Vox Ecclesiae - 1866 Author:William Goode Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER V. THE PROPER SOURCES OF INFORMATION. OUR author thus states the question, and the sources to which he thinks we ought to apply for an authoritativ... more »e answer to it: "The present question is simply this — whether it is a doctrine of the Church of England that Episcopal ordination is a sine qua non to constitute a valid Christian ministry ? In order to a true answer we must examine I. "The Articles and other formularies which relate to it, taken in their literal sense. II. " The opinions of those who drew up these standards, as ascertained by their other writings, to be taken as guides to the sense in which they intended those standards to be received, as also the opinions of the leading divines of the Church onward for a hundred years. III. The Practice of the Church For A Similar Period, as a further guide to the true interpretation of the standards," Now, these are not the sources from which a true and authoritative answer can be elicited. We should like to know on what pretence the opinion of a man who lived a hundred years after Cranmer could be offered in evidence of Cranmer's meaning in the formularies, or why those who lived a little more than a hundred years after the Reformation should not be equally authentic exponents. Still more, we should like to know on what pretence the Practice THE PROPER SOURCES OF INFORMATION. 113 of the Church for its first hundred years should be a rule to us, and its practice to-day and for two hundred years past ignored. The true sources from which we are to gather the judgment of our Church upon this or any other point are: 1st. Its Doctrinal And Devotional Standards — the Liturgy Articles and Ordinal. /. These are to be taken in the plain sense of their words; and if there be room for any doubt' a...« less