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 The conception of priestho 
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THE 
 
 CONCEPTION OF PRIESTHOOD 
 
HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
THE 
 
 CONCEPTION OF PRIESTHOOD 
 IN THE EARLY CHURCH 
 
 AND IN THE 
 
 CHURCH OF ENGLAND 
 
 W. SAN DAY, D.D., LL.D. 
 
 LADY MARGARET PROFESSOR OF DIVINITY AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH 
 HONORARY FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE 
 
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 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1898 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Of the sermons which follow, three were 
 preached before University audiences in the 
 Chapel of Trinity College, Dublin, and at St. 
 Mary's, Oxford, and the fourth in Christ Church 
 Cathedral. Only the first two were preached 
 continuously; the fourth in this volume was 
 third in order of time and fell in the middle 
 of the Long Vacation. I have not hesitated 
 to alter what I had originally written wherever 
 I thought that it could be improved. 
 
 There is something that I do not wholly like 
 in preaching upon burning questions. The quiet 
 steady building up of Christian people in per- 
 manent truth is without doubt the more excellent 
 way. But it is just the fringe of permanent truth 
 that is apt to be controversial, and it is often 
 through controversy that the solid body of 
 
vi 
 
 Preface 
 
 acknowledged truth is enlarged. On the other 
 hand, it is indeed easy for any one to mistake 
 what may seem to him a certain call to express 
 what is in his mind on the topics of the moment. 
 But risks of this sort are risks that must be run. 
 It is impossible to tell how far a call is real until 
 the attempt has been made to respond to it ; and 
 attempts that should not have been made very 
 soon find their level and are forgotten. 
 
 It has fallen to me in the course of the follow- 
 ing pages to speak much and often of a near 
 neighbour and dear friend, to whom, since we 
 were brought together, I have been greatly in- 
 debted — and all the more indebted because our 
 antecedents and ways of looking at things are so 
 different. He will not, I know, think it incon- 
 sistent with our friendship if I discuss these 
 serious matters with him as freely in public 
 as I should do (if I could) in private. For one 
 who is halting in speech and slow in getting his 
 thoughts into order, the compulsion of print is 
 a distinct advantage. And I have a feeling that 
 the antithesis which subsists between us is one 
 that will need to work itself out on a larger 
 
Preface 
 
 vii 
 
 scale, if the reconciliation and concentration of 
 forces for which so many of us are looking is 
 to be accomplished. 
 
 During the five or six months which, in the 
 intervals of other things, the preparation of these 
 sermons has covered, events have moved fast in 
 the Church of England, and the situation to-day 
 is not exactly what it was when the sermon 
 which comes last in the volume was preached. 
 The most important fact that has intervened has 
 been the Primate's Charge, which will, I imagine, 
 chiefly be felt as a strong and timely defence of 
 our threatened comprehensiveness. It never 
 was more necessary that this should be main- 
 tained, and that in wider interests than our own. 
 The double aspect of our Church constitutes 
 at once its greatest difficulty and its greatest 
 opportunity. If we can overcome the difficulty, 
 and succeed in harmonizing the differences with- 
 in our own borders, there is a good hope that 
 the effect may be felt beyond them. 
 
 Only as this little book was going to press 
 there came into my hands a treatise by the 
 Rev. B. J. Kidd on The Later Mediaeval Doctrine 
 
viii 
 
 Preface 
 
 of the Eucharistic Sacrifice, published under the 
 auspices of the Church Historical Society. This 
 is a full and exact examination of the subject, 
 and should certainly be consulted by all who 
 desire to see the question touched on p. 87 
 worked out with detailed precision. 
 
 Christ Church, Oxford, 
 November, 1898. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Unity of the Church i 
 
 II. The Origin of the Ministry 35 
 
 Note on Clem. Rom. ad Cor. xliv. 1-3 . . 70 
 
 III. Sacerdotalism 73 
 
 IV. The Present Situation 105 
 
I 
 
 THE UNITY OF THE CHURCH 
 
I 
 
 Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there 
 are diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And there are 
 diversities of workings, but the same God. who worketh all things in 
 all. i Cor. xii. 4-6 (R.V.). 
 
 There are two ways of approaching the New 
 Testament and the institutions and doctrines of 
 the early Church, which stand to each other 
 in rather sharp contrast. One of these has a 
 recognized name and certain recognized canons, 
 but I am not sure that this can be said of the 
 other; and I hesitate to give it a name which 
 might not be accepted and might do it an in- 
 justice. The first, of which I think I may speak 
 as recognized, is the Historical Method. The 
 other I may perhaps be allowed, purely for 
 convenience and with all due reserve on the 
 grounds mentioned, to call the Logical Method 
 as opposed to the Historical. 
 
 These two methods are related to each other 
 somewhat in the way in which Induction is 
 related to Deduction. I remember that there 
 B 2 
 
4 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 is, as I suppose the philosophers would tell 
 us, no such thing as pure Induction or pure 
 Deduction ; in every so-called inductive process 
 there is an element of deduction, and in every 
 so-called deductive process there is an element 
 of induction. But if that is so, the terms would 
 be all the more appropriate as applied to the 
 methods of which I am speaking. In neither 
 is there anything really hard and fast. Both 
 are in their way more or less mixed. Still, very 
 broadly and generally speaking, the tendency of 
 the one may be said to be inductive, and that 
 of the other deductive. In other words, the 
 tendency of the one is to argue upwards from 
 facts or from particulars to principles, and 
 that of the other is to argue downwards from 
 principles to facts and particulars, and always 
 to interpret the particular in the light of the 
 universal. The one method, following the 
 course of external events, sees the principle at 
 work gradually emerging from them ; the other, 
 seizes first upon the principle, and with this 
 firmly in hand threads its way through the 
 events, classifying, characterizing, and judging 
 them by their relation to the principle. 
 
 For some time past opposite tendencies which 
 
The Unity of the Church 5 
 
 might be thus described, have made themselves 
 felt in a field of inquiry which is of great 
 importance in the study of Christian Origins — 
 the inquiry as to the conception of the Church 
 in early Christian times and as to the corre- 
 sponding conception and practical development 
 of the Ministry. Within the last year they have 
 been presented probably in clearer antithesis 
 than ever before — certainly in antithesis so 
 clear as to bring the question of method into 
 conscious prominence — by the publication of 
 two books, the posthumous volume of Dr. Hort's 
 lectures and sermons entitled The Christian 
 Ecclesia and Dr. Moberly's Ministerial Priest- 
 hood. Both books stand out above the general 
 level of current theological literature, the second 
 perhaps in especial degree because of its very 
 able dialectic and the uncompromising boldness 
 and sharpness of outline in which it sets forth 
 a theory which in recent }^ears, although it has 
 no doubt been strongly held by a large section 
 of the Anglican Church, has not in an equal 
 degree had the ear of the general public. 
 Perhaps it was time that the balance should 
 be redressed. In any case it is just through 
 such sharp formulation of opposing views that 
 
6 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 permanent advances in the apprehension of 
 truth are made. 
 
 It would be difficult for two writers to adopt 
 more opposite methods. And it seems to me, 
 if I am not mistaken, that this oppositeness of 
 method is answerable for an appearance of 
 greater oppositeness in conclusion than really 
 exists. For the present I take a single point, 
 but that a point which is fundamental in its 
 bearing upon the whole position — 'the nature 
 of Church Unity/ 
 
 The later writer criticizes the earlier on this 
 head. He finds his conception of the unity of 
 the Church inadequate, and he evidently thinks 
 that the inadequacy is deep rooted, that it goes 
 behind details of exegesis and that it marks an 
 inherent defectiveness of teaching. 
 
 There does indeed seem to be a real difference, 
 and one which we certainly ought to look full 
 in the face. But I believe that it is emphasized 
 rather more than it need be emphasized; and 
 so far as I am able to judge it seems to me that 
 the language used by Dr. Hort more exactly 
 represents the tenor of Scripture, and by the 
 careful way in which it is guarded saves us from 
 consequences which we may be glad to be spared. 
 
The Unity of the Church 7 
 
 It is not denied that there is in a great deal 
 of this language the glow of a noble enthusiasm. 
 'Glow' is the word which best expresses the 
 effect with which this enthusiasm makes its way 
 outwards. Severely self-critical, not ready in 
 expression, and sincere to the remotest fibre 
 of his being, it was impossible for Dr. Hort to 
 set down a syllable of mere rhetoric or that he 
 did not deeply feel. But he was a man of 
 strong convictions; he held nothing on which 
 his mind was really made up that he did not 
 intensely hold; and there cannot be a doubt 
 that this article of his creed was one that he 
 would have himself claimed as a foundation 
 truth of his thinking. 
 
 But the purpose with which he wrote was 
 historical. He traces the process by which 
 Church after Church was founded, a process 
 which to the eye of a careless onlooker might 
 have seemed fortuitous ; the great Church of 
 Antioch deriving its origin from certain name- 
 less disciples scattered in the persecution which 
 arose about Stephen, visited for a long time 
 by none of the Twelve, and shaping its course 
 in no direct dependence on them, guided and 
 prompted by a little band of prophets and 
 
8 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 teachers whose names fall rather into the second 
 than the first rank of those which history has 
 handed down to us ; the great Church of Rome 
 even more conspicuously a product in the first 
 instance of what might seem an accidental 
 aggregation of little groups of Christians from 
 this country, and from that finding their way 
 as if by a natural magnetism to the centre 
 of the Empire; the long list of Churches of 
 St. Paul's foundation owning allegiance indeed 
 to him as their founder but owning none to 
 the Churches of Judaea, though at his earnest 
 entreaty using every effort to translate the 
 fellowship of Christians into substantial fact by 
 a liberal contribution to their material needs. 
 A careless onlooker might well, as I have said, 
 see nothing but accident in this. We know 
 that it was not accident, but the working of 
 a Providence never absent from the Church 
 of Christ, but more signally manifest in that 
 age than in any other. The actors in these 
 events, leaders as well as followers, must have 
 been for the time absorbed in them. Only by 
 degrees there would dawn upon their minds 
 the conception of a Church ' one ' in the sense 
 of the Nicene Creed, embracing all the scattered 
 
The Unity of the Church 9 
 
 communities in a high transcendental union ; 
 for it was long before there was any such 
 centralized system of organization as that which 
 culminated in mediaeval Rome and even then 
 did not include, or only included imperfectly 
 and for a short time, the whole of Christendom. 
 So far as the evidence which has come down 
 to us permits us to see, St. Paul was the first 
 to take in the full grandeur of the vision which 
 these events had been preparing. He gives it 
 expression for the first time in the Epistle to 
 the Ephesians. That Epistle is well described 
 as 1 the harmonious outpouring of thoughts that 
 had long been cherished but had not as yet 
 found right and profitable opportunity for full 
 utterance, thoughts that doubtless had grown 
 and ripened while they lay unspoken, and now 
 had been kindled afresh by the conjuncture 
 which had at length been reached in the Divine 
 ordering of events ; for now, after weary years 
 of struggle and anxiety, what St. Paul recognized 
 as sure pledges for the essential unity and 
 essential universality of the Church of Christ 
 had been visibly bestowed from on high 1 / 
 Those are Dr. Hort's words ; and it would 
 
 1 The Christian Ecclesia, p. 280 f. 
 
io The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 be easy to quote many others like them 
 which bear the strongest witness that this 
 ' essential unity and essential universality ' (i. e. 
 comprehensiveness) of the Church of Christ 
 was very far from being indifferent to him. 
 It did indeed lie very near his heart. 
 
 But then he speaks of the unity of the 
 universal Ecclesia as 'a truth of theology and 
 of religion, not a fact of what we call ecclesi- 
 astical politics V This is the distinction to which 
 exception is taken 2 , or at least to the application 
 of it. It is worth while to note the epithets 
 that are used on the two sides. Dr. Hort, as 
 we have seen, speaks of ' essential unity and 
 essential universality.' On the other side we 
 find the epithets ' dominant,' 1 paramount,' ' per- 
 emptory' recur several times 3 . 
 
 I will consider presently the significance and 
 validity of these different modes of expression. 
 But we shall do well first to see how far the 
 opposing views really coincide with each other. 
 For indeed the common ground between them 
 is very large ; and that it is so large is, I cannot 
 
 1 The Christian Ecclesia, p. 168. 
 
 2 Ministerial Priesthood, p. 26 f. 
 
 s Ibid., pp. 3, 9, 10, 26, and perhaps elsewhere. 
 
The Unity of the Church n 
 
 but think, a cheering and hopeful sign for the 
 extent to which our Church may close its ranks 
 and march forward in the spirit of comradeship 
 to the work that lies before it. 
 
 For the purpose of determining the extent 
 of the common ground I will take the analysis 
 of the idea of Church Unity as it is given in 
 the first chapter of Ministerial Priesthood. We 
 find there certain lower forms of unity discussed, 
 and not denied or discarded but treated as 
 subservient to the highest. 
 
 First there is the idea of what is called a 
 1 purely accidental unity ' as though the Church 
 had consisted in the first instance of a number 
 of individual units which by degrees under pres- 
 sure of circumstances coalesced into a society. 
 The two authors would be agreed in rejecting 
 this as an adequate account of the origin of the 
 Christian Church, though it might not be an 
 untrue description of certain aspects of the 
 process of unification seen merely from without. 
 
 Next is taken up the idea which marks a 
 further step in advance upon this — the idea, 
 namely, that out of such accidental coalescence 
 of units there gradually grew up the conception 
 of unity as an ideal to be aimed at. It is a 
 
i2 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 universal experience that individuals acting in 
 a society are stronger than the same number 
 of individuals acting each alone. And there 
 can be no question that through such practical 
 experience the sense of brotherhood in the 
 smaller Christian communities would be daily 
 strengthened. And from the smaller communi- 
 ties it would pass to the larger groups until these 
 were bound together, in a sort of federation. 
 This too is a vera causa, but not a sufficient 
 cause for what we know to have been the 
 course of early Christian History. 
 
 Above these lower kinds of unity arising 
 ultimately out of practical advantage rises the 
 philosophical conception, based upon the demon- 
 strable incompleteness of the individual life. In 
 connexion with this there occurs the profound 
 remark which is well worth pondering that t not 
 in abstraction, or isolation, but in communion 
 lies (it may be) the very meaning of personality 
 itself 1 .' Man cannot develop the highest part 
 
 1 Ministerial Priesthood, p. 5. A very similar thought is to be 
 found in Hort, Hulsean Lectures, p. 194 : ' All life in the higher 
 sense depends on some fellowship, an isolated life is a contra- 
 diction in terms. Fellowship is to the higher life what food 
 is to the natural life — without it every power flags and at last 
 perishes.' 
 
The Unity of the Church 
 
 13 
 
 of himself except in relation to his fellows. 
 Thus life in society satisfies a high necessity 
 or craving of our natures and not merely those 
 that are lower. The sense of this too no doubt 
 contributed, however unconsciously, to weld 
 together the scattered units which made up 
 the Christian Church. 
 
 But for the Christian, supreme above even 
 this philosophical conception of unity, is the 
 theological. If the Church is in something 
 more than mere metaphor the Body of Christ, 
 if there is circulating through it a continual 
 flow and return of spiritual forces, derived 
 directly from Him, if the Spirit which animates 
 the Body is One, then the Body itself also 
 must be in essence one. It has its centre not 
 on earth but in heavenly places, where Christ 
 sitteth at the right hand of God. It is there- 
 fore one in a sense which is truly both essential 
 and transcendental. 
 
 This essential and transcendental unity would 
 be as fully recognized by Dr. Hort as by his 
 critic. It is just what he means in speaking 
 of it as a ' truth of theology or of religion/ 
 I do not doubt that he would have also 
 recognized certain consequences which flow 
 
i4 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 from this. He too would say that this tran- 
 scendental unity cannot be only transcendental. 
 It is, and it must be, continually realizing itself 
 in the Church upon earth. No Christian, and 
 no society of Christians, can escape the pressing 
 duty of making the unity which exists in name 
 more and more real and vital. Let us lay down 
 all this in the strongest terms possible. But 
 when we have done so, there will still be two 
 questions unanswered : (i) the question as to the 
 extent to which the unity of inward essence 
 requires a corresponding unity of outward 
 organization ; (2) the question as to the exact 
 nature of the obligation which it imposes, the 
 exact place of this duty in the scale of Christian 
 duties generally. 
 
 (1) Unity is one thing, uniformity is another. 
 A high degree of * essential 5 unity is compatible 
 with a much lower degree of formal unity. 
 When we are considering the unity of the 
 Church, the most obvious analogy that presents 
 itself is that of the unity of the State. But in 
 the case of the State the unity of the body 
 politic is not only consistent with, but it actually 
 gains from a great amount of local variety. 
 
