And the Priesthood thus: 

“Receive the Holy Ghost, for the office and work of a Priest, in the Church of God, now committed unto thee by the imposition of our hands.  Whose sins thou dost forgive, they are forgiven; and whose sins thou dost retain, they are retained.  And be thou a faithful dispenser of the Word of God, and of His Holy Sacraments:  In the name, etc.”

These, I say, were words spoken to us, and received by us, when we were brought nearer to God than at any other time of our lives.  I know the grace of ordination is contained in the laying on of hands, not in any form of words;—­yet in our own case (as has ever been usual in the Church) words of blessing have accompanied the act.  Thus we have confessed before God our belief that the bishop who ordained us gave us the Holy Ghost, gave us the power to bind and to loose, to administer the Sacraments, and to preach.  Now how is he able to give these great gifts? Whence is his right?  Are these words idle (which would be taking God’s name in vain), or do they express merely a wish (which surely is very far below their meaning), or do they not rather indicate that the speaker is conveying a gift?  Surely they can mean nothing short of this.  But whence, I ask, his right to do so?  Has he any right, except as having received the power from those who consecrated him to be a bishop?  He could not give what he had never received.  It is plain then that he but transmits; and that the Christian Ministry is a succession.  And if we trace back the power of ordination from hand to hand, of course we shall come to the Apostles at last.  We know we do, as a plain historical fact; and therefore all we, who have been ordained clergy, in the very form of our ordination acknowledged the doctrine of the APOSTOLICAL SUCCESSION.

And for the same reason, we must necessarily consider none to be really ordained who have not thus been ordained.  For if ordination is a divine ordinance, it must be necessary; and if it is not a divine ordinance, how dare we use it?  Therefore all who use it, all of us, must consider it necessary.  As well might we pretend the Sacraments are not necessary to salvation, while we make use of the offices in the Liturgy; for when God appoints means of grace, they are the means.

I do not see how any one can escape from this plain view of the subject, except (as I have already hinted) by declaring that the words do not mean all that they say.  But only reflect what a most unseemly time for random words is that in which ministers are set apart for their office.  Do we not adopt a Liturgy in order to hinder inconsiderate idle language, and shall we, in the most sacred of all services, write down, subscribe, and use again and again forms of speech which have not been weighed, and cannot be taken strictly?