woman's work in the church

Front matter

i at

ps cy r Aan)

111, hh eH OB

Chapter 1, The Deaconesses Of The Early Church

. The Female Diaconate in Apostolic Times . The Church-Widows, Church-Virgins,- and

Duveloaxroe

. The Female Diaconate in the ‘‘ Apostolical

Constitutions” . A Early Notices of the Female Tae: in ifs Greek and Latin Churches till the Days of

Chrysostom

. Chrysostom and his Deaconess Friends . The Greek Female Diaconate in the Fifth

Century . 6 The Greek Female anne in se Codes Aa later Councils, till its disappearance

. Latest Notices of the Female Diaconate in the

Western Church A 5 : 5 :

. Conclusion: Lessons of the Historical Female

Diaconate . : 5 9 ° .

PAGE xvi Contents.

§ 5. § 6.

§ 1. § 2. § 3.

§ 4. § 5-

§ 6.

$7.

CHAPTER 1.

EARLY FEMALE MONACHISM AND THE BEGUINES.

. Church-Virginship, and the Doctrine of the

Spiritual Marriage of the Individual with Christ 5 5 m .

. Early Female Monachism as Compared writ

Church-Virginship 5 °

3. The Social Principle, the Mainstay of Mouachion 4. Sketch of ‘the History of Monachism till the

Eleventh Century 5 Female Monachism till the Eleventh Caitaiy 6 The Béguines ° 5 . . . .

CHAPTER IIL

THE SISTERHOODS OF THE CHURCH OF ROME.

Early Romish Charitable Ue Oui S esi ATEE cants and their Tertiarians . 4 : A Struggle between the Free and the Monastic Charitable Fellowships 5 3 The Tertiarian Nuns—Hospitallers—A lexians Early Educational Fcllowships—the Gerardins The Jesuits and Female Educational Orders, Ursulines, &c. é é The later Charitable Sisterhoods Sa Reforma tory Orders—Sisters of Charity, &c. Persistency of Romish Diaconal Sisterhoods .

PAGE

85 93

96 106

161 181

Contents. XVil

CHAPTER IV.

DEACONESSES AND SISTERHOODS IN REFERENCE TO THE REFORMED CHURCHES,

§ 1. Deaconesses and Female Monachism among the bot Reformed Churches in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries 5 , 6 193

§ 2. Deaconesses’ Institutes and Protestant Sis terhoods in the Nineteenth Century 0 F 200

$3. Special Characteristics of the Protestant Deaconesses’ Institute ° ; A A 207

Appendix

A.—The Coptic Apostolical Constitutions . . 219 B.—The Canons of the Councils of Niczea, Laodicea, and Carthage . ; . : 223 C.—The Marriage of the Soul with Christ, a Doe: trine not countenanced by St Paul 5 ‘ 22 D.—The Church-Virgins, and the Transition of the Institution into Monachism . 5 F 234 E.—The Hospitallers of St Martha in Cede A 240 ¥,—Translation of one of the later Béguine Rules 242 G.— ‘‘ Deaconesses or Protestant Sisterhoods” : 248

H.—Miss Sellon’s Sisterhood of Mercy . 5 6 203

CHAPTER 1

THE DEACONESSES OF THE EARLY CHURCH.

§ 1. Zhe Female Diaconate in Apostolic Times.

“F COMMEND unto you Phcebe our sister,

which is a servant of the church which is at Cenchrea,” (Rom. xvi. 1.) If the Greek word (ddéxovey) here translated “ servant” had been rendered as in the 6th chapter of Acts, the 3d of the First Epistle to Timothy, and in many other passages of the apostolic writings, the verse would have run thus: “I commend unto you Phoebe our sister, which is a deacon of the church which is at Cenchrea,” and the name at least of a female diaconate would have remained familiar to us. It is one A

2 The Women-Deacons of those too frequent instances in our translation of the same word being differently rendered, which often give a wholly different complexion to passages closely akin in the original,—as the 13th chapter of the First Epistle to Corinthians, where St Paul’s glorious eulogy of “charity” loses, so to speak, its brotherhood with St John’s oftrepeated lessons on “ love,” the Greek word (ayann) being the same in the teachings of both apostles; discrepancies which for some—I may speak at least for myself—render a revision of the authorised version a matter of deep and serious interest. Reserving therefore all questions as respects the functions of the persons whom the word designates, but adhering to the form which is nearest to the Greek, we may say that undeniably there is mention of female deacons, or deaconesses, as I shall mostly henceforth call them (Greek, 4 diéxovs, dsaxévicow—Latin, diaconissa, diacona,) in the New Testament. The deacon Phcebe must, moreover, have been a person of some consideration. St Paul begins with her name the list of his personal recommendations or salutations to the Roman Church, and recommends her at greater length than any other person: “That ye receive her in the Lord, as becometh saints, and that ye assist her in whatsoever business 21.2 hath need of you: for she hath been of the New Testament. 2 a succourer of many, and of myself also.” Evidently this “servant of the church,” this “ succourer” of apostles, couid have been no mere pew-opener, no filler of a purely menial office.