 Take the British Empire at this moment. Is 
 
The Unity of the Church 15 
 
 it the less a unit, is it the less an empire be- 
 cause it includes within its bounds a perplexing 
 multiplicity of local constitutions— vassal states, 
 protected states, crown colonies, self-governing 
 colonies ? Experience has taught us as a nation 
 that different races and communities of different 
 history and origin are not all to be governed 
 upon the same lines. It has taught us that 
 a loose tie may be far more effective than one 
 that seems closer. It has taught us the wisdom 
 of allowing constitutions to grow and adapt 
 themselves to varying needs and circumstances. 
 It has taught us the strength and flexibility that 
 comes from a generous recognition of local 
 freedom. The impressive celebrations of last 
 year, with the spirit of loyalty which they evoked 
 and the deep-seated strength to which they bore 
 witness, put the seal for ever upon a lesson 
 which had been slowly learnt. 
 
 Something of the same lesson had been learnt 
 centuries ago by a race with no less practical 
 instincts than our own. The pages of the New 
 Testament are studded with indications of the 
 way in which imperial Rome knew how to build 
 up a like unity upon diversity. The politarchs 
 at Thessalonica, the duumviri with their lictors 
 
16 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 at Philippi, the Asiarchs at Ephesus, the legatus 
 in Syria, the procurator in Judaea, the pro- 
 consuls in Cyprus and at Corinth, the tetrarchs 
 of Galilee and Ituraea, the two Agrippas with 
 their title of King, remind us how many and 
 varied types of government and administration 
 were held to be, and were, entirely compatible 
 with inner cohesion and stability. 
 
 I do not quote these examples to prove at 
 once that a like degree of variety is admissible 
 in the case of the Church. I only quote them 
 as evidence that a stringent conclusion cannot 
 be drawn a priori. It does not follow that 
 because the Church is one, it can have but 
 a single type of outward organization. What 
 types it can have, and what type it is best that 
 it should have, must be determined by other 
 methods, and in particular by the old appeal to 
 Scripture and to History. 
 
 (2) To the Scriptures also we must go if we 
 would determine the nature of the obligation 
 entailed by the unity of the Church. We have 
 seen that this has been described on the one 
 hand by such terms as ' dominant/ ' paramount,' 
 ' peremptory/ taking it at once into the region 
 of practice and giving to it a foremost place in 
 
The Unity of the Church 17 
 
 the complex scheme of Christian duties ; and 
 on the other hand we had it described as rather 
 a 1 truth of theology and religion ' than a fact 
 of ecclesiastical politics. 
 
 To which of these two descriptions does the 
 language of the New Testament correspond 
 most nearly ? Unity of spirit, harmoniousness 
 of action, mutual deference and consideration, 
 the absence of self-assertion, are no doubt en- 
 joined in the imperative mood. That the Church 
 as the Body of Christ is one is a postulate of 
 Christian belief 1 . But as this oneness is con- 
 ditioned by the presence of the Holy Spirit, it 
 would seem that wherever there were the fruits 
 of the Spirit the oneness in question was in 
 some measure satisfied. Not a word is said 
 about uniformity of outward organization. And 
 the great passage in which the Lord Himself 
 speaks most directly of the oneness of His 
 followers, is not a command having reference 
 to the present but a prayer pointing to a distant 
 future. ( Neither for these only do I pray, but 
 for them also that believe on Me through their 
 word ; that they may all be one ; even as Thou, 
 Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, that they also 
 
 1 Eph. iv. 4. 
 C 
 
18 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 may be in Us : that the world may believe that 
 Thou didst send Me. And the glory which 
 Thou hast given Me I have given unto them ; 
 that they may be one, even as We are one ; 
 I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may be 
 perfected into one ; that the world may know 
 that Thou didst send Me, and lovedst them, even 
 as Thou lovedst Me 1 / There is nothing here 
 that we can call ' peremptory ' ; the unity of 
 Christians is not treated as a matter of com- 
 mand, written as it were on tables of stone, but 
 as a principle working its way gradually to 
 fulfilment under that Divine Providence which 
 governs the world. Our Lord prays for this 
 fulfilment in the same manner in which He 
 bids us pray that the Kingdom of God may 
 come, and that His will may be done on earth 
 as it is in heaven. 
 
 These distinctions will seem to some fine- 
 drawn, but their practical importance is seen 
 when we come to apply them to the actual state 
 of things around us. 
 
 We are confronted with the fact that the 
 unity of the Church has been broken. Chris- 
 tendom is divided into a number of bodies, many 
 
 1 John xvii. 20-23. 
 
The Unity of the Church 19 
 
 of which do not recognize or hold communion 
 with each other. Some are further removed 
 from organic unity than others. And the judge- 
 ment which we form of these separated bodies 
 will depend directly upon what we take to be 
 the nature of the unity of the Church, and the 
 nature also of the obligation to maintain it. 
 On the view which we form of these points 
 will hang our estimate, not only of the fault 
 incurred in the breach of unity, but also of 
 the possibilities of reunion. 
 
 Our great divisions date mainly from the 
 sixteenth century. And it is very probably 
 true that throughout that century there was an 
 insufficient sense of the obligation of unity. 
 From that time to this, especially throughout 
 Northern Europe, the centrifugal tendency — if 
 we may call it so — has prevailed. At the present 
 moment there is a reaction, and men are earn- 
 estly seeking to reunite the severed members. 
 
 Of course there were reasons for the sever- 
 ance. And it is just here that the question 
 as to the nature of the obligation of unity 
 comes in, where one obligation is weighed 
 against another, and where the lower has to 
 yield to the higher. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 As a problem of history the estimate which 
 we form of the Reformation is most delicate 
 and difficult. It greatly, needs renewed ex- 
 amination with full knowledge of the facts, and 
 with more resolute impartiality of judgement. 
 
 I can only speak as one who does his best 
 to aim at the latter qualification. My own more 
 special studies have lain too much in other 
 directions for me to make any claim to the 
 former. 
 
 At its best the Reformation was a moral 
 revolt against corruptions and abuses which 
 had reached a climax at the moment when it 
 broke out. It was an intellectual revolt in 
 defence of nascent truth which it was sought to 
 suppress, as well as against perverted develop- 
 ments which could not stand the test of reason. 
 It was a spiritual revolt against doctrines which 
 at least in their popular acceptation were too 
 often and too grossly materialized. 
 
 If we are to do justice to the leaders of the 
 Reformation we must bear these things in mind. 
 We must give them full credit for the better 
 part of the motives which impelled them to 
 undertake the conflict, and for the courage and 
 steadfastness with which it was sustained. We 
 
The Unity of the Church 21 
 
 must remember what the conflict meant, a very 
 different thing from sitting in our easy chairs 
 and writing to the newspapers as we do to-day. 
 We must remember also how difficult it was 
 for men in all the confusion and heat of battle 
 to see the exact perspective of things as we may 
 now hope to see it. 
 
 But, on the other hand, if we would do justice 
 to the forces which made for resistance ; we shall 
 have at every turn to check the facts as to the 
 extent of the corruptions and abuses — or, to put 
 the same thing more positively, as to the amount 
 of genuine and sincere Christianity which existed 
 along with and in spite of them. I feel sure that 
 Protestant writers have too much underrated 
 this 1 . We shall have to distinguish between 
 the popular distortions of doctrine and practice 
 and the same doctrine and practice under a more 
 enlightened interpretation. 
 
 1 Let us, e. g., put before our minds one or two facts : that the 
 Imitation was a product of the century before the Reformation, 
 and that the conditions under which it was produced had a rather 
 wide extension ; that it was in the same century that Fra Angeiico 
 was painting in his cell at St. Mark's ; that Luther himself derived 
 a great part of his impulse to the spiritual life from Staupitz and 
 the Augustinians ; that Sir Thomas More died for conscience sake 
 and for his fidelity to the old order— the whole Reformation 
 produced no finer character. 
 
22 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 Among the points which we should have to 
 consider is one which has lately been brought 
 up afresh, and which affects intimately the whole 
 course of controversy both in those days and 
 in our own. This is the relation of the inward 
 to the outward, of the forms and institutions in 
 which the religion of the time was embodied 
 to the religion itself. In the controversies of 
 the Reformation much stress was laid upon the 
 antithesis of inward and outward, and stress is 
 continually being laid upon it by the advocates 
 of Reformed teaching. In particular it played 
 a prominent part in Bishop Lightfoot's well- 
 known Essay on the Christian Ministry. 
 
 This position of Bishop Lightfoot's is chal- 
 lenged by Dr. Moberly, who insists that it is 
 wrong to put the outward into antithesis to 
 the inward. The outward, it is maintained, 
 should be rather the natural expression of the 
 inward. The complex system of the Christian 
 ministry and Christian ordinances should be 
 the appropriate vehicle of the life within. If 
 we look out into the world of nature we see 
 everywhere body in the closest relation to 
 spirit. ' All flesh is not the same flesh : but 
 there is one flesh of men, and another flesh of 
 
The Unity of the Church 23 
 
 beasts, and another flesh of birds, and another 
 of fishes 1 .' The law holds good that the inner 
 vital force clothes itself with a corresponding 
 organism. And this organism becomes as 
 necessary to the life for which it is the vehicle 
 as the life is necessary to it. 
 
 We must needs regard this as a sound 
 analog} 7 , and we must accept the warning 
 which goes along with it. If there is a serious 
 divergence between the outward and the in- 
 ward, — if the outward becomes utterly inade- 
 quate or fault}' as a vehicle of the inward, the 
 proper remedy is to correct the outward, not 
 to destroy or ignore it ; to re-establish the 
 missing harmony, not to despair of producing 
 any harmony at all. 
 
 The reminder which we have received of 
 these truths is well-timed. It is to be hoped 
 that we shall not forget them. 
 
 And yet after all is there not great excuse for 
 those who have pressed the contrast between 
 inward and outward too sharply? May they 
 not seem to have the highest authority at least 
 for the intention of what they do ? The feeling 
 of contrast between inward and outward is with- 
 
 1 1 Cor. xv. 39. 
 
24 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 out doubt very widespread, especially on all the 
 Protestant side of Christendom. And when we 
 inquire after its origin I strongly suspect that it 
 is due, ultimately if not immediately, more than 
 to any other cause, to the general impression 
 left by the reading of the Gospels. The reading 
 may be to some extent a misreading, an imper- 
 fect reading, a reading which does not sufficiently 
 note the whole of the context ; still the mistake 
 is not unnatural. The minds of Christians have 
 been haunted all through the centuries by those 
 scathing denunciations of the Scribes and Phari- 
 sees, the religious leaders of the day. 'Woe 
 unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! 
 for ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and 
 have left undone the weightier matters of the 
 law, judgement, and mercy, and faith : but these 
 ye ought to have done, and not to have left the 
 other undone. . . . Woe unto you, scribes and 
 Pharisees, hypocrites ! for ye cleanse the out- 
 side of the cup and of the platter, but within 
 they are full from extortion and excess (i.e. the 
 cup and the platter are filled with the proceeds 
 of extortion and licence, ill-gotten gains and the 
 material of self-indulgence). Thou blind Phari- 
 see, cleanse first the inside of the cup and of 
 
The Unity of the Church 
 
 25 
 
 the platter, that the outside thereof may become 
 clean also V 
 
 When we look into such passages carefully, 
 we see how exquisitely they are balanced, — 
 just the right amount of stress, neither less nor 
 more : ' These ye ought to have done, and not 
 to have left the other undone. . . . cleanse first 
 the inside of the cup and of the platter, that the 
 outside thereof may become clean also/ The 
 tithing of mint and anise and cummin is not to 
 be neglected. The greater duty does not cancel 
 the less. And the cleansing of the inside of 
 the cup has for part of its object that the outside 
 may be clean. The words of grace do indeed 
 need careful and accurate study if we are to 
 obey the maxim to ' see life steadily and see it 
 whole' — not merely to discern the right from 
 the wrong, but to observe a due balance and 
 proportion in the discriminating of right and 
 wrong. 
 
 And yet, human nature being what it is, so 
 hasty and so impulsive, so impatient of study 
 and so prone to take sides and see one thing 
 in glaring light and another not at all, can we 
 be surprised if hundreds and thousands and 
 
 1 Matt, xxiii. 23-26. 
 
26 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 tens of thousands of Christians have risen 
 from the perusal of this twenty-third chapter of 
 St. Matthew with the belief that the external 
 and official embodiment of religion is in con- 
 stant danger of corruption, and that it is more 
 likely to contradict than to represent the 
 motions of the Spirit within? 
 
 If it were not for the injustice of arguing 
 simply from one age to another, we should have 
 to confess that the Gospels do go a long way 
 in the support of such a paradox. 1 Thou, when 
 thou fastest, anoint thy head, and wash thy face ; 
 that thou be not seen of men to fast, but of thy 
 Father which is in secret 1 .' Here we have an 
 extreme case. The lower law that a certain 
 attitude of mind finds its expression in a certain 
 practice is not only suspended but reversed by 
 the action of a higher law which imperiously 
 demands sincerity and singleness of motive. 
 And wherever there is a like collision of prin- 
 ciple the Gospel rule leaves us in no manner 
 of doubt which we ought to follow. There 
 are other requirements of the Gospel which are 
 more dominant, more paramount, more peremp- 
 tory than the requirement of external unity or 
 
 1 Matt. vi. 17 f. 
 
The Unity of the Church 27 
 
 the maintenance of traditional forms of eccle- 
 siastical or liturgical order. 
 
 If, therefore, the Reformers went to greater 
 lengths than they need have done, — if they 
 considered too little (as I believe they did 
 consider) the obligation of a full and real unity 
 among Christians, not only in the sense and 
 spirit of brotherhood, but in the outward forms 
 of an organization expressive of brotherhood, 
 we must at least give them credit for setting 
 the greater commandments of the law in their 
 proper place. If they broke up the unity — 
 not, be it remembered, of the whole Church 
 but of the Western Church, for the separation 
 of East and West had taken place centuries 
 before and on grounds still more inadequate 
 — they aroused themselves to do this in de- 
 ference to what seemed to them the yet more 
 imperative claims of right and truth. We need 
 not think that their right was perfect right or their 
 truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth, 
 to regard them as having a considerable degree 
 of justification for their action, so much justifica- 
 tion as should in any case exempt them from 
 excessive blame. They had the root of the 
 matter. They had the earnest desire to do 
 
28 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 what was right and to believe what was true ; 
 and in pursuit of this end they were ready 
 to sacrifice their personal ease, to run great 
 risks, and even to put in jeopardy life itself. 
 
 And another thing that needs to be remembered 
 is that none of the Reformers believed them- 
 selves to be breaking the true unity of the 
 Church. There was not one who would not 
 have confessed from his heart that the Church 
 is one. Some of them, it is true, like Zwingli 
 and Calvin, sought this unity in the invisible 
 Church rather than in the visible. And for 
 the stress which they laid upon this distinction 
 the crying faults of the visible Church must 
 bear a great part of the blame. 
 
 But others like Luther and Melanchthon, 
 though they make the distinction, do not press 
 it to the extent of antithesis or contrast but 
 see that the visible and the invisible Church 
 are really the same. The teaching of the 
 Reformers on this head is very interesting 
 and deserves to be set out in some detail. 
 Those who desire to look into the subject 
 will find this ably done in one of the collected 
 essays 1 of Albrecht Ritschl. 
 
 1 Gesammelte Aufsdtze, Freiburg i. B. und Leipzig, 1893. 
 
The Unity of the Church 
 
 29 
 
 Time prevents me from tracing as I should 
 like to do the course of the doctrine in Huss 
 and Zwingli. And in regard to Calvin I can 
 only pause to point out that even he allows 
 that 1 wherever we see the word of God sincerely 
 preached and sincerely heard, where we see the 
 Sacraments administered according to Christ's 
 ordinance, there it can in no wise be doubted 
 that there is in some sense a Church of God 
 (illic aliquam esse dei ecclesiam nullo modo ambi- 
 gendum est) V These are almost the familiar 
 words of our own Nineteenth Article, and 
 the}* are valuable as far as the}* go, though 
 not carried out quite consistently. 
 
 Luther goes a step further. He distinguishes 
 indeed the Spiritual Church, the object of faith, 
 which he identifies with the 1 Communion of 
 Saints/ and the 1 Corporeal Church,' the out- 
 ward marks of which are, not Rome or any 
 other local centre, but Baptism, Sacrament, 
 and Gospel. It is true that he speaks some- 
 what disparagingly of this hierarchical corporeal 
 Church as in its quality as corporeal, in its 
 hierarchy and its ritual, an ordinance of men ; 
 but though he gives them different names he 
 
 1 Inst. iv. L par. 9. 
 
30 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 regards them as really only different aspects of 
 the same Church. 'The first/ he says, 'which 
 is natural, thorough, essential, and real, we will 
 call a spiritual inward Christendom. The other 
 which is artificial and external, we will call 
 a bodily and outward Christendom, not/ he 
 goes on, ' that we desire to separate them but 
 (to keep them) together, as though I were to 
 speak of a man and were to call him on the 
 side of his soul a spiritual man and on 
 the side of his body a bodily V And this 
 language is made yet more explicit by Melanch- 
 thon who will not hear of an invisible Church 
 apart from the visible. ' And let us not invent/ 
 he says, ' a Church invisible and without voice 
 (invisibilem et mutam), though consisting of men 
 alive in the flesh, but let the eyes as well as 
 the mind contemplate the multitude of them 
 that are called, i. e. of those who profess the 
 Gospel of God 2 .' 
 
