ORDINATION

The ceremony of conferring orders in the church, which is derived, by all communities that admit a regular commi ion and succe ion in the ministry from the time of the apostles, from the authority of Jesus Christ; of whom it is said, in St. John's Gospel (xx.21.), that, after his resurrection, he said, "As my father has sent me, even so send I you: " and then he breathed upon them, and said to them, " Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit they are remitted unto them, and whatsoever sins ye retain they arc retained." Prayer and the imposition of hands are also mentioned as forming part of the ceremony of ordination of deacons in the Acts; and ordination is even now conferred under similar forms in most Christian churches. The Romish church holds ordination to be the sixth of its seven sacraments, as being an institution of Christ conferring a special grace. The Protestants show that it differs from a sacrament, according to the received definition of such, as containing no matter, like the water in baptism, or the elements in the eucharist. They deny that the ve els which are delivered to the newly ordained person according to the Romish rite can be taken as the matter of a sacrament, not being recommended by any Scripture authority, nor indeed known in the church till the tenth or eleventh century. (See Hooker's Eccl. Pol. books vii. and viii.) In the Presbyterian church the term ordination has a meaning wholly distinct from that in which it is received by other Christian churches; being applied exclusively to that solemn act by which a licensed preacher or i probationer is inducted into the ciiarge of a particular parish or congregation, and not, as is sometimes erroneously a erted, to the act by which he is entitled to preach the Gospel, or, in other words, to the ceremony by which " orders" are conferred in the English church. In the English church a clergyman can be ordained but ' once: in tlie Scotch church he is said to be ordained as [s. 867]