Ember Friday: Taylor, 'the whole office of the Priesthood', and the 1559 Ordinal

It is the Friday of September Embertide. Today I am thinking of a dear friend who will be priested in coming days. My mind turns towards words from Jeremy Taylor, from his work Clerus Domini, on "the divine institution, necessity, sacredness, and separation of the office ministerial". Taylor's words are an exposition of the formula repeated at the laying on of hands in the Ordering of Priests in the 1559 Ordinal:

Receive the holy goste, whose synnes thou doest forgeve, they are forgeven: and whose sinnes thou doest retaine, thei are retained: and be thou a faithful despensor of the word of god, and of his holy Sacramentes. In the name of the father, and of the sonne, and of the holy gost. Amen.

This formula became a particular focus of controversy when Apostolicae Curae declared that 'Receive the Holy Ghost' was insufficient, going on to strangely suggest that the addition in 1662 of 'for the office and work of a Priest" indicated that Anglicans understood "the first form was defective and inadequate". As Saepius Officio rightly noted, however, this addition, and the related addition in the Consecration of Bishops, was "in order to enlighten the minds of the Presbyterians", refuting any suggestion that these were not separate orders of ministry.

Taylor's exposition of the 1559 formula is a wonderful, rich expression of how "the whole office of priesthood" is bestowed by these words with the laying on of hands, given by God, derived from the Apostles, and authoritatively ministering Word and Sacrament to the congregation:

The Holy Ghost was the first Consecrator, that is made evident; and the persons first consecrated were the Apostles, who received the several parts of the Priestly order, at several times; the power of consecration of the Eucharist, at the institution of it; the power of remitting and retaining sins in the Octaves of Easter; the power of baptizing and preaching, together with universal jurisdiction, immediately before the Ascension, when they were commanded to go into all the world preaching and baptizing. This is the whole office of the Priesthood; and nothing of this was given in Pentecost when the holy Spirit descended and rested upon all of them ... for then they received those great assistances which enabled them who had been designed for Embassadors to the world, to do their great work: and others of a lower capacity had their proportion, as the effect of the promise of the Father, and a mighty verification of the truth of Christianity.

Now all these powers which Christ hath given to his Apostles, were by some means or other to be transmitted to succeeding persons, because the several Ministeries were to abide for ever. All Nations were to be converted, a Church to be gathered and continued, the new Converts to be made Confessors, and consigned with Baptism, sins to be remitted, flocks to be fed and guided, and the Lords death declared, represented, exhibited, and commemorated until his second Coming. And since the powers of doing these offices, are acts of free and gracious concession, emanations of the holy Spirit, and admissions to a vicinity with God, it is not only impudence and sacriledge in the person, falsly to pretend, that is, to bely the Holy Ghost, and thrust into these Offices, but there is an impossibility in the thing, it is null in the very deed doing, to handle these mysteries without some appointment by God ...

God is the Consecrator; man is the Minister; the separation is mysterious and wonderful; the power great and secret; the office to stand between God and the people, in the ministery of the Evangelical rites; the calling to it ordinary, and by a setled Ministery, which began after the descent of the Holy Ghost in Pentecost.