 I quote these passages because they present 
 a welcome coincidence, from a perhaps rather 
 unexpected quarter, with a leading idea of 
 Dr. Moberly's who insists that 'the Church 
 
 1 Werke, xviii. 1215, ap. Ritschl, u. s., p. 76. 
 
 2 Corp. Re/, xxi. 825, ap. Ritschl, p. 86. 
 
The Unity of the Church 31 
 
 militant and the kingdom triumphant are the same 
 Church/ and who illustrates their identity by the 
 continuous personality of the individual saint — 
 the saint on earth with all his sins and short- 
 comings, and the same saint in heaven purified 
 and glorified. 
 
 It will be said that even if an agreement is 
 reached on this head — as I think it may be 
 reached — the main difficulty is still left, viz. 
 the difficulty as to what we are to say of those 
 good men outside the pale whom we cannot 
 think that God will reject, even though they 
 have not complied and perhaps have not had 
 the opportunity of complying with all the con- 
 ditions of membership of the Visible Church. 
 But is not the answer something of this kind ? 
 
 Theology is meant for normal conditions, 
 not for abnormal. We trouble ourselves too 
 much about these latter, which we can in fact 
 only leave to God — assured that in so doing 
 we are leaving them to One who knoweth 
 whereof we are made and remembereth that 
 we are but dust, to One who will make every 
 allowance that can possibly be made for the 
 errors as well as for the misfortunes of His 
 children. 
 
32 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 And for the rest it seems to me that in this 
 as in many other controversies which divide 
 men most at the present time, the issue is 
 very largely one of words rather than of things. 
 Those who insist on the Invisible Church mean 
 by the Church not the society of the potentially 
 redeemed, but of the actually and ultimately 
 redeemed, the congregation of the 'just made 
 perfect.' Those who lay stress on the Visible 
 Church mean by the Church the society of 
 those who bear certain outward marks of being 
 Christ's people. There can be no question that 
 both these are real entities, but they are also 
 very different entities; the common name of 
 ' Church ' includes them both ; and it con- 
 stantly happens that one set of persons in 
 speaking of the Church has the one idea 
 in their minds, while another set of persons 
 in using the same comprehensive title has 
 the other. Nor are even these two senses 
 exhaustive. The ' Ideal Church,' though it 
 covers in part what was aimed at by the 
 phrase 'Invisible Church,' is not identical 
 with it, and it stands in a different relation 
 to the outward society as we see it. Here 
 again when we speak of the Church some 
 
The Unity of the Church 33 
 
 may be thinking of the Catholic Church, the 
 Church Universal (of which in its turn the 
 definitions may be different), some of the 
 National Church, some even of the simple 
 congregation. 
 
 Now if in every case in which debate arises 
 about the Church the disputants were careful 
 to add the discriminating epithet which showed 
 precisely which of the divergent senses they 
 had in view, their meaning would be clear, 
 and the rest of the world would know against 
 what and for what they were arguing. But 
 this careful definition of terms is usually 
 wanting. And the consequence is infinite 
 confusion, and a vague interchange of random 
 strokes which wound those for whom they 
 were not intended. 
 
 1 If there is battle, 'tis battle by night, we stand in the darkness, 
 Here in the melee of men, Ionian and Dorian on both sides, 
 Signal and password known ; which is friend and which is 
 foeman 1 ? ' 
 
 This is one aspect of things, the aspect which 
 is depressing and discouraging. But there 
 is of necessity another aspect which is more 
 hopeful. If so much of our present contro- 
 
 1 Clough, Bo/hie, canto ix. 
 D 
 
34 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 versies turns upon false issues, — if we see 
 men upon all sides using different language 
 because they are thinking about different things, 
 attacking others for what they do not hold and 
 holding themselves other views than those 
 which their opponents attribute to them, ought 
 it not to be possible, by carefully correcting 
 our ideas from the outset, by ascertaining 
 exactly what our opponents mean as well as 
 what we mean ourselves, by looking throughout 
 less at words and names than at realities, to 
 find a much larger amount of common ground 
 than we have done hitherto, and to mitigate the 
 bitterness of conflict by removing all that is 
 removable of its causes ? I firmly believe that 
 it is possible to do this. The moment may 
 seem inauspicious, when the minds of men 
 are heated and the air is full of tumult. But 
 that is all the more urgent reason why the 
 friends of peace on both sides should lay 
 their thoughts calmly before each other and 
 seek to bring them into closer harmony. 
 
II 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE MINISTRY 
 
 D 2 
 
II 
 
 And God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondly 
 prophets, thirdly teachers, then miracles, then gifts of healings, helps, 
 governments [wise counsels, R. V. marg.], divers kinds of tongues. 
 i Cor. xii. 28. 
 
 Are we to conceive of the Christian Ministry 
 as originating by devolution from above, or 
 by evolution from below ? The question has 
 recently been propounded to us in a very 
 trenchant manner, and it has received a very 
 trenchant answer. But as this answer is given 
 in the form of a criticism of one, if not two, of 
 our most illustrious scholars, the two theories 
 may be regarded as directly confronting each 
 other, and it is highly desirable that they should 
 be examined, and that the decision between 
 them should be made as deliberately and care- 
 fully as possible. 
 
 The question may be approached in several 
 different ways, and by different methods. The 
 
38 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 particular method which I propose to myself will 
 be that of following the history of the Ministry 
 in its earlier stages, and at each step in the 
 process endeavouring to determine which of 
 the two theories fits the data most satisfactorily. 
 We must be prepared for the possibility that 
 there may be elements of truth in both, and if 
 that should be the case, we shall try to discover 
 what they are and how they are to be combined. 
 
 There are two points which appear to need 
 a little clearing up at the outset. When we 
 speak of devolution and of evolution as applied 
 to the Ministry we may mean one of two things. 
 We may have in our minds the commission to 
 minister in the holders of office, or we may 
 be thinking not so much of the holders of office 
 as of the offices themselves as they emerge in 
 history. 
 
 Bishop Lightfoot's sketch of the growth of 
 the Christian Ministry no doubt has reference 
 mainly to the latter. But the criticism which 
 is directed against him appears to embrace 
 both at once. It may be right that it should 
 do this; it may be true that the one question 
 involves the other. But it may conduce to 
 clearness of thought if in our minds we keep 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 39 
 
 them apart. This, for instance, is the way in 
 which the problem is stated. ' Must true min- 
 isterial " character " be in all cases conferred 
 from above ? Or may it sometimes, and with 
 equal validity, be evolved from below ? Is 
 uninterrupted transmission from those who had 
 the power to transmit a real essential? or can 
 the Church originate, at any point, a new ministry 
 whose commission of authority should exceed 
 or transcend what had been ministerially re- 
 ceived 1 / I submit that however they may be 
 connected, the transmission of ministerial ' cha- 
 racter ' or commission and the creating of a new 
 form of ministry are not quite the same thing. 
 And when Bishop Lightfoot is criticized for 
 ignoring the whole question, I should have 
 thought that w T hat he really did was to try to 
 consider the second half without considering 
 the first. I am not clear that he was wrong in 
 this. In other words : the question whether 
 the Church did or did not create a new form 
 of ministry seems to be a question of historical 
 fact which can be answered as such, and, if it 
 can, ought to be so answered independently 
 of any further principle which may be involved 
 
 1 Ministerial Priesthood, p. 116. 
 
40 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 in it. I propose myself to take the two pro- 
 positions in this order. How far this can be 
 done legitimately should appear from time to 
 time on the particular issues. 
 
 Another preliminary question on which it is 
 well to have an understanding is as to what 
 is meant by evolution in such a connexion as 
 that before us. There is no doubt a mechanical 
 and godless theory of evolution which would 
 be repudiated by the Christian scholars who 
 have dealt with the Ministry. For them, so 
 far as they have ever used the word or so far 
 as it can fairly be used to describe their views, 
 it is as far as possible from being either me- 
 chanical or godless. What a Christian means 
 by ' evolution ' is only a particular method, and as 
 it would seem the usual method of the Divine 
 working. Behind it, in it, through it there is 
 always the Providence of God, shaping the 
 course of human events in accordance with His 
 sovereign Will. If the God of Israel, watching 
 over His people, slumbered not nor slept, as 
 little can we think of the Author of the New 
 Covenant as slumbering or sleeping. If that 
 New Covenant was to be conveyed throughout 
 the world, we may well see His hand in every 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 41 
 
 step which conduced to its more efficient 
 propagation. 
 
 One part of the Divine working may help to 
 illustrate another. There is nothing in which 
 we believe the Spirit of God to have been 
 more immediately present than in the process 
 of Revelation. Yet God's revelation of Himself 
 as we see it is made to us through men. And 
 these men, prophets or ' wise men ' or apostles, 
 or whatever they may be, did not by becoming 
 the vehicles of it lose any of their attributes 
 as men. They wrote down naturally what they 
 thought, and their thoughts have an inner 
 coherence with which the Divine action upon 
 them does not interfere, though the result, when 
 we see it, is not what would have been attained 
 by any unaided natural process. We may take 
 a verse in 1 Thessalonians as a typical descrip- 
 tion : ' For this cause we also thank God with- 
 out ceasing, that, when ye received from us the 
 word of the message, even the word of God, 
 ye accepted it not as the word of men, but, as 
 it is in truth, the word of God, which also 
 worketh in you that believe V The preaching 
 of St. Paul was a genuine human product and 
 
 1 1 Thess. ii. 13. 
 
42 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 expression of the mind of the Apostle, but it 
 was not one whit the less the word of God 
 speaking through him. And precisely in the 
 same way we may be prepared to find the forms 
 of Christian Ministry growing, as it might seem, 
 out of ordinary human needs, 'the creation of 
 successive experiences, and changes of circum- 
 stance/ and yet all the time carrying out a 
 Divine plan in a Divinely appointed way. 
 When we speak of 'evolution' let it be this 
 which we are understood to mean. 
 
 An inquiry as to the history of the Ministry 
 naturally begins with the Apostles. And here 
 we find ourselves in a region which has of late 
 been the scene of somewhat sharp debate. Is 
 it the case that the Apostles (i. e. the Twelve) 
 received ' a formal commission of authority for 
 government from Christ Himself 1 '? 
 
 We are apt to think of the Twelve as if the 
 title ' Apostle ' were far more freely given them 
 in the Gospels than it is, and as if they were from 
 the first invested with powers of which there 
 is no trace. The name appears to have been 
 given them with a very definite significance. 
 
 1 Hort, Christian Ecclesia, p. 84 ; cf. Moberly, Ministerial Priest- 
 hood, p. 29; Gore, Ep. to the Ephesians, p. 269 ff. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 43 
 
 We are told that our Lord appointed Twelve, 
 to whom He gave this name, ' that they might 
 be with Him, and that He might send them 
 forth (i'va duoo-TeWr] avrovs) to preach, and to have 
 authority (k^ova-Lav) to cast out demons 1 / The 
 word indeed appears to have its proper sense 
 of 'missioner/ Their nearness to the person 
 of Jesus seemed to have for its object in the 
 first instance to fit them for their 'mission/ 
 During their Master's lifetime this mission of 
 theirs appears to have been a small and sub- 
 ordinate matter, of less importance in itself 
 than as a prelude or preliminary exercise for 
 their great commission in the future. It was 
 not until their Lord was on the point of de- 
 parture that the greater commission to ' go and 
 make disciples of all the nations 2 ' was unfolded 
 to them. 
 
 Suspending for the moment our judgement 
 upon a group of sayings in the Gospels, I think 
 it may be said that there is nothing else in 
 the Gospels and Acts which might not be 
 sufficiently accounted for as the Providential 
 outgrowth of this position. It was inevitable 
 that those who had stood so near the person 
 
 1 Mark iii. 14 f. 2 Matt, xxviii. 19. 
 
44 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 of the Lord, who were supposed to know His 
 mind, and who were able to tell so much more 
 than any one else about Him, should take the 
 lead, or have it willingly conceded to them. We 
 find the function of the Apostles as witnesses 
 to Christ, and in particular to His Resurrection 
 strongly insisted upon. And for the rest as 
 they had been the most prominent of our Lord's 
 disciples during His life, so also were they the 
 most prominent after His Ascension. It is in 
 keeping with the view that the deference paid 
 to them was natural and spontaneous that just 
 those come to the front who possessed a natural 
 ascendency of character, while the rest remain, 
 so far as our evidence goes, very much in the 
 background. It should be remembered also 
 that St. James, 1 the Lord's brother,' whatever 
 the precise nature of his authority, probably 
 did not derive it from the fact that he had 
 had a place among the Twelve. 
 
 We are expressly told that the action taken 
 as a result of the Conference at Jerusalem was 
 that of ' the Apostles and the elders with the 
 whole Church V It is surely a straining of 
 
 1 Acts xv. 22. It cannot be called strict exegesis to say with 
 Canon Gore that the passage (Acts xv. 24-28) implied ' a govern- 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 45 
 
 the text to see in this any special prerogative 
 of the Apostles. They act as leaders of the 
 Church and give shape to its resolutions, but 
 those resolutions go forth with the authority 
 of the Church as a whole. The letter which 
 is addressed to the Gentile Christians of Antioch 
 and the surrounding district is written in the 
 names of the Apostles and presbyters, but the 
 express mention of the presbyters shows that 
 the Apostles are not acting by themselves, and 
 the fact that the presbyters of the Church of 
 Jerusalem could have as such no authority 
 whatever over the Church of Antioch may be 
 taken as proof that Apostles and presbyters 
 together are really writing in their representative 
 capacity. Behind them they have the assembly 
 of the whole Church. We observe further that 
 the conditions as to the intercourse of Jews 
 with Gentiles laid down in the letter, although 
 there is claimed for them the sanction of the 
 Holy Ghost— although, that is, there was an 
 evident consciousness that the meeting of which 
 the letter was the outcome was moved by that 
 prophetic inspiration with which so many of 
 
 mental authority, which, if it is shared by the presbyters, is 
 substantially that of the Apostles ' (Ep. to Eph., p. 270). 
 
46 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 its members were endowed, and although the 
 conditions in question are thus imposed by 
 a weight of authority greater than that of any 
 recorded act since the Day of Pentecost, yet 
 rapidly fell into desuetude and were dropped 
 simply because the course of events left them 
 behind and without any formal abrogation. In 
 this they supply a warning that the Providence 
 of God works far more by the active teaching 
 of history than by any processes of formal 
 authentication. 
 
 The history of the Church of Antioch gener- ^ 
 ally points the same moral. It is a Church 
 with which so far as we can see — and in this 
 case the argument from silence seems valid — 
 Apostles qua Apostles appear to have had ex-^ 
 tremely little to do. It was founded without 
 their aid. When it has existed for some time 
 they send Barnabas, but only to report. He 
 reports and exhorts, but nothing more. We 
 hear much of t prophets ' in connexion with it — 
 not only of the little group which send forth 
 Paul and Barnabas on their mission, but also 
 Agabus and Judas and Silas. There can be ^ 
 no doubt that the life of the Spirit was strong 
 within the Church, and yet we hear nothing of 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 47 
 
 any formal organization. When relief is to 
 be sent to the Churches of Judaea those who 
 send it are described simply as ' the disciples V 
 When Paul and Barnabas are sent up to attend 
 the Conference the word used is eragav, without 
 subject expressed. The letter in reply is ad- 
 dressed simply to 'the brethren in Antioch 2 ,' 
 &c, and the same term is used twice in the 
 following context along with 3 rb wXijOo? as de- 
 scriptive of the Church. Is this accident ? We 
 cannot be sure that it is not. No doubt the 
 Church at Antioch received an organization 
 similar to that of the other Churches sooner 
 or later, but the time seems to have been 
 delayed. 
 
