ranks according to sex and age1, offered its oblations; the deacons received them and disposed them on the altar; the Bishop and his Presbyters consecrated them, all laying their hands on them while the bishop recited the Great Thanksgiving; and the laity added their assent in the Great Amen 2. But when circumstances required it, this cooperation of the priesthood was as it were spread out and extended, and individual presbyters instead of concelebrating with the bishop in situ, were commissioned to do their part in the common act elsewhere, in local congregations. Baptism, Absolution, and Ordination, are all related to the Eucharist as avenues to it, either for participation or for ministry3. And this perhaps determined the limits which were set to the possible delegation of the administration of them to individual presbyters or to others. The bishop, as the normal minister of the sacraments, guards and controls the approaches to the Eucharist. Accordingly, in the creation of ministers of the altar, while the assent of the faithful generally is required to the choice of the persons to be ordained, it lies with the bishop alone to confer the authority: Ordination is reserved exclusively to the Bishop. The authority to confer Baptism, in view of its necessity, is extended to presbyters and deacons, at first occasionally, and then ordinarily, when the bishop is not at hand, and even to laymen in case of urgent need: but the initiation remains incomplete until it is completed and confirmed by the Imposition of the Hand of the Bishop. Absolution, which readmits the penitent to the fellowship of the Eucharist, is conferred, with the assent of the body of the faithful, by the Bishop, whether acting alone or with 1 Didasc. ii 57 §§ 2 sqq. 2 S. Justin M. Apol. i 65, 67. This is expressed, as we have seen, by the administration of these rites in the course of the Liturgy, immediately before the Mass of the Faithful. the cooperation of the clergy; but since excommunication is not the annulling of baptism, and absolution is not an initiation de nouo but the restoration of the rights of an indelible initiation already conferred, in case of urgency its administration is extended to individual Presbyters, and by special commission in particular instances to Deacons. In accordance with later usage, Marriage and the Unction of the Sick have been included above among the Sacraments. But the ministry of the Church in relation to Marriage in the ante-Nicene period, as always, was confined to the confirmation, by the invocation of the divine benediction, of what was already otherwise accomplished. As for the Unction of the Sick, it had no prominence in this period, and perhaps it was not yet any part of the universal system of the Church ; and it is only in the West that the hallowing of the oil has been reserved to bishops alone; while in the fourth and following centuries not only the administration but even the hallowing was sometimes effected by laymen. |