Forbes on Article XXVI: Of the Unworthiness of the Ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacrament

SOME special prerogatives and responsibilities of the Christian ministry have with more or less logical con sistency been acknowledged by every sect and Church. Even those who have taught that the ministerial power is a mere delegation of power from the congregation, have yet recognised a certain authority, and demanded a certain morality as a consequence thereof. What is venial in the ordinary member is not so in the case of the minister. A higher standard is demanded of those whose position is that of the chosen and selected teachers of the congregation.

But if this be so in the case of those sects who claim no sacramental authority for their ministers, how much more is it so with those who recognise the divine hierarchy ; who hold that the Christian priesthood is a delegation from the priesthood of Jesus Christ, according to the words, ” As My Father sent Me, so send I you;” who recognise in the sacerdotal power a transmission from above, not a representation from beneath, according to the words, ” Obey them that are

OF THE UNWORTH1NESS OF THE MINISTERS, &C. 477

set over you in the Lord,” and who regard the sacred office as the medium of certain mysterious blessings, the holders of that office being ” stewards of the mys teries of God.”

Where this belief prevails, not only is a higher stand ard demanded of the officers of religion, but anything like sin or immorality is regarded with the greatest abhorrence. That any so invested with the gifts of ordination should partake in the vices or worldlinesses of those around them, is offensive in the highest degree to Christian instincts. A specially holy life is the cor relative of specially holy gifts, and therefore, like ’ ’ the hedge of the law” among the Jews, certain amusements and occupations, not in themselves wrong, are pro scribed by the spiritual sense of the Church, and termed unclerical, meaning thereby that they are unworthy of the thoughts of the clerus, or Lord’s heritage.

Moreover the measure of proportion indicated in the old law, where it is said, ” as with the priest so with the people,” is observable under the new law. The vices and virtues of the clergy will form a pretty accurate gauge of the religious condition of a Church, and while every reformation and revival has been attended or preceded by increasing strictness on the part of the clergy, (as in the great Cistercian movement in the twelfth century,) all periods of religious decay have been caused or accompanied by a corresponding degra dation of the character of the clergy. The state of things indicated by the manners pourtrayed in Chau cer’s ” Canterbury Tales,” is sufficient proof of this.

Or take the scornful picture given by Dante a : —

” Yenne Cephas : e venne el gran vasello De lo Spirito Santo magri e scalzi Prendendo ‘1 cibo di qualunque hostello

Or voglion quinci e quindi chi rincalzi Le moderni Pastori, e che li meiii Tanto son gravi : e chi dirietro gli alzi.

Cuopron de’ manti loro i palafreni, Si che due bestie van sott’ una pelle : 0 Patienza che tanto sostieni.”

But while the sensitiveness of the conscience of the Church touching the virtues of the clergy must be re cognised and admired, the student of history cannot fail to notice from the earliest period a tendency to forget the institution in the individual, and to ignore the organic commission in the qualities of the person commissioned. Nothing but a well-grounded faith in the hierarchical structure of the Church will pre vent men falling into this extreme, and as a matter of fact, from very ancient times there have been sects who made the validity of the Sacraments depend on the worthiness of him who administered them, and it is against these that the Article is directed.

Now the very nature of a Sacrament implies that it not only signifies grace given, but actually bestows it, in virtue of the institution of Christ. The Thomists held that the Sacraments worked as physical causes, the Scotists as moral causes of grace, but both maintained that they operated not per accidcns but per se ; that is,

a Paradise, xxi. 119.

OF THE UNWORTHINESS OF THE MINISTERS, &C. 479

in conformity with their divine purpose and by the virtue attached to them by our Lord, they always ob tain their end, and confer their peculiar grace in all cases universally, where man imposes no obstacle. But a further question arose : could that obstacle be found in the moral state of the administrator ? It was granted that certain moral conditions in the case of the reci pient could mar the effect of the Sacrament, but what about him who ministered it ? The Church has always held that his unworthiness could put no obstacle to grace, nor foul the source whence flowed the streams of Christ’s benediction. ” He who receiveth is not injured, even if he who bestows should seem unworthy ; nor are the unspotted mysteries denied, should the priest ex ceed all men in wickedness, (TrapekdcreLev*)” St. Au gustine points out that if this were not so, man would lose all his motives for confidence in God, and God would cease to be his only hope c. St. Optatus shews that they who baptize are the labourers, not the householder ; and that the Sacraments are holy per se ; and that it is to shut God out of His gifts to main tain otherwise d.

Yet from an early period this truth was resisted, 1. by the Novatians, who rejected the Baptism of the Church6, ascribing, an ancient writer saysf, the

b S. Isid., 1. iii. Ep. cccxl. : see also Greg. Naz., Orat. 40; Chrys., in Matth. Horn. 1. n. 3. c Cont. Lit. PetiL, i. 4. n. 5, and

i. 3. n. 4 ; 6. n. 7. d De Schism. Don., v. 4.

[…]

f Quaistt. V. et N. T.y ap. q. 102, in St. Aug., Opp. t. iii. App., p. 98, Ben.

efficacy of the Sacraments to the character of him who administered them ; 2. by the Donatists, who, re garding the piety of the administrator as the condition of the efficacy of the Sacraments, refused to recognise the ordination of Csecilian by Felix of Aphthonga, whom the Donatists accused falsely of having been a traditor, that is, having in the persecution deli vered up the sacred vessels and books, under threat of death *.