Turn now to the 3d chapter of St Paul’s First Epistle to Timothy, where the apostle gives successively those noble pictures of the Christian bishop, of the Christian deacon. “A bishop,” he says, “must be blameless, the husband of one wife, vigilant, sober, of good behaviour, given to hospitality, apt to teach; not given to wine, no striker, not greedy of filthy lucre;... one that ruleth well his own house, having his children in subjection with all gravity.” Proceeding next to the deacons: “ Likewise must the deacons be grave, not double-tongued, not given to much wine, not greedy of filthy lucre..... Even so must their wives” (yuvainas woubrw¢)—so says our translation—“ be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things. Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife, ruling their children and their own house.”

Many, no doubt, will have been struck by the circumstance, that whilst the deacons’ wives are mentioned in the above passage, there is no parallel injunction as to the wives of bishops, although the former are treated obviously as married men and fathers of families, in precisely similar terms ;

4 The Women-Deacons whereas if the example of a deacon’s wife be of sufficient moment to deserve a special apostolic exhortation, that of a bishop’s wife must need it far more. Accordingly, Calvin and some others have held that the word rendered “their wives” means the wives of the bishops as well as of the deacons,—an interpretation which would itself do violence to our text, and which certainly accuses St Paul of hasty and slovenly writing. For, if he had meant this, surely he would more naturally have inserted the verse at the end of the whole exhortation, after the present ver. 13, than have “thrown in”—to use an expression of Chrysostom’s in a comment to be presently referred to— something about bishops’ as well as deacons’ wives at once in a passage referring to deacons, both before and after. This interpretation, at all events, seems to have been entirely foreign to the early Church. Two meanings only appear to have been put upon the passage till the Reformation: one which referred it to women generally; the other, which referred it to the female diaconate.

Both these senses rest indeed upon the literal text. It will be observed that the word “ their,” in ver. 11, is printed in italics, indicating insertion at the hands of our translators. The Greek word, on the other hand, translated “wives,” signifies primarily “women.” Literally, therefore, the verse of the New Testament. 5 might run thus: “Even so must women be grave, not slanderers, sober, faithful in all things.” Accordingly, the Latin Vulgate translates by the equivalent for “women,” (#wlieres) not for “wives ;” our own Wycliffe following in its wake, and writing, ‘also it bihoveth wymmen to be chast,” &c. Upon this construction Chrysostom, in his homilies on this epistle, (the 1zth,) observes as follows :— “Some say that this is spoken of women generally ; but it is not so. For why should he have thrown in something about women amongst the things which he has been saying? But he speaks of those that have the dignity of the diaconate.” If, therefore, ‘‘ zomen-(deacons)” are meant, the sense is plain. Just as the men-deacons must be grave, not double-tongued, &c., even so must the women-deacons be grave, not slanderous, &c. ‘Thus, to sum up the argument, if the wives of the deacons be intended, the omission of all mention of bishops’ wives seems unaccountable; if the wives of bishops and deacons alike are meant, the reference to the former is strangely thrown in amidst injunctions specially referring to the diaconal office ; if women generally, the injunction is thrown in still more strangely; but if “women-deacons” be really meant, instead of either an unaccountable omission or an illogical insertion, we have a command strictly sufficient, strictly logical, and in strict ac-

6 Women-Deacons cordance, as I shall presently shew, with the facts of Church history.*

Let me observe here at once, that whatever may appear hereafter to have been the functions of the deaconess in the ministrations of charity, they had in them nothing exclusive of the active development of every Christian grace in other female disciples, to whom the title is not attributed. Side by side with Phoebe, we find mention of “ Mary, who bestowed: much labour on us,” “Tryphena and Tryphosa, who labour in the Lord,” “the beloved Persis, which laboured much in the Lord” (Rom. xvi. 6, 12); whilst in another epistle the same apostle speaks again of “those women which laboured with me in the gospel” (Phil. iv. 3). Thus is continued that bright chain of female excellence, beginning with those holy women who, with the apostles, followed the Saviour in all His journeyings, and ministered to Him of their sub-

* Several modern critics, especially German, infer from

Tit. ii. 3, the existence of a class of female presbyters, invested with a sort of magisterial functions,—a class of persons of which some traces, indeed, are to be found later in schismatical bodies, but never in the Church (at least till a much later period). I cannot say how strongly I feel that our translators are upon this point entirely in the right, and that the apostle has simply in view a contrast of age between “‘aged men” and ‘‘aged women” on the one hand, and “¢young men” and*‘‘ young women” on the other. Female bishops there were avowedly none.

and Church-Widows. 7 stance, the Marys, and Joannas, and Susannas (Luke viii. 2, 3), and which then links itself on to the above-mentioned names through Dorcas, “ full of good works and alms-deeds ” (Acts ix. 36); and above all, through that remarkable personage of the © apostolic age, Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, the Jew of Pontus, whom the Acts shew us with him, expounding the way of God more perfectly to Apollos (Acts xviii. 26); the husband and wife, both “ helpers” of Paul “in Christ Jesus,” who had for his life “laid down their necks ; unto whom not only” he gave “ thanks, but also all the churches of the Gentiles” (Rom. xvi. 3, 4). The female diaconate must therefore have been, from the first, like every other office in the Christian Church, only the full developed type, and not the exceptional monopoly of a woman’s function and work.

