compassion that He should thus embody in visible form His divine gift. So it is made most easily intelligible and accessible to the ignorant. So it is most easily and forcibly impressed on men's minds that Christ has come, not merely to show them what in any case they are, but to make them what apart from Him they cannot be. Except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.' 'Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you.' 2 Aristotle represented man as 'self-sufficient '—not indeed as an individual, but as a member of an organized society, the city of Greek civilization. If he needed to come into contact with God, that was rather at the circumference of his life and as the remote goal of its highest efforts. Christianity, on the contrary, represents man as fundamentally and from the first dependent upon God. It proclaims that man's initial step of true progress is to know his utter, his complete dependence,-that the essence and secret of all sin is his claim to be independent, to be sufficient for himself. Thus Christ, when He came to restore men to their true selves and to God, as a whole it suggests-not that he believed in no real presence' in the elements, but that he regarded the consecrated bread as a figure of Christ's body, in the sense that, remaining bread, it, so to speak (like Christ's body on earth) embodied the spiritual presence or spirit of Christ which it was to communicate: see my Dissertations (Murray, 1895), pp. 308 ff. On Tertullian's use of 'figura' cf. Journal of Theological Studies (1906) vii. 595.] ་ The earliest language about baptism also is very emphatic in making it the instrument of the new birth and its accompanying purification. See Hermas Vis. iii. 3 § 5, Sim. ix. 16, and Barnabas Ep. 11. The only early Christian writings which seem to take a low view of the sacraments are very Judaic, e.g. the not very early (Ebionite) Clementines and the Didache, which, though primitive and not Ebionite, has no hold on the doctrine of the Incarnation or of the grace which flows from it. It is instructive to contrast in this respect Christianity with Neo-Platonism. Communion with God-oneness with God-was regarded by the philosophers as attainable only through intellectual self-abstraction from the things of sense and an ecstatic rapture possible but to a very few 'select' natures. In the Church it was believed to depend upon a simple act, possible to the most ignorant. 'Take, eat; this is My Body.' 'He that eateth My Flesh dwelleth in Me, and I in him.' F. W. Robertson (Sermons, 2nd series, pp. 55, 56) attempts to make baptism merely an announcement of what is, instead of a creative or re-creative act: but this is to do violence to the whole body of Scriptural and ecclesiastical language. The Church is the 'new creation,' and the sacraments are 'practica' or 'efficacia signa.' (iii) as meeting the moral needs of those who minister. did all that was necessary to emphasize that their restoration must be by the communication of a gift from outside, which they had not and could not have of themselves. This is the essential message of Christianity, and is what differentiates its whole moral scheme down to its very foundations from that of Aristotle. Yet in the second part of the Aristotelian position Christianity recognises a divine truth, of which man had never lost his hold; man must still realize his true being in a society, the city of God. Only in the divine household of the Church can he be fed with his necessary portion, the bread of life. But if it be important to impress upon men's minds, permanently and persistently, as a part of a catholic system, their dependence upon gifts bestowed from outside, it must be admitted that there is no way of making the impression more effective than by the institution in the Christian household of a stewardship, which should represent God, the giver, distributing to the members of the divine family their portion of meat in due season; and it is quite essential that such stewards should receive their authorisation by a commission which makes them the representatives of God the giver, and not of men the receivers. It is the doctrine of ministerial succession by commission from the Apostles which makes, and which alone makes, this required provision for representing to us, along with the matter of the Revelation, and as needful to its due reception, this lively idea of its origin.' 1 (iii) The apostolic succession seems to correspond, as nothing else does, to the moral needs of the ministers of Christ's Church.2 How shall they preach,' said St. Paul, 'except they be sent?' He himself had been sent by an immediate mission from 1 Gladstone Church Principles p. 208. • See Dr. Liddon's sermon The Moral Value of a Mission from Christ. 