ANGLICAN 495 ANOLICAN stood in the first century of its use, the defenders argue that, although it may have been undesirable to substitute this new rite for the ancient and ven- erable rite which preceded it, the cluinKe Wiis within the competence of the Edwardine and Klizal)ethan authorities, since every national Church has author- ity to select its own rites and ceremonies, as long as it eliminates no element which, in the judgment of the Universal Church, is essential to validity. To this it is replied that no evidence is forthcoming to show that any such authority has ecr been recog- nized in national Churches; that, on the contrarj-, though local churches have at times added further prayers and ceremonies to the rites handed down to them from time immemorial, they have, as Mori- nus has told us, never ventured to subtract anything that was in previous use, fearing lest in so doing they might touch something which was essential. To this the defenders reply that at least the Anglican rite has retained all that is to be found in the Roman Ordinal in its earliest known form, as well as in the Eastern ordinals, which the Holy See has ever rec- ognized as valid; and that it nui.<t be held therefore to have retained all that can reasonably be claimed as necessary. But in the first place, though the course of theological opinion inclines to jvidge that the tradition of instruments and other added cere- monies in the modern Western rite might be laid aside without danger to validity, the Holy See, as has been said, feeling that in a matter of such su- preme importance it is Ijest to follow an aljsolutely safe rule, is loth to tru.st to speculative opinions, and has always required a conditional r^ordination whenever any one of the added ceremonies has been omitted. Moreover, it is not correct to say that the Anglican rite retains all those elements which the Eastern and early Western rites have in common. For what these have in common (cf. App. IV of the Vindication) is imix)sition of hands accompanied by a prayer in which the order to be imparted is defined •either by its accepted name, or by words expressive ■of its grace and power, which is chiefly the power to ■consecrate and offer up in sacrifice the Body and Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ under the appear- ances of bread and wine. The original Anglican rite, on the contrary, contained no words whatever in the "form" accompanying the imposition of hands to define the order to l)e imparted. In the rite for the episcopate the consecrating bishop saj's, "Take the Holy Ghost"; but he does not say for what — whether for the office of a bishop, or priest, or dea- ■con — so much so that Dr. Lingard could suggest that it was a form as suitable for the admission of
- a parish clerk as for the consecration of a bishop.
And so, too, with the priesthood, though in a some- what less degree. Kor here the words of the "form" are, "Receive the Holy Cdiost- whose sins thou dost forgive they are forgiven, ana whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained. And be thou a faithful ■dispenser of the Word of God and of His Holy Sac- raments"; whereas the power to forgive sins does not di-scriminate between the priest and the bishop, and besides is only a secondary' and incidental, not the primary and essential, function of the priestly office. Still the defenders of the Anglican Ordinal have their further rejoinder. It is not necessary, they contend, that the nature of the order imparted should be defined by the words of the "form" taken by itself alone; it is sufficient if the meaning of this "form" is determined to a definite sense by the con- text, or other prayers and ceremonies which precede ■or follow; and they point out that in the titles of the rites — "The form of ordering Priests" and "The form of consecrating an .rchbishop or Bishop" — in the presentation of the candidates, and in several •of the prayers, the needful mention of the order to ibe imparted is declared. Moreover, they refer to a decision of the Holy Oflice, 9 April, 1704, in regard to some Abyssinian ordinations, as witnessing ttiat the Holy See itself has recognized the words, "Take the Holy Ghost", to be sufficient, when said with the imposition of liands, if the remainder of the rite Ls Kufliciently determinate. But, in the first place, as regards this .byssinian case, its nature has l^een mi.sapnrehended, as may be seen from the documents published by Father Brandi, in his "Roma e Can- terburj'". In the second place, none of the rites, ancient or modern, which the Holy See has ever recognized lends any support to this theory of an indeterminate form determined by a remote context. In the third place, it is contrary to the analogy of all the other Siicraments and is unreasomible in itself. It is as if, writes Cardinal Segna (Revue Anglo- Romaine, 29 Kebruarv, 1.S90), in a wedding cere- mony, "the bride and bridegroom should stand at the altar and in many an eloquent phrase declare their mutual love, but when the moment has arrived for pronouncing the decisive word 'I will', should shut their hps in stubborn silence." And in the fourth place, the remote context, instead of deter- mining the words, "Receive the Holy Ghost", to signify the bestowal of a true priesthood, determines them to an exactly opposite sense. It is true that the traditional names of the three orders occur in places, but, as explained at the head of this article, these names at the Reformation were often used in a sense from which all notion of the priesthood and its mystical powers had been drained off. That this was the sense in which they were intended by those who framed and authorized the Edwardine rites is f)roved by the statements of classical Anglican writers ike Hooker, who defend the retention of the old names on the plea that "as for the people, when they hear the name [priest] it draweth no more their minds to any cogitation of .sacrifice than the name of a senator or of an alderman causeth them to think upon old age, or to imagine that every one so termed must needs Ije ancient because years were respected in the nomination of both" (Eccles. Pohty, V, Ixxviii, 2). There is, moreover, the broad fact that, when the old and the new rite are compared, it appears that the difference lies just in this: that the framers of the new have cut out all that in the old gave expression to the idea of a mystic sacerdotium in the Catholic sense of the term. There is also the con- nected fact that the introduction of the Edwardine Ordinal was the outcome of the same general move- ment which led to the pulling down of the altars and the sibstitution of communion tables, in order that, as Ridley expressed it, "the form of a table .shall more move the simple people from the superstitious opinions of the Popish mass unto the right use of the Lord's supper". .5. According to Catholic doctrine, it is necessary for validity that the minister of a sacrament should not only employ a proper form, but should also have a proper intention. ThiLS Pole, in his instnietions to the Bishop of Norvich (which Leo XIII cites in his Bull of condemnation), tells him to treat as not val- idly consecmtcd those pretending bishops in whose previous coasecration ceremonies "the form and in- tention of the Church had not Ijeen observed", thereby implying that this double defect was present in the Edwardine consecration.';. On this point the defend- ers of . glican orders urge that (1) to admit that the mental intentions of the minister can affect the validity of the Sacrament is to involve in uncer- tainty all ordinations whatever — for how are we to know what internal lapses or deflections from the due intention may not has'e been secretly made by those on whose acts the orders of whole generations of Christian ministers have l)ecn dcf)endent? — and (2) even granting this doctrine of intention, no de- fect of due intention should be imputed to the An-
