(Wilkins, Concil. iv. 121). The Anglican priesthood being gone, the episcopate also lapses. For according to the Pontifical, the episcopate is the “summum saccrdotium”; the bishop in consecration receives “the sacerdotal grace”; it is “his office to consecrate, ordain, offer, baptize, confirm.” Thus in the Pontifical the words “Receive the Holy Ghost” are determined and defined by the context. There is nothing in the Anglican ordinal to show that the Holy Ghost is given for the consecration of a bishop in the Roman sense. In 1704 John Gordon, formerly Anglican bishop of Galloway, gave to the Holy Office an account of the manner in which he had been consecrated. The Sacred Congregation, with the pope’s approval, declared his orders to be null. The constant practice has been to reordain unconditionally Anglican priests and deacons. In 1896 Leo XIII. summoned eight divines of his own communion to examine the question anew. Four of those divines were, it is said, decidedly opposed to the admission of Anglican orders as valid; four were more or less favourably disposed to them. The report of this commission was then handed over to a committee of cardinals, who pronounced unanimously for the nullity of the orders in question. Thereupon the pope published his bull Apostolicae curae. In it he lays the chief stress on the indeterminate nature of the Anglican form “Receive the Holy Ghost” at least from 1552 till the addition of the specific words, “for the office and work of a bishop (or priest) in the church of God,” as also on the changes made in the Edwardine order “with the manifest intention. . . of rejecting what the church does.” His conclusion is that Anglican orders are “absolutely null and utterly void.” Moreover, in a letter to Cardinal Richard, archbishop of Paris, the pope affirms that this his solemn decision is “firm, authoritative and irrevocable.”
For Roman Catholics the decision necessarily carries great weight, and it may perhaps have its influence on Anglicans of the school which approximates most closely to Roman belief. It need not affect the opinion of dispassionate students. It is not the judgment of experts. The rejection of Anglican orders in the 16th and 17th centuries was based on a theory about the “tradition of instruments,” which has long ceased to be tenable in the face of history, and is abandoned by Romanists themselves. The opinion of a liturgical scholar like Mgr. Louis Duchesne, who was a member of the papal commission, on the general question would be interesting in the highest degree. Unfortunately we know nothing of his vote or of the reasons he gave for it, and outside of the Roman pale the unanimous decision of a committee of cardinals counts for very little. We may grant the pope’s contention that the Edwardine church had no belief in priests who offered in sacrifice the body and blood of Christ or in bishops capable of ordaining such priests. We may grant further that the medieval offices have been deliberately altered to exclude this view. But then the liturgy of Serapion, the friend of Athanasius, recently discovered, contains forms for the ordination of priests and bishops which do not say a word about power to sacrifice, much less about power to sacrifice Christ’s literal body and blood. The canons of Hippolytus, which are about 150 years older, and indeed all the oldest forms for celebration, absolutely ignore any such power of sacrifice. If they speak of sacrifice at all, it is a sacrifice of the gifts brought by the faithful and distributed in the congregation and among the poor, or again they refer to those spiritual sacrifices which a bishop is to offer “day and night.” The Didache and Justin Martyr are no less unsatisfactory from the Roman point of view. In short, the English reformers knew very well that the ordinal and communion office which they drew up could not satisfy the requirements of medieval theology. They appealed not to the school divines, but to Scripture and primitive antiquity. That is the standard by which we are to test their work.
Authorities.—For holy order in the apostolic and sub-apostolic age the reader may consult R. Rothe, Anfänge der christlichen Kirche (1837); A. Ritschl’s Entstehung der altkatholischen Kirche (2nd ed., 1857); J. B. Lightfoot’s dissertation on the “Christian Ministry” in his commentary on the Philippians (1868). A new era was opened by E. Hatch’s Organization of the Early Christian Church (1880); to this Bishop C. Gore’s Church and Ministry (1888) is a reply. The facts are judicially stated and weighed in Bishop J. Wordsworth’s Ministry of Grace (1902). Dr T. M. Lindsay’s Church and Ministry in Early Centuries (1902) on the whole agrees with Hatch, but is too eager to find modern Presbyterianism in the early church. A. Harnack’s edition of the Didache (1884), his Sources of the Apostolic Canons (Eng. trans., 1895), the edition of the Canons of Hippolytus by H. Achclis, in Texte und Untersuchungen, vol. vi. (1891), the translation of Serapion’s Prayer-book (translated by Bishop J. Wordsworth, 1899), are indispensable for serious study of the subject.
Joann Morinus, De sacris ordinationibus (1655) and A. C. Chardon, Histoire des sacraments, vol. v. (1745), are rich in material chiefly relating to the patriotic and medieval periods.
For the controversy on Anglican orders see P. F. Courayer, Validité des ordinations anglaises (1732), and two works in reply by M. Le Quien, Nullité des ordinations anglicanes (1725}, Nullité des ordinations anglicanes démonstrée de nouveau (1730). In recent times Anglican orders have been defended by A. W. Haddan, Apostolical Succession in the Church of England; F. W. Puller, The Bull Apostolicae Curae and the Edwardine Ordinal. They have been attacked by E. E. Estcourt, Question of Anglican Ordinations (1873), and by A. W. Hutton, The Anglican Ministry, with a preface by Cardinal J. H. Newman (1879). (W. E. A.*)
ORDER IN COUNCIL, in Great Britain, an order issued by the sovereign on the advice of the privy council, or more usually
on the advice of a few selected members thereof. It is the modern
equivalent of the medieval ordinance and of the proclamation
so frequently used by the Tudor and Stewart sovereigns. It is
opposed to the statute because it does not require the sanction
of parliament; it is issued by the sovereign by virtue of the
royal prerogative. But although theoretically orders in council
are thus independent of parliamentary authority, in practice they are only issued on the advice of ministers of the crown, who are, of course, responsible to parliament for their action in the matter. Orders in council were first issued during the 18th century, and their legality has sometimes been called in question, the fear being evidently prevalent that they would be used, like the earlier ordinances and proclamations, to alter the law. Consequently in several cases parliament has subsequently passed acts of indemnity to protect the persons responsible for issuing them, and incidentally to assert its own authority. At the present time the principle seems generally accepted that orders in council may be issued on the strength of the royal prerogative, but they must not seriously alter the law of the land.
The most celebrated instance of the use of orders in council was in 1807 when Great Britain was at war with France. In answer to Napoleon’s Berlin decree, the object of which was to destroy the British shipping industry, George III. and his ministers issued orders in council forbidding all vessels under penalty of seizure to trade with ports under the influence of France. Supplementary orders were issued later in the same year, and also in 1808. Orders in council are used to regulate the matters which need immediate attention on the death of one sovereign and the accession of another.
In addition to these and other orders issued by the sovereign by virtue of his prerogative, there is another class of orders in council, viz. those issued by the authority of an act of parliament, many of which provide thus for carrying out their provisions. At the present day orders in council are extensively used by the various administrative departments of the government, who act on the strength of powers conferred upon them by some act of parliament. They are largely used for regulating the details of local government and matters concerning the navy and the army, while a new bishopric is sometimes founded by an order in council. They are also employed to regulate the affairs of the crown colonies, and the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, the viceroy of India, the governor-general of Canada, and other representatives of the sovereign may issue orders in council under certain conditions.
In times of emergency the use of orders in council is indispensable to the executive. In September 1766, a famine being feared, the export of wheat was forbidden by an order in council, and the Regulation of the Forces Act 1871 empowers the government in a time of emergency to take possession of the railway system of the country by the issue of such an order.