2 Christ as direct, as visible (so he believed) as that which empowered the other Apostles. When he exhorts Timothy to use his ministry courageously, it is by recalling his mind to an actual external commission received, with its actual and accompanying gift.1 'There is not in the world,' says Bishop Taylor, 'a greater presumption, than that any should think to convey a gift of God, unless by God he be appointed to do it.' Such appointment or commission, to be valid, must be of an authority-not unquestioned indeed, for St. Paul's was questioned, but not justly open to question as representative of Christ. Men are needed for Christ's ministry who have ready wills and clear convictions, men, that is, with a sense of vocation; but they must be also men of humility, distrustful of their own impulses and powers, like the prophets of old. The very thing that such men need is the open and external commission to support the internal sense of vocation through all the fiery trials of failure and disappointment, of weariness and weakness, to which it will be subjected-nay, to be its substitute when God's inward voice seems even withdrawn-maintaining in the man the simple conviction that, as a matter of fact, 'a dispensation has been committed' to him. The idea of the apostolic succession is, then, we may claim, in natural harmony both with the moral needs of men and with the idea of the Church. Such a succession of ministers would serve, as nothing else could serve, equally as a link of continuity in the society, and as an institution calculated to represent to men's imaginations the dependence of the Christian life upon God's gifts, and as a means of supplying a satisfying commission to those called to share the ministry. 1 Rom. X. 14; 2 Tim. i. 6, iv. 5. ⚫ Ductor Dubitantium in his Works (ed. 1828] xiv. p. 26. But it is objected to lowing grounds: On the other hand, objections are raised against it on the fol- which may best be considered before we approach the discussion of the historical evidence, especially as the consideration of them will serve to put more clearly before our minds what the exact conception is which is to be subjected to the test of history. (1) 'It is sacerdotal.' The most important of them may be summarized under five heads : (1) the doctrine of the apostolic succession is sacerdotal: (2) it postulates-what is so incredible-that bad or unspiritual men can impart spiritual gifts to others: (3) it is incompatible with the true ideal of liberty: (4) it is exclusive in such a sense as to be fatal to its claim: (5) the chances against its having been actually preserved are overwhelming. (1) 'The doctrine of the apostolic succession is sacerdotal.' This we admit in one sense and deny in another. It is necessary for us in fact to draw a distinction between what we regard as legitimate and what as illegitimate sacerdotalism. For the term is associated historically with much that is worst, as well as with much that is best, in human character. Priesthood has been greatly abused. But must not the same be said of liberty, or of State authority? Must not it be said of religion itself, in common with all the greatest and most ennobling truths? What would become of us if we should agree to abandon every idea and institution which has become corrupt, or been exaggerated, or made to minister to ambition and worldliness? Life would be a barren thing indeed! There is surely no better task for the wise man than to set himself to vindicate the truths which 1 Dr. Liddon University Sermons, and series, p. 191: 'A formidable word, harmless in itself, but surrounded with very invidious associations.' See the whole passage. lie behind persistent and popular errors and abuses -to the reality and power of which, indeed, the very popularity and persistence of the abuses bear witness. terial priest ever, is not The chief of the ideas commonly associated with The minissacerdotalism, which it is important to repudiate, is hood, howthat of a vicarious priesthood.1 It is contrary to the vicarious, true spirit of the Christian religion to introduce the notion of a class inside the Church who are in a closer spiritual relationship to God than their fellows. 'If a monk falls,' says St. Jerome, a priest shall pray for him; but who shall pray for a priest who has fallen ?' Such an expression, construed literally, would imply a closer relation to God in the priest than in the consecrated layman, and such a conception is beyond a doubt alien to the spirit of Christianity. There is no sacrificial tribe or class between God and man.' 'Each individual member [of the Christian body] holds personal communion with the Divine Head.'3 The difference between clergy and laity is not a difference of kind '4 but of function. Thus the completest freedom of access to God in prayer and intercession, the closest personal relation to Him, belongs to all. So far as there is gradation in the efficacy of prayers, it is the result not of official position but of growing sanctity and strengthening faith. It is an abuse of the sacerdotal conception, if it is supposed that the priesthood exists to celebrate sacrifices or acts of worship in the place of the body of the people or as their substitute. This conception had, no doubt, attached itself to the 'massing priests' of the Middle Ages. The priest had come to be regarded as an individual who held, in virtue of his ordination, the prerogative of offering sacrifices which could win God's gifts. Thus spiritual advan 1 See Maurice Kingdom of Christ part ii. ch. iv. § 5 ad fin. • Bp. Lightfoot Dissert. on the Christian Ministry p. 181. |