LESSON THE EIGHTEENTH.

The Ordinal or the Forms of Ordering Deacons, Priests, and Bishops.*

EANINGS of the terms HOLY ORDERS,

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ORDINATION, the ORDINAL. - HOLY ORDERS is a term expressive of the position and authority, which the Ministers of Religion hold in the CHRISTIAN CHURCH; Ordination is the act by which they are appointed and qualified to discharge the ministerial functions; and the ORDINAL is the form of Ordination, or of setting them apart to the office of the Ministry.

* As we propose shortly to publish a second work more especially for the use of candidates for the ministry, in which the ARTICLES of RELIGION, the ORDINAL, the CANONS, and the FORMS of CONSECRATION and of INSTITUTION may be at once more fully and more advantageously treated than in this manual, we shall confine our present lesson on the ORDINAL to such general points of information as it behooves every member of OUR CHURCH to be acquainted with.

2. THREE ORDERS of Ministry in the Church. OUR CHURCH, as well as that of ENGLAND, and indeed all reformed CHURCHES recognize three, and only three, orders of the ministry; such having manifestly been the original constitution of the CHURCH of GOD both under the Jewish and the Christian Dispensations.

3. THE BASIS upon which OUR LORD Constituted the Church. Under the MOSAIC ECONOMY there were a High-Priest, Priests, and Levites, invested with different degrees of Ecclesiastical authority; and as, in many of her outward forms and ceremonies, the CHRISTIAN CHURCH was modelled upon that of the JEWS, her DIVINE FOUNDER adopted thence a three-fold Order of Ministers. During His personal ministry OUR LORD being the Great HIGH-PRIEST of the NEW DISPENSATION, appointed under Himself as the HEAD, the Twelve APOSTLES, and, subordinate to them, the seventy disciples. After His Ascension, a third order of deacons, was added to the Apostles and Seventy Disciples; and it appears both "from the Holy Scripture and ancient authors, that from the Apos

tles' time there have been three Orders of Ministers in Christian Churches, BISHOPS, PRIESTS, and DEACONS."

4. CONFIRMATION of the above statement from the Apostolic Epistles and the Writings. of the Primitive Church.-ST. PAUL distinctly specifies THREE ORDERS, when he states that "GOD had set some in the CHURCH, first Apostles, secondly Prophets, thirdly Teachers" (1 Cor. xii. 28); and there are passages in his other Epistles, which agree with this statement. Compare Eph. iv. 11; 1 Tim. iii. 13, and iv. 12. With respect to the early FATHERS, IGNATIUS, the disciple of ST. JOHN and Bishop of Antioch in the First Century, affirms (in Epist. ad Trall. c. 3) that χωρὶς τούτων ἐκκλησία οὐ xaleita, apart from, or without these, i. e. Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, it is not called a Church. To the same effect are the following passages in the works of the same illustrious Father, Ep. ad Trall. c. 7; ad Magn. cc. 6, 7; ad Philadelph. cc. 4, 7; ad Smyrn. c. 8. Thus also in the eighteenth Canon of the COUNCIL of NICE, A.D. 325, it is stated εμμενέτωσαν οἱ διάκονοι τοῖς ἰδίοις μέτροις,

εἰδότες ὅτι τοῦ μὲν ἐπισκόπου ὑπηρέται εἰσί, τῶν δὲ πρεσβυτέρων ἐλάττους: “ Let the deacons keep within their own limits-of-duty, remembering that they are on the one hand servants of the Bishops, and on the other inferior to the Presbyters." It would be easy to multiply such authorities largely, but the above may suffice here.

5. THE TITLES of the Three ORDERS of the Ministry. The TITLES now applied to distinguish the THREE ORDERS of the Ministry were not limited exactly in the same way or degree by the writers of the NEW TESTAMENT. As the circumstances of an Institution vary, either new terms must be coined, or those already in existence must be modified to answer the occasion; and the latter method has been more commonly adopted. The Latin title Imperator is a good illustration of this; originally it signified commander, like the Greek oroarnyós, and in the times of the REPUBLIC was awarded by the people to a victorious General as a title of Honour; in this way it gradually attained the signification of Commander-inChief, from which, by an easy transition, it passed, under the Cæsars, to its final meaning

of Ruler of the Roman State. Now episcopos (inioxonos), which signifies generally an overseer, was originally assumed to denote the presiding, and diaconos (diáxovos) = a servant, to denote the ministerial, functions of the CHURCH; so that the former is even applied to OUR LORD (1 Pet. ii. 25), and both of them to His Apostles (Acts i. 20; 2 Cor. iii. 6; Eph. iii. 7), who, with respect to their age and dignity, are sometimes also called presbyteroi (peoßúrego). Compare Acts xx. 17, 28. When, however, the Apostles, in anticipation of their approaching martyrdom, appointed their successors in the superintendence of the several CHURCHES which they had founded, as TIMOTHY at EPHESUS, and TITUS in CRETE, the title of Apostolos (anóorolos) was reserved by way of reverence to those who had been personally-sent, by CHRIST Himself; episcopos (iпioxoпos) was assigned to those who succeeded them in the highest office of the CHURCH, as overseers of pastors as well as of flocks; and presbyteros (noεoßúτegosthe) became distinctive appellation of the second order, so that, after the First Century, no writer has designated the