I have italicized two of these clauses because (as will presently appear) they are as admirable upon the principles advocated in these pages as upon Dr. Hatch's own. But it is the final clause which shows what Dr. Hatch's distinctive position really is. He proceeds in the same lecture to exhibit in part, and give the explanation of, the very real and serious disproportion in the way of over-statement of ministerial distinction and power which has been only too familiar in some parts of Church history; and he concludes it in words whose solemnity of feeling and aspiration we can re-echo with hardly the less of sympathy because we are convinced that they are exegetically misconceived: 'But in earlier times there was a grander faith. For the kingdom of God was a kingdom of priests. Not only the "four and twenty elders" before the throne but the innumerable souls of the sanctified upon whom "the second death had no power" were "kings and priests unto God." Only in that high sense was priesthood predicable of Christian men. For the shadow had passed; the Reality had come; the one High Priest of Christianity was Christ!'

It will be remembered that the thought which is still immediately before us is the thought of ministers, as organs of the whole Body, specialized for certain particular functions, which are necessary for the life of the whole; in function, so far, distinct; not dependent simply upon any act or will of the whole for their functional empowerment and authority; yet being none the less, even in their most distinct functional activity, organs representative and expressive of the living capacity or inherent prerogative of the whole. Now when, with this leading thought, we turn to Bishop Lightfoot's essay, it is impossible not to be struck with the extent to which this thought, if he admitted it, would modify large sections of his argument. The last twenty-five pages of the essay he devotes to discussing and exposing 'Sacerdotalism.'

1 p. 142.

It would be quite premature to enter upon any discussion of that word here. But this is perhaps the time to notice that, at least in large part, sacerdotalism seems to Bishop Lightfoot to mean, or at all events (amongst other things) to imply, the precise contradictory of our present principle -the doctrine that 'sacerdotal ministry' is not representative of, but is something exclusive and apart from, the life of the Body as a whole. He sets the two ideas, of sacerdotalism on the one hand and representative ministry on the other, in sharp antithesis, as alternatives. An account of ministry (however otherwise 'sacerdotal'), which began by insisting on the harmony of the two, as a position fundamental for understanding the rationale of ministry, would cause at once the larger part of his argument to fall as irrelevant to the ground.

Thus he says (speaking of what he regards as an earlier and purer ministerial conception), 'Hitherto the sacerdotal view of the Christian ministry has not been held apart from a distinct recognition of the sacerdotal functions of the whole Christian body. The minister is thus regarded as a priest, because he is the mouthpiece, the representative of a priestly race1. . . . So long as this important aspect is kept in view, so long as the priesthood of the ministry is regarded as springing from the priesthood of the whole body, the teaching of the Apostles has not been directly violated.' It will be observed that these two sentences (and particularly the phrases which I have italicized), though capable of misinterpretation, would stand as the natural expression of the very view which has been maintained above. But that, to Bishop Lightfoot, they contain and mean the very thing which has been protested against above, is clear from the sentence which in his paragraph intervenes between the two. It is this: 'Such appears to be the conception of Tertullian, who speaks of the clergy as separate from the laity only because the Church in the exercise of her prerogative has for convenience entrusted to them the

1

1 Philippians, p. 256. The italics throughout these sentences are mine.

performance of certain sacerdotal functions belonging properly to the whole congregation, and of Origen, who giving a moral and spiritual interpretation to the sacerdotal office, considers the priesthood of the clergy to differ from the priesthood of the laity only in degree, in so far as the former devote their time and their thoughts more entirely to God than the latter.'

Of Tertullian and Origen I will speak a little further presently. Meanwhile compare the way in which the two sentences quoted below are written by Bishop Lightfoot together, as if they were but two ways of conveying practically the same thing. After having said, ‘In such cases (viz. the weekly alms, oblations, prayers, thanksgivings, &c.) the congregation was represented by its minister, who thus acted as its mouthpiece and was said to "present the offerings" to God: so the expression is used in the Epistle of St. Clement of Rome: but in itself it involves no sacerdotal view;' he adds these two sentences: 'This ancient father regards the sacrifice or offering as the act of the whole Church performed through its presbyters. The minister is a priest in the same sense only in which each individual member of the congregation is a priest1.' It is difficult to see on what ground the Bishop makes the assertion of the latter sentence at all, except on the assumption that it is identical with that of the earlier. But this at least it certainly is not. Even the earlier assertion, though true, is not capable of being deduced from the phrase (to which he refers) in Clem. ad Cor. 44.

