from Archbishop Bramhall. Now if this were the doctrine of the Church of England it would have formed, we may be sure, when such vast importance is attached to it, one of its Articles, and would have been otherwise prominently brought out. But this doctrine is nowhere to be found in any of its authorized documents! How is this to be accounted for unless it be that it never held it? And if it does not hold it, how can such strong language be employed by Dr. Wordsworth in its name? Because there are Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, as also five other Orders in the Church of Rome, that fact does not necessarily constitute her a true Church; as well might we conclude that, because a crew of pirates has a captain and subordinate officers, they must have been duly commissioned by lawful authority!

Nor does the Church of England affirm that the special duties of ministers cannot be performed without such names being attached to the "Orders of Ministers in Christ's Church " as Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. It could not possibly have contended for the names as being all scriptural. And from the fact of the names not being all scriptural, (and scriptural names to three Orders it would, I think, be impossible to find,) it

is not an inappropriate argument to say that, from so ostensibly weak a premise a strong dogmatic conclusion, such as is generally drawn,-ought not to be deduced. When also so loose and objectionable a word as "Priest" has been employed,—a word nowhere to be found in the New Testament, and, obviously, designedly excluded from it,―to describe a minister in Christ's Church, too great a stress ought not to be laid upon the phraseology of "the Preface" on this matter. The spirit and not the letter should be our polestar when considering its teaching. That this reasoning is perfectly legitimate and sound is further apparent when we examine into the manner in which the Preface has been carried out. In the first place we notice a marked difference in the heading of the Ordination Services. There is "the Ordering of Deacons," and "the Ordering of Priests," but not the Ordering of Bishops, only "the Consecration of Bishops; a distinction which is seen also in the services themselves, and in the wording of the Thirtysixth Article. This fact may be said to establish that there are but two Orders or ministerial grades practically enforced, the third service being but a confirmation of the second formally to grant

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authority for particular duties to experienced and fit persons, known to be such, in the second order, to secure an orderly and effective government over the Church. * If this is not the fact, then, consistently with the rigorous interpretation that the Church must have three distinct Orders and be limited to three, we shall be utterly at a loss to justify its adoption of a fourth; for there is a fourth as practically enforced as a third. Archbishops are by the Ordination Services as much an Order as Bishops, the form for the one is, with the exception of "the Oath of due Obedience to the Archbishop," which bishops only are

In the Preface itself there is a similar striking distinction. In the second clause it is enacted, "None shall be admitted a Deacon, except he be twenty-three years of age. . . . And every man which is to be admitted a Priest, shall be full four-and-twenty years old. And every man which is to be ordained or consecrated Bishop shall be full thirty years of age." Not, we see, admitted a Bishop, but "ordained or consecrated Bishop." Now the word "admitted" implies an entrance into something (in the present case it can mean only an Order) from which the person was previously excluded. The language employed, therefore, indicates very plainly that Bishops are not raised or taken out of the Order of Priests, but only consecrated to an office in that Order.

required to make,-identical with the form for the other, and there is as great a progressive superiority in the Order of Archbishops as there is in that of Bishops. But there are but three Orders -Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, then Archbishops are not an Order, which is contrary to fact. The conclusion we are compelled to come to here then is, that the word "Orders" in the Preface ought not to be understood in a narrow or restricted sense. It has a twofold sense. Orders are both ministerial and ecclesiastical. There is no higher ministerial power given to Bishops or Archbishops when they are ordained as such, than what was granted to them when they were admitted into the Order of "Priests." Ministerially, therefore, they are all — Archbishops, Bishops, and Priests-but one Order. Ecclesiastically they are three Orders. Archdeacons and Deans, though no Ordination Services are enjoined for the making of them, are likewise Orders. Bishops are not an Order in the same sense as Deacons and Priests are Orders. Bishops are an Order like unto Archbishops, Archdeacons, and Deans. In the former sense there are in the Church of England but two Orders-Deacons and Priests. In the Order of Deacons there are

no grades or different Orders; * in the Order of Priests there are several, such as-Archbishops, Bishops, Deans, Archdeacons, Canons, and Priests. The parity of Order, therefore, of Bishops and Priests, as "Ministers in Christ's Church," is not touched by the Preface, or the Ordination Services. † We confess to a deficiency of explanation, and a laxity of diction in "the Preface," which we cannot sufficiently regret, though we imagine at the time it was written it was not expected such a subject would be so fruitful of heartburnings, rancour, and intolerance as it has since proved. From the spirit of the whole Book of Consecration and the Articles we cherish the belief that,

Though Archdeacons in these last ages of the Church have usually been of the Order of Presbyters, yet anciently they were no more than Deacons. the principal Deacon of every Church."- Bingham : Antiquities of the Christian Church, vol. i., book 2, c. xxi., § 1.

It was not simply through humility, but probably as claiming their highest privilege, that we find Bishops anciently [that is, since the Reformation] styling themselves Priests, and Ministers."-Rev. Wm. Maskell, M.A.: Monumenta Ritualia Ecclesiæ Anglicanæ, vol. iii., p. 84.

"There are so many duties common to both Bishops and Priests, that we may regard the two degrees but one Order."-The same, vol. iii., p. 81.