Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/236

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32
Nelson.

baptized in one Church, has a right to partake of the Lord's Supper, and other church privileges, in all other Churches, where he happens to come; whereas if baptism only admitted men into some particular Church, they must be re-baptized, before they can lawfully be received to communion in any diocese, where they have not been baptized already.

If it was not thus in holy orders, that they who have received them in one place, retain them in others: no minister could have authority to preach the Gospel or to administer the sacraments, or to exercise any other part of his functions beyond the particular district in which he was ordained; the consequence whereas is manifestly this, that the gospel of Christ must not be propagated, nor any churches erected, in countries where they had not stood ever since the Apostles' times. For since there can be no ministers without ordination, as was before proved, so then they, who have been ordained in one country, may lawfully exercise their respective functions in others, where there are no ordained ministers already settled, or else those countries must remain for ever without ministers, and consequently without sacraments and other public offices of religion.


Nelson, Confessor.Festivals and Fasts.

The Church being a regular society founded by Christ, distinct from and independent of all other worldly societies, must naturally make us suppose that He instituted some Officers for the government of it.... [The] Powers peculiar to the superior Order being necessary for the good government of the Church, it is plain in fact they did not expire with the Apostles. But, as our Saviour "glorified not Himself to be made an High Priest," but had His commission from God the Father, so after His resurrection, He invested the Apostles with the same commission His Father had given unto Him: "As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you; and He breathed on thern, and said unto them. Receive ye the Holy Ghost." In which commission is plainly contained the authority of ordaining others, and a power to transfer that commission upon others, and those upon others to the end of the world. And to show that it was not