 So far as we have gone we have seen nothing 
 to require or even to suggest that the Apostles 
 were invested with any specific authority, other 
 than that which must naturally and inevitably 
 (i.e. Providentially) have attached to them. But 
 we have left behind certain passages in the 
 Gospels to which it will now be well to return. 
 They are first the promise to St. Peter that 
 to him should be given the keys of the kingdom 
 of heaven, and that what he bound on earth 
 
 1 Acts xi. 29. 3 Ibid. xv. 23. 3 Ibid. vv. 30, 32, 33. 
 
48 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 should be bound in heaven, and what he loosed 
 on earth should be loosed in heaven 1 . Then 
 a similar promise to the whole body 2 ; the subject 
 previously mentioned is 'the disciples,' which 
 is ambiguous. And lastly we have St. John's 
 account of the meeting in the upper room 
 on the evening of the first Easter Day, when 
 the risen Lord breathes upon those who are 
 assembled, there, saying 1 Receive ye the Holy 
 Ghost : whose soever sins ye forgive, they are 
 forgiven unto them ; whose soever sins ye retain, 
 they are retained V 
 
 In these passages there is no doubt a distinct j/ 
 committal of powers, in the one case, as it would 
 seem, of framing laws or deciding what was 
 binding and what was not ; in the other case of 
 declaring the conditions of forgiveness, whether 
 (as Bishop Westcott holds) for classes or for 
 individuals. On whom are these powers con- 
 ferred? In the first instance the recipient is 
 without doubt St. Peter in his single person, 
 perhaps as to some extent representative, but 
 how far is not defined. In the second passage S 
 1 the disciples ' may mean, but do not certainly 
 
 1 Matt. xvi. 19. 
 
 2 Ibid, xviii. 18. 
 
 3 John xx. 22 f. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 49 
 
 mean the Twelve. In the third passage it is 
 a debated point who were addressed. If we 
 take the narrative in St. Luke to supplement 
 that in St. John those present are ' the Eleven ' 
 and those who were with them, that is the 
 nucleus of the Church of Jerusalem. Just 
 before the appearance of the Lord the two way- 
 farers who had returned from Emmaus were 
 added to the number. If it was the same upper 
 room in which we find the disciples met in 
 Acts i, there would be an additional presump- 
 tion that the gathering was not confined to the 
 Apostles. 
 
 ✓Tt cannot be said that any one of these 
 passages points to powers conferred upon the 
 Twelve, as such. It is more probable than 
 not that others were included in the commission 
 given besides the Twelve. And even if the 
 Twelve had a certain prerogative, it would seem 
 to be less in their own right than as repre- 
 senting the whole body of the Church. 
 
 There is another group of passages in which 
 the Apostles are singled out more expressly. 
 I refer in a lower degree to the place in 
 Ephesians where the Church is described as 
 'built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
 
50 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 prophets 1 ' — where the way in which ' prophets ' 
 (i. e. probably the New Testament prophets) are 
 coupled with the Apostles takes away somewhat 
 from the exceptional position assigned to the 
 latter ; moreover it is sufficiently clear that the 
 term 'Apostles' is used in the wider sense as 
 in i Cor. xii. 28, Eph. iv. 11, and the Didache, 
 and is not confined to the Twelve. The Twelve 
 are really in view in Matt. xix. 28, where it is 
 said that the twelve Apostles shall sit on twelve 
 thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, and 
 in Rev. xxi. 14, where the wall of the heavenly 
 city is described as having ' twelve foundations, 
 and on them twelve names of the twelve 
 apostles of the Lamb/ The sacred number 
 ' twelve ' was deeply fixed among the religious 
 associations of Israel; to &o£e/ca0iAo*> 2 repre- 
 sents the Chosen People as an ideal unit ; and 
 St. James, writing as a Christian, addresses his 
 epistle to the ' twelve tribes ' in a similar ideal 
 sense. No doubt these allusions imply a special ^ 
 dignity on the part of the Twelve, but there is 
 nothing to show that this dignity included a 
 direct commission to govern. The nearest ana- 
 logue would be that of the Patriarchs. The Jew 
 
 1 Eph. ii. 20. 2 Acts xxvi. 7. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 51 
 
 looked back wistfully to his descent from the 
 Patriarchs 1 , and the Christian in like manner 
 traced his spiritual descent to the Twelve 
 Apostles ; but in neither case is the precedence 
 involved other than one of honour. 
 
 The case of St. Paul illustrates well the process 
 by which a position of honour became also one 
 of authority ; but it does not carry the argument 
 further than this. The apostleship of St. Paul 
 had about it something irregular as compared 
 with that of the Twelve. He cannot quite 
 strictly be regarded as incorporated in their 
 number. The three places where he speaks 
 of his 1 apostleship ' 2 all seem to have the 
 missionary character strongly impressed upon 
 them. The ' seal ' of his apostleship to which 
 he points most triumphantly consists in the 
 converts he has made, the Churches he has 
 founded. ^The proof of it which the Judaean 
 apostles accepted was the actual success of his 
 missionary labours. Even if w T e could suppose 
 that St. Paul succeeded to any express pre- 
 rogative conferred upon the Twelve, I should 
 still think that the authority which he exercised 
 
 1 wv 01 narepes Rom. ix. 5 ; cf. iv. I, xi. 28 f., &c. 
 
 2 Rom. i. 5 ; 1 Cor. ix. 2 ; Gal. ii. 8. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 turned far less on this than on his claims as 
 the founder or spiritual ' father' of his Churches, 
 on his force and ascendency of character, and 
 on the gifts of the Spirit with which he was 
 richly endowed. I doubt if the Epistles contain 
 anything which will not be found to fall under 
 one or other of these heads. 
 ^ It were much to be wished that we knew more 
 about the wider use of the name 1 apostle ' — its 
 use I mean not merely for the 'delegate' of 
 a particular Church, as in 2 Cor. viii. 23, but 
 for what would seem to be a lesser copy of 
 the original institution. Suspected before, as 
 e.g. by Bishop Lightfoot, this use has been 
 y proved beyond dispute by the discovery of the 
 Didache] in which the wandering apostle and the 
 wandering prophet clearly take precedence of 
 the officers of the local Church. The existence 
 of this wider sense creates a certain amount of 
 ambiguity in more than one passage. It would 
 be a pertinent question to ask how far the 
 peculiar claim which is made for the Twelve 
 is supposed to extend. If it includes St. Paul, 
 does it also include St. Barnabas and St. James, 
 the Lord's brother? If it includes these, does 
 it include the whole class referred to in the 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 53 
 
 Didactic! And if it includes the whole class, 
 on what ground is the claim made for those 
 outside the direct recipients of the two com- 
 missions given by our Lord before and after 
 His Resurrection ? The absence of any sharp 
 boundary between the Twelve and the larger 
 class who bore the same name involves the 
 exclusive claim which is made for the Twelve 
 in serious difficulties. 
 
 After the Twelve the next appointment of 
 which we read in the New Testament is that 
 of the Seven, in whom we shall probably not be 
 wrong in seeing the prototypes of the later order 
 of ' Deacons.' The account of this appointment 
 is so instructive that I shall venture to read it as 
 it stands. 1 Now in these days, when the number 
 of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a 
 murmuring of the Grecian Jews [Hellenists] 
 against the Hebrews, because their widows were 
 neglected in the daily ministration. And the 
 twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto 
 them, and said, It is not fit that we should for- 
 sake the word of God, and serve tables. Look 
 ye out therefore, brethren, from among you 
 seven men of good report, full of the Spirit 
 and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over 
 
54 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 this business. But we will continue stedfastly 
 in prayer, and in the ministry of the word. . . . 
 And the}- chose — seven whose names are given — 
 whom they set before the apostles : and when they 
 had prayed, they laid their hands on them V 
 V May I say that the view which I am taking 
 of the origin of the Christian Ministry as a 
 whole might be regarded as modelled upon this 
 passage? It includes both the principles of 
 evolution and of devolution. It is indeed an 
 exact example of what I understand by ' evolu- 
 tion.' The appointment of the Seven arises out 
 of what might be called ordinary' natural causes, 
 which because the} 7 are so described may none 
 the less be carrying out a larger Divine purpose. 
 In proposing the appointment the Twelve are 
 moved by considerations of the higher expe- 
 diency. The initiative comes from them, and 
 certain parts of the formal appointment are 
 discharged by them — whether claimed by them 
 ^as a right or spontaneously left to them by 
 V the Church, does not appear. The Church as 
 a whole also takes an active part. They give 
 a willing consent to the proposal. They select 
 the candidates, examine their qualifications, and 
 
 1 Acts vi. 1-6. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 55 
 
 present them for the laying on of hands. One 
 can almost see by such a passage how easily 
 and naturally practical questions might solve 
 themselves, without any formal constitution or 
 established rule — by spontaneous deference and 
 good feeling on the one side, and desire for the 
 public good and the enlisting of willing service 
 on the other. The distribution of parts is per- 1 
 fectly appropriate, and would be equally appro- 
 priate whether there were any formal commission 
 behind it or not. The proof of such a com- t 
 mission appears to me very imperfect. But 
 even if it existed, I would far rather lay stress 
 on the beautiful spirit of co-operation which runs 
 through the narrative. The ideal temper, the 
 truly Christian temper, the temper befitting the 
 followers of Him who bade His disciples not to 
 let themselves be called Rabbi, seems to be such 
 as this, — where there is no raising of the question 
 of authority, where it is neither asserted on the 
 one hand nor denied on the other, where it is 
 not even felt with any touch of self conscious- 
 ness on either side, but where there is just 
 a quiet, affectionate deference, which has no 
 laws because it needs none. 
 / This may be the point at which a few words 
 
56 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 should be said on the much debated question 
 of the Maying on of hands/ It was used at 
 what we should call 1 Ordinations ' or the solemn 
 setting apart for office, but it is not simply to 
 be identified with this. It accompanied any act - 
 of blessing, as we see by many examples, from 
 the blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh by 
 Jacob to the children whom our Lord took 
 up in His arms, ' laying His hands upon them V 
 A similar act was frequently employed by our 
 Lord in His miracles of healing 2 , and by others, 
 as by Ananias in restoring St. Paul to sight 3 , and 
 by St. Paul himself in the healing of Publius 4 . 
 A"Nor in the cases of consecration was it confined 
 to consecration to office. The 'prophets and 
 teachers/ we read, laid their hands upon Paul 
 and Barnabas, when they were sent out on 
 their new work of carrying the Gospel to the 
 Gentiles 5 . The same passage shows that al- 
 though Philip the Evangelist did not himself 
 1 lay hands ' upon his Samaritan converts, but 
 waited for the coming of Peter and John, the 
 rite was not reserved solely for Apostles, as 
 
 1 Mark x. 16 ; Matt. xix. 15. 
 
 2 Mark vi. 5 ; cf. i. 41, v. 23, &c. 
 4 Ibid, xxviii. 8. 
 
 3 Acts ix. 12, 17. 
 5 Ibid. xiii. 3. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 57 
 
 indeed we find it in the case of Timothy also 
 administered by the whole presbytery 1 . 
 - These varied uses at the same time make 
 it clear that although employed (as blessing 
 was employed) naturally and preferably by a 
 superior, the act did not denote the trans- 
 mission of a power or energy from one who 
 had it to one who had it not, because this would 
 not apply either to the case of Ananias or to 
 the prophets and teachers at Antioch sending 
 Paul and Barnabas on a mission which was 
 wholly new. It seems to have been rather a 
 symbolical act, in its origin similar to the 
 symbolical acts of the prophets of the Old 
 Covenant, appropriate to the invoking of blessing 
 from on high, emphasizing and making yet 
 more solemn the prayer which it accompanied. 
 It is thus in principle at one with the use 
 of liturgical rites and ceremonies in general. 
 i/But the prayer was the essential thing, as 
 St. Augustine saw. Arguing that He who 
 could confer the Holy Ghost must be Himself 
 God, he says : * For none of His disciples gave 
 the Holy Ghost. They prayed indeed that He 
 might come upon those on whom they laid 
 
 1 1 Tim. iv. 14. 
 
58 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 their hands, they did not give Him themselves. 
 A custom which the Church in the case of its 
 officers retains to this day V 
 ^The importance of this point is clear. Let us 
 grant that a certain order is normal, and that it 
 has historical prescription in its favour. Let us 
 grant that at a certain point in history, through 
 an exaggerated reaction largely caused by the 
 fault of those who administered that order, its 
 course was broken and another order substi- 
 tuted. >/Yet when under that order ministers 
 have been for many generations solemnly set 
 apart and the Divine blessing solemnly invoked 
 upon them by sincere and devout people, not 
 without signs following that the blessing so 
 invoked has been given, even supposing that 
 there was an initial mistake, it seems to me, 
 on a Biblical estimate of the relative value of 
 things, altogether disproportioned to make that 
 initial mistake a cause of fundamental or per- 
 manent division. 
 We shall form a wrong idea if we think of the 
 
 1 De Trin. xv. 26, § 46 : 1 Immo quantus est Deus qui dat Deum ? 
 Neque enim aliquis discipulorum eius dedit Spiritum sanctum. 
 Orabant quippe ut veniret in eos quibus manus imponebant, non 
 ipsi eum dabant. Quern morem in suis praepositis etiam nunc 
 servat Ecclesia.' 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 59 
 
 growth of the Christian Ministry, with its accom- 
 paniments, after the manner of the framing of 
 a written constitution, in which certain leading 
 principles are recognized from the outset and 
 carried out in detail with logical precision. 
 ^The Christian Ministry, like most other ad- 
 ministrative forms, it is probable, rather grew 
 than was made. And that by a process which 
 if we could have seen it we should very likely 
 have described as quite simple and natural — 
 though because natural it is not to be supposed 
 that it is any the less Providential. 
 
 There is a good example of this in the next c> 
 office to which we come, that of the ' elder ' 
 or ' presbyter.' It is now, I imagine, generally 
 agreed that this is nothing else than the standing 
 office of the Jewish synagogue transferred to 
 the Christian Church. We are not told any- ^_ 
 thing about the transference, but we find the 
 office existing in the Church at Jerusalem at 
 the time when St. Paul and St. Barnabas arrive 
 with contributions from the Church of Antioch *. 
 
 It could hardly be otherwise. It might con- 
 ceivably have happened that a whole synagogue, 
 or at least the majority of the congregation, 
 
 1 Acts xi. 30. 
 
6o The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 came over bodily to Christianity. If so, it 
 would naturally retain its constitution just as 
 it was.MBut short of this there can be little 
 doubt that some who held the office of presbyter 
 would be converted, and they would certainly 
 not cease to be regarded as presbyters were 
 regarded because they became Christians. * The 
 Jewish presbyters apparently were heads of 
 families who took their place as such by right 
 of birth. We read of Paul and Barnabas ' ap- 
 pointing elders ' (xtipOTovrjo-avrts irpecrfivTepovs) 
 in the Churches of Lycaonia and Pisidia. 
 But this is what would naturally happen in 
 newly founded Gentile communities modelled 
 at least to that extent upon the Jewish. 
 
 Not essentially different would seem to have 
 been the state of things in regard to the re- 
 maining order of kmo-KOTroi or ' bishops/ If 
 we could trace the sequence of events we 
 should probably find that each stage of the 
 history grew out of the last by an unforced 
 and natural process. But unfortunately here 
 there are great gaps in the evidence, and we 
 are left largely to conjecture. /We do not know 
 how far the creation of the episcopate in the 
 
 1 Acts xiv. 23. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 61 
 
 later sense was a deliberate act or under what 
 circumstances it arose. uWe know that during 
 a period covered by St. Paul's speech at Miletus, 
 the Epistle to the Philippians, the Pastoral 
 Epistles, the Epistle of Clement of Rome, and 
 probably the Shepherd of Hermas, there was 
 a plurality of tmo-KOTroi in each Church. *"~In 
 other words the terms kirivKOTroi and wpao-fivTepoi 
 were applied to the same persons. c We know 
 that at the time of the martyrdom of Ignatius, 
 i.e. probably about 110-117 a. d., at Antioch in 
 Syria, and in some of the Churches in Western 
 Asia Minor there was already established a 
 monarchical Episcopate in the later sense. But 
 how the transition was brought about we can 
 only guess. ^ 
 
 It is well known how many attempts have 
 been made in recent times to solve this problem. 
 None of them admit of absolute verification. 
 ^-^But I confess that to me the most probable 
 theory appears to be that advocated by Dr. Hort, 
 and substantially before him by that most 
 scientific of German scholars, Dr. Loofs, of 
 Halle — the theory, namely, that k-rrio-KOTros was 
 in the first instance not so much the name of 
 an office as a descriptive term, bringing out 
 
62 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 its characteristic functions l . You will see that 
 this at once accounts for the first half of the 
 problem, how it comes about that two words 
 are used to describe the same office. — 
 
 On this view npeo-^vrepo? is the name of the 
 office, and kirio-KOTros tells us further that the 
 duty of the presbyter was to exercise over- 
 sight. It is an additional argument in favour 
 of the theory that it is entirely in harmony 
 with the usage of the word up to that date, the 
 end of the first century, both in literature and 
 in inscriptions. eTrio-KOTreLv, kmo-KOTros, kino-Kimf) 
 are far more common in a general sense than 
 as designating a particular office. 
 
 There remains what may be called the second 
 half of the problem — how it was that the plural 
 kiTLcrKOTroi, representing a college of presbyters 
 with equal rights, became a single ewLa-KOTro? with 
 superior rights to the rest of the presbytery. 
 This is a still more difficult question than the 
 
 1 ' Mir scheint in der vorschnellen Annahme, kiriffKoiros sei fruher 
 Amtsname, Titel gewesen, ein irpurov ipcvdos vieler neuerer 
 Konstruktionen zu liegen ; die altere Arischauung halte ich 
 durchaus nicht fur veraltet ; imoKoiros ist eine Funktionsbezeich- 
 nung und bis ins endende zweite Jahrhundert hinein gehen die 
 Spuren davon, dass man ein Bewusstsein davon hat dass 
 emaKonos weniger Amtsname als Amtsbeschreibung ist ' (Studien 
 u. Kritiken, 1890, p. 628). 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 63 
 
 first, and in regard to it we are still more thrown 
 back upon conjecture, as positive data fail us 
 even more completely. 
 
