"munita." Should it be urged, that the title king must be very blank without the name of some region or country, over which the kingly power extends. I answer, not a jot blanker than the title bishop or priest, without the name of diocess or parish. And if a bare name will serve, nothing is more easily supplied: king of the planet Saturn, or of Terra australis incognita, will sound as well, and mean as much, as bishop in partibus infidelium. By the way, a bishop's charge is a church, so, and a church consists only of believers. Infidels, therefore, are properly no part of his charge, no more than wolves or foxes are part of the flock of a shepherd.

With the Romanists matrimony and holy orders are both equally sacraments, and are, besides, thought to have a great analogy to each other. The relation which Christ bears to his church, that is, the church universal, is in Scripture compared to the relation which the husband bears to the wife. And the relation which the bishop bears to the particular church under his care, has been often represented by the fathers as an emblem of the relation which Christ bears to the church universal. Pope Innocent the third adopts the same metaphor, calling ordination the spiritual marriage of the bishop to his church. To this idea also the ceremony of the ring in consecration, still retained in the church of Rome, unquestionably owes its origin. No consistent Roman catholic, therefore, can be of fended, that I borrow an illustration from what he accounts likewise a sacrament, and the most analogous of them all, by the consent of popes and fathers, to the subject in hand. Now if it had happened to be (as, no doubt, if it had suited any poli tical purpose, it would have been) the practice to celebrate marriages sometimes, avevas, wherein, if you will admit the absurdity of the expression, which, in these cases, is una voidable, you make a man a husband, or marry him without giving him a wife, what would really have been conferred on the man by such a ceremony? By marriage, indeed, you lay him under certain obligations, and give him certain rights. But as the wife is the object of the one, and the source of the other, where there is no wife they can have no existence. The case of the bishop is precisely the same. If you give him no charge, the obligations to superintendency, and the claims of submission and support, for want of a subject, can have no existence, What then is there in the one ceremony more nugatory than in the other? For if unmeaning words will satisfy, why may not the mystical, invisible, indelible character of husband be imprinted by the first, as that of priest or bishop is by the second? Holy writ gives just as much countenance to the one as to the other. But we may venture to affirm, that if it had not suited

the church's policy to have some examples of such ordinations, unauthorized alike by Scripture, and by the nature of the thing, the notion of the character, in the way it has been propounded by the schoolmen, had never been heard of.

When those merely titular bishops and priests came to be elected into diocesan or parochial charges, the question was, in what manner were they to be received? To re-ordain them would have thrown an imputation on the first ordination, as though it had been of no significancy, and little better than a solemn farce. This (though manifestly for some ages the doctrine of the church concerning them) was now by all means to be avoided, as it might tend both to correct an abuse, which the rulers of the church found their account in supporting, and to derogate from the people's reverence for the solemnities of religion. Therefore, beside what may be said to be conferred visibly and intelligibly in all regular ordinations, the charge of a certain district, in what regards spiritual matters, and the oversight of the people, there must be something invisible and unintelligible, which is nevertheless the principal, else all those loose ordinations would be mere nullities. This mysterious something they call the character impressed, which was no sooner discovered or devised, than it constituted the essence of the sacrament; the other particulars relating to the charge of a flock, which to an ordinary understanding might appear to be the whole, were then found to be but circumstances. And as the general practice of the church came at length to be, (for in this they were for several ages far from being uniform) to disapprove re-ordaining, as well as re-baptizing and re-confirming; and that even though the baptism, confirmation, or ordination, had been given by a heretick, or schismatick, or though the receiver had afterwards apostatized, they conceived that a character, though not the same character, was the immediate result of all these ordinances, and that being indelible, it needed not to be renewed.

It were in vain to look for this tenet in Scripture, where there is not the faintest trace of any such conception. It were no less vain to search for it in the fathers, who were unacquaint ed alike with the name and the thing. This even some of the Romish doctors themselves have not scrupled to admit, founding the doctrine solely on the authority of the church. But indeed on this (as on many other articles) the doctrine of the church has varied with the times. The council of Nice, the first of the ecumenical councils, expressly decreed, that such bishops and presbyters as had been ordained by Miletius, a deposed bishop, for the merely nominal or Utopian bishops were not then known, should not be admitted to serve the

church as either bishops or presbyters, till they had been duly re-ordained, sinalegα Xeigolovia Cebαoblas*. If an overture of this kind, in regard to any degraded prelate, had been made at Trent, in the last of their councils, it would have been received. with universal abhorrence, and considered as proceeding either from the rankest heresy, or from the grossest ignorance. But that it was no heresy for many centuries after the Nicene synod, is manifest from the uniform style on this subject, both of the ecclesiastical writers, and of the councils. Would we then track this nonsense to its source? We must dip, or rather dive, into the futile logomachies of the schoolmen; for it will be found to be the genuine production of the darkly subtle metaphysico-scholastical theology of the middle ages. Nothing could be idler than to attempt the refutation of a dogma, for which a vestige of evidence has never been produced. But were the business of refuting incumbent upon us, a little further examination of the subject, and of the opinions that have been advanced concerning it, would entirely supersede the necessity.

