'These thy Ministers': the wisdom of an old and noble Anglican practice

I noticed a recent exchange on X between the commentator Peter Hitchens and an Anglo-catholic cleric on the subject of priesthood. It began as a debate on the ordination of women as priests but - perhaps not unsurprisingly - turned to the issue of the nature of this office.  Hitchens stated:

my bit of the CofE has ministers, not priests, and tables rather than altars. 

As we might expect, the Anglo-catholic cleric responded with this statement:

the Church of England has priests, which are a type of minister. The 1662 refers to priests several times and contains a form for ordaining them. The vicar of your parish is, legally, a priest.

Hitchens came back:

The Prayer Book, which is famously ambiguous on many matters, also uses the term 'minister'. So do some Anglicans, of which I am one ...

The exchange demonstrates what I have previously described as the historic Anglican difference between the language of order and the language of pastoral ministry. The language of order - bishops, priests, deacons - gives expression to the church as a public, duly ordered corporation, with rights, liberties, and privileges associated with these offices and the wider polity. This is a national Church as a body corporate, an ecclesiastical polity. 

To provide a perhaps surprising example of such usage in the wider Reformed tradition, we can turn to Bullinger's Decades, delivered, we should note, when the Reformation was well-established in Zurich:

We call that a parish in which there are houses and streets joined together in a single locality. But both in town and country the various districts are each allocated a church and parish priest to serve them, and the particular circuit is then called a parish.

In the Book of Common Prayer 1662, the language of order finds obvious and expected expression in the Ordering of Priests. This is the order into which those to be ordained are - in the words of the presentation at the outset of the rite - "admitted". 

Alongside this, however, the Ordering of Priests also contains the language of pastoral ministry. This is particularly evident in the bishop's charge to those to be ordained and in the prayer preceding the laying on of hands. Neither of these refer to priesthood. The charge, it is true, does reference "this Office ... your Office ... this Office", but the term 'priest' is not used at all. Instead, we hear of "Messengers, Watchmen, and Stewards of the Lord ... your Ministry towards the children of God". And at the heart of the charge is the call to "consider how studious ye ought to be in reading and learning the Scriptures". This is explicitly the language of pastoral ministry.

Likewise, the prayer before the laying on of hands petitions has no reference to priesthood, but instead petitions:

So that as well by these thy Ministers, as by them over whom they shall be appointed thy Ministers, thy holy Name may be for ever glorified, and thy blessed kingdom enlarged.

In other words, in the charge and in the prayer preceding the laying on of hands, the language of order - priest - is not to be found. The office is defined as a pastoral, not sacerdotal, ministry. 

What, however, of the laying on of hands? Here - since the revision of 1662 - the language of order is used, bestowing the particular office:

Receive the Holy Ghost for the Office and Work of a Priest in the Church of God, now committed unto by the imposition of our hands ...

At the delivery of the Bible immediately following, it is the language of pastoral ministry that is heard:

Take thou authority to preach the Word of God, and to minister the holy Sacraments in the Congregation, where thou shalt be lawfully appointed thereunto.

The concluding collect of the rite, not without some significance, again uses the language of pastoral ministry, not of order:

that thy Word spoken by their mouths may have such success, that it may never be spoken in vain. Grant also that we may have grace to hear and receive what they shall deliver out of thy most holy Word, or agreeable to the same, as the means of our salvation ...

What we might say, therefore, is that the Ordering of Priests, while yet retaining the language of order, at the same time doctrinally conforms to the Second Helvetic Confession:

we do not impart the name of priest to any minister. For the Lord himself did not appoint any priests in the Church of the New Testament who, having received authority from the suffragan, may daily offer up the sacrifice that is, the very flesh and blood of the Lord, for the living and the dead, but ministers who may teach and administer the sacraments.

This finds an echo in Hooker's commentary on the Prayer Book use of 'priest' not being understood as expressing a sacerdotal understanding of ministry:

As for the people when they heare the name it draweth no more theire mindes to any cogitation of sacrifice, then the name of a Senator or of an Alderman causeth them to thinke upon old age or to imagin that everie one so termed must needes be ancient because yeeres were respected in the first nomination of both (LEP V.78.2).

Precisely because the Ordering of Priests has a non-sacerdotal understanding of ordained ministry, and because it explicitly uses 'Ministers' to express the nature of the office, in it is therefore found the basis for pastoral, non-sacerdotal language for those Ministering in the Congregation (to use the words of Article XXIII). The old and noble Anglican practice of using 'minister' - or vicar, rector, curate - is embedded in the Ordering of Priests. Such terms reflect and express the non-sacerdotal nature of the ordained ministry inherent to the rite. What is more, the practice of using the term 'Minister' or, for example, 'Curate', better expresses the nature of ministering in the congregation, and the relationships of the parish, than is the case with the language of order. This is the wisdom behind the old and noble Anglican usage. The language of order is appropriate for recognising the Church's character as an ecclesiastical polity, a duly ordered corporation. In the parish, however, it is the language of pastoral ministry that is most fitting - and traditional.

Give grace, O heavenly Father, to all Bishops and Curates, that they may both by their life and doctrine set forth thy true and lively Word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy Sacraments: And to all thy people give thy heavenly grace; and specially to this congregation here present; that, with meek heart and due reverence, they may hear, and receive thy holy Word; truly serving thee in holiness and righteousness all the days of their life.