 . We may think with the older writers of the 
 position of Timothy and Titus as Apostolic 
 delegates, or of St. James as president of the 
 presbyters of Jerusalem, or with Rothe 1 and 
 Loning 2 of Symeon his successor, or with 
 Ramsay 3 of the presbyter whose duty it was 
 to correspond with other Churches (as in the 
 case of Clement of Rome), or with Harnack 
 and Loofs 4 of the presbyter who took the 
 lead in the conduct of worship, especially in 
 the Eucharist. There is no reason for treating 
 these different explanations as alternatives. 
 They all represent causes which were realty 
 at work ; and they all converge upon the same 
 result. Nor would they exclude the possibility 
 that there were other causes still which have 
 not yet been discovered. 
 
 But the important point for us is that if we 
 had been living then we should have seen 
 the episcopate grow up round us— it is very 
 
 1 Cf. Lightfoot, Philippians, p. 199 ff. 
 
 - Die Gemeindeverfassung des Urchristenthums (Halle, 1889), 
 p. 116 f. 
 
 3 Church in the Roman Empire, p. 367 ff. * Op. cit., p. 652 f. 
 
64 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 probable — gradually and imperceptibly from 
 such natural causes as these. It did not drop 
 from the skies. It was not instituted by a voice 
 from heaven. And yet, although it was due 
 — humanly speaking — to the operation of these 
 mediate causes, it may be none the less a 
 Divine ordinance. We no longer think of the 
 Bible as directly dictated to its human authors, 
 and yet we still believe it to be in a most true 
 sense the word of God. And in like manner 
 in regard to the episcopate we may trace its 
 origin to secondary causes, and yet believe that 
 these causes were all the time in the hand of 
 God and carrying out His purposes. ^/ 
 
 There is, however, another and yet larger 
 question that meets us as soon as we think of 
 the beginnings of formal office in the Christian 
 Church. We are reminded that in the first 
 great age of the Church much that afterwards 
 became the subject of formal office was pro- 
 vided for in another way and by a more direct 
 inspiration. The Epistles of St. Paul, and the 
 Acts read in the light of the Epistles of St. Paul, 
 give us a vivid picture of the forces which 
 really made the Apostolic Age what it was. 
 They are summed up under the general name 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 65 
 
 of the 'Spiritual Gifts.' And to appreciate 
 these gifts at their full value we need further 
 to remember that it was in virtue of their 
 possession of these gifts that St. Paul and 
 St. Peter and St. John, and not only they, 
 but the nameless author of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews, wrote as they wrote in words that 
 we still read to this day. But it was a peculiarity 
 of these ' Spiritual Gifts ' that they were not 
 communicated only through recognized channels. 
 They were so communicated at the prayer of 
 Apostles and others, but that was not the only 
 method of communication. 1 The wind bloweth 
 where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound 
 thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, 
 and whither it goeth : ' even such is the way 
 of the Spirit. Under the Old Covenant there 
 had been sometimes a succession of the prophets, 
 so that one was called and appointed by his 
 predecessor as in the case of Elijah and Elisha. 
 But it was by no means always so. The 
 prophet Amos answered Amaziah, 1 1 was no 
 prophet, neither was I a prophet's son; but 
 I was an herdman, and a dresser of sycomore 
 trees: and the Lord took me from following 
 the flock, and the Lord said unto me, Go, 
 
 F 
 
66 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 prophesy unto My people Israel 1 .' The very 
 greatest prophets, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekielwere 
 called in this way. And there can be no doubt 
 that the same double rule held under the 
 New Covenant as under the Old. There too 
 Prophecy was a very real thing, and some 
 prophets received their call and their inspiration 
 through mediate agencies, and others directly. 
 
 The point to be noted is that God has not 
 only one way of working. He does work 
 through regular defined channels, but He also 
 works outside them. And His greatest working 
 of all has been often of this irregular kind. 
 This fact, as a fact, we ought to have very 
 present to our minds. 
 
 Yes, I shall be told; but it is a fact — or 
 a principle rising out of a fact— which it is 
 extremely dangerous to apply to any century 
 after the first. At one great extraordinary 
 conjuncture in the history of the world God 
 did use extraordinary means to produce ex- 
 traordinary effects; but the gate is opened 
 perilously wide if this is taken as a precedent. 
 We have recently been warned in earnest words 
 of the risk of allowing a claim to inspiration 
 
 1 Amos vii. 14 f. 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 67 
 
 simply because it is made *. It is well to keep 
 the warning in mind. 
 
 Still it cannot cancel the fact that God has 
 in the past been pleased to act in this manner. 
 And I cannot but think that it would be an 
 equal mistake on the other side to limit the 
 range of this action of His strictly to the period 
 embraced within the two covers of the Bible. 
 Outside that period, and outside the bounds 
 of any authorized Ministry there have surely 
 been men, neither prophets nor the sons of 
 prophets, who have been taken as it were from 
 the flocks or the sycomores and have yet done 
 a great work for God and for Christ. 
 
 Our Lord Himself laid down a rule which is 
 so simple that the experts in theology have been 
 often tempted to pass it by, though the common 
 sense of the unlearned clings to it. 1 Ye shall 
 know them by their fruits/ And applying this 
 test it seems to me that we must speak with 
 very great reserve. It is impossible to condemn 
 those whom God has visibly not condemned. 
 
 Let me take one example as typical of all. 
 It is an extreme example in both ways. The 
 Society of Friends meets, I suppose, with the 
 
 1 Ministerial Priesthood, p. no. 
 
68 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 most direct negative all those conditions which 
 are most strenuously asserted for a right minis- 
 tration of the Gospel. They do not acknowledge 
 any visible organization of the Church ; they 
 have no regularly constituted Ministry; they 
 dispense with outward Sacraments. And yet 
 there are few bodies which have upheld such 
 a high and uncompromising standard of Chris- 
 tian practice. There are few which have lived 
 more consistently up to their beliefs. There 
 are few which, in proportion to their size, have 
 done more to make Christian principle prevail 
 in the world at large. I refer of course to their 
 efforts in connexion with slavery, war, and the 
 state of prisons. 
 
 Any theory as to the nature of the Christian 
 Ministry must have its place for phenomena— 
 for paradoxes, if we will— like these. It must 
 not only have a place for them, but it must do 
 justice to them. But I greatly doubt whether 
 justice can be done by singling out a particular 
 principle and pressing it through in all its logical 
 severity without constant regard to what lies 
 on the right hand and on the left, i.e. to the 
 whole context of its expression in history. 
 
 It is a consolation to think that as to the great 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 69 
 
 fundamental principle of Ministry all Christian 
 men are agreed. Even those of whom I have 
 just spoken as rejecting all outwardly constituted 
 Ministry do so rather from excess than from 
 defect in the assertion of this principle. The 
 principle I mean that the ultimate sanction of 
 all work for God, and the entire enabling of 
 those who desire to work for Him must come 
 from God Himself. This is not in question. 
 And it is I conceive the most essential truth 
 in the claim that is made for the principle of 
 devolution. 
 
 Debate begins at the point at which we set 
 about to determine through what precise human 
 channels the Divine sanction and (in a less 
 degree) the Divine enabling should be con- 
 veyed. I do not say that this is a matter of 
 indifference. I do not say that here too there 
 is not a more and a less excellent way. All 
 the help and stimulus that can be given us to 
 find that way and to meet upon it when found, 
 is to be greeted with thankfulness. But do not 
 let us by one hand-breadth widen the breach 
 which divides us from our fellow Christians 
 beyond that to which we are absolutely com- 
 pelled. 
 
70 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 Note on Clem. Rom. ad Cor. xliv. 1-3. 
 
 It is contended that although the doctrine 
 of Apostolical Succession is not found in the 
 New Testament, it is laid down so explicitly by 
 St. Clement of Rome as to show that the 
 principle must really date from the time of 
 the Apostles. The passage in question is as 
 follows. I give the Greek text with the 
 ancient Latin version recently discovered by 
 Dom G. Morin. 
 
 Kal ol diroarroXoL f]Li$)v eyvoovav 81a tov Kvpiov 
 
 T]LL$)V '/r)(TOV XpLOTTOV OTL €pi$ €(TT(ll €7tI TOV OVOLtaTOS 
 
 Trj? kTriarKOTrfjs. Aid ravT-qv ovv rr\v airiav 
 TTpoyvcoonv €i\r)(f)6T€$ reXeiav KaTeaTrjcrav toi>9 
 irpotip-qiievovs, Kal Liera^v emvofirji/ eScoKav (or 
 SeSdoKacriv) oVa)?, kav kol/jltjOcoo'lv, 8ia8e£<QVTai erepoi 
 SeSoKL/xaa-fMeuoL di>8p€$ rrjv Xzirovpyiav avr&v. 
 Tovs ovv KaTaaraOeuTa? vtv €K€lvcov 77 Lieragv v(j> 
 iTepcov eXXoyiLxov dv8pa>v, o~vv6vSoKr)o~do~r)9 rrjs 
 €KK\r]o~ia$ 7rdo-7]9, Kal Xeirovpyrjo-avTas djiefXTTTCOS 
 
The Origin of the Ministry 71 
 
 TO) TTOLfiVLCO TOV XpLVTOV . . . TOVTOVS OV SlKCtlCD? 
 
 vofiigoftev aTTofidWzo-6ai rrjs Xeirovpyias. 
 
 cmvoprjv A Lat. c7ri8ofj.r)p C (cf. Syr.) : emfxovrjv, adopted 
 by Lightfoot, is a conjecture. The accession of 
 Lat. to the best MS. seems to establish eWo/^v. 
 
 ' Et apostoli nostri scierunt per Dominum 
 nostrum Ihesum Christum, quia contentio erit 
 pro nomine aut episcopatu. Propter hanc 
 causam prudentiam accipientes perpetuam prae- 
 posuerunt illos supradictos, et postmodum 
 legem dederunt, ut si dormierint, suscipiunt 
 viri alii probati ministerium eorum. Igitur illos 
 constitutos ab illis vel postmodum a quibusdam 
 viris ornatis consentiente aecclesia omne (sic), 
 et ministrantes sine querela gregi Christi . . . 
 hos aestimamus non debere eici ab administra- 
 tione.' 
 
 'And our Apostles knew through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ that there would be strife over the 
 name of the bishop's office. For this cause 
 therefore, having received complete foreknow- 
 ledge, they appointed the aforesaid persons, 
 and afterwards gave a further injunction that 
 if they should fall asleep, other approved men 
 should succeed to their ministration. Those 
 therefore who were appointed by them, or 
 afterwards by other men of repute with the con- 
 sent of the whole Church, and have ministered 
 unblamably to the flock of Christ . . . these 
 
72 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 men we consider to be unjustly deposed from 
 their ministration/ 
 
 St. Clement is insisting here on the regular 
 and responsible appointment of the Corinthian 
 presbyters. He does not hint in any way at 
 a transmission of powers. The erepoi eWoyifioi 
 dvSpts are not, as some translations of Clement's 
 language might lead us to suppose, placed on 
 the direct line of descent from the Apostles. 
 When we think of the importance of prophecy 
 and the activity of prophets in the Apostolic 
 age, it is very improbable that all who held 
 office or dignity in the Church were appointed to 
 it directly by Apostles in either the wider or the 
 narrower sense. The state of things described 
 by St. Clement is just what would be natural. 
 Nominations to office would be made by an 
 Apostle, if one was available, if not by those 
 whom the Church most trusted. But in all 
 cases the assent of the Church was required. 
 
Ill 
 
 SACERDOTALISM 
 
Ill 
 
 But I write the more boldly unto you in some measure, as putting 
 you again in remembrance, because of the grace that was given me of 
 God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus unto the Gentiles, 
 ministering the gospel of God, that the offering up of the Gentiles 
 might be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost. 
 Romans xv. 15, 16. 
 
 I suppose that the deepest cleavage at the 
 present moment in the Church of England is 
 that between those who hold and those who 
 deny the priestly character of the Ministry. 
 The single word 1 Sacerdotalism ' indicates the 
 opposing tendencies. And as it is far more 
 often on the lips of enemies than on those of 
 friends, it has contracted an ugly sound that 
 one would willingly avoid. But it may be best 
 once and again to adopt the other policy of 
 looking the difference full in the face, with 
 a view to see whether it cannot be reduced. 
 And the belief that it can be greatly reduced 
 
76 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 has prompted the words which I am to address 
 to you this morning. 
 
 I wish to ask you to consider whether the 
 difference which seems so absolute is not to 
 a greater extent than we are apt to suppose 
 one of names rather than of things; and the 
 inference that I would draw is that if on both 
 sides we steadily resist the temptation to use 
 provocative language, and as steadily compel 
 ourselves to look at the realities that are at 
 issue, instead of the shibboleths which we have 
 come by habit to attach to them, we shall have 
 more of the spirit of brotherhood and of the 
 strength and mutual confidence that comes 
 from it. 
 
 I am led to entertain this hope by a book 
 to which I have referred before in this place, 
 and which others besides myself have treated 
 as worthily representing a great cause, Dr. 
 Moberly's Ministerial Priesthood. The really 
 central argument in that book is an analysis and 
 discussion of the idea of Priesthood, starting 
 from a criticism of Bishop Lightfoot. Bishop 
 Lightfoot, taking the word 1 Priesthood 9 in a 
 certain sense, had deprecated its use in con- 
 nexion with the Christian Ministry. To this 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 11 
 
 it is replied that the sense thus ascribed to the 
 word is a wrong sense, and another is substituted 
 for it, the applicability of which to the Ministry 
 is strongly affirmed. 
 
 I ask you to observe how much of this turns 
 not upon any obstinate conflict of fact or even of 
 ideas, but on the appropriateness of the use of 
 a certain name ; and I ask you to consider how 
 easily the whole argument may be restated 
 without any variation in substance, but with 
 a result which is eirenic instead of controversial. 
 If the sense which Bishop Lightfoot puts upon 
 the word * Priesthood ' is wrong, it follows that 
 what he deprecates is not what his critic desires 
 to assert, and that what the critic asserts 
 is not what he had deprecated, so that except 
 upon the verbal question they are really argu- 
 ing on different planes, and at bottom it is quite 
 possible that they may be really agreed. I will 
 go further and say that they are to a very 
 large extent agreed, and that a great part of 
 Dr. Moberly's contention is simply common 
 Christian ground, which — apart from the par- 
 ticular way of putting it — may be accepted by 
 men of all parties, and at least raises no party 
 question. It is indeed a significant fact that on 
 
78 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 the constructive side the writer whom he quotes 
 most freely and with the fullest community of 
 ideas is the late Dr. Milligan, a Presbyterian, 
 though it is true a Presbyterian with exception- 
 ally wide sympathies and exceptional depth 
 of insight. 
 
 I do not by what I have said mean to imply 
 that the verbal question is a matter of indiffer- 
 ence or that it is one that may not quite legiti- 
 mately be argued. It is a question that may 
 well touch some tender sensibilities, because on 
 the answer given to it will depend whether 
 language freely used in the Early Church 1 and 
 increasingly used in the Mediaeval Church is 
 justified or abandoned. Besides, it may reason- 
 ably be maintained that a body of ideas is more 
 likely to have justice done to it if it is summed 
 up under a recognized name than if it is only 
 held in a state of tacit and loose acceptance. 
 
 I have anticipated thus much in order that the 
 
 1 It may be true that sacerdotal language in regard to the 
 Ministry is first employed (so far as we know) by Tertullian 
 in the West and perhaps by Origen in the East, but Ovaia 
 (irpoa<popa) of the Eucharist goes back to the Didache (14 ter) and 
 Justin Martyr {Dial. 41 ; cf. 28, 116, 117). The Eucharist was 
 constantly identified by early Christian writers with the Ovaia 
 tcaOapa of Mai. i. 11 (' in every place incense is offered unto My 
 name, and a pure offering'). 
 
Sacerdotalism 79 
 
 drift and tendency of what I am about to say- 
 may be clear from the outset. But it is time we 
 came to close quarters with the controversy as 
 it actually lies before us. Before, however, we 
 can do this with effect there is yet another 
 general question on which it is important to 
 have an understanding. 
 
 The discussion of the meaning of words as 
 a first step towards determining truth of ideas 
 is as old as Plato and Aristotle ; but there does 
 not appear to be even yet a satisfactory agree- 
 ment as to the course which such a discussion 
 should take. It is not sufficiently agreed what 
 is the meaning of a word. Is it what the word 
 is understood to mean in common everyday 
 language; or is it what the word as a fact 
 means in some typical or classical example ; or 
 is it w T hat the word ought to mean in a com- 
 prehensive philosophy of things ? 
 