Two puzzling questions have been moved on this subject, which were hotly agitated, but not solved, in the council of Trent, where it was thought necessary, however, to make a decree, affirming the character in opposition to one of the Lutheran articles denying it. One question is, wherein it consists; the other, whereon it is imprinted. In answer to the former, relating to the quiddity of the character, as these sophisters love to express it, it has been observed, first nega tively, that it cannot be an infusion of grace, as of faith, hope, or charity, because, say our profound disquisitors, all the seven sacraments confer grace, whereas it is on the three that cannot be repeated, the unreiterable, which imprint a character; besides, it can be neither grace nor virtue for this other reason: both these may be lost, whereas, the character is indelible. As little can it be a particular qualification, which fits the person for the discharge of the duties of the office, for a man may become totally unqualified by age and infirmities, or he may unqualify himself by vice. Besides, it has never been denied that persons, very ill qualified, have been ordained, and never appeared one jot better qualified after their ordination than before. It could not be the gift of justification, because this is what the impenitent, in mortal sin, does not receive in any sacrament; and yet an impenitent, in mortal sin, may be ordained and receive the character. But to consider the thing positively, there were who maintained that it was a quality

* Theodor. Hist. 1. 1, c. ix.

Among those there were four different opinions, according to the four sorts of qualities distinguished in the schools. Some affirmed that it is a spiritual power, others a habit or disposi tion, others a spiritual figure; nor was the notion that it is a sensible metaphorical quality without its advocates. Some would have it to be a real relation, others a fabrick of the mind though it was by no means clear how far these considered it as removed from nothing.

As to the second question, the ubi of the character, there was no less variety of sentiments than about the first, some placing it in the essence of the soul, others in the understanding; some in the will, and others more plausibly in the imagi nation; others even in the hands and the tongue; but, by the general voice, the body was excluded. So that the whole of what they agreed in amounts to this; that in the unreiterable sacraments, as they call them, something, they know not what, is imprinted, they know not how, on something in the soul of the recipient, they know not where, which never can be deleted.

In regard to the indelibility all agreed, insomuch, that though a bishop, priest, or deacon, turn heretick or schismatick, deist or atheist, he still retains the character, and though not a christian man, he is still a christian bishop, priest, or deacon; nay, though he be degraded from his office and excommuni cated, he is, in respect of the character, still the same. Though he be cut off from the church, he is still a minister in the church. In such a situation to perform any of the sacred functions, would be in him a deadly sin, but these would be equally valid as before. Thus he may not be within the pale of the church himself, and yet be in the church a minister of Jesus Christ. He may openly and solemnly blaspheme God, and abjure the faith of Christ; he may apostatize to Judaism, to Mahometism, or to Paganism, he still retains the character. He may even become a priest of Jupiter, or a priest of Baal, and still continue a priest of Jesus Christ. The character, say the schoolmen, is not cancelled in the damned, but remains with the wicked to their disgrace and greater confusion; so that even in hell they are the ministers of Jesus Christ, and the messengers of the new covenant. Nor is it cancelled in the blessed, but remains in heaven with them for their greater glory and ornament.

I have been the more particular on this topick, because it is a fundamental article, with a pretty numerous class (and these not all Romanists.) I was willing to explain it, as far as it is explicable, from the writings of its defenders, being persuaded that on those who do not discover there a sufficient confutation, reason, and argument, Scripture and common sense will make

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no impression. An author, of whose sentiments I took some notice in my last lecture, has observed*, that as the civilians have their fictions in law, our theologists also have their fictions in divinity. It is but too true, that some of our theological systems are so stuffed with these, that little of plain truth is to be learnt from them. And I think it will be doing no injury to this dogma of the character, to rank it among those fictions in divinity. God forbid I should add in the not very decent words of that author, (though I really believe he meant no harm by them) " which infinite wisdom and "goodness hath devised for our benefit and advantage." The God of truth needs not the assistance of falsehood, nor is the cause of truth to be promoted by such means. The use of metaphorical expressions, or figurative representations, in Scripture, give no propriety to such an application of a term so liable to abuse.

* Hickes, Christian Priesthood, I. 1, ch. ii, § 8.