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(4.) Hence ordination is the joint work of the people, pastors, and superintendents of the church, in which a person duly qualified is separated for the work of the ministry, in some formal Scriptural form, accompanied with prayer.

We say it is to be accompanied with prayer, because this refers the choice to God. Prayer was always used in all kinds of appointments to the ministry, and the absence of it would involve the charge of irreligion.

That some kind of form may be used, because, in all the cases we have an account of, with any circumstantiality, a formal process has been observed. Our Lord appointed his apostles by naming and numbering, or enrolling them; Matthias was chosen by lot, and then numbered or enrolled; or the deacons' hands were imposed, accompanied with prayer. Thus some form was used; yet the forms did vary from each other in those cases recorded in Scripture. The form is not essential. Whatever Scriptural form the church approves of ordinarily ought to be observed.

The person must be duly qualified. On this enough has been said. Ordination, in the foregoing definition, is said to be a joint work of the people, pastors, and special officers of the church. If the will or judgment of the people be overlooked, there is a great irregularity in the ordination, though we would not say the ordination is invalid, provided the candidate was duly qualified. When special officers, as bishops or selected elders, are not chosen to ordain, there is great want of formality and regularity; yet we would not maintain that an ordination of a proper person chosen by the people or elders was therefore invalid. If the body of elders connected with the candidate do not act in the case, then there is a very serious irregularity, which approaches to an invalidity. Hence those ordinations made by the Church of Rome by their prelates, without the joint acts of people or presbyters, are highly irregular, and most of them are absolutely invalid, because of the ineligibility of the candidates. The same may be said of the ordinations of the English Church, where neither people nor elders were consulted. Thus invalidity or irregularity, or both, are chargeable to a very great extent against the ordination both of Romish and Protestant Successionists. Their ordinations for Scriptural character are not to be compared with the ordinations of those who select pious and gifted men, by the recommendation of the people, the election of the pastors, and by such special officers whom they may see fit to intrust with the formal consecration, whatever Scriptural form may be used on the

occasion.

Had we time and space, we could advantageously prove that ordination to the ministry in the Methodist Episcopal Church, as well as among the Wesleyan Methodists, may safely challenge comparison with the ordination practiced by any branch of the Successionists, whether Protestant or popish, and be a large gainer by the examination. This, however, may be attempted at a future time. It might also be a matter of some curiosity to present before the reader the ordinals of Exclusionists, as their notorious defects would serve to show how much they have departed from Scripture and antiquity. Perhaps this also may be attempted at a future period, if life, health, and opportunities permit.

For the Methodist Magazine and Quarterly Review.

TRIALS BY ORDEAL AND SINGLE COMBAT.

AN HISTORICAL AND MORAL ESSAY.

BY REV. J. H. YOUNG, OF THE BALTIMORE CONFERENCE.

Continued from page 38.

We now proceed to the history and extent of the practice of single combats.

In this part of the essay it will appear that edicts have been published and laws enacted for and against this custom, by kings, popes, and councils; and that in some countries it has been much more frequently resorted to than in others. The canon law, drawn from the writings of the ancient doctors, the decrees of councils, and the letters of popes, was almost invariably against it.

The first ordinance we meet with in opposition to dueling proceeded from the third council of Valence or Valentia, in Dauphine, which was composed of the clergy of Arles, Vienne, and Lyons, headed by Remi, the archbishop of the latter city, in 855. This body of ministers decreed, that if any person killed another in single combat, he should be forthwith excommunicated; and that he who was thus slain should not be favored with a Christian burial.

The next edict against this superstitious trial came from Pope Nicholas the First, commonly called the Great, who obliged Louis II., one of the emperors of the west, to perform the duties of a groom, in 862. It was in substance like the other. On this occasion the good bishop, or successor of Peter, gravely maintained that the example of David and Goliah was not a sufficiently conclusive reason to justify these combats.

. This decree of his holiness was followed by another from the Emperor Otho I., who ascended the throne of the German empire in 936, and died in 973. But this sovereign was in favor of dueling; and perhaps no prince by any law ever promoted this evil more successfully. It had been customary before his time, during several centuries, for every person to choose the law by which he wished to be governed and judged, and he might signify this preference publicly. There were several codes of laws in existence in the imperial dominions, as that of the Romans, the Burgundians, the Lombards, and others, either of which might be selected by an individual as the rule of his actions. But Otho ordained, contrary to the established usage of the country, and without regard to the predilection of his subjects for any particular legal code, that all persons, without exception, should thenceforth submit to the edicts which had been issued in reference to the trials by duel or battle. See Robertson's Charles V., vol. i, p. 354.