One more sentence may be quoted: 'The point to be noticed at present is this; that the offering of the Eucharist, being regarded as the one special act of sacrifice and appearing externally to the eye as the act of the officiating minister, might well lead to the minister being called a priest and then being thought a priest in some exclusive sense, where the religious bias was in p. 260.

this direction and as soon as the true position of the minister as the representative of the congregation was lost sight of1.' Here, it will be observed, the idea of ' representing the congregation' is in express terms made directly antithetical to the idea of an official priesthood, a priesthood, that is, appertaining to the ministers more. than to other individual members of the congregation. This is precisely the confusion of which we complain. That a 'representative' priesthood (which we strongly assert) implies, in a real sense, the priestly character of the Church as a whole, we should altogether insist that it implies that any other members of the Church than her ordained ministers are authorized to stand as the Church's representative personae, in order to exercise ministerially the functions by which expression is given to her priestly character, we both repudiate as inference, and also deny in fact.

That Tertullian, as especially in the well-known passage, quoted both by Bishop Lightfoot and Dr. Hatch, went too far in the direction of this false inference, may be admitted; that in so doing he rather overstated a

1 p. 261.

2 De Exhort. Cast. vii. : 'Vani erimus si putaverimus quod sacerdotibus non liceat, laicis licere. Nonne et laici sacerdotes sumus? Scriptum est Regnum quoque nos et sacerdotes Deo et Patri suo fecit. Differentiam inter ordinem et plebem constituit ecclesiae auctoritas et honor per ordinis consessum sanctificatus. Adeo ubi ecclesiastici ordinis non est consessus, et offers et tinguis et sacerdos es tibi solus. Sed ubi tres, ecclesia est, licet laici. . . . Igitur si habes ius sacerdotis in temetipso ubi necesse est, habeas oportet etiam disciplinam sacerdotis, ubi necesse est habere ius sacerdotis. Digamus tinguis? digamus offers? quanto magis laico digamo capitale erit agere pro sacerdote, cum ipsi sacerdoti digamo facto auferatur agere sacerdotem.'

These are the words which have been held to be so capital. I have been content to take them in their ordinary interpretation: but must own that their meaning does not seem to me so absolutely clear. Sacerdos es tibi solus' seems to represent a very different thought from any right, under supposed necessity, to minister congregationally. It sounds more like what any modern High Churchman would say of a Christian secluded from all access to Church ordinances. It will be said no doubt that the 'et offers et tinguis' exclude such an interpretation. Perhaps they do but it does not seem to me at all impossible that a writer, who can be so rhetorical as Tertullian, would express himself

truth than stated what was wholly an untruth, is implied in the position as set forth above: that he should have, just in this way, overstated his truth, seems to be the most natural consequence in the world from his admitted Montanism; from the imperfect perception of the relation between 'outward' and 'inward' which is a basis of Montanism; and from the attitude of conscious depreciation of the sacredness of external order, and even of protesting opposition against it, into which his Montanism necessarily drew him 2. It is difficult to thus, without meaning necessarily more than that 'your own prayers and spiritual communings take the place of preaching, praising, baptizing, confirming, communicating-everything whatever.' Such a rhetoric, and the precise form it here takes, would be made all the more probable, because there would anyhow be a limited sense in which both the 'offers' and the 'tinguis' might seem to be literally predicable of occasions in domestic lay life: the 'tinguis' as representing the ultimate possibility 'si necesse est' of baptizing; the 'offers' as not wholly inapplicable to the habitual reception in private of the sacrament reserved. After all, it is Tertullian who says, de Baptismo, 17, 'Alioquin [sc. salvo Ecclesiae honore] etiam laicis ius est [sc. dandi baptismum]'; and again, it is Tertullian who writes of the Christian wife of a heathen man (ad Uxorem, II. v.), 'non magiae aliquid videberis operari? non sciet maritus quid secreto ante omnem cibum gustes? et si sciverit panem, non illum credit esse qui dicitur? Et haec, ignorans quisque rationem, simpliciter sustinebit? sine gemitu? sine suspicione panis an veneni?' Such a familiar possibility as these words contemplate must form part of the atmosphere through which we distinguish the meaning of Tertullian. I am not suggesting, however, that Tertullian is here so much speaking, directly and literally, either of Baptism in extremis, or of private self-communicating; but rather that, in a passage which is primarily rhetorical, the possibility of these two things enters in, partly to give a sense of justification to, partly to determine the precise form of, the rhetorical phrases.

It will be understood that these remarks affect the meaning of Tertullian's apparent assumption that a layman, as such, was admittedly capable of administering sacraments. They affect it particularly as evidence of contemporary custom or thought. But they do not affect the use which Tertullian makes of the assumption, whatever the assumption itself may mean. He undoubtedly uses it for the purpose of wiping out all real distinction between ministry and laity, and reducing it to a mere arrangement of ecclesiastical orderliness. It is curious to see how he helps himself herein by the word 'priests,' and the quotation from Rev. v. 10. The word 'priest' lent itself to this ambiguity, as the words 'apostle,' 'bishop,' 'presbyter,' 'deacon,' had never done. 1 In the sense explained in chapter ii. p. 50.

2 Cp., as in the last chapter, p. 48, the distinction drawn between the ' ecclesia episcoporum' and the 'ecclesia spiritus,' in the de Pudicitia, xxi.