such necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given often times, and may give place."1

Archbishop Usher' says: In places where bishops cannot be had, the ordination by presbyters standeth valid." And William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury from 1716 to 1737, says: “The Reformed Churches, though in some things dissenting from our Anglican Church, I cheerfully embrace."

The confidence of Anglican divines in the validity of presbyteral ordination supported a close fellowship of the Church of England with the Reformed Churches on the continent. Bucer and Peter Martyr were called by Cranmer to the chairs of divinity in Cambridge and Oxford, during the reign of Edward. Craumer, in 1552, invited Calvin, Bullinger and Melancthon to England, to aid in drawing up a Confession of Faith. Clergymen from the continent received benefices in England; they were not reordained, but were only required to subscribe the Articles. The recognition of the validity of presbyteral ordination by the Anglican Church was almost universally prevalent until toward the middle of the seventeenth century. The change of sentiment was brought about mainly through the influence of Archbishop Laud.'

It may be added that the original identity of presbyter and bishop is freely conceded by prominent Episcopal commentators of our time, such as Whitby, 1776, Bloomfield, Conybeare and Howson, Alford, Ellicott, Stanley and others.

5. The general principle which justifies the develop

1 Ecc. Pol., Bk. VII., 14, 11. Vol. II., p. 404.

21580-1655.

3 Cf. Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, Vol. II., pp. 185, 297. Laud, b. 1573. Archbishop of Canterbury 1633, beheaded 1645.

ment of a congregational or of a diocesan episcopate also makes room and justifies a reverse order of change. As when wisdom demands it the Church may multiply ministerial offices and have different grades of bishops and deacons, so when wisdom no longer sustains these different grades of office-bearers the number of offices may be reduced. If the process of reduction be not arbitrary, but answerable to the altered condition of the Church, reduction is compatible with the integrity, the dignity and a valid succession of the ministry. As at one time a superior or subordinate office may arise because needful, so at another time an existing office may cease because no longer needful. In both cases, whether offices be instituted or superseded, the principle is the same, the Church being free to adjust the form of her organization to the status of her life and the call of history. If history supersedes the necessity of an archiepiscopal or metropolitan see, that see may cease with as much propriety as in a previous age it was established; and the order may be followed by an organization in which all presbyters or bishops have co-ordinate authority. The change is economic. It violates neither the genius of the New Testament Church nor the constitution of the apostolic ministry. To the process of reduction and simplification there is no limit but that which is fixed by the original type of the ministry. The prophetic, priestly and kingly functions inhere in the idea of the office by virtue of its origin, and therefore neither the one nor the other can ever be superseded or set aside.

§ 305.

Though there are three distinct functions of the ministry and each function embraces different classes of duties, yet as the mediatorial office of Christ, in whose name the minister officiates, is but one office, every office-bearer duly ordained is invested with the one office, including its several functions.

1. Invested with the one office, the minister has authority to perform all its 'functions, each function being part of the office. The ordained man has this comprehensive authority because the prerogatives of the one office are vested in him. He may agreeably to the existing economy of a branch of the Church be invested by ordination with authority to perform only one function, for example, that of a ruling elder; but there is no ordination of a man to only one function without clothing him with the office in which the function inheres. In other words, every one ordained to take part in the ministry of the Gospel possesses not only some but all the prerogatives of an office-bearer; though his right of administration is by the existing church organization limited to but one function.

It does not follow that a man limited by the vows of ordination to the exercise of but one function, may at will, because clothed with the one all-comprehensive office, assert the right to exercise all functions. He is bound by the existing economy of the Church and by the existing organization of the ministry. Living the life of the enthroned Christ and having authority to adjust her organization by spiritual wisdom to internal demands and external conditions, the Church has the divine right in all ordinary

cases to enforce her regulations on every member, whether a layman or an office-bearer. If he transgresses he violates his vows, he commits sin, and is subject to penalty. The same authority which clothes him with the office binds him to the performance of its duties according to the established order. All the prerogatives of the office other than the function to which he is ordained are in abeyance. His vows bind him to abstain from the exercise of functions withheld as really as to discharge the specific duties which to him have been entrusted. The existing economy, or the particular organization in which he stands, is as truly law for the conscience as the New Testament type which underlies and justifies the existing mode of organization.

2. There is no exception to this law in the ordinary course of history. An exception may arise in a convulsive epoch, when one established order of things is superseded and a different order arises to take its place. When such an epoch emerges, the Church has in reserve an adequate spiritual force in every office-bearer which she may assert for the perpetuity of the ministry in its integrity. At such an extraordinary juncture a subordinate office-bearer, whether a 'presbyter' or a 'ruling elder,' might not only administer the sacraments but likewise lay on hands in ordination. With this judgment Bishop Lightfoot con

curs:

"The Christian minister does not interpose between God and man in such a way that direct communion with God is superseded on the one hand, or that his own mediation becomes indispensable on the other.

"Again, the Christian minister is the representative of man to God.

黃 *

He is a priest, as the mouthpiece, the delegate, of a priestly race.

His acts are not his own, but the acts of the congregation. Hence, too, it will follow that, viewed on this side as on the other, his function can

may

be

not be absolute and indispensable. It may be a general rule, it under ordinary circumstances a practically universal law, that the highest acts of congregational worship shall be performed through the prin cipal officers of the congregation. But an emergency may arise when the spirit and not the letter must decide. The Christian ideal will then interpose and interpret our duty. The higher ordinance of the universal priesthood will overrule all special limitations. The layman will assume functions which are otherwise restricted to the ordained minister."1

But under what circumstances such a justifying neces sity may occur cannot be determined a priori. The sup posed epoch is a juncture full of peril, and will stand self-condemned or self-justified by the developments of history. Ecclesiology may maintain no more than this: that the mystical body of Christ has latent spiritual resources which are of necessity held in abeyance, or may be called forth whenever the solemn hour has struck. There is at hand a recuperative power adequate to every emergency or calamity, and this recuperative and selfadjusting power resides both in the ministry and in the lay membership. The lay membership and the ministry are factors equally essential to the existence and perpetuity of the Church, each in its own sphere; and wherever there are laymen and office-bearers, whatever be their grade, there cannot be an absolute break in the continuity of life or order of succession.

The Christian Ministry, by The Right Rev. J. B. Lightfoot, D. D., p. 145.