the thrilling solemnity of St. Paul’s exclamation, after he had absolved the Corinthian penitent, “Such trust have we through Christ to God-ward!”—“Such trust!”—words may not describe it—“Such trust!”—“not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God, WHO also hath MADE US Ministers of the New Testament!” What depth of meaning to us is there in such language as, “Feed the flock of God over whom the Holy Ghost hath made you overseers!” We feel that we are using it in the Apostle’s divine sense—yes, the very same solemn sense! All systematizers are obliged to put some lower diluted meaning upon it! And not on this alone, but on every similar text of the Sacred Word! Which of them can say, in the same sense as the Apostles did, of the Ministers of Christ, that they are “Workers together with God?”—Let any man revolve in his mind all those words so copiously quoted already, concerning the unearthly responsibilities of those who have to “save themselves, and them that hear them.” Let a man deeply think of his Saviour’s words, “I give unto you the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” “He that heareth you heareth Me,” and he will feel it strange mockery, to apply such language to a minister self-authorized, or commissioned by civil governors; and he will come to feel, as the believers in an Apostolic Ministry feel, the power of the question; “How shall men preach except they be SENT?”
Having now thus far explained the nature of the Catholic Doctrine of the Ministry; not attempting to prove it by theoretical arguments, but simply to contrast it with other doctrines, and compare it with Scripture; it remains for us, next to consider the means whereby this Ministry hath been continued in the Church; and for this purpose we must state the Doctrine of the Succession. The Evidences of the doctrine, and the Objections urged against it, we must reserve to the following lectures.
It is affirmed, that before the Apostles quitted the field of their earthly labours, they appointed “Successors;” and “laying their hands” on them, transmitted all the Apostolical power which they had received from Christ. It is not supposed that the gift of Apostolical Ordination contained necessarily any such grace, as is ordinarily understood by the term miraculous; though many who were ordained at first, might of course have possessed likewise such miraculous gifts, as were very common to all classes of believers in the early Church. It is also on record, that the ordained Successors of the Apostles, before they also died, bequeathed their power and authority to others, by the same ceremony of “laying on of hands.” And it is not denied by any, that the same practice has universally prevailed from that time to the present. These Apostolical Successors throughout the whole Church, were deemed the centres of Unity, and sources of Sacramental grace to their respective communities, dioceses, or Churches. They were looked upon as Chief Embassadors of Christ—Vicegerents of the Saviour of mankind—all, in a word, which St. Peter and St. Paul claimed to be:—Divinely “Sent.” (1 Tim. i. 12, ii. 7.) They were at first called by various names,—Apostles, Superintendents, Angels, and Bishops; but eventually this latter designation prevailed. From these Bishops every other officer of the Church derived his power, and “without the Bishop,” to use the words of St. Ignatius, the contemporary of the Apostles, it was not lawful to do any thing in the Church. Finally, for more than a thousand years there was no Church in all the world which was not so governed by Apostolically descended Bishops.