Saxo, the grammarian, a Danish historian of the twelfth century, who is good authority on this subject, states that dueling had been abolished in Denmark as early as A. D. 981. Yet this trial, in the course of time, was again practiced in that country, until it was finally abrogated, according to Dr. Clarke and others, by Christian III., who began his reign in 1535.

The first decrees we meet with against this ordeal in England were passed by Henry the First, who died in 1135. Little, however, was accomplished by a law so imperfect. He merely prohibited these trials in civil questions of a petty character.

Henry the Second, in the former part of his reign, which began in 1154, introduced into his realm, with the consent of the parliament, the alternative of the grand assize. This was a species of trial by jury; and before it was adopted the single combat was the only trial in writs of right among the English. After this the tenant could choose either the jury or battle. See Blackstone, book iii, p. 341. This was acknowledged by the ablest jurists to have been a great improvement in the law, and a great preventive of judicial dueling.

Sir Henry Spelman, in his Glossary, speaks of grants which were made to the bishops and clergy to make use of the trial by the sword, as well as by fire and water, in the days of King John, who was elevated to the throne in 1199. "Judicium ferri, aquæ, et ignis."

The last instances we have in the history of England, in which the trial by battle was awarded, are the following:-One was in 1571, in the thirteenth year of Queen Elizabeth. This was waged in the Court of Common Pleas at Westminster, and was to be conducted under the inspection of the judges of that court. The lists were marked out, as was customary, about sixty feet square; the judges attended in their scarlet robes, and all the usual ceremonies of such occasions were observed: but the good queen wisely interposed her authority, stopped the proceedings, and the matter was compounded. Spel. Gloss. voc. compus, p. 103; Robertson, vol. i, p. 358; Blackstone, book iii, p. 338.

In the seventh of Charles the First, 1631, a judicial combat was appointed in the court of chivalry and honor, in the painted chamber at Westminster, between Donald Lord Rea, or Rhee, appellant, and David Ramsay, Esq., defendant. The high constable and earl marshal of England were commissioned by his majesty to preside at the trial. The day of trial was announced by these officers; and the parties were to appear with a spear, a long sword, a short sword, and a dagger. But before the time had arrived the king prorogued the combat to a further day; and finally revoked the commission, and accommodated the quarrel. See the last authorities above, and Chitty's note (2) in Blackstone, book iv, p. 348. Another instance occurred in 1638. Rushworth's Observations on the Statutes, p. 240.

The law authorizing these singular trials continued in force in Great Britain until 1817-18, when it was abolished both in civil and criminal cases by the fifty-ninth parliament of George the Third; and yet dueling, in its modern acceptation, has prevailed to an alarming extent in England during the last and the beginning of the present centuries. According to Mr. Buckingham, who delivered an address in parliament on the subject of providing by law for the more effectual suppression of dueling, one hundred and seventy-three were fought by British subjects, from 1760 to 1820. In these "affairs of honor," some of the most distinguished men in the nation were included; such as Canning, Pitt, Fox, and Sheridan, Lords

Castlereagh, Shelburn, Townsend, and Lauderdale, and the Dukes of York, Richmond, and Norfolk, with many others.

Eugenius III., who was made pope in 1145, confirmed the edicts in favor of duels previously in existence, and declared officially that the ancient and established custom of single combat must be observed. This was the successor of St. Peter, and the vicar of Jesus Christ!

But Frederick I. and II. both opposed it by enacting laws against it, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.

Pope Alexander III., who occupied the papal chair from 1159 to 1181, and who was more beloved by his subjects and respected by the world than his predecessor Eugenius, interposed also against these combats, and was followed in his pious effort in 1194 by Celestine III.

But in no country on earth was this practice of fighting out quarrels more positively interdicted, and nowhere had it, nevertheless, more extensive sway, than in chivalrous, Catholic, infidel France.

