Anglican episcopacy

“ The pope still addresses his fellow-bishops as “venerable brothers”; but from the Roman Catholic Church the fraternal union of coequal authorities, which is of the essence of episcopacy, has vanished; and in its place is set the autocracy of one. The modern Roman Catholic Church is episcopal, for it preserves the bishops, whose potestas ordinis not even the pope can exercise until he has been duly consecrated; but the bishops as such are now but subordinate elements in a system for which “Episcopacy” is certainly no longer an appropriate term. ”

“ The design is to unite you with the Scots nation and the presbyterians of England against the anti-monarchical party, the independents.... If by conscience it is intended to assert that episcopacy is jure divino exclusive, whereby no protestant, or rather Christian church, can be acknowledged for such without a bishop, we must therein crave leave wholly to differ. And if we be in an error, we are in good company, there not being, as we have cause to believe, six persons of the protestant religion of the other opinion.... ”

“ By the spirit of the English law, we, Catholics, are allowed to maintain the Pope's supremacy in ecclesiastical, and religious matters; we are also allowed to be governed by Catholic Bishops, and [Pg 10] of course, we are allowed to be governed by them, according to the proper and perfect form of Episcopal government, and there is no English law, to prevent these Catholic Bishops from taking the titles of any place, provided they are not titles of places, held by the Anglican Hierarchy. ”

“ In order to estimate rightly the nature of this change, it is necessary to keep in view the distinction between the power of mission and that of orders. The former is the source of jurisdiction, and the latter of the functions of the episcopate. When the two are united, we are presented with a diocesan episcopacy; but the union is not essential. A monastic church requires the exercise of episcopal functions within her as much as any other church, and for that purpose possesses within her the superior grade of the bishop according to canonical rule ”

“ Any branch of the Church reformed on the principles of the English Reformation.
In certain considerations of the first spiritual importance, the Church of England occupies a singularly felicitous position. The great majority of Christians—the Roman, Greek, and Eastern Churches—regard Episcopacy as indispensable to the integrity of Christianity; the Presbyterians and others, who have no bishops, nor, as far as we can judge, any means of obtaining the order, regard episcopacy as unnecessary. ”

“ Of all the wonders of the English Church, the greatest is that the rulers of it should hold episcopacy to be an institution of Christ, and that the Gospel should be spread among all nations, and, at the same time, should refuse the American Churchmen a bishop, and the fanatics and heathen all opportunities of enjoying the Gospel dispensation in the purity and lustre with which it shines in the Mother Country. ”

“ Whether any clergyman, however dignified or distinguished, if he think his own profession most agreeable to Holy Scripture, and the primitive church, can really wish in his heart, that all sectaries should be upon an equal foot with the churchmen, in the point of civil power and employments?
Whether episcopacy, which is held by the church to be a divine and apostolical institution, be not a fundamental point of religion, particularly in that essential one of conferring holy orders? ”

“ This is the land of sects. An Englishman is a free man, and goes to Heaven by any road he pleases.
But although anybody may serve God after his own fashion, their true religion, the one in which fortunes are made, is the Episcopal sect, called the Anglican Church, or, simply and pre-eminently, the Church. No office can be held in England or Ireland except by faithful Anglicans; a circumstance which has led to the conversion of many Noncomformists.
The Anglican clergy have retained many Catholic ceremonies, 278 above all that of receiving tithes with a most scrupulous attention. ”

“ On the vexed question of Episcopal ordination, we are convinced that the high-churchmen are wrong, before their own communion and before the world. The reformers under whose inspirations the English Church was formed, never intended to unchurch the religious bodies of the continent with whom they were in sympathy. The words of the ordinal refer only to the rule to be adopted in the Anglican body, and do not decide at all the question of the validity of non-Episcopal orders. The twenty-third of the thirty-nine articles is so expounded by Burnet. ”

“ They may, say the episcopalians, be properly appealed to, in order to know the truth of FACT in the ages in which they lived. And if, from their unanimous testimony, even from the first days of Christianity, it appears, that GOVERNING and ordaining AUTHORITY was exercised by Bishops ONLY, in distinction from Presbyters, and as an order in the church above them, it would argue great arrogance, if not obstinate perverseness, to dispute the divine original of episcopacy. ”

“ The bishops therefore, we infer, have just as much power as the people choose to give them, and we see no reason why the congregations should not enlarge and restrict that power at pleasure—make a new constitution, if they wish, every year, and treat their prelates as the savage treats his idol, which he sets upon an altar for worship in the morning, and if things go not well with him, kicks into the kennel at night. Indeed, since the foundation of the Anglican Church the episcopate has always been treated with scant ceremony. ”

“ And although it is impossible to form a correct estimate on such a subject, because some of the most important data are beyond our reach, yet it may be doubted whether there ever was a time when missions achieved more solid success. The enormous growth of the colonial and missionary episcopate during the last hundred years is at any rate one great fact which represents and guarantees a great deal. Until 1787 there was not a single episcopal see of the Anglican communion in any of the colonies or settlements of the British Empire; still less was there a single missionary bishop. ”

“ They regard the episcopal constitution as an old and wholesome ordinance but not a divine institution, also the Anglican liturgy and Book of Common Prayer, though capable of improvement, while they recognise the ordinations of other evangelical churches as valid, and reject as Puseyite the doctrine of a special priesthood of the clergy, of a sacrifice in the eucharist, the presence of the body and blood of Christ in the elements, and of the essential and invariable connection between regeneration and baptism. ”

“ It was alleged that the whole episcopacy should be regarded as one, and that each bishop constituted an integral part of the grand unit. "The episcopacy is one," says Cyprian, "it is a whole in which each enjoys full possession." [654:3] "There is one Church from Christ throughout the whole world divided into many members, and one episcopate diffused throughout an harmonious multitude of many bishops." ”