At the great revival of mental thought in the middle ages, this notion, probably caused by the ex ceeding corruption in the lives of the ecclesiastics, was again and again produced. Arnold of Brescia, and his adherents, taught it. The Vaudois maintained that priests in mortal sin could not consecrate the Eucharist, and that the transubstantiation took place not in the hand of the unworthy celebrator, but in the mouth of the worthy communicant ; that a bad priest could not absolve ; that it was better to confess to a pious laic than to a wicked clergyman. Wicliffe, and Huss, though he is not always consistent, pretended that a priest in mortal sin is thereby degraded from his priesthood, and from his power to operate Sacra ments. It will be seen that as the inward state of the clergy is known to God alone, the validity of

£ It appeared subsequently, from the curious Acts of the Synod of Cirta (in St. Aug. c. Crescon., iii. 27, 28), that those who originated the Donatist schism by consecrating Majorian in the place of Caecilian, had themselves been ” traditores,” and had at that S^nod accorded each other a mutual amnesty.

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their acts on this theory becomes radically doubtful and uncertain h.

This led on to another error at the time of the Re formation. The efficacy of the Sacraments was held no longer to depend on the interior disposition of the minister. Not the beneficial effect only, but the reality also of the Sacrament was held to depend on the in terior disposition, the faith of him to whom the Sacra ment was administered *.

Our Article condemns both these notions. It lays down that the Sacraments have an objective value in virtue of their institution. Sacraments ” be effectual because of Christ’s institution and promise ;” there fore they do not depend on the state of the recipients. It also lays down that the clergy, who have chief authority in the ministration of Word and Sacra ments, do not minister in their own name, but in Christ’s; therefore neither do they depend on the state of the celebrant. The Article, however, thinks it right to bring prominently forward the necessity of men being in a fit state for the beneficial par taking of these ordinances, and therefore dwells on the fact that the grace of God’s gifts in the case of wicked clergy is not diminished from such as ” by faith and rightly” receive them.

h Vide Gerson, Responsio ad Error, de or at. privat. fidelium, torn. ii. p. 654 ; Du Pin, D’Argentie, Collect. Judiciorum de nov. err., torn. i. p. 2 ; p. 168.

T i

” Nevertheless, it appertained to the discipline of the Church that inquiry be made of evil ministers.” That the vices of the clergy helped to produce the Reforma tion is a fact allowed on all hands. In the Provincial Council held in 1549 at Edinburgh, it is declared “that the two main roots and causes of the evils which have occasioned the disturbances, and the here sies which the Synod met to check, are the corruption of manners and profane indecency of life of the clergy on the one hand, and the gross ignorance of good let ters and all arts on the other k.” The same convention exhorts the prelates and beneficed clergy in the bowels of Jesus Christ and for zeal of piety, in order to meet heresy, to amend their ways, ” lest they should pro ceed to correct the morals of others, themselves en tangled in notorious crimes, to the great scandal of the people, and increase of heresy1.” The pictures of the habits of the clergy given by these canons is terrible. To forbid the unblest offspring of unhallowed alliances to remain in the parsonages, to condemn im plication in secular business, to repress sumptuousness of apparel, to enforce some sustentation for poor people out of their benefices, to order decency in their fami lies, which families were most ill-ordered, to enforce preaching at least four times a-year, to regulate the schools and the quality of those ordained and presented to benefices, to repress pluralities, were among some of the efforts made to turn the tide of the Reforma tion in Scotland ; but it was too late. The very effort

k Cone. Prov. Eccl. Scot., ii. p. 81, ed. Robertson. l Ibid., p. 118.

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to restore discipline drove over some of the younger abbots and beneficiaries to the cause of the Reformed to escape Reformation. Perhaps sin and fear had paralysed the energies of those who made the laws. Of the six bishops present at the Synod of 1549, three at least were stained with the worst crimes condemned ; the salt had lost its savour, and the violence of the subsequent changes becomes the measure of the cor ruption which occasioned them.

In England it was not so bad, though even here there was much to amend. The succession of earnest prelates never wholly died out, even to the last. Wit ness the praise of Warham by Erasmus, and Fuller’s less generous testimony to the eminent merits of Eisher.

That a false opinion, that had created the great schism of the Donatists in Africa, should be con demned, is not surprising. No body such as the Eng lish Church could continue to maintain an organic existence, if the efficacy of its sacramental rites de pended upon the inward condition of its ministers. But the condemnation is remarkable when we remem ber that the opinion here censured was the centrs-point of the reforming theories both of Wicliff and of Huss. According to these, the wicked or unworthy priest was no priest. An immoral Pope was no true successor of Peter, or Vicar of Jesus Christ. The great popularity of the name of Wicliff, as the great forerunner of the English Reformation, has blinded men to the real cha racter of the communistic and anti-social theories in State craft which he advocated ; and it is a remark-

able thing that one of the Articles of the Reformed Church of England should in such trenchant terms deny his theory of the priesthood. The solution of the difficulty seems to be that although Wicliff had told profoundly on the conscience of England, (we find this in the conduct of Robert Hallain, Bishop of Salisbury, at the Council of Constance, who not only inveighed against the vices of Pope John XXIII., but objected to the burning of Huss,) nevertheless as a party the Lollards were never popular in Eng land, (Shakspeare is said to have called Falstaff, Sir John Oldcastle, in his first draft of Henry IV.,) and therefore it is doubtful whether these earlier Re formers are the true fathers of the later ones. Pro bably, so far as the destructive side was concerned, the earlier denunciations of the scandals did much to break down the faith of the people in the old objects of reverence, either persons or things, but they did not go to construct anything of the late Reformation. On the contrary, the distinctive tenets were, as in the case of the present Article, condemned by the Church, and the notions found a more congenial home in. some of the wild sectaries who gave so much trouble in the later days of Elizabeth’s reign.

Notes

• Luther, Capt. Bab., torn. ii. ed. Gen. p. 286 ; Con/. Aug. xiii. Apol. art. iii. n. 155.