Practical Reflections on the Ordination Services for Deacons and Priests, in the United Church of England and Ireland. to Which Are Added, Appropriate Prayers for Clergymen, Selected and Original (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1830 edition. Excerpt: ... THE FORM AND MANNER or ORDERING OF PRIESTS: WITH PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS. If When the day appointed by the Bishop is come, after morning prayer is ended, there shall be a Sermon or Exhortation declaring the duty and office of such as come to be admitted Priests; how necessary that Order is in the Church of Christ; and also how the people ought to esteem them in their office. REFLECTION. The holy order of Deacons is only preparatory to the indelible character of the Priesthood. The sanctity, however, which I would attribute to this sacred institution, is neither superstitious nor mysterious. Awful indeed is the character of the Priesthood, and beneficial are its duties, but I would not be thought to throw around it such hidden virtue, as would deceive the ignorant, or attract the notice of the designing. The Order is confessedly divine in its origin: and the good intended to be derived from it should be as sincere, as it is pure in its motives. The duties of the character, our Church truly believes to be inherent in the office. But this does not imply pride or arrogance in the possessor of it; it lifts no man up with the acquisition of gifts, though those gifts were spiritual. If the apostles received distinction from their flocks, it did not arise from any temporal greatness which they possessed, but from the appropriate qualities of their character, from the due discharge of the trust committed to them, from the fruits of the Spirit which they manifested in all their conduct, from their intrinsic goodness and humility, their indefatigable utility and persevering zeal. If the intrepid Paul magnified Ms office, it was not that he might lord it over God's heritage, but that he might " provoke to emulation them that were his "flesh, that he might...