 As between Dr. Moberly and Bishop Lightfoot 
 the ultimate divergence is really of this kind. 
 The question of the Priesthood drives us back 
 upon the further question of the nature of 
 Sacrifice, because the crucial point in the func- 
 tions of the priesthood is its relation to sacri- 
 fice. The burning question as to the Christian 
 
8o The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 Ministry is precisely this, Is the Christian 
 minister a sacrificing priest, or is he not ? If 
 he were merely called ' priest ' in the etymo- 
 logical sense of 1 presbyter/ there would be no 
 controversy. It is when the claim is made that 
 the functions of the priest include sacrifice that 
 controversy begins. 
 
 Now, in seeking to determine this point, it 
 cannot be considered unnatural that Bishop 
 Lightfoot should go to the Old Testament 
 institution of sacrifice. The Old Testament 
 presents us with a typical example of a priest- 
 hood, the leading function of which is the 
 offering of sacrifice. This supplies the standard 
 to which Bishop Lightfoot refers when he denies 
 that function to the Christian priesthood. I 
 submit that in so doing he is at least not open 
 to censure. A process so exceedingly natural, 
 so broadly intelligible, so directly in touch with 
 the instincts of the plain man cannot be otherwise 
 than legitimate. And his conclusion, limited 
 as it obviously must be, is nothing less than 
 self-evident: the Christian Ministry is not a 
 sacrificing priesthood in the Old Testament 
 sense of sacrifice. 
 
 But it is also a legitimate inquiry to ask 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 81 
 
 whether behind the Old Testament institution 
 of sacrifice, behind the Pagan sacrifices, behind 
 sacrifice as an institution in all its forms, there 
 is not an idea of sacrifice purified from all grosser 
 elements, independent of all the blood of beasts 
 shed on Jewish or Pagan altars, a pattern of 
 sacrifice laid up in the heavens and invested 
 with none but heavenly attributes, which may 
 be fulfilled as much and indeed far more in 
 Christianity than in Judaism. This is what 
 Dr. Moberly contends for. He starts from the 
 fact that the Death of Christ is described as 
 a sacrifice ; — and it is one of his points that the 
 conception of sacrifice in the case of Christ is 
 not to be too closely identified with His death ; 
 the death is an element in it, a necessary and 
 unavoidable element under the given conditions, 
 but not the whole or even the greatest part of it. 
 The offering of Himself to the Father by our 
 Lord Jesus Christ was an act of sacrifice. It 
 had so much in common with the Mosaic sacri- 
 fices that without death it would have been 
 incomplete and ineffectual for its purpose : 
 'Without shedding of blood there is no re- 
 mission.' Christ therefore died, and through 
 death made good His sacrifice. But what Christ 
 
 G 
 
82 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 does, that the Church, which is the body of 
 Christ, also does. And what the Church does, 
 that the Ministry, who are its executive organs, 
 also do. It follows that the New Covenant has 
 its sacrificial system as well as the Old. And 
 that system is not only concentrated upon the 
 single act of Christ but permeates the whole 
 society, and within the society finds its special 
 expression in the Priesthood. 
 
 Let us pause for a moment over these last two 
 steps where the reasoning may well seem to be 
 somewhat removed from ordinary apprehension. 
 There is a certain cycle of teaching the essence 
 of which is really common to St. Paul and 
 St. John, though the language in which it is 
 expressed is different, and hints of it are given 
 under the yet simpler forms of the Synoptic 
 Gospels. The imitation of Christ is no merely 
 external thing. It is, or it should be, an inner 
 appropriation, assimilation, and reproduction of 
 the law of the life of Christ. That law is in its 
 root and essence dying in order to live. The 
 Christian does not die in order to live exactly in 
 the full and transcendent sense in which Christ 
 died. His Death and His Rising again were 
 charged with a world-wide significance. They 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 83 
 
 had relation to the whole human race. In that 
 they were unique. The Christian follows in 
 his Master's steps afar off. But he too, so far 
 as in him lies, must ' die with Christ 1 as St. Paul 
 expresses it. He must die to sin ; he must put 
 off ' the old man ' ; he must struggle to free 
 himself from the meshes of temptation through 
 the flesh in which he is involved. He must 
 do all this not in his own strength but in the 
 strength of Christ, on whom his affections are 
 so concentrated that it is as if Christ and he 
 were actually one. 
 
 This is what St. John means, or what our 
 Lord Himself means in the version of St. John, 
 when He says ' I am the way— a text so im- 
 pressively expounded in the Hulsean Lectures of 
 Dr. Hort. It is really what the Synoptists also 
 mean when they speak of losing the life in order 
 to find it— that is losing the lower life, the life 
 dominated by the senses, in order to gain the 
 higher life, the life dominated by the Spirit. 
 
 All this, as I have said, is common Christian 
 doctrine — doctrine it is true, which belongs to 
 a high region of thought and of endeavour to 
 which it is hard for the average man to attain, 
 but yet which may be attained in indefinitely 
 
 G 2 
 
84 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 various degrees, and which is often attained more 
 fully in practice than it could be consciously 
 explained in theory. At least it corresponds to 
 no divisions of party. 
 
 Neither is there any party division really 
 involved, though we may seem to be coming 
 nearer to it, when we pass on with Dr. Moberly 
 to speak of the ceremonial appropriation of the 
 Death of Christ. If the Christian is to be made 
 one with Christ in His Death, there can be no 
 doubt that the ceremonial expression of this is 
 to be sought in the Holy Communion. What- 
 ever we may think as to the exact method by 
 which the sacrament operates, we must all, 
 whether Churchmen or Nonconformists, regard 
 it as the one appointed ceremonial means, the 
 only ceremonial means under the New Covenant, 
 of realizing to ourselves the Death of Christ. 
 This is undoubtedly what St. Paul intends when 
 he says, ' The cup of blessing which we bless, 
 is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? 
 The bread which we break, is it not a communion 
 of the body of Christ 1 ?' 
 
 We may rate higher or we may rate lower 
 the value of ceremonial means, but in any case 
 
 1 1 Cor. x. 16. 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 85 
 
 thus much is clear. The sacrament of the 
 Lord's Supper is common to nearly all Chris- 
 tians, and whatever else it may denote, it 
 denotes certainly this, the bringing home of 
 the Death and Sacrifice of Christ to the soul 
 of man. 
 
 I do not see that an)' reasonable exception 
 can be taken to the view that the Church in 
 its acts of Eucharistic worship identifies itself 
 with the Death of Christ ; and it is but a 
 natural step from this to say that it does 
 this through an ordained ministry as its 
 organs. 
 
 The language that one commonly hears 
 from those who would be thought to hold high 
 doctrine on these subjects is somewhat different, 
 though in effect it is the same. It is usually 
 said that the minister in the sacrament ' pleads ' 
 or 4 presents ' the Sacrifice of Christ ; and it is 
 by virtue of this pleading or presenting of 
 a sacrifice that he is himself described as 
 ' sacrificing.' 
 
 I submit, however, that to sacrifice and to 
 ' plead ' or 4 present ' a sacrifice ceremonially 
 are really distinct things. And if those who 
 think with Bishop Lightfoot took their stand 
 
86 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 upon this distinction, and said that in a strict 
 use of terms those who do but plead or present 
 the Sacrifice of Another are not entitled to 
 speak or be spoken of as though the act of 
 sacrifice were their own, their position would 
 seem to be inexpugnable. 
 
 All turns ultimately upon the relation of the 
 one great and true Sacrifice and the shadows 
 of it that are enacted upon earth, but enacted 
 by the express institution of Him by whom 
 the Sacrifice was made. It seems to me that 
 the clergy of the Church of England are really 
 loyal in this matter. I do not believe that even 
 the very 'highest' among them would wish to 
 infringe upon the uniqueness of the great 
 Sacrifice. There is not one who would say 
 that that Sacrifice needed to be repeated. How 
 could it possibly need to be repeated? It is 
 an eternal act, done once for all, but with an 
 effect that is indestructible. Dr. Moberly well 
 says, speaking of the sense in which the Son is 
 said to plead His own Sacrifice to the Father, 
 'The words "pleading" or "presenting" in 
 this connexion must not be understood as 
 describing anything corresponding to specific 
 acts done, or words spoken by Christ in His 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 87 
 
 glory. His glorified presence is an eternal 
 presentation; He pleads by what He is 1 . 1 
 
 The Church of Rome has gone furthest in 
 a questionable direction when it declares the 
 Eucharist to be verum ac proprhun sacrificium 
 and vere propitiatorium ; and there can be no 
 doubt that it has given cause for a great 
 amount of popular misunderstanding of a very 
 serious kind. But I am not sure that even the 
 language of the Church of Rome is not capable 
 so far of being reconciled with truth. Even the 
 Church of Rome would allow that in the last 
 resort that which it calls a ' sacrifice ' is such 
 as being identified with the Sacrifice of Christ 2 . 
 Its virtue is derivative and not original. 
 
 I understand that in Dr. Moberly's con- 
 ception the element of 1 sacrifice ' in the work 
 of the Ministry would be twofold. On the one 
 hand there is the ceremonial or sacramental 
 act of sacrifice which is wholly of this derived 
 character, and has for its background the true 
 Sacrifice of Christ. And on the other hand 
 there is the appropriation of the spirit of 
 Christ's Sacrifice— that which gave it its value, 
 the spirit of self-devotion and love. The minis- 
 
 1 Ministerial Priesthood, p. 246 n. * Ibid., p. 231. 
 
88 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 terial life ought, it is urged, to be a constant 
 expression of this spirit taking the form of 
 pastoral care. The Christian minister should 
 be no mere performer of an opus operatum ; he 
 should live for his people, and let himself spend 
 and be spent in their service. 
 
 Are we called upon in any way to dispute 
 this conception? The only question which it 
 seems to me can rightly be raised in regard 
 to it is whether it sufficiently corresponds to 
 what is commonly understood by sacrifice, 
 and whether it has sufficient warrant in the 
 language of the New Testament. I confess to 
 some reluctance to reading back the ideas of 
 succeeding centuries into the New Testament. 
 History is full of grooves which we must get 
 out of if we would secure any real freshness 
 of apprehension. Continuity is a good thing, 
 and we may see the hand of God in history; 
 and yet we cannot forget that an element of 
 human perversity and fallibility enters in. The 
 development which began in the second century 
 ends in the state of things before the Re- 
 formation. It is a delicate and laborious matter 
 to separate the strands of good and evil, of 
 truth and error. We may then be glad, where 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 89 
 
 we can, to escape the necessity for doing this 
 by going back beyond the point at which they 
 begin to be closely intertwined. The appeal 
 to Scripture is a common ground where we 
 can meet some who will not be so ready to 
 meet us when the Scriptures are left behind. 
 
 We ask then if the conception of the Christian 
 Ministry of which we have been speaking has, 
 or has not, a Scriptural sanction. Does the 
 New Testament sufficiently recognize it in the 
 character of a priesthood, and of a sacrificing 
 priesthood ? I think we may say that it does. 
 I doubt if there is any passage so strong as the 
 verse which I have chosen for my text. The 
 sacrificial terminology is far more marked in the 
 original than it can be in a translation. St. Paul 
 is apologizing to the Roman Christians for his 
 boldness in urging upon them their duties. 
 It is not as if he were preaching some new 
 thing ; he is only recalling to their minds what 
 they already know. And he does this in virtue 
 of the Apostleship of the Gentiles which has 
 been committed to him. 1 1 write,' he says, 
 1 because of the grace that was given me of 
 God, that I should be a minister of Christ Jesus 
 unto the Gentiles' (XtLTovpybv Xpio-Tov ' 7 770-01) eis 
 
90 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 ra edvrj—l need not remind you that Xetrovpyov 
 is exactly the word that would be used of the 
 discharge of the priests' office in the Temple), 
 ' ministering the gospel of God ' (the R. V. notes 
 in the margin that the Greek is ' ministering in 
 sacrifice ' — the word is Upovpyovura, the technical 
 term for the function of sacrifice), 'that the 
 offering up of the Gentiles' (77 npocrfyopa rcou kOvwv, 
 i. e. not ' the offering which the Gentiles make, 
 but which the Gentiles are ') ' might be made 
 acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost.' 
 The Apostle conceives of himself as standing 
 at the altar; and the offering which he lays 
 upon the altar is the Gentile Church, so far as 
 it is of his founding or comes within his special 
 province. An offering ought to be without 
 blemish. It ought to be first purified before 
 it is offered. And it is the Apostle's earnest 
 prayer to God, that these converts of his, these 
 Gentile Churches for which he is responsible, 
 may be so sanctified by the outpouring of the 
 Holy Spirit upon them that they may be an 
 offering really acceptable, a sacrifice of a sweet 
 smelling savour, for the purpose for which they 
 are destined. 
 
 Is not this really very much the conception 
 
Sacerdotalism 91 
 
 of Priesthood expounded by Dr. Moberly? 
 There is the same double aspect, the ceremonial 
 and the moral. For if it is said that the language 
 of St. Paul is metaphor, a figure of speech and 
 not of act, that is but a superficial distinction. 
 All ceremonial is based on symbolism, and the 
 symbolism of act is only more effective than 
 the symbolism of word. But in this particular 
 case the symbolism of word is so clear and vivid, 
 that action itself could hardly make it more 
 forcible. We seem to see the battered and 
 shattered Apostle, in bodily presence weak, but 
 uplifted by the strength of deeply felt emotion, 
 pouring out his whole soul to God as he la}'s 
 this offering of his upon the altar, wrestling in 
 prayer for the precious souls which he has won 
 from destruction and commending them to the 
 most effectual working of Divine grace, that 
 they may fulfil the true end of their being, the 
 glory of God who made and redeemed them. 
 
 There we see how the ceremonial act is really 
 expressive of the moral. It is the fervour of 
 the soul finding outward utterance. In Dr. Mo- 
 berly's definition of sacrifice it is this fervour, 
 this devotion of the soul which is the essential 
 thing. That is why he lays such very great 
 
92 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 stress on the pastoral side of the Priesthood. 
 A priesthood without the pastoral side, is to him 
 no priesthood at all. Unless in some way or 
 other it finds an equivalent, it is a ministry pro- 
 fessedly sacrificial but wanting just that element 
 of sacrifice which gives it reality, which gives it 
 the true worth of sacrifice in the sight of God. 
 
 If the Sacrifice of the Son of God is really 
 His Love going forth and treading the wine- 
 press alone in a world of sorrow and sin, then 
 the sacrificing Priesthood, if the Christian 
 Ministry deserve the august name, is such by 
 virtue of the distant gleams which it reflects 
 of the Divine Sacrifice. It has no original 
 virtue ; it has no mechanical virtue ; it must 
 enter, however imperfectly, into the sphere of 
 the great Divine purpose of which it forms part, 
 if it is to discharge its functions at all. t/ 
 
 When the doctrine of a 'sacrificing Priest- 
 hood ' is presented in this way, I confess that 
 I do not see why any of us should quarrel with 
 it. I do not think that we do quarrel with it. If 
 that sainted bishop — a true saint for simplicity 
 and singleness of aim, though he spent his days in 
 no cloister but in the active work of scholarship 
 and administration — if he, who brought out the 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 93 
 
 stores of his learning to combat what is com- 
 monly known as 1 sacerdotalism,' could arise and 
 be questioned and have this theory of ' Ministerial 
 Priesthood' set before him, I fully believe that 
 he would not condemn but welcome it. What 
 he combated, and what the strenuous opponents 
 of sacerdotalism still combat, is, I believe, a 
 wholly different thing. It is that spirit of 
 clerical arrogance and assumption \ utterly alien 
 to the real leaders of the movement and to all 
 who really understand their own meaning, of 
 which the doctrines called 'sacerdotal' are the 
 excuse and not the cause. It is difficult to see 
 how a book like Ministerial Priesthood, so care- 
 fully guarded, so critical and severe in its ideal 
 of ministerial duty, could furnish even a pretext 
 for such perversion. 
 
 I fail to see myself how the question is even 
 one of a greater or less degree of ritual. Tastes 
 differ largely as to the extent to which they 
 would choose to have ideas presented to the 
 eye and to the ear as well as to the mind. But 
 if the ideas that underlie the presentation are 
 
 1 The legal doctrine that a benefice is the freehold of the 
 incumbent for the time being is sometimes applied in a waj' 
 that is very repellent. But this is neither Churchmanship nor 
 Christianity. 
 
94 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 not harmful, the mode of presentation does not 
 make them harmful. At least we should exercise 
 a large-minded charity in judging upon such 
 matters, and make full allowance for difference 
 of temperament and mental constitution. 
 
 There is, I quite believe, a danger — a real 
 danger — of materialized views of spiritual things, 
 especially of the Sacrament. But the book of 
 which I have been speaking is full of protests 
 against such views. Nor would it be difficult to 
 find abundant protests coming from the same side. 
 If I may say so, I regard these protests as of 
 especial value, because they come from quarters 
 from which advice and remonstrance will be 
 listened to. It is better for those of us who can 
 speak with less of sympathy to keep silent. 
 
