Ecclesiastical Commission

“ But ecclesiastical commissioners are but men; the people, therefore, in every parish in England should themselves look into their own ecclesiastical affairs; and demand with one united voice the fulfilment of those religious duties to God and God’s poor, which devolve on those who claim the lands of the church. Sooner or later a demand so just must be fully recognised; and governors will assuredly arise, who will have both the power and the will to execute justice. ”

“ Hence they were invested (or were supposed to be so) with a spiritual attribute peculiar to themselves, and which stamped them as a class apart; but the Reformed clergy, in their election and admission to the ministry, obtained nothing but a human commission. The divine title (Christian belief) was also theirs; but this, being equally the property of the whole Christian commonwealth, of course conferred no peculiar distinction upon them. ”

“ The human title every man had who was a believer. To become a clergyman, it was necessary that the aspirant should be a Christian. No process of ordination (effective as that ceremony was considered) could have made a Jew or a Mahommedan an office-bearer in the Roman Catholic church. This, then, was the preliminary title to the ministry. But it was merely a human qualification. It required to be supplemented by a divine commission—by ordination from God, received at the hands of the successors of the apostles,—and then the clergyman's title was complete. ”

“ He resisted the appointment of the royal commission on ecclesiastical discipline in 1904, but in 1908 he introduced the ecclesiastical disorders bill, in which he claimed to give effect to the commission's report. ”

“ That was not what he required, He wanted nothing but his human title; and this he obtained by the election of the people and the approbation of the learned. Is the man now a clergyman as contradistinguished from a layman? We may call him so for convenience' sake; but it is a distinction without a difference. In the Romish church the clergy were separated from the laymen by the whole diameter which lies between the human and the divine. In their ordination the priests received a divine commission which the laity did not possess. ”

“ In favour of doubling the episcopate—that is, of assigning a bishop generally speaking for every county, instead of the present average of one for two—the emphatic and unexpected testimony of Lord Harrowby may now be quoted. When a Churchman of his school—an Ecclesiastical Commissioner, moreover—stood up so manfully to communicate his personal desire for so wide a reform, to many hundred, auditors and the representatives of the London press, it was clear that the subject had reached no early stage of ripeness. The Court of Appeal, remanded to a section, evoked a debate in which Dr. ”

“ Five commissioners are a quorum for the transaction of business, provided two of them are church estates commissioners; two ecclesiastical commissioners at least must be present at any proceeding under the common seal, and if only two are present they can demand its postponement to a subsequent meeting. ”

“ In an œcumenical council, where the universal episcopate is gathered together under the presidency of its head, the successor of Peter, as vicar of Christ, the Catholic Church is organized for deliberation and action in the most perfect way possible. Who compose a council? The bishops of the world, to whom the right of membership belongs by divine law, and other prelates in eminent positions to whom the privilege is conceded by ecclesiastical law. ”

“ The ministers of a church have a particular interest in its legislation—are to be presumed to have an especial knowledge of the best way in which that should be conducted. But they are not to be presumed to have an exclusive interest in ecclesiastical legislation—an exclusive knowledge of what is best for the church. Many people have these things at heart, and are endowed with this knowledge, equally with the clergy. The Christian community at large must be allowed an extensive share in the legislature of the council which deals with ecclesiastical concerns. ”

“ Meantime the affairs of the church now for a year occupied the principal share of Stair's attention. An attempt was made to effect a union between the presbyterian and episcopal clergy, and finally, after the king had agreed to dispense with putting the oath of allegiance to every clerical member of the assembly about to meet, the assembly in 1693 appointed a commission to receive episcopal ministers qualifying themselves in terms of the recent act of parliament, that is by subscribing the confession of faith and acknowledging presbyterian church government. ”

“ In the first place, we hardly need say that no one but a duly authorized priest of the Catholic Church has the power to give absolution. As we are addressing chiefly those who believe in some ecclesiastical system, we have only to advert to the fact, that to such a power both orders and jurisdiction are necessary. The Episcopal Church does not admit the existence of this power, and the whole Christian world which does accept it, unites in the opinion that the Episcopalian clergy have no orders whatever, any more than the Methodists or Presbyterians. ”

“ An external commission, conveyed by Episcopal consecration or ordination, is considered necessary to constitute a lawful ministry; and it is therefore declared, by the Church, that “no man shall be accounted or taken to be a lawful [pg 029] Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, in this Church, or suffered to execute any of said functions,” unless he has “had Episcopal consecration or ordination;” and the power of ordaining, or setting apart to the ministry, and of laying on hands upon others, is vested in the Bishops. ”

“ It will be of little avail to them to say that the bishops only have pronounced a decision, and that the division of the clerical and lay [Pg 520] vote in four or five dioceses saved them from a prohibitory canon of the whole convention. Are the presbyters and lay deputies the successors of the apostles, whom the Lord instituted to govern the church of God? Who made the sheep of the flock the judges in ecclesiastical causes?
We have no heart to believe that the condemnation of the bishops will do any good with the majority of them. ”

“ The Catholic Autonomy Association, consisting of the bishops, the abbots, and certain elected members, clerical and lay, exists to represent the Church in regard to the faithful, on the one hand, and the Government, on the other, in all questions of schools, of church property, and especially (since the minister of public worship might happen to be a non-Catholic) to advise the king in the exercise of his prerogative of nominating bishops. It is plain that the advantage or disadvantage to the Church of autonomy would depend on the composition of the commission. ”