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Louis VII., surnamed the Young, following the example of Henry I. of England, issued an edict in 1168, by which these trials were forbidden in all civil causes of minor importance, and limited in criminal cases to five offences-treason, rape, murder, house-burning, and theft. These restrictions were afterward entirely abolished by Louis IV., the tutelar saint of the nation, and author of the famous pragmatic sanction. But this law was confined in its operations to his own dominions or territories, and did not exert its influence on those parts of the kingdom which belonged to the powerful vassals of the crown. Soon after, however, they were likewise forbidden by the Counts d'Auvergne and Poicton, and a few other barons.

These trials were at first prohibited, and again partially restored, in 1303-6, by Philip the Fair, and grandson of the preceding. He restricted them to treason, rape, and house-burning, and prescribed the several rules and ceremonies to be observed by the combatants. The evil existed to a fearful extent during the reign of this prince. He appeared to think that, by confining this custom to a few cases which but seldom occurred, it might be gradually abolished, and the desired object finally gained. But he ought to have known that that object could only be accomplished, as the reformation of the drunkard can alone be effected, on the total abstinence principle.

The king reserved the right of challenge to himself, and forbade it to all others. If, in considering the offense of the accused, and the circumstances of the case, a duel was by him thought justifiable, a challenge was accordingly authorized, and the parties met and settled the difficulty.

Honorable dueling prevailed more dreadfully in France in the time of Henry IV. than during the reign of any other monarch. A computation was made by Leominia in 1607, by which it appears, that in the first eighteen years of Henry, from 1589 to the preceding date, four thousand Frenchmen had fallen in single combats! This is almost incredible, but most probably correct.

Three reasons may be assigned for this epidemic character of the dueling mania in the time of Henry the Great:

(1.) It is well known that this prince, from the death of Henry III. to nearly the close of his own life, had been engaged in several very sanguinary wars. Inured to scenes of carnage, the sight of blood, and the death of his subjects, ceased at length to produce the ordinary effect upon his mind. He could hear of the most horrible conflicts, and look upon the fields of battle, covered with the bodies and clotted gore of the dead, with but little emotion. The consequence was, he became almost insensible to the crying evil, which some of his best friends and wisest counselors wished him to remove. Edicts were indeed published and registered after his chief advisers had earnestly solicited them; but they were only as the morning cloud or the early dew. There is a vast difference between enacting a law for the prohibition of evil, and enforcing obedience to that law by vigorously inflicting on the offender the penalty by which it is sanctioned. Laws have been passed by the kings of France, and by almost every government on earth, for the prevention of dueling; but the infamous duelist has been permitted to trample them under his feet, with the blood of his victim, with impunity!

(2.) Another reason for the universal dominion of this custom in the reign of Henry is this:-The preceptor assigned him by his mother the queen of Navarre, who was very anxious about his education, was La Gaucherie, a man of extensive erudition, but a rigid predestinarian in principle. His religious views naturally became strongly tinctured with the characteristic peculiarities of his teacher's faith. Hence he was fully persuaded in his own mind, that God had predetermined the occurrence of every event that comes to pass. If therefore a duel was fought, and one or both of the parties were killed, not only was the combat itself, but the death of the victim, in the opinion of the prince, according to the will of Heaven. Why then, he might consistently reason, should I interpose the arm of my authority to hinder that which was foreordained by God himself? (3.) A third reason is, duels were generally fought by persons in high life, by princes and nobles; and from them the practice was copied by the plebeian. These individuals therefore, enjoying, as they often do, the favor of the king, and being of importance to the welfare of the government, easily obtained a royal pardon, though guilty of murder, and under sentence of death. And if mercy is extended to the rich and influential, and not to the inferior subject, the rebellion of the populace frequently follows as the unhappy result. In duels the law should be no respecter of persons; or, if any, it ought rather to be in favor of the very dregs of society: the greater the man, the more prompt and signal should be the punish

ment.

Henry IV., at Blois, in June, 1602, ordained that dueling should be considered high treason, and that death should be inflicted on the disobedient. By this law the power was conferred on the constables and marshals of France, for the first time, to prevent measures of violence, and to have the injury sustained by either party speedily and prudently repaired. When this edict was registered, the French parliament restricted its influence to those combats alone which arose from a principle of honor, falsely so called, and all other crimes were excepted

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