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I do not desire 'more than this.' But, read with this, the outcome of the passage of Justin will be that whilst only certain ministers, authorized as such, could ministerially exercise the 'priesthood' and offer the 'sacrifices,' yet the sacrifices which they offered and the priesthood which they exercised were the sacrifices and priesthood of the Church as a whole, and of her ministers rather as the representative organs of her power, than as a power apart, standing outside of her, or between her and God. This of course is exactly the view which I have been interpreting. But how is it relevant to the Bishop's argument? That argument seems to me to fall to the ground, if it be once conceded that the ministerial celebration of the Eucharist was the right of some and not of others, according as they were, or were not, ordained to ministry.

Must it not then be said that the Bishop has been misled by a false antithesis? Is not his argument really based upon the assumption that the priesthood of the Church as a whole, and a ministerial priesthood within the Church, or at least a ministerial priesthood divinely authorized and delimited, are mutually incompatible ideas? He is bound therefore to use the passage in Justin in a way which will only lead to contradictions. But the passage fits at once perfectly to our view, and confirms it in every particular.

Again, when he comes to Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria, I cannot but submit that there is another false antithesis underlying his argument. He writes as if men who recognized that the true heart of Christian priesthood was in inward and spiritual reality were ipso facto excluded from acknowledging an outward and ministerial priesthood at all. Upon this pseudo-antithesis I have dwelt sufficiently in an earlier chapter. But if it be swept away, there is nothing left in his citations from these two fathers. They both, in fact, believed in an episcopal succession continuous from the Apostles; and Clement shows explicitly that he recognizes the de facto 'presbyter and deacon and layman,' or, elsewhere, the

'bishop, presbyter, and deacon,' none the less distinctly because he knows that reality of presbyterate-inwardly, ultimately, in the presence of God - depends not on earthly rank but on spiritual character. The same two fallacies completely undermine what he says of Tertullian and Origen. But I need not repeat what I have said of these before, and particularly of the use which he makes of the Montanist position of Tertullian 1.

Whilst therefore I do not believe that Bishop Lightfoot's position is true in this matter even of the apostolic epistles themselves, I certainly cannot admit that he has made it good in respect of either the sub-apostolic writers, or those who intervene between these and St. Cyprian. From St. Cyprian onwards he would admit. that this 'sacerdotal' language has been the received language of the Catholic Church. It has been, then, in admitted possession for at least 1,600 years. I must submit that its essential reality is plainly discernible for over 200 years more. Even the very completeness of its acceptance from the middle of the third century might well suggest that it was rather in implicit agreement than in any real contrast with that universal sense of the Christian Church, into which, upon any showing, it fitted so easily and so completely. We may do well to separate ourselves from all language which would fairly imply a belief in the existence of a distinct caste, of higher holiness or strictly mediatorial power, as if by any right of its own to offer sacrifice, or in any proper sense of the word to 'atone'; but I must venture to think that the theological judgement or instinct - of the Anglican reformers, who, in the face of the destructive flood of Edwardian and Bucerian Protestantism, retained with deliberate emphasis the Christian 'priesthood' as apostolic and perpetual in the Church of Christ, is at once more consistent, more scriptural, and more profound, than any considerations which have been or can be urged

1 See above, pp. 78-86,

to palliate a modification in this respect of the wellnigh immemorial language, expressive as it is of the wholly immemorial meaning, of the Christian Church. Had Bishop Lightfoot's argument been directed, not (as it is) against the whole association and language of 'sacerdotalism,' but rather against a certain misconceived and disproportioned idea of sacerdotal association and language, the outcome-and we must add, the value-of his dissertation would have been very different.

IV.

Now I have dwelt for some time upon the interpretation and vindication of this 'sacerdotal' and 'sacrificial' phraseology. It will, however, be obvious that it is, after all, precisely in this respect that the Anglican Ordinal does make deliberate and decided departure from the unreformed language and thought. All direct language about the power to offer sacrifice,' which, by a process. of gradual accretion, had come to be at last so continually and so emphatically reiterated in the Sarum Pontifical, is removed, and other things are emphasized in its place. What is the nature and meaning of this crucial alteration?

Now the answer seems to me as simple as it is important. It is one thing to admit the reality of sacrificial language; it is quite another to make it the one definition and measure of Christian ministry. We have seen something of the progress of gradual development, by which this one aspect or thought-not merely colours so far the office of the Christian presbyter as to justify the instinct of the Church in stamping upon the word 'presbyter' whatever associations rightly belong to its shortened form 'priest,' but itself becomes the characteristic essence, the one differentia, the adequate definition of 'presbytership.' But if we go back to the really early indications, still more if we go back to Scripture itself, it is impossible not to be struck with a wide difference of proportions in this respect. Whatever we may, by perfectly just constructiveness, infer and understand about Christian ministry, it seems to be perfectly undeniable that, in the New Testament, (a) the 'sacerdotal' idea of the ceremonial

offering of Eucharistic sacrifice is nowhere obviously upon the surface, as the one constitutive idea of Christian ministry, whether apostolic or presbyteral, and (b) certain other conceptions emphatically are.

Take the sketch of apostolate through the whole of the fourth chapter of 1 Cor.; or again the second and four following chapters, or again the eleventh chapter, of the Second Epistle. The first of these is a picture of inconceivable outward contemptibleness culminating in 'the filth of the world, the offscouring of all things'; the second expressly combines inconceivable glory in spiritual work upon souls with the same paradoxically extreme depression, contempt, dying upon the earth; the third is, to the end of time, a most marvellous picture in detail of humiliation and endurance, culminating above all in 'that which presseth upon me daily, anxiety for all the Churches.' Turn from these again to presbyterate as indicated in the Pastoral Epistles or in the solemn words of St. Paul in the Acts, 'I hold not my life of any account . . . so that I may accomplish . . . the ministry which I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God.'. . . 'Take heed unto yourselves and to all the flock in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops, to feed the Church of God which He purchased with His own blood;' words which in more ways than one recall our Lord's own picture of the true Pastor: The good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep.'

...

I was myself arguing, not long ago, that the thought of the Christian 'sacrifice of Eucharist,' the 'sacrament of the Christian sacrifice,' is in some of those passages very near at hand. But it is not upon the actual surface of any one of them. What then is really the foreground of the picture? Whatever may be by just inference implied and contained, what is that which stands forward as the dominant idea of the whole? It is something far more general, and more inclusive of all vital activities and meaning, than anything, however mysterious and far-reach

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