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teenth century taught that the Pope is the supreme ruler of the Church, and the source of all ministerial power and jurisdiction. Both of these theories of the ministry are many centuries too late to be true.

W

XXIV

THE PRIESTHOOD

HATEVER men may think about the

necessity of having priests in the Church,

and there have been many violent controversies in the past on this question,— there are probably few modern Christians who would refuse to believe in the Priesthood of our Lord. That He is our great High Priest is a truth so firmly imbedded in the New Testament, and especially in the Epistle to the Hebrews, that one could scarcely deny it without rejecting the authority of the New Testament as a whole.

The main section of the Epistle to the Hebrews, which has been called the Epistle of Priesthood, is concerned with setting forth the universal and sovereign High Priesthood of Christ, and the fulfilment of His priestly work. Bishop Westcott, in his commentary on this Epistle, points out that the characteristic teaching of the Epistle on the Priesthood of Christ, is found in the Lord's words as reported by S. John more distinctly than in the other Gospels. Thus in the

Gospel according to S. John, the Lord reveals His victory through death; and He shows Himself in a figure as at once Priest and victim. (S. John X, 1-21.) Elsewhere He proclaims that when He is lifted up from the earth, He will draw all men to Himself (XII, 32), that His removal from the limitations of our present bodily existence is the condition of His Spiritual gift (XVI, 7), and that He hallows His people in Himself (c. XVII).

The idea is no less familiar in the New Testament that the Church, the mystical Body of Christ, the blessed company of all faithful people, is a priestly body. Christ is still carrying on His priestly work in Heaven and on earth through the Church, which is His body. Therefore all the faithful share in His priesthood. We are "Kings and priests to God," "an holy priesthood," "a royal priesthood," by virtue of our being sacramentally united to the great High Priest of our profession, Jesus Christ. This is what is meant by the "priesthood of the laity," of which we hear so much in some quarters. The laity, because they are members of a priestly body, assist the body in the exercise of its priestly functions.

The Body of Christ, however, like the human body, must exercise its functions through special

organs or members. The function of priesthood, the offering of the eucharistic sacrifice, the continual remembrance through re-presentation of the sacrifice of the Cross, is exercised through the ministerial priesthood. Those who have been set apart through prayer and ordination to carry on the priestly functions of the whole priestly body, are quite reasonably designated as priests. They are not priests in the sense that they offer sacrifices of slain animals and of the fruits of the earth on behalf of others separated from them by an impassable gulf, as were the priests of the Jewish dispensation and the various heathen cults. They are simply priests in the sense that the one High Priest of the new covenant through their ministry pleads before God the one sacrifice of Himself once offered. They are the hands of the Body of Christ, offering to God the holy gifts which He has commanded us to offer.

Etymologically, the word priest is merely a modified form of the word presbyter, derived from the Greek word for elder. In Wycliff's Bible, the word priest is used where in Tyndale and the Authorized Version the word elder is used. In pre-Reformation England the word presbyter gradually became abbreviated into the word priest. After the Reformation, there was a

marked tendency to return to the word presbyter. That explains what Milton meant when he said, "New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." In the Book of Common Prayer, both the terms presbyter and priest are used to designate the second in rank of the clerical orders, between the bishop and the deacon.

From the earliest times in the Church, the office of presbyter has been regarded as a sacerdotal office, in that it confers power to consecrate the bread and wine in the Eucharist and to declare absolution. Therefore, taking into cognizance the general European use, we may say that the title presbyter came to be used in all languages as synonymous with sacrificing priest,— in Greek iepeús, and in the Latin sacerdos. This has been true of all the great historic Churches of Christendom. To quote from the Century Dictionary, under the word priest:

"The Roman Catholic Church teaches that it is the office of a priest 'to offer, bless, rule, preach, and baptize.' These same offices are assigned to priests in the Orthodox Church and other Oriental churches and in the Anglican Church. In the church last named the form of ordination gives authority to forgive or retain sins and be a dispenser of the word and sacraments, and only priests (including bishops as in priest's orders) can give bene

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