“ What was less essential she supplied by the prerogative of the crown, as her grandfather had done once before. The archbishop consecrated was Dr. Parker, formerly chaplain to Anne Boleyn: a thoroughly worthy man, the father of learned studies on English antiquities, especially on the Anglo-Saxon times. By him the laying on of hands and consecration was bestowed on the other bishops who were now elected: they were called on to uphold at the same time the idea of episcopacy in its primitive import, and the doctrines of the Reformation. ”

“ It is evident, by some passages in Strype, attentively considered, that natives regularly ordained abroad in the presbyterian churches were admitted to hold preferment in England; the first bishop who objected to them seems to have been Aylmer. Instances, however, of foreigners holding preferment without any re-ordination, may be found down to the civil wars. Annals of Reformation, ii. 522, and Appendix, 116; Life of Grindal, 271; Collier, ii. 594; Neal, i. 258.
The divine right of episcopacy is said to have been laid down by Bancroft, in his famous sermon at Paul's cross, in 1588. ”

“ It is of the nature of evil to make its presence much more keenly felt than the presence of good. So while keenly alive to the drawbacks of presbytery, you are hardly conscious of its advantages. You swing over, let us suppose, to the other end: you swing over from Scotland into England, from presbytery to episcopacy. For awhile you are quite delighted to find yourself free from the little evils of which you had been wont to complain. But by and bye the drawbacks of episcopacy begin to push themselves upon your notice. ”

“ Elected bishop of St. Andrews, Dunkeld, and Dunblane on 30 Nov. 1853, Wordsworth was consecrated at St. Andrew's Church, Aberdeen, on 25 Jan. 1853. The principles on which he acted in this office were mainly three: (1) to prevent the capture of the Scottish episcopal church by a narrow party, especially by a party manned by Englishmen and controlled from England; (2) to convince Scotsmen of the value of episcopacy and episcopal ordinances; (3) to make some concessions to presbyterians by which they might be conciliated, the main principle of episcopacy being saved (Episcopate, pp. 37−9) . ”

“ Some of the bishops submitted to this decree; others, as might be expected, stood out 276 in defence of their dignity, and were supported both by the king and by all who conceived that the supreme power of Scotland, in establishing and endowing the church, had not constituted a society independent of the commonwealth. A series of acts in 1584, at a time when the court had obtained a temporary ascendant, seemed to restore the episcopal government in almost its pristine lustre. But the popular voice was loud against episcopacy ”

“ LOW CHURCHMAN, a term applied to members of the Church of England or its daughter churches who, while accepting the hierarchical and sacramental system of the Church, do not consider episcopacy as essential to the constitution of the Church, reject the doctrine that the sacraments confer grace ex opere operato (e.g. baptismal regeneration) and lay stress on the Bible as the sole source of authority in matters of faith. They thus differ little from orthodox Protestants of other denominations, and in general are prepared to co-operate with them on equal terms. ”

“ If the Catholic faith be the perfect revelation of Christianity, the Anglican Reformation is a cloud of heresies; if the Catholic Church be the organ of the Holy Ghost, the Anglican Church is not only no part of the Church, but no church of divine foundation. It is a human institution, sustained as it was founded by a human authority, without priesthood, without sacraments, without absolution, without the real presence of Jesus upon its altars. ”

“ Now in the first place, let us suppose, for the sake of argument, that Episcopacy is in fact not at all mentioned in Scripture: even then it would be our duty to receive it. Why? because the first Christians received it. If we wish to get at the truth, no matter how we get at it, if we get at it. If it be a fact, that the earliest Christian communities were universally episcopal, it is a reason for our maintaining Episcopacy; and in proportion to our conviction, is it incumbent on us to maintain it. ”

“ They scarce ever fail of turning us to the FATHERS in vindication of their cause; hereby virtually reflecting disgrace on the scriptures, as though they were insufficient, simply of themselves, to bring this controversy to an issue.
In order to reconcile the appeal that is so often made to the FATHERS with that honour which is due to the scriptures, the episcopalian plea is, that they consider these fathers, not as judges, but witnesses only in their cause. But what are they brought to witness? Is it, that episcopacy is an institution of Jesus Christ? ”

“ As one who is not guiltless of such attempts, and as one who is becoming accustomed to be charged with novelty in teaching, and disloyalty in practice to that which is undoubtedly and historically Anglican, I have been compelled to ask myself, "What is loyalty to the Anglican Church? Is there, in fact, some peculiar and limited form of Christianity to which I owe allegiance?" I had got accustomed to think of myself as a Catholic Christian whose lot was cast in a certain province of the Catholic Church which was administratively separated from other parts of that Church. ”

“ The deepest line of cleavage is naturally between the view that episcopacy is a divinely ordained institution essential to the effective existence of a church as a channel of grace, and the view that it is merely a convenient form of church order, evolved as the result of a variety of historical causes, and not necessary to the proper constitution of a church. ”

“ Moreover, no diocese in the Established Church of England has the power to select its own bishop. The King as temporal head of the Church appoints the bishops of all dioceses, and that power is exercised for the King by his prime minister. And during the colonial period in America the Governor of every colony other than Virginia and Pennsylvania appointed the rector of every Anglican parish and inducted him into office. ”

“ Even at this moment many good Churchmen are reproached with a love of filthy lucre because they do not follow a few who once thought with them, but who have apostatized from the faith of their fathers; whereas, if there be a man in the world to whom secession under any pretext is impossible it is the consistent Anglican—the distinguishing tenet of whose school is the spiritual equality of bishops, and the consequent indefeasible authority of that episcopal line which has from time immemorial been in possession of a given country. ”