 For it is, after all, not so easy as it may seem 
 to say where materialism begins. The exact 
 limits and relations of material and spiritual 
 form a philosophical problem of which perhaps 
 even the thinkers have not got to the bottom, 
 much less those who are not thinkers. It 
 may well be that those who seem to err on 
 the side of materialism are at the bottom of 
 their minds seeking to assert and emphasize 
 their sense of the reality of sacramental grace, 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 95 
 
 of which the\' have personal experience and 
 conviction. If they do not deceive themselves, 
 if the} 7 do not let the outward take the place of 
 the inward, if they show the true fruits of the 
 Spirit, we may give them credit for sincerity, 
 and receive what they may say with the respect 
 to which all genuine conviction is entitled. 
 
 A more tender place is touched by the exclu- 
 sive claims which are made for the apostolically 
 descended priesthood. It is the negative side 
 of these claims which is felt, the denial of the 
 right of those who have not the same descent. 
 This really cuts to the quick, and we cannot for 
 a moment wonder that it should do so. 
 
 But even here there is room to hope that 
 some steps are possible towards an under- 
 standing. In the first place, it should be 
 distinctly borne in mind that the more sweeping 
 refusal to recognize the non-episcopal Reformed 
 Churches is not, and can never be made, a 
 doctrine of the Church of England. Too many 
 of her most representative men have not shared 
 in it Hooker did not hold it ; Andrewes ex- 
 pressly disclaimed it 1 ; Cosin freely communicated 
 
 1 The views of these writers appear to me, so far as I can judge, 
 to be fairly and correctly presented in Dr. Brown's Apostolical 
 Succession, p. 404 ff. 
 
96 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 with the French Reformed Church during his 
 exile. Indeed, it is not until the last half of the 
 present century that more than a relatively 
 small minority of English Churchmen have 
 been committed to it. 
 
 Again, those who within this period have 
 taken up the negative position have done so in 
 no lightness of heart, but in deference to what 
 they conceive to be an absolutely constraining 
 logic, and they have done it with the amplest 
 possible acknowledgement of Christian excel- 
 lences in the separated bodies. 
 
 Further, it will be noted that the more 
 responsible writers avoid as far as possible the 
 use of language which involves any sort of 
 judgement upon these bodies. For instance, 
 when Dr. Moberly asserts that a certain form 
 of Church organization is 'essential' or 'indis- 
 pensable/ he is careful to add that he means 
 1 essential, or indispensable for us ' — for those 
 brought up as we are, who can accept the 
 premisses from which he is arguing. He 
 always has in view the reservation that God 
 is not bound by His own appointed methods — 
 that 'outside His appointed " media" of what- 
 ever kind — ministries, sacraments, ordinances — 
 
Sacerdotalism 97 
 
 He can work, if He will, as divinely as within 
 them.' This consideration, he adds, may serve 
 ' somewhat to the lowliness of our thoughts ; it 
 may abash us from the presumption of even 
 imagining, at any time, anything like a judgement 
 of others, whose case before God is known to 
 Him, not to us V I have said that the re- 
 sponsible writers and speakers do not often 
 forget this. It were only to be wished that the 
 same caution would extend more completely to 
 the rank and file. It would save them not only 
 from exciting much just resentment against the 
 Church of which they boast, but also from many 
 a departure from Christian humility and charity 
 in themselves. 
 
 Lastly, it seems to follow that if at any time 
 those who hold these views are compelled to 
 express them, a more guarded and appropriate 
 way of speaking would be, not to ' unchurch ' 
 the bodies that do not satisfy all their require- 
 ments, but to speak of them rather as ' Churches 
 with a certain defect of order or organization/ 
 Where there are so many signs of God's 
 presence the impugned bodies must needs 
 have a right to be called 'Churches.' And 
 
 1 Ministerial Priesthood, p. 61. 
 H 
 
98 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 the saving clause would leave the nature and 
 gravity of the defect to the judgement of God. 
 
 If the members of these bodies could see that 
 with those who hold such opinions they are not 
 taken up wantonly or in a spirit of mere hostility, 
 that they are no product of pride or presumption, 
 but a severe and unwelcome necessity of thought, 
 their natural anger would by degrees give way 
 to sorrowful acquiescence. 
 
 For I also cannot but think that at least our 
 own Nonconformists will by degrees come round 
 to feel that there is something unsatisfactory in 
 their own position. I may claim that they are 
 for the most part at one with us in the principle 
 that there should be some differentiation of 
 function between ministers and people. Most 
 of them recognize that the minister cannot 
 rightly assume office to himself, that he needs to 
 be called by the Church and solemnly admitted 
 with prayer for God's blessing. Most Noncon- 
 formist bodies would go as far as this ; and then, 
 as the growing study of history among them 
 extends and deepens, they will I believe further 
 come to see that the Episcopal organization was 
 the rule of the Church for fifteen centuries, that 
 in practice it has many recommendations, and 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 99 
 
 that the reasons for which in the sixteenth 
 century it was thrown over were insufficient. 
 They might come in the end to reach hands to 
 those of us who hold that although Episcopacy 
 is not of divine right it is yet the normal order, 
 a sound link in the chain which binds us to the 
 Great Church of the past. 
 
 However that may be, I feel sure that as time 
 goes on, we shall all, Anglican and Nonconformist 
 alike, find ourselves compelled to confess that 
 in some respects the reaction of the sixteenth 
 century went further than it need have gone. 
 The excuses were great ; they could hardly have 
 been greater. The uprising of the Northern 
 nations was an uprising in the name of pure 
 religion, and pure religion has upon the whole 
 been the gainer. But we must say 'on the 
 whole ' ; and the balance is perhaps not so clear 
 and decisive as in our self-complacency we are 
 apt to assume. There was an element of 
 exaggeration and fanaticism in the Reformation, 
 and there was a not inconsiderable uprooting of 
 wheat with the tares. 
 
 The verdict is not mine ; it is not that of 
 any individual, however learned and however 
 authoritative. It is the verdict of that im- 
 H 2 
 
ioo The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 personal force, the voice of which is becoming 
 clearer and more certain every day, the verdict 
 of really impartial History. The figure of 
 History sits enthroned in the clouds; the 
 weapons of our partisanship cannot touch her, 
 and our efforts to escape from her are vain ; 
 her word once deliberately issued is inexorable. 
 
 Before the bar of History all our conflicting 
 sects and parties will have in the end to lay 
 their several pleas, and await the verdict in 
 silence. I do not doubt that we shall all 
 have many sins and shortcomings to confess. 
 We shall have to abase ourselves in dust and 
 ashes. But the same Power before whom we 
 do this, if it cannot give us absolution will 
 at least give us consolations. I have spoken 
 of the confession which, if I am not greatly 
 mistaken, the Anglican in his degree and the 
 Nonconformist also in his degree, will have 
 one day to make. But we are not alone : the 
 proudest and greatest of all the Churches is 
 at our side. 
 
 Listen to a few sentences from the closing 
 paragraphs of a History of the Christian 
 Church by a Roman Catholic professor, who 
 is one of that band, gathered from many 
 
Sacerdotalism 101 
 
 nations and man}* tongues, by whom the im- 
 personal voice is gradually taking articulate 
 shape : — 
 
 'The development of events must fill us 
 with sadness. The Christian heart yearns not 
 for separation but for unit}'. . . . Especially 
 deplorable for us Westerns is the disruption 
 of the sixteenth century. And yet, much as it 
 may trouble us, it was not without salutary 
 consequences. The question has often been 
 asked whether the reform of the Church 
 would ever have been brought about without 
 it. We cannot answer absolutely in the nega- 
 tive, for that would be to doubt the vitality 
 of the Church and its providential guiding. 
 But just as little can it be disputed that the 
 reform had been waited for much too long, and 
 that it did not come until the edifice of the 
 Church had been shaken to its very founda- 
 tions and until there had been a great falling 
 away. History shows further that the reform 
 was not only carried into execution after this 
 falling away, but that it was also brought on 
 and hastened in its course by it. The revival 
 of the Church is thus presented as closely 
 associated with the disruption. . . . Even the 
 
io2 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 confusion of creeds (Mischung der Konfes- 
 sionen) which has succeeded to the older un- 
 challenged unity (Abgeschlossenheit) in the recent 
 period, has not proved to be a mere evil 
 though it has brought with it many abuses. 
 In the countries invaded by it, the religious 
 life at least pulsates at the present time 
 more vigorously than in the rest. The fact 
 is indisputable, and its explanation lies near 
 at hand. The opposition of the confessions 
 incites to greater care and to stronger efforts.' 
 
 Can we expect a more magnanimous ad- 
 mission? Does it not touch the very heart of 
 the matter? And does it not justify the belief 
 that the truth of history heals wounds if it 
 makes them? For the rest I do not think 
 that we can do better than adopt, both in 
 their patience and in their faith, the concluding 
 words of all : ( These consequences put a more 
 favourable appearance on that development 
 than it at first sight presents. Nevertheless 
 the disruption must be regarded as an evil; 
 indeed it is on all sides felt as such, and 
 that, not only by Catholics, but by many 
 thousands of Protestants. But there it is, 
 and there, as far as we can see, it is likely 
 
Sacerdotalism 
 
 for a long time yet to remain. Under these 
 circumstances we must meanwhile seek com- 
 fort in these consequences, but above all trust 
 firmly in the Lord of the Church, who although 
 His dealings with us children of men are dark, 
 yet always keeps His hand protectingly over 
 that which He has founded, true to the word 
 which He spake to His disciples, " I am with 
 you alway, even unto the end of the world V 
 
 1 Funk, Lehrbuch der Kirchengeschichte (3rd ed., 1898), p. 589 f. 
 
IV 
 
 THE PRESENT SITUATION 
 
IV 
 
 Now I beseech you, brethren, through the name of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that there be no divisions 
 among you ; but that ye be perfected together in the same mind and 
 in the same judgement, i Cor. i. 10. 
 
 One of the most remarkable things about 
 St. Paul is his extreme sensitiveness to all the 
 influences for good or for evil at work upon 
 the Church 1 . His mind is like one of those 
 delicate instruments invented by modern science 
 which registers the slightest change in the 
 atmosphere around it, and feels as if from afar 
 the approach of disturbance or trouble. Whole 
 volumes are contained in those touching words 
 with which he closes the catalogue of his 
 bodily sufferings in the cause of Christ. These 
 alone are such as even the most energetic and 
 the most daring of later missionaries could 
 
 1 The situation contemplated in this sermon is that of August 14, 
 when the sermon was preached. 
 
io8 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 hardly parallel ; but they are after all only one 
 department of the Apostle's experience. ' Beside 
 those things that are without/ he writes, ' there 
 is that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety 
 for all the churches. Who is weak, and I am 
 not weak ? who is made to stumble, and 
 I burn not 1 ? ' The Epistles that have come 
 down to us are an eloquent comment upon this 
 passage. We may see in them how St Paul 
 seems to have had spread out before him a 
 mental map — or shall we say photograph — of 
 the Church to which he is writing. He knows 
 each individual member of it by name, and not 
 only knows him by name but he knows what 
 is passing in his mind. He can see all the 
 currents of thought or feeling which agitate 
 the little society — for we must remember that 
 although the Churches of St. Paul's own founda- 
 tion were very numerous, each one of them as 
 judged by our present standards would have 
 seemed very small. Not only the greater 
 storms, the more violent divisions which none 
 could fail to see, but even the lightest breath 
 which ruffled the surface of these St. Paul saw. 
 It filled him with anxiety. He must needs 
 
 1 2 Cor. xi. 28 f. 
 
The Present Situation 109 
 
 himself personally intervene ; and he would 
 not rest until the danger had subsided. 
 
 Here at the beginning of the First Epistle to 
 the Corinthians we have an instance of one 
 of the greater convulsions — the Church split up 
 as it were, into four hostile factions— one saying 
 'I am of Paul,' and one ' I am of Apollos,' and 
 a third 1 1 of Cephas/ and a fourth ' I of 
 Christ/ So far has the rupture gone that 
 the Apostle exclaims indignantly, s Is Christ 
 divided ? was Paul crucified for you ? or were 
 ye baptized into the name of Paul 1 ?' In the 
 Second Epistle to the same Church, we have 
 a more subtle and complicated state of things — 
 a state of things so subtle and complicated that 
 for us, and from the hints which the Apostle 
 gives, it is difficult to unravel ; but we can see 
 that just because there was no single openly 
 declared issue but secret influences were under- 
 mining the Church, and that on a wide scale, 
 his anxiety was increased, and was at the 
 moment very acute indeed. 
 
 We pass over from Corinth to a Church like 
 Philippi, the general condition of which was 
 very satisfactory, but even there private feuds 
 
 1 1 Cor. i. 13. 
 
no The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 appear to have run high. 1 1 exhort Euodia, and 
 I exhort Syntyche, to be of the same mind in 
 the Lord 1 .' The Apostle pours out the whole 
 affectionateness of his nature in earnest entreaty, 
 ' If there is therefore any comfort in Christ, if 
 any consolation of love, if any fellowship of the 
 Spirit, if any tender mercies and compassions, 
 fulfil ye my joy, that ye be of the same mind, 
 having the same love, being of one accord, of 
 one mind 2 / These concluding words in their 
 iteration of the same idea remind us strongly 
 of the verse which I took for my text. They 
 show how very much St. Paul had at heart the 
 unity of the Church — its unity in every sense, 
 both large and small — as well in the relation 
 of individuals to each other as of party to party. 
 St. Paul would have been the last to deprecate 
 variety. He understood too well how the body 
 is composed of many members, and each member 
 has a different function. But he is very urgent 
 that these various members should work together 
 smoothly and harmoniously. That is the true 
 type of the working of a living bod} 7 , a body 
 that is not only alive but healthy and vigorous 
 in its life. 
 
 1 Phil. iv. 2. 
 
 2 Phil. ii. i f. 
 
The Present Situation 
 
 in 
 
 Measured by this Apostolic standard, what 
 shall we say as to the course of things in our 
 own National Church within the last twenty-five 
 years and at the present time ? I take twenty- 
 five years because it was, roughly speaking, 
 at about that distance of time that our Church 
 might have seemed to a bystander to be most 
 divided against itself 1 . A number of bitter 
 controversies were then on foot which had not 
 been decided. High was against Low. and 
 Low against High, and both against Broad. 
 Strenuous endeavours were made by each party 
 to suppress one or other of its neighbours. 
 
 Happily, as I cannot but think, those efforts did 
 not succeed. And if we were to try to characterize 
 the last quarter of a century in the Church of 
 England. I suppose we might say that its chief 
 characteristic has been a stead)- approximation 
 and reconciliation of party to party. Each has 
 come to recognize more and more the virtues 
 of the others ; and each has tried more and 
 more to assimilate those virtues for itself. We 
 often hear it remarked to what an extent good 
 Evangelical doctrine is preached from High 
 
 ■ The Public Worship Regulation Act was passed in 1874. 
 
ii2 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 Church pulpits. The reason is because there 
 is real support for that doctrine in Holy Scrip- 
 ture ; and honest clear-sighted men could not 
 but see that there was this support, and could 
 not but act upon what they saw. In quite an 
 equal degree the mass of the Evangelical party 
 has altered its tone towards High Churchmen, 
 because they saw that they too really did love 
 the Lord Jesus in sincerity, and because they 
 saw the fruit of their labours visibly impressed 
 upon many a slum and alley throughout the 
 land. Much too was due to a more open- 
 minded reading of history and a stronger sense 
 of the value to a Church of historic continuity. 
 The Broad Church party hardly exists any 
 longer in the way in which it did when its 
 leading members were fighting for bare life 
 against attacks from this side and from that. 
 But why has it so far ceased to exist ? Because 
 it has been crushed and exterminated ? No ; 
 but because the greater part of its work is done. 
 It has leavened the thought of its opponents, 
 and the causes that it advocated are now taken 
 up under other flags than its own. All this has 
 been progress of the best kind — what was ad- 
 mirably described from this pulpit a few Sundays 
 
The Present Situation 113 
 
 ago 1 as — 'not compromise for the sake of peace 
 but comprehension for the sake of truth/ 
 
 But now, just at the present moment, there 
 appears to be a check in the process of ap- 
 proximation and assimilation. I do not think 
 that the check as a whole is serious ; but 
 there are perhaps one or two features in it 
 which are serious, and in any case it is well 
 to look the situation in the face. 
 
 I do not know whether I interpret rightly 
 the tenor of opinion among the great body of 
 those not immediately concerned, but the in- 
 terpretation which I should put upon it would 
 be something like this. 
 
