The Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review Volume 10 - Softcover

Inhaltsangabe

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1839 Excerpt: ... THE METHODIST MAGAZINE AND S,uarterlfi lUWrto. EDITED BY S. LUCKEY AND G. COLES. Vol. XXI, No. 1. JANUARY, 1839. New Series--Vol. X, No. 1. For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review. Article I.--ORDINATION TO THE MINISTRY. BY REV. CHARLES ELLIOTT, A. M. Many persons are accustomed to consider imposition of hands to be of the same import with ordination, though, in truth, they are of very different acceptations. Ordination is the constituting or appointing of ministers to their office. Imposition of hands is only one of the ceremonies used on an ordination occasion, and stands in the same rank with reaching the Bible to the candidate, or any such rite; while it is inferior to the proper examination of the candidate's attainments, as well as to prayer, unless as imposition of hands may be itself a form of prayer. We have no fault to find with the use of this in the ritual of ordination, though we have an irreconcilable warfare against it as an essential part of ministerial ordination; and much more so when it is made the principal part of ordination, or when it is converted into ordination itself. At an early age of Christianity, rites and forms of new and imposing import began to find their way into the church. At the same time the ancient ceremonials received more than their wonted attention. In process of time the mere ritual took the place, in a good degree, of the thing with which the rite was associated, and which it was intended to signify. The prayer for the thing was put in the place of the thing prayed for. Thus the precatory absolution employed when apostates returned to the church was used on all occasions where pardon was invoked. The precatory form, too, was soon turned into the absolute. Instead of praying, as at first, "Deus te absolvat...

Die Inhaltsangabe kann sich auf eine andere Ausgabe dieses Titels beziehen.