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'A Pattern in the High Priest of our Profession': Robert Nelson's 'Life of Dr. George Bull', the ordinal, and the parish minister

This week's reading from Robert Nelson's The Life of Dr. George Bull (1713) is a quite beautiful passage that might be regarded as a commentary on the Ordinal's Ordering of Priests. Two gospel readings are provided for the Ordering of Priests, Matthew 9:36ff and John 10:1ff. In the former, Our Lord is "moved with compassion" for the crowds following Him. In the latter, He reveals Himself as "the good shepherd", the One who has come "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly". Both gospel readings set the context for the bishop's declaration:

Have always therefore printed in your remembrance, how great a treasure is committed to your charge. For they are the sheep of Christ, which he bought with his death, and for whom he shed his blood. The Church and Congregation whom you must serve, is his spouse and his body ... Wherefore consider with yourselves the end of your ministry towards the children of God, towards the spouse and body of Christ.

Nelson, in the context of praising Bull's "Zeal for the Salvation of Souls" in his parish ministry, then provides this meditation, encouraging "all the Parochial Clergy" to be conformed to the "pattern of ... the Blessed Jesus" in their care for the flock. Reading this meditation, it is difficult not to think that Nelson had in mind the above words from the Ordinal. This is a passage that clergy could profitably keep close at hand for ongoing reflection and that laity could use to guide prayers for parish ministers:

But to excite all the Parochial Clergy to this Watchfulness over the Conduct of their Flock; they have a Pattern of it in the High Priest of our Profession, the Blessed Jesus, who with particular Assiduity applied himself to form and preserve those Disciples which his Father had committed to his Care. He lived among them, supporting all their Weakness, and compassionating their Infirmities; he instructed them in Publick and in Private, and hid no Truth from them which might be profitable for them, and which they were able to bear. He hardly suffered them out of his sight but when he retired into some Solitude, and then he remembered them in his Prayers. This Love and Care of his Disciples appeared not only in those his Addresses to Heaven, which preceded his Passion, but when he was delivered into the Hands of his Enemies, he seemed to forget himself in respect of them, "If you seek me," saith he, "let these go their way," as if he had been concerned for nothing so much as the Preservation of his Disciples; notwithstanding his Bonds, and the Violence of his Persecutors, he did not forget his chief Apostle, but reached forth his Hand to raise him from his unhappy Fall, fulfilling to the last those Words of Scripture, "Having loved his own, he loved them unto the end."

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