EPISCOPACY.
This theological sympathy between the English and the Continental Churches extended also to the principles of Church government, which was regarded as a matter of secondary importance, and subject to change, like rites and ceremonies, 'according to the diversities of countries, times, and men's manners, so that nothing be ordained against God's Word' (Art. XXXIV.). The difference was simply this: the English Reformers, being themselves bishops, retained episcopacy as an ancient institution of the Church catholic, but fully admitted (with the most learned fathers and schoolmen, sustained by modern commentators and historians) the original identity of the offices of bishop and presbyter; while the German and Swiss Reformers, being only presbyters or laymen, and opposed by their bishops, fell back from necessity rather than choice upon the parity of ministers, without thereby denying the human right and relative importance or expediency of episcopacy as a superintendency over equals in rank. The more rigid among the Puritans departed from both by attaching primary importance to matters of discipline and ritual, and denouncing every form of government and public worship that was not expressly sanctioned in the New Testament.
The most learned English divines before the period of the Restoration, such as Cranmer, Jewel, Hooker, Field, Ussher, Hall, and Stillingfleet, did not hold the theory of an exclusive jure divino episcopacy, and fully recognized the validity of presbyterian ordination. They preferred and defended episcopacy as the most ancient and general form of government, best adapted for the maintenance of order and unity; in one word, as necessary for the well-being, but not for the being of the Church. Cranmer invited the co-operation of Lutherans and Calvinists even in the most important work of framing the Articles of Religion and revising the Liturgy, without questioning their ordination; his own views of episcopacy were so low that he declared 'election or appointment thereto sufficient' without consecration, and he was so thoroughly Erastian that after the death of Henry he and his suffragans took out fresh commissions from the new king. [1157] His three successors in the primacy (Parker, Grindal, and Whitgift) did not differ from him in principle. 'Archbishop Grindal,' says Macaulay, 'long hesitated about accepting a mitre, from dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration. Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of England would propose 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 the Papists, and that the chief officers of the purified Church should be called superintendents.' The nineteenth of the Elizabethan Articles, which treats of the visible Church, says nothing of episcopacy as a mark of the Church. The statute of the thirteenth year of Elizabeth, cap. 12, permits ministers of the Scotch and other foreign Churches to exercise their ministry in England without re-ordination. After the union with Scotland the English sovereign represented in his official character the national Churches of the two countries, and when in Scotland, Queen Victoria takes the communion from the hands of a Presbyterian parson. Prominent clergymen of the Church of England, such as Travers (Provost of Trinity College, Dublin), Whittingham (Dean of Durham), Cartwright (Professor of Divinity in Cambridge, afterwards Master of Warwick Hospital), and John Morrison (from Scotland), had received only Presbyterian ordination in foreign Churches. Similar instances of Scotch, French, and Dutch Reformed ministers who were received simply on subscribing the Articles occurred down to the civil war. The English delegates to the Synod of Dort, which was presided over by a presbyter, were high dignitaries and doctors of divinity, one of them (Carleton) a bishop, and two others (Davenant and Hall) were afterwards raised to bishoprics. Archbishop Ussher, the greatest English divine of his age, who in eighteen years had mastered the whole mass of patristic literature, defended episcopacy only as a presidency of one presbyter over his peers, and declared that when abroad he would take the holy communion from a Dutch Reformed or French minister as readily as from an Episcopalian clergyman at home.
But the reigns of James and Charles I. form the transition. In the heat of the Puritan controversy both parties took extreme ground, Presbyterians and Independents as well as Episcopalians, and claimed exclusive Scripture authority and divine right for their form of government. Truth and error were mixed on both sides; for the primitive government was neither Episcopalian nor Presbyterian nor Independent, but apostolic; and the Apostles, as inspired and infallible teachers and rulers of the whole Church of all ages, have and can have no successors, as Christ himself can have none.
The doctrine of the divine and exclusive right of episcopacy was first intimated, in self-defense, by Bishop Bancroft, of London (in a sermon, 1589), then taught and rigidly enforced by Archbishop Laud (1633-1645), the most un-Protestant of English prelates, [1158] and was apparently sanctioned in 1662 by the Act of Uniformity, which forbade any person to hold a benefice or to administer the sacraments before he be ordained a priest by Episcopal ordination. By this cruel Act two thousand ministers, including some of the ablest and most worthy men in England, were expelled from office and driven into non-conformity.
Notwithstanding this change, the Church of England has never officially and expressly pronounced on the validity or invalidity of non-episcopal orders in other Churches; she only maintains that no one shall officiate in her pulpits and at her altars who has not received episcopal ordination according to the direction of the Prayer-book. [1159]