Anglican Orders Are They Valid?

This work begins: "I HAVE received a letter from you, In which you set before me the difficulties in matters of religion that perplex you, and ask my advice in the doubts that harass your soul. I accept with pleasure the confidence you are pleased to repose in me, and I trust you will never have any reason to regret that you have done so. You may rest assured that my best advice is always and at all times at your service, and that any question you think fit to raise shall receive my most serious consideration." "You have, you say, the Apostolic Succession, the Priesthood, the Real Presence of our Lord in the Blessed Sacrament; and what more can anyone desire?" "I am far from agreeing with you that the question of the validity of your Orders occupies a place of such primary importance as you seem to suppose. It is, of course, true that valid orders must necessarily be found in the true Church of Christ, for they are necessary to her supernatural life, and, in fact, to her very existence; still, it does not by any means follow, that valid orders are a note of the true Church, and that those who possess them are necessarily within the One Fold of the One Shepherd. Nothing could be further from the truth. Any such inference is a logical fallacy." And this is interesting: "The following is an extract from a letter from the Rev. Basil E. Popove, Chaplain of the Russian Embassy, also in. possession of the writer: --" The limits of a letter allow me only to state that by the law and practice of the Holy Eastern Church (RussoGreek) an Anglican priest could only he admitted into her fold as a layman."" And there is considered a question of Baptism amongst the Anglicans: "An Anglican Bishop, long resident in Scotland, speaks as follows: - "In arriving at any conclusion regarding the nature of the administration of Baptism in the Scotch Establishment and other Presbyterian sects, it should be remembered that its ministers one and all look upon it merely as a rite-a rite which is a sign-and have no theological belief of its importance. This being so, they would naturally administer it with no particular care or exactness. And this is what I have always found. I have seen several instances of Baptism by Presbyterian ministers, of only one of which could I positively take upon myself to declare that it was certainly valid. The others were all doubtful and uncertain. Our invariable rule in dealing with converts is to baptize them sub conditione."" And more to the point: "It is beyond dispute that the founders of the Anglican Church held Episcopacy to be a lawful and praiseworthy form of Church government, but they were very resolute against the idea that it was of divine institution, or was able to confer grace, or was a sacrament. This is abundantly proved both by the words and the acts of the Reformers. Tyndale pronounces on the question of the ministry as follows: "Ye choose temporal officers and read their duty to them, and they promise to be faithful ministers, and then are admitted. Neither is there any other manner of ceremony at all required in making of our spiritual officers than to choose an able person, and then to rehearse him his duty and give him his charge, and so put him in his room.""