It is obvious that nothing can be added by an argument like this.

Before leaving the 'étude,' it may be worth while to quote one word of a different kind-its final word-addressed plainly, though not by name, to M. Duchesne: 'Si l'Église pouvait accepter les ordinations anglicanes comme valables, elle devrait le faire; d'abord parce que ce serait son intérêt, puisque cela rendrait ainsi plus facile le retour de cette Église depuis si longtemps séparée, retour qui est un de ses plus chers désirs; ce serait plus encore son devoir, puisqu'elle enseigne que les rites catholiques de l'ordination, employés par un ministre hérétique avec l'intention requise, confèrent le sacrement de l'Ordre, lequel ne peut sans sacrilège se réitérer.'

It is unnecessary to comment further upon the argument of the 'Étude.' For not the least remarkable fact about it is that, within the year, a great part of it was publicly withdrawn by M. Boudinhon himself. Christmas Day, 1895, is the date of the preface to a new pamphlet, larger than the first, in which he has materially reconsidered his position.

In this brochure, 'De la Validité des Ordinations Anglicanes,' he devotes his whole effort to bring the argument for their nullity away from all considerations of 'intention' (herein pointedly separating himself from English Roman Catholics 1) and to base it altogether on the inherent inadequacy of the Anglican rite.

He lets go the argument which had seemed to be so conclusive in the Étude-alike against the possibility of the adequacy

'A priori, et avant la détermination légitime faite par l'Église, toute forme est suffisante, dès lors qu'elle indique l'effet de l'ordination; mais, en réalité, après la détermination compétente, les formules imposées par l'Église sont nécessaires'; pp. 16, 17.

'Ou plutôt, pour conclure ainsi, il faudrait autre chose: il faudrait démontrer, suivant ce que j'ai dit plus haut, qu'il n'existe pas de différences entre l'Ordinal anglican et le Pontifical latin, si ce n'est des différences purement accidentelles. Or la comparaison entre les deux textes-comparaison que chacun peut faire-ne permet pas de réduire les différences entre l'un et l'autre à n'être qu'accidentelles'; pp. 17, 18.

1 'Les catholiques anglais se font illusion, ce me semble, en s'attachant presque exclusivement aux motifs de nullité tirés du défaut d'intention des ministres de l'ordination, et des hérésies professées par eux et par l'Église Anglicane, particulièrement sur l'Eucharistie et le sacrifice. Tout cela est presque complètement en dehors de la question'; pp. 17, 18.

of the rite, and the possibility of the adequacy of the intention -drawn with charming simplicity from the obvious fact that Anglicans had altered the Ordinal of the [Roman] Church. Putting 'intention' aside, he admits that, as far as the rite is concerned, its inadequacy does not instantly follow. There is still one chance1. Though they had deliberately varied the form of the Church,' it is still to be asked whether in varying they had or had not lost the essential elements in the forms of the Church.' The animus implied in the fact of altering at all does not settle the matter by itself.

He is good enough to remind us that such a testing of the Anglican rite by 'legitimate' rites is only necessary because the Anglican rite is itself schismatic and illegitimate. Had it existed within the Church,' or even been recognized by 'the Church,' that would suffice. But being schismatically 'without,' it can only justify itself by its conformity with that which is 'within';

Pp. 23, 24.

This is delightful. The whole of the major premiss, then which he is about to construct, avowedly depends, for its relevancy to the argument, upon the fundamental assumption that Anglicans, their principles, their ceremonies, their service books, have no place in, but are wholly outside of, the history and the life of the Church.' So frank a begging of the only question really worth arguing of course considerably clears the ground.

But to return to M. Boudinhon. He grants that the Anglican Ordinal fully possesses, in the laying on of hands, the one and only essential materia. Everything therefore turns on the question of the 'forma,' which to him is a term synonymous with the 'canon consécratoire.' What then is essential for a consecratory forma?

Of the answer to this his new premiss consists. Examine, he says in effect, all the constitutive 'formae' which have ever in fact been recognized by 'the Church.' Observe what features are common to them all.

These features constitute the essential

1 'Il ne reste donc qu'une seule hypothèse-mais il en reste une- .. si elles avaient conservé ce qu'il y a d'essentiel dans les prières des Pontificaux catholiques légitimes'; p. 24.

'J'avais conclu, je l'avoue, trop rapidement à l'insuffisance des formules anglicanes, ayant un peu trop vite admis une différence substantielle entre ces prières et celles des formes catholiques'; p. 58.

'form.' A 'form' which has these is adequate. A form which lacks any one of these is not.

I cannot but point out that in this new major premiss there are tacitly contained no less than three assumptions, every one of which is gratuitous and inadmissible. The first is (as always) that the Church' and 'Rome' are simply synonymous terms. He goes on no doubt to examine the Ordinals of many ages and of many countries. But he examines them on the basis of their having been authorized or acknowledged by Rome. And for this reason he of course, by hypothesis, omits the Anglican. This means at once that between him and Anglicans there is no real community of ground.

