The Protestant churches of Germanj-, Holland, Switz- erland, France, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Scotland, etc., have only presbyterial ordination, and place no re- liance on the derivation of their clerical orders, from the fact that their founders, such as Luther, Calvin, and others, had been episcopally ordained as presbj'ters. They all unite in considering the call of God expressed through the suft'rage of the Church as the essential pre- requisite to true ministerial character, while ordinatien is simply an appropriate ceremony designed to authen- ticate that call, and to publicly separate ministers to the sacred office. In most of the churches named, as well as in the American Presbj-terian, Baptist, and Congre- gational churches, deacons are onh' lay officers of the Church, and do not receive the imposition of hands.
As we have not thought proper to allot space for the formulas of the Greek and Roman ordinations, so now we deem it unimportant to introduce details as to cere- monies and variations iu the practice of ordinations among Protestants. Such variations find their prototype in the scriptural ordinations, of which no two recorded were conducted in all respects alike, a fact that plainly indicated the non-essentiality of fixed forms, as well as the Christian liberty of adapting forms to circumstances. With a single exception, substantial unity may be said to prevail throughout the Protestant world in the view that the validity or propriety of ministerial ordinations does not hinge on any form of ceremony, or any pre- tence of tactual succession, and this unity of sentiment is sustained by a corresponding charity and mutual re- spect. The exception referred to, though not stated in the creed of any Protestant Church, has nevertheless existed from the period of the Reformation, and has re- sulted in a voluminous, and not seldom acrimonious controversy, which promises to descend to future gen- erations.
VI. Iligh-Church Controveisy on Ordination. — In or- der to comprehend the nature and bearings of this con- troversy, it is necessary to take into view some well- known facts respecting the peculiar constitution of the Church of England. They are indicated in the follow- ing language, abridged from lord Macaulay's introduc- tion to his History of England:
"Henry VIII attempted to constitute an Anglican Church diflering from the Roman Catholic Church on the point of the supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in this attempt was extraordinary. The English Reformers were eager to go as far as their brethren on the Continent. They unanimously condemned as anti- Christian numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry
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had stubbornly adherod, and which Elizabeth reluctantly abaiidonud. jVlaiiy felt a strong repugnance even to thiufrs indifloreni wbichliad formed part of the polity or ritual of the niyslical Babylon. Thus bishop Hooper, who died manfully at Gloucester for his religion, long refused to wear the episcopal vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown, pulled down the ancient altars of his diocl'se, and ordered the Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches, at tables which the papists ir- reverently termed oyster -boards. Bishop Jewell pro- nounced the clerical garb to be a stage-dress, a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he would spare no labor to extirpate such degrading absurdities. Archbishop Grindal long hesitated aOout accepting a mi- tre from dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would projjose to herself the Church of Zurich as the absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop Ponet was of opinion that the word bishop should be abandoned to papists, and that the chief officers of the purified Church should be called superin- tendents. When it is considered that none of these prel- ates belonged to the extreme section of the Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if the general sense of that party had been followed, the work of reform would have been carried on as unsparingly in England as in Scotland. But as the government needed the support of the Protestants, so the Protestants needed the protection of the government. Much was therefore given up on both sides; a union was effected, and the fruit of that nnion was the Church of England. The man who took the chief part in settling the conditions of the alliance which produced the Anglican Church was Thomas Crannier. He was the representative of both the parties, which at that time needed each other's assistance. He was at once a divine and a courtier. In his character of divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way of change as any Swiss or Scottish Reformer. In his character of courtier he was desirous to preserve that organization which had during many ages admirably served the purposes of the bishops of Rome, and might be expected now to serve equally well the purposes of the English kings and of their ministers. To this day the constitution, the doc- trines, and the services of the Church retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprang. She occupies a middle position between the churches of Rome and Geneva. The Church nf Rome held that episcopacy ■was of divine institution, and that certain supernatural graces of a high order had been transmitted by the impo- sition of hands through fifty geneiations, from the eleven who received their commission on the Galiltean mount to the bishops who met at Trent. A large body of Protes- tants, on the other hand, regarded prelacy as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they found a very different form of ecclesiastical government pre- scribed in Scripture. The founders of the'Anglicau Church took a middle course. They retained episcopacy, but they did not declare it to be an institution essential to the welfare of a Christian society, or to the efficacy of the sacraments. Cranmer, indeed, on one important occa- sion, plainly avowed his conviction that in the primitive times there was no distinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of hands was altogether superfluous."