I

LECTURE II.

PRIESTHOOD NOT AN ORDER IN THE NEW

TESTAMENT (CONTINUED).

F the course of reasoning presented in the previous lecture is substantially valid, it might seem a work of supererogation to pursue any further the line of argument then sketched; for if in the New Testament, to which alone we appeal as the ultimate source of evidence on the matter in hand, there is discoverable no trace of the priesthood either in name or in office, its alleged apostolicity falls to the ground. But the hardihood and endless repetition with which the claims of a Christian priesthood have been advanced, and the tendency, almost mechanical, which exists in many minds to yield credence to assertions which are repeated with sufficient boldness, will justify my purpose in this lecture still further to strengthen the considerations already adduced, by showing that the sacerdotalism which has allied itself with the gospel is discredited by the qualifications which, according to the New Testament, the ministers of Christ are to possess, and also by the whole genius and aim of the gospel.

III.

The qualifications indispensable to the Christian minister are not necessary for the order and the functions of the priest; while, on the other hand, many of the elements which are consonant, or, at least, not disconsonant, with the validity of the order and functions of the priest, are not only not recognised but disallowed by the gospel. In other words, the names differ, the offices differ, and the qualifications differ. To which we may also add, that the disqualifications differ likewise.

And here it is of some moment that we draw attention to a word we have just used, and which plays the most important part in all Romish and Neo-Catholic writings, touching the orders of the ministry-we mean "validity." This is necessary for the very being of orders, in ecclesiastical phrase, their "esse;" while other things may be important for their well being, in similar phrase, their "bene esse." But these latter elements, however otherwise serviceable and efficacious in the subsidiary functions of the priesthood, and in whatever degree of combination and excellence they may be possessed, never mount so high as to constitute the supreme quality of "validity." There may be faith, reverence, love, chastity, self-denial, knowledge, prudence, zeal, aptness to teach, seraphic devoutness, and every grace in the Christian train; but these are no more than subordinate, and even optional qualifications for the priestly office-invaluable, indeed, to the man who is so happy as to possess them, and to those who may

have the good fortune to enjoy the ministrations of a priest so richly endowed, but they are not of the essence of "validity."

All the spiritual excellences possessed by all the saints on earth and in heaven, if combined in one person, would impart to him no authority or power to administer the sacrament of the Eucharist, or to pronounce absolution. While, on the other hand, no ignorance, dissoluteness, infamy, can annul this validity in the case of any priest who, with a due intention, has received holy orders at the hands of a bishop who is himself the inheritor of an untainted commission. I do not hereby affirm that the Church of Rome or any other sacerdotal communion is wholly disregardful of the character of its priests, and that it does not subject them to the exercise of discipline, with its varying degrees of censure and punishment; but I do affirm that in the history of all such Churches there have been instances innumerable in which their - priests have exemplified every corruption and crime of which man can be guilty, without any molestation in their sacerdotal functions; and that, according to Tridentine doctrine, the sacraments of the Church have lost none of their virtue in their hands. This conception of validity, as independent of moral and spiritual qualifications, is traceable to a complete inversion of the whole nature and purpose of the gospel, which is thus regarded as predominantly a system of ceremonial efficacy, the priestly manipulator resting his prerogative simply on a pedigree.

But the question we have to consider is, whether we find in the teaching of the New Testament any authority for the doctrine that the ministers of religion can possess a validity of office without the equipment intellectual, moral, and spiritual, which will enable them to expound and exemplify the great truths of the gospel. Can they be clothed with the lofty, the awful function of ambassadors of Christ, by a manual ceremony, which links them to a chronological chain of officials, whose character, however flagitious, cannot neutralise the efficacy of their priestly acts? In the apostolic instructions respecting the qualifications which are to be possessed by the bishop or presbyter, is there any trace of the dogma that there can be authority without fitness, or that there can be fitness without faith, and without that grace which assumes and secures that its possessor will " deny ungodliness and worldly lusts, and live soberly, righteously, and godly in the present world" ? Of the validity of orders, divorced from a competent endowment of intellectual and spiritual powers and sympathies, that apostle, to whose writings `we owe our chief directorium on the nature of the Christian ministry and its qualifications, knows nothing. With him, a validity of orders which was but conventional and formal, was a fiction. His validity was not independent of the inner qualifications, but was determined by them. The fitness to preach, or to perform any duty in the Church, preceded the authority, and was its chief warrant, the authority neither creating the fitness nor dispensing with it.

This relation of validity of office to the possession of appropriate qualifications would be recognised at once in any department of life in which reason can play freely without the blinding influence of theological prejudices. There is nothing indeed of which men are growing more impatient than claims of dignity, and, authority, and office, which are unsupported by corresponding competence of faculty and character.

Nothing would be more resented in a civilised and enlightened nation than the existence of a caste of physicians or surgeons, whose authority to practise on the constitutions of the people rested on ordination only, while the question of their knowledge anatomical, physiological, chemical, and pathological, was wholly subordinate. The validity of their healing commission, so far as it is formal and recognised, is now made to depend, happily for their patients, on their tested knowledge, of their possession of which both they and the public are assured by the certificates of qualified and incorruptible examiners. What, however, would be the estimation in which a medical lineage would be held whose only validity was grounded on the allegation, even if true, that they had inherited their healing orders from Æsculapius through means of a ritualistic ceremony, which neither communicated, certified, nor implied the existence of the special knowledge which such a caste imperatively requires? And still further, what, if the medicaments employed were alleged to owe their restorative virtue not to any inherent and absolute quality, but to certain words uttered over them, or