The second assumption is that the essential 'forma ' in Ordination is one single separate prayer, which can be and must be detached from that whole service of prayer of which it forms part; so that it is, and the service as a whole is not, before God and man, the devotional and interpretative accompaniment of the laying on of hands. If St. Paul laid hands on Timothy in a service of prayer which lasted (say) half an hour, it was not the uplifting of heart through that half hour in Godward aspiration and request-it was the words of some one single, short, separate moment of prayer, in immediate juxtaposition with the manual act which, taken quite apart and alone, constituted in that case the 'prayer' which (as all theologians allow) must accompany the laying on of hands for Ordination. I am not now to discuss this point in full, but must at least express my conviction that theologians (too ready, as often, materially to externalize and logically to define!) have been misled in their theories on this point by an analogy falsely drawn from the sacrament of Baptism; for in Baptism there is, as there is not in any other sacrament or sacramental rite whatsoever, a single formula (itself not in the shape, though with the implications, of a prayer) which, because prescribed as a formula by the lips of the risen Lord Himself, can and does stand alone and apart from everything besides in the full ceremonial of Baptism. So completely, however, is this idea of the technical 'forma' detached by Boudinhon (as by many others in their definition of sacraments) from the service of which it can only at the most be a significant climax, that, when he has settled. which of the elements in the service is to be taken as the 'forma,'

he demands to have, within the limits of that one detached prayer, whatever he has laid down to be essential for the 'prayer' that shall accompany and interpret the laying on of hands.

The third assumption is that the Ordinal 'forms' which have ever been used in the Church (i. e. recognized by Rome) have been in such sense under Divine guidance as to warrant not only the negative conclusion—that nothing can be essential to ordination which they do not all contain; but also the much more doubtful positive-that nothing can possibly have been present in fact in them all without being so indispensable in the sight of God, that, if it were not mentioned, the grace of Order would not be given.

It is obvious that M. Boudinhon is here on very dangerous ground historically. We do not know all the forms which existed. within the area that Rome is not prepared to condemn; at any moment a new discovery might modify the received belief, and show that under this rule forms had been condemned as inadequate which were really well within the terms of the rule1. It is

1 A striking illustration of the probabilities in this direction is supplied by Father Puller [see Guardian for Sept. 30, 1896, p. 1474]:

'The Abbé Boudinhon, by a comparison of the various forms in his collection, has put together all those elements which are common to all of them, and, arranging them in the form of a prayer, he has thus composed a formula which he thinks contains the minimum which can be admitted if a valid ordination is to be secured. There is one point in his formula which seems to me to be open to criticism, but I will first quote it as it stands in his treatise De la Validité des Ordinations Anglicanes. It occurs on p. 50, and runs thus :

“Deus qui . . . respice propitius super hunc famulum tuum, quem ad diaconatum (respective: presbyteratum vel episcopatum seu summum sacerdotium) vocare dignatus es; da ei gratiam tuam, ut munera huius ordinis digne et utiliter adimplere valeat."

'Mgr. Gasparri (Revue Anglo-Romaine, tom. i. p. 545) accepts this formula as giving satisfactorily those elements which are common to all the recognized precatory ordination forms. The point in the formula which I should criticize is the express mention of the order conferred. Unfortunately M. Boudinhon did not take into account the very old Roman rite given in the Canons of St. Hippolytus. If he had, he would have noticed that in the prayer for the ordination of a deacon in that rite there is no mention of the diaconate. The prayer runs as follows (Achelis' edition of the Canons of St. Hippolytus, can. v. sections 39-42, pp. 66, 67):-"O Deus, Pater Domini nostri Iesu Christi, rogamus te nixe [? enixe], ut effundas Spiritum tuum Sanctum super servum tuum N. eumque praepares cum illis, qui tibi serviunt secundum tuum beneplacitum sicut Stephanus ; utque illi concedas vim vincendi omnem potestatem dolosi

probable also that this third assumption would be of no value to M. Boudinhon, except as read in conjuntion with the second. But even apart from the second, and apart from the grave historical risks to which it exposes him, it is necessary to insist that this third assumption-the very marrow of M. Boudinhon's major premiss-is a mere assumption, more or less reasonable, no doubt, for ordinary purposes, but of no real cogency.

Proceeding, however, with his scrutiny upon this principle, M. Boudinhon concludes that the 'prayer' (which is to be recognized detachedly as the 'forma') must express three things, (1) petition to God for grace for the ordinands (generally, but not always, expressed as the gift of His Spirit to them); (2) the name of the order to which they are to be ordained; and (3) (with great variety of detail) some reference to the functions to be fulfilled and the endowments required for their fulfilment, but not necessarily any specification of the powers conceived to be conveyed in the ordination (pp. 45-47). By

signo crucis tuae, quo ipse signatur; utque concedas ipsi mores sine peccato coram omnibus hominibus, doctrinamque pro multis, quâ gentem copiosam in ecclesiâ sacrâ ad salutem perducat sine ullo scandalo. Accipe omne servitium eius per Dominum nostrum Iesum Christum, etc. Amen." Attention was called to this formula by Mr. Lacey, in the Supplementum to the De Hierarchia, and the Abbé Boudinhon, when reviewing the Supplementum, frankly admits that, in view of this formula, his previous result must be modified. It is evident that in this formula there is no mention of either deacon or diaconate, and therefore it cannot be maintained that there is any necessity for the mention of the order, which is being imparted, in the precatory form. No doubt, in some way or other, the fact that the ordinand was going to be ordained deacon and not priest was made manifest when the rite contained in the Canons of St. Hippolytus was performed; but the ordination formula itself is simply a prayer that God would pour out His Holy Spirit upon the ordinand, so that by his holiness and learning he may draw many souls to salvation. The Abbé Boudinhon (Revue Anglo-Romaine, tom. ii. p. 674), speaking of this Hippolytean formula, says :

""Neither the word 'deacon' nor the word 'diaconate' is found in it. The fixing of the intention of the prayer [to the bestowal of the diaconate] is sufficiently secured either by the allusion to Saint Stephen, or by the other prayers and ceremonies, however summary they may have been at that primitive epoch, or even simply by the will and intention of the bishop who was ordaining."

Father Puller adduces this as a modification, in detail, of M. Boudinhon's result. It is, in fact, more than this. It is a striking illustration of the precariousness of his principle.