 Few would approve of the scenes which 
 have taken place or of the particular kind of 
 protest against certain practices which has 
 been adopted. At the same time, it has been 
 regarded with more tolerance than would 
 have been extended to it if it had not been 
 felt that the protesters were sincere, if narrow, 
 and not very well advised or scrupulous men. 
 It has also been felt that they had, from their 
 point of view, a real grievance, and that the}* 
 
 1 By the Rev. C. G. Lang, Vicar of Portsea, at the time of the 
 Lectures to Clergy. 
 
 I 
 
ii4 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 had some excuse in the difficulty of attracting 
 public attention, which unfortunately is too 
 often done most effectually by creating a 
 scandal. 
 
 On the other hand, the things protested 
 against have not been so severely condemned 
 as they might have been, partly because the 
 individuals concerned had credit for being in 
 other respects good and hard-working men, 
 and partly because it is coming to be under- 
 stood that every great movement is sure to 
 have a fringe of extravagance round it, which 
 must be set down to the general frailty of 
 human nature, and must not necessarily condemn 
 the movement with which it is associated. 
 
 Then again, the events in question have 
 called forth spontaneous expressions of loyalty 
 from representatives of the main body of the 
 party implicated, which have had a reassuring 
 effect. At bottom, the nation as a whole 
 knows what it really owes to that party, and 
 its natural temper is one of tolerance where 
 it thinks that much good is purchased by a 
 little harm. 
 
 I do not think that the disturbances of 
 which we have heard so much have been 
 
The Present Situation 115 
 
 more than a nine days' wonder, such as soon 
 subsides again into quiet. And I doubt if 
 even the cry of lawlessness in the Church 
 with which they have been connected, will have 
 had any further effect than a little wholesome 
 tightening of the reins and a strengthening 
 of the hands of lawful authority. This is 
 indeed a thing to be desired. Freedom is a 
 good thing, but one of our dangers at the 
 present day is lest freedom should degenerate 
 into licence. 
 
 In all this I do not see any substantial bar 
 to that steady advance which is making our 
 Church more compact, more united, a stronger 
 and a better instrument for doing the work of 
 God in the world. I attach more significance 
 to an influence of another kind. 
 
 Of course we know that there are two 
 extreme sections in the Church diametrically 
 opposed to each other. At present, one of 
 these is active in attack, and the other is on 
 its defence. We cannot be surprised if the 
 attacking party, seeing the present conjunc- 
 ture to be more favourable for it than circum- 
 stances have been for some time past, should 
 put forth all its strength and use all its 
 
 1 2 
 
1 16 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 weapons. One of the most effective of these 
 weapons is, I suspect, the publication of a 
 book entitled The Secret History of the Oxford 
 Movement 1 . 
 
 We cannot help being reminded of another 
 History of the Oxford Movement by the late 
 Dean of St. Paul's. Only one word is added 
 to the title, but the tendency of the two 
 books is almost directly opposed. I do not 
 doubt that in the process of approximation 
 and assimilation, of which I have spoken, 
 Dean Church's book has played a prominent 
 part. Every one felt that, whatever the ulti- 
 mate value of the movement which it de- 
 scribed, it was at least the meeting-point of a 
 great amount of high-minded aspiration and 
 endeavour. There was an elevation, a chas- 
 tened and high-toned dignity about the picture, 
 which exercised a great power of attraction 
 over those whose sympathies had not hitherto 
 been enlisted. It was a book the effect of 
 which was healing, reconciling, uniting. It 
 drew Churchmen together, because it set be- 
 fore them an ideal which all felt that they 
 would be proud and glad to make their own. 
 
 1 By Walter Walsh, London, 1897. 
 
The Present Situation 117 
 
 The effect of The Secret History of the Oxford 
 Movement would be on the contrary — at least 
 if it were read without discrimination — rather 
 to disunite than to unite, to discredit one large 
 section of the Church, to undermine and destroy 
 its influence. 
 
 The author himself would not, I think, dis- 
 claim this object in writing. And his book 
 has been taken up and is, I believe, being 
 circulated widely by those who openly profess 
 to have that object. Now, a book will no 
 doubt work far more quietly than sensational 
 scenes in church or before a magistrate, but 
 I do not on that account consider it the less 
 but rather the more really formidable. And 
 this particular book seems to me very much 
 calculated to have the effect which is sought. 
 For I must do the author the justice to say 
 that he has written calmly and temperately. 
 He has expressed a great desire to be fair 
 towards those whom he criticizes and not to 
 misrepresent them. There may be different 
 opinions as to what constitutes fairness; but 
 so far as it consists in an appeal to docu- 
 ments, the claim in this instance cannot be 
 denied. 
 
n8 Tlie Conception of Priesthood 
 
 Nor am I sure that the publication of a 
 work like this is wholly to be regretted. If 
 it had come much earlier — twenty or thirty or 
 forty years ago— it might have shaken the 
 edifice of our Church more seriously than it 
 can do now. And in itself perhaps it is well 
 that some things should be known which 
 have hitherto been more or less concealed. 
 I do not blame too much either the conceal- 
 ment or the publication. All depends upon 
 the temper in which the whole indictment is 
 received by us, the general public or main 
 body of the Church, who stand apart from 
 either side. 
 
 For we must take the book as an indictment — 
 and an indictment with evidence alleged. This 
 is the first caution which I think that we ought 
 to bear in mind. The whole statement is ex 
 parte, a deliberate collection of facts the object 
 of which is to discredit opponents. If I do not 
 call it exactly unfair, it is because there is a 
 proverb that 'all things are fair in war,' and 
 here the two sides are practically at war. The 
 one is seeking of set purpose to injure and 
 depress the other. 
 
 Facts that are really facts may be so stated as 
 
The Present Situation 119 
 
 to do serious injustice. In the present case all 
 the stress is laid on the supposed 'secrecy' of 
 the movement, and everything that can be called 
 in any sense ' secret ' is marshalled in evidence 
 against it. But how many things may be 
 described as 'secret' which are yet perfectly 
 free from blame on account of their secrecy ! 
 
 Let us consider. In the first place, it is not 
 only natural, but right, that what aims at the 
 deepening of the inner religious life should be 
 conducted quietly, and not obtruded before the 
 eye of the world. The instinct of reverence 
 impels a devout mind to keep such things to 
 itself, especially when that which it regards as 
 sacred would not be equally so regarded by 
 others. Our Lord Himself bade His disciples 
 exercise great care and discretion in exposing 
 the mysteries of their religion to heathen and 
 unbelievers. He compared this to giving holy 
 things to dogs or casting pearls before swine K 
 And although it would be harsh and wrong to 
 apply this saying directly to those whose worst 
 defect may be a certain narrowness and callous- 
 ness, due as much to training as to nature, still 
 the principle holds good. The refinements of 
 
 1 Matt. vii. 6. 
 
i2o The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 worship exist only for those who can enter into 
 their spirit. It would be in vain to offer them 
 where they would be received without intelli- 
 gence and without sympathy. 
 
 Another form which the charge of secrecy takes 
 has reference to the appearance of duplicity in 
 those who have become converts to the Church 
 of Rome. It is said that up to the last moment 
 they have used language which must have been 
 insincere, both of the communion which they 
 were leaving and of that which they were about 
 to join. But who shall be the judge in such 
 cases ? Hardly those who have never undergone 
 a mental crisis of the kind. Such are apt to forget 
 that there must needs be a double strain in the 
 thought of those who have made so momentous 
 a change, both sides of which are perfectly 
 sincere. They are indeed all the time arguing 
 with themselves. There are two voices within ; 
 and if the exigencies — or, if we will, tempta- 
 tions — of the position lead one to speak aloud 
 while the other is only heard in the silent court 
 of conscience, that is not exactly insincerity. 
 The most eminent of all the converts to Rome 
 in this century laid bare his soul in this matter, 
 and the verdict of his countrymen has acquitted 
 
The Present Situation 121 
 
 him of serious blame, where it did not so wholly 
 acquit one of his colleagues. 
 
 Lastly, it is sought to base a damaging charge 
 on the production of books which, by the very 
 nature of their object, had a limited and guarded 
 circulation. It is not difficult to place such 
 things in an invidious light. But it does not 
 follow that everything which is innocent in itself 
 will bear to be proclaimed from the housetop, 
 or that all that cannot be so proclaimed must 
 therefore in itself be mischievous. There may 
 be some danger, but it has certainly been much 
 exaggerated. 
 
 I pass on to another, and a still more im- 
 portant caution. The author of the book of 
 which I am speaking has mixed up together 
 a number of practices which stand upon a very 
 different footing, and he embraces in one 
 sweeping condemnation many societies and 
 classes of persons in regard to which others 
 of us would feel the necessity for careful dis- 
 crimination. 
 
 The reason in his case is deep-seated. He 
 regards everything that has any resemblance 
 to the practice of the Church of Rome as 
 wrong: he does not ask if it is bad, or pre- 
 
i22 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 ponderantly bad, in itself. It is enough for him 
 that it has the stamp of Rome. 
 
 No doubt in taking up this position he is 
 doing what very many Englishmen have done 
 for a long time past. He appeals to a prejudice 
 in which he will find plenty of sympathizers. 
 But this position is distinctly not that of the 
 English Church ; and it is a position which many 
 others, out of no partiality for Rome but in 
 the interests of sheer justice and truth, have 
 felt compelled to abandon. 
 
 I say, first, that the position in question is 
 not that of the Church of England. Even in 
 the days before our Church had reached a clear 
 self-consciousness of the principles of its own 
 being, when it was still feeling its way towards 
 the ground which Hooker and Overall and 
 Andrewes gradually defined for it, it did not 
 appeal to the Scriptures alone but to the 
 Scriptures and Antiquity. No other Reformed 
 Church kept in view the usage of the early 
 centuries so steadily and so persistently \ The 
 
 1 It would be an interesting inquiry, which it may be hoped 
 that some student of this period may some day undertake, to 
 compare the history of the appeal to Antiquity in the Lutheran 
 and Anglican communions. No doubt both began by making the 
 appeal, but the divergence would seem to have been early felt — 
 
The Present Situation 123 
 
 statements made as to ancient practice will not 
 always hold water, but it was agreed that that 
 practice — the practice of the Church of the first 
 four general Councils — when it could be ascer- 
 tained, was binding. But this principle covered 
 a number of things which the more advanced 
 Reformers objected to as Roman. In fact it 
 might be said that the Church of England 
 only discarded what express proof of Holy 
 Scripture compelled it to discard; whereas 
 of Calvin and Zwingli it would be true to say 
 that they only retained what express proof 
 of Holy Scripture compelled them to retain \ 
 
 at least if we may trust Barlowe's Dialogue on the Lutheran 
 Factions (ed. Lunn, p. 71) : 'In denyenge purgatorye and 
 auctorite of 3 re pope, yf they founde in auncyent auctours as much 
 as a corrupte t3 T tle of a p3 r stle sownynge any thynge to theyr pur- 
 pose, all be it the Epystle selfe made whole against it : yet wold 
 they take it as the worde of god and sure reuelation of the spyryte. 
 Contran-e wyse, yf anye alledged Austen, Hierome, Cypiyane, or 
 Chrysostome agaynste them they wolde admytte theyr sentences 
 for none auctoryte, sayenge they were men, and all men were 
 lyers.' Barlowe's Dialogue was published after a visit to Germanj' 
 in 1531, and reprinted (without alteration) in 1553. It seems, 
 however, that Barlowe not only mixed with Lutherans proper but 
 that he also went into 1 hye Almajme unto the Oecolampadians, 
 and remaynynge there amonge them was oftentymes conuersaunt 
 with Anabaptistes ' ; so that we cannot be sure that he does 
 not mix up different opinions. 
 
 1 There is a significant passage in a letter of Cranmer's, written 
 — it will be noted — in 1552, when he had gone as far as he ever 
 
i24 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 You will observe the broad difference between 
 these two positions. The one sacrificed many 
 an innocent and primitive usage which the 
 other preserved, or marked as worthy of preser- 
 vation. 
 
 It is true, however, that in the early years 
 of Queen Elizabeth there were many earnest 
 people, especially among those who had been 
 exiles for their opinions in the time of Mary 
 and had come into close contact with the 
 Reformers of Geneva, Zurich, and Frankfort, 
 who were not satisfied with this. They wished 
 to go further in the way of destruction, and they 
 created a strong body of opinion in favour of 
 destruction. Their efforts were helped by the 
 course of external politics. Queen Elizabeth 
 was excommunicated by the Pope, and her 
 life and throne were constantly plotted against 
 by Papal emissaries. Our country was engaged 
 in a life and death struggle with Spain, which 
 culminated in the threatened invasion of the 
 
 went in the direction of Puritanism : ' They say that kneeling is 
 not commanded in Scripture : and what is not commanded in 
 Scripture is unlawful. There is the root of the errors of the sects ! 
 If that be true, take away the whole Book of Service ; and let us 
 have no more trouble in setting forth an order in religion, or 
 indeed in common policy' (quoted by Dixon, Hist, of Ch. of Eng., 
 iii. 476). 
 
The Present Situation 12s 
 
 Spanish Armada. All this was traced to the 
 machinations of Rome. And then at the be- 
 ginning of the reign of James I there was the 
 fresh excitement of Gunpowder Plot, followed 
 at the end of the century by the short-lived 
 tyranny of the Roman Catholic James II. What 
 wonder if there sank deep into the heart of 
 the English people a settled dread of Roman 
 agencies and Roman ways! Hence it is that 
 the cry of ' No Popery ' has always been so 
 popular. The distrust and dislike of Rome 
 became a national tradition. 
 
 To this day that tradition has not wholly 
 worked itself out. And yet it has been to 
 a large extent unreasoning and ill-founded. 
 The liberties of England are far too firmly 
 planted to be in any real danger now. And 
 if we try to cast away prejudice and look 
 at things Roman with an open mind, it cannot 
 I think be denied that we have done them 
 much injustice. We have been so intent upon 
 making out a case against Roman Catholicism 
 that we have too often looked upon it at its 
 worst instead of at its best. Should we our- 
 selves bear to be judged upon these terms ? 
 If we try to find out what there is of good 
 
i26 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 in our Roman fellow Christians, we certainly 
 can find it. Think for a moment of the Sisters 
 of Mercy whose very name is a proverb for 
 devotion to the cause of suffering humanity. 
 Think of Father Damien and his lepers, and of 
 the host of Roman Catholic missionaries, exiles 
 from their homes, who in numbers and in zeal 
 emulate our own. Think of the saintly lives, 
 of which from time to time we have glimpses, 
 of many a humble cure in secluded Alpine 
 valleys or by the storm-beaten shores of the 
 Atlantic. Think of the bands of scholars in 
 France and Belgium, in Germany and Italy, 
 who are moved by a genuine love of knowledge 
 and of truth, and who are seeking to spread 
 both by all the means in their power. Where 
 these things are we may be sure that the blessing 
 of God is, and that the name of Christ is not 
 invoked in vain. 
 
 There is many a loyal son of the Church of 
 England, deeply attached to the Mother that 
 bare him and proud of her history and of her 
 characteristic excellences, who yet cannot help 
 seeing that some virtues and graces have been 
 more highly developed in the stock from which we 
 have broken off than in that to which we belong. 
 
The Present Situation 127 
 
 If it is true, it is also right that we should feel 
 thus. By so doing we are all the more likely to 
 improve the inheritance which God has given us. 
 And in any case the cultivation of such mutual 
 understanding and sympathy must be the first 
 step towards the reuniting of the scattered 
 members of the Body of Christ. 
 
 That is a hope that we cannot and must not 
 surrender. Our duty at the present time is to 
 try to heal these old breaches and not to widen 
 them. But I shall be told that the risk is great 
 in adopting these ancient institutions which have 
 certainly in the past been abused. Yes, there 
 is a risk, which must be set against any possible 
 profit, and may well justify caution and a tact- 
 ful and elastic rule — leaving them to make their 
 way on their own merits where they are con- 
 genial, and scrupulously abstaining from any 
 attempt to force or obtrude them where they are 
 not. We say that some of these institutions 
 have been abused; but Why? Because they 
 were not kept sweet and clean by the flowing 
 through them of a stream of strong and deep 
 and genuine Christianity. The great safeguard 
 against all possible abuses, the one article of 
 a standing or a falling Church, is the cultivation 
 
128 The Conception of Priesthood 
 
 of the spirit of Christ. Where there is a real 
 and intense loyalty to Him, there we may be 
 sure will be the fruits of the Spirit, which will 
 bud and blossom even through institutions that 
 are not without their dangers. And where this 
 is wanting we shall have a Church hard and 
 cold and lifeless, however careful it may be 
 to keep itself clear of contamination. Do not 
 let us be in haste to pluck the mote out of 
 the eye of our brother, but to pluck the beam 
 out of our own. We may be sure that the 
 best way even to advance the interests of 
 a party is to strengthen and deepen the hold 
 of that party upon Christ Himself and the 
 principles of Christ. And if we each and all 
 make this our aim, we shall find that insensibly 
 in drawing near to Christ we have drawn nearer 
 to each other, that we are really * perfected 
 together in the same mind and in the same 
 judgement/ that we have really learnt to ' speak 
 the same thing.' 
 
 OXFORD : HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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