Page:The Great Encyclical Letters of Pope Leo XIII.djvu/406



400 ANGLICAN ORDERS.

form, which defect equally affects all these Ordinations; so much so, that when similar cases subsequently came up for decision the same decree of Clement XI. was quoted as the norma.

Hence it must be clear to every one that the contro- versy lately revived had been already definitely settled by the Apostolic See, and that it is to the insufficient knowl- edge of these documents that we must, perhaps, at- tribute the fact that any Catholic writer should have considered it still an open question. But, as We stated at the beginning, there is nothing We so deeply and ardently desire as to be of help to men of good-will by showing them the greatest consideration and charity. Wherefore We ordered that the Anglican Ordinal, which is the essential point of the whole matter, should be once more most carefully examined.

In the examination of any rite for the effecting and administering of a sacrament, distinction is rightly made between the part which is ceremonial and that which is essential, usually called the matter and form. All know that the sacraments of the New Law, as sensible and efficient signs of invisible grace, ought both to signify the grace which they effect, and effect the grace which they signify. Although the signification ought to be found in the whole essential rite â€” that is to say, in the matter and form â€” it still pertains chiefly to the form ; since the mat- ter is the part which is not determined by itself, but which is determined by the form. And this appears still more clearly in the Sacrament of Orders, the matter of which, in so far as We have to consider it in this case, is the im- position of hands, which indeed by itself signifies nothing definite, and is equally used for several Orders and for Confirmation. But the words which until recently were commonly held by Anglicans to constitute the proper form of priestly Ordination â€” namely, "Receive the Holy GJiost," certainly do not in the least definitely express the Sacred Order of Priesthood, or its grace and power, which is chiefly