firmation; ordain the ministers of the Church; and that they are able themselves to perform very many other things; over which functions the rest of an inferior order have no power. The sacred and holy synod further teaches, that, in the ordination of bishops, priests, and of the other orders, neither the consent, nor vocation, nor authority, whether of the people, or of any secular power or magistrate soever, is required in such wise as that, without this, the ordination is invalid: yea rather it doth decree, that all those who, being only called and instituted by the people, or by the secular power and magistrate, ascend to the exercise of these ministrations, and those who of their own rashness assume them to themselves, are not ministers of the Church, but are to be accounted as thieves and robbers, who have not entered by the door.[1]These are the things which it hath seemed good to the sacred synbod to teach the faithful of Christ, in fueneral terms, touching the sacrament of Orders. But it hath resolved to condemn things contrary thereunto, in express and specific canons, in the manner which follows; to the end that all men, with the assistance of Christ, using the rule of faith, may, amidst the darkness of so many errors, more easily be able to recognize and to hold Catholic truth.
ON THE SACRAMENT OF ORDERS.
Canon I. If any one shall say, that there is not in the New Testament a visible and external priesthood: or that there is not any power of consecrating and offering the true body and blood of the Lord, and of remitting and retaining sins; but only an office and bare ministry of preaching the Gospel; or that those who do not preach are not priests at all let him be anathema.
Canon ii. If any one shall say, that, besides the priesthood, there are not in the Catholic Church other orders, both greater and lesser, by which, as by certain steps, advance is made unto the priesthood; let him be anathema.
Canon iii. If any one shall say, that orders, or sacred ordination, is not truly and properly a sacrament instituted by Christ the Lord; or, that it is a certain human figment devised by men unskilled in ecclesiastical matters; or, that
- ↑ John x. 1.