“ He would have them disciplined inwardly on the presbyterian plan, the worshippers delegating their spiritual government to an oligarchy of pastors and elders, power of excommunication being reserved to 'the whole congregation itself.' But he would subject no congregation to any ecclesiastical jurisdiction save 'that which is within itself.' To prevent as far as possible the action of the state from being warped by ecclesiastical control, he would enact that no clergyman should hold any office of civil authority. ”

“ What the Council discussed was to be the work of unknown divines: what it voted was to be the work of a majority in a Commission of twenty-four. It was in the election of these Commissions that the episcopate obtained the chance of influencing the formation of its decrees. But the papal theologians retained their predominance, for they might be summoned to defend or alter their work in the Commission, from which the bishops who had spoken or proposed amendments were excluded. Practically, the right of initiative was the deciding point. ”

“ They would admit the limitation of the bishops’ power by a council of the lower clergy, and even by laymen, to be elected by this council, in each diocese: Parliament should regulate the spiritual jurisdiction in relation for instance to marriage: even a rent-charge on ecclesiastical revenues for [Pg 414] A.D. 1645. ‘the maintenance of peace’ was suggested. Even this seemed to the King almost too much, and he declined to go a hair’s-breadth further, as he considered himself bound by his coronation oath to maintain the Church establishment. ”

“ Self-evidently, Romanists construed this as an a priori endorsement of the Council and its resolutions. In the article "Of Ecclesiastical Ministers" we read: "And that all other ministers should be subject and obedient to the chief bishop [the Pope] and to other bishops who administer their episcopal office according to God's command, using the same for edification and not for destruction; which ministers should be ordained also by such bishops upon presentation by the patrons." This article conceded the primacy of the Pope and the ecclesiastical jurisdiction of the bishops. ”

“ It is generally believed, and the fact is of lasting importance, that the Convocation of the clergy, a commission of the spiritualty, the Primate-Archbishop and a number of bishops, took part in the change; but yet the decisive decrees went forth from the Parliament, to which the spiritual power had been irrevocably attached since Henry VIII, and sometimes from the Privy Council alone. To establish a normal form of doctrine, men set to work to compose a Confession, which was completed at that time in forty-two Articles. ”

“ What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could alter: and of things instituted by human beings a layman was surely as competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and canons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by referring them to a Commission for revision and correction. ”

“ They will state the matter thus to themselves: "Jesus Christ's own commission is the best external security I can have, that in receiving this bread and wine, I verily receive his Body and Blood. Either the Bishops have that commission, or there is no such thing in the world. For at least Bishops have it with as much evidence, as Presbyters without them. In proportion, then, to my Christian anxiety for keeping as near my Saviour as I can, I shall of course be very unwilling to separate myself from Episcopal communion. ”

“ Common sense pauses for a reply. Each one must decide for himself whether his minister speaks according to the Bible; and this being granted (which is the fundamental position of all Protestant bodies) we do not see the use of ministers, much less of bishops, much less of a council of bishops. Christ's great commission, according to the Episcopalian prelates, hinges on the chance that the Bible will be circulated and rightly interpreted. The history of religion since the Reformation does not cause us to think much of this chance. ”

“ In all the government of the Church it should be observed that representatives of the clergy and representatives of the laity are co-ordinated under the presidency of the Bishops, and no Canon of the Church, either Diocesan or general, is carried without the consent of both clergy and laity and the sanction of the Bishop, or Bishops, as the case may be. ”

“ Those who are not of the semi-Catholic school are obliged to seek for some tenable ground on which to maintain their claim of fellowship in essentials with the universal church, in a theory of transition from apostolical to ecclesiastical Christianity during the period lying between the close of the first and the end of the second centuries. The hinge of the question is the institution of the episcopate, as a distinct and superior grade of the Christian presbyterate, with hierarchical authority. ”

“ In one place, or time, the doctrine has been distorted; in another, the practice has been abused: but everywhere, and at all times, by Greeks and Romanists, by high-Churchmen, and by not a few low-Churchmen, it has been, and is asserted, that p. 98Christ gave by commission, and continues by His promise to be always present with His Church, power and command to use ministerial absolution. The Church of England claims that delegated power, and obeys that positive command. ”

“ In a cathedral of the Church of England “lay clerks” and “lay vicars” sing such portions of the service as may be performed by laymen and clergy in minor orders. “Lay readers” are persons who are granted a commission by the bishop to perform certain religious duties in a particular parish. The commission remains in force until it is revoked by the bishop or his successors, or till there is a new incumbent in the parish, when it has to be renewed. ”

“ The Provincial Synod consists of a union of three or more presbyteries with the same members. There are now sixteen. They meet twice a year to hear appeals from presbyteries. No appeal can go direct to the General Assembly, omisso medio, unless the presbytery have so expressly directed, or unless there be no meeting of synod after the decision of the presbytery before the meeting of General Assembly.
(d ) The General Assembly is the supreme ecclesiastical court of this system. It meets annually. ”

“ It must be evident, of course, that the motive of the Commission is not an endorsement of the blasphemous gospel of Success, by adding penalty to the self-denying clergy; what is painfully obvious is their apparent unbounded confidence that there are no clergy sufficiently foolish to sacrifice stipend at the call of faith's venture! ”