A Vindication of the Bull 'Apostolicae Curae'; A Letter on Anglican Orders (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos or missing text. Not indexed. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1898. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... prayers and ceremonies is acknowledged, as the quotation from Morinus shows. But that they were also permitted to subtract prayers and ceremonies in previous use, and even to remodel the existing rites in the most drastic manner, is a proposition for which we know of no historical foundation, and which appears to us absolutely incredible. Hence Cranmer, in taking this unprecedented course, acted, in our Opinion, with the most inconceivable rashness. 25. ANCIENT FORMS ALL DEFINITE AND IDENTICAL IN TYPE. But you are also mistaken in thinking that matters have been left by Our Lord in so much uncertainty, and that there is no one definite form which has everywhere prevailed in the Catholic Church, both in the East and in the West. If, indeed, you mean merely that no identical form of words has always and everywhere been in use, but that, on the contrary, several different forms of words have been recognised by the Holy See as sufficient, you say what all will admit, and the Bull nowhere denies. Although, even as regards these various forms of words--the Eoman, the Greek, the Maronite, the Nestorian, the Armenian, &c.--it should be observed that they are not numerous, not twelve, according to the most liberal estimate. Their origins too, being unrecorded, and belonging to the earliest Christian centuries, cannot be so confidently referred to an exercise of local liberty on the part of National Churches. The Bull, however--when, passing over controversies about the matter, it lays down that the form of Holy Orders must be definite--is requiring, not that the form should always consist of the same words, but that it should always be conformed to the same definite type. Hence it goes on to say in what this definiteness of type is to consist. The form must, it say...