§ 2. The Church-Widows, Church-Virgins, and

Duveloakro..

One great cause of the obscurity in which the history of the female diaconate has been involved has been the existence in the early Church, from the apostolic age, of another class of women in later times frequently confounded with female _ deacons, and who indeed seems eventually in the

West to have merged into one body with them.

8 The New Testament Widows

“Honour widows that are widows indeed,” says St © Paul (x Tim. v. 3, e¢ seg.); “but if any widow have children or nephews, let them learn first to shew piety at home, and to requite their parents, for that is good and acceptable before God. Now she that is a widow indeed, and desolate, trusteth in God, and continueth in supplications and prayers night and day. . .. Let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years old, having been the wife of one man, well reported of for good works; if she have brought up children, if she have lodged strangers, if she have washed the saints’ feet, if she have relieved the afflicted, if she have diligently followed every good work. ... If any man or woman that believeth hath widows, let them relieve them, and let not the church be charged, that it may relieve them that are widows indeed.”

What does the picture here given amount to? Surely it is that of the a/mswomen of the primitive Church ; persons free from all family ties (“if any widow have children or nephews”), and at the same time destitute of all family support (“she that is a widow indeed, and desolate,” ... “if any man or woman that believeth hath widows, let them relieve them”), who, after a life of Christian usefulness (“well reported of for good works,” &c.), were thought worthy of being provided for not Women-Deacons. 9 by the Church (“let not the church be charged, that it may relieve them that are widows indeed ”) in their old age (“let not a widow be taken into the number under threescore years”), being released from all duties of active benevolence (“she that is a widow indeed . . . continueth in supplications and prayers night and day”). Now, the details of this picture are very much the reverse of what is implied in the word deacon, z.¢., man or maid-servant, (glorious humility of the Christian Church, which knows no higher titles than these of “servant,” “elderly man,” “overlooker!”), As the primary function of the deacon was one of a purely ministerial nature, to “‘serve tables”—and let it be remembered that the very necessity for the office arose from the neglect of the Greek ‘ widows” in the “daily ministration” (the original Greek word is “diaconate,” diaxovig)—so we may at once as- . sume that the female deacon’s duties must have been active ones. We can hardly suppose, for instance, that a widow of sixty, such as St Paul describes, would, like the deacon Phoebe, have undertaken a long journey under all the difficulties of ancient navigation, charged, if a tradition accepted by our translators speaks true, with the care of the epistle in which she is mentioned. And shall we be far from the truth if, judging from St Paul’s commendation of Phcebe, we conjecture

Io The Church-Widows that the female deacon was what the widow had been, a bringer-up of children, a lodger of strangers, a reliever of the afflicted, a diligent follower of every good work? If so, it would easily follow that aged female deacons would be adopted into the class of widows ; that women who had actively ministered to the Church during the working time of their lives should in turn be ministered to by the Church in their old days, and allowed to devote themselves to prayer and contemplation. And thus the two ideas might in time run into one. Two classes of women, then, appear from the apostolic writings to have formed part of the earliest order of the Church,—the one ministering, the other ministered to,—the one fulfilling an office of active duty, the other rewarded for their past services by the privilege of an honourable provision in their old age. But there is also another class of females, who, although the canonical writings certainly do not exhibit them as forming part of the order of the Church, yet seem treated of with peculiar minuteness by St Paul. We remember his judgment concerning virgins, as to whom he had “no commandment of the Lord” (1 Cor. vii. 25); how he told the Corinthians that “he that standeth steadfast in his heart, having no necessity, but hath power over his own will, and, hath so decreed in his heart that he will keep his virgin, and the Virgins. II doeth well; so then, he that giveth her in marriage doeth well, but he that giveth her not in marriage doeth better” (1 Cor. vil. 37, 38*). It might naturally be expected, after such an intimation of the great apostle’s private opinion—not to speak of a passage in the First Gospel (Matt. xix. 12),—that virginity would be had in favour in the early Church, particularly having reference, as the apostle him-

* To avoid unnecessary controversy on a point not directly concerning my subject, I adopt the common interpretation, which applies the whole passage to virgins generally, and to those who have parental or quasi-parental authority over them. At the same time, a view of it is entertained by a very dear and respected friend of mine, the Rey. F. D. _- Maurice,—my obligations to whom for the light which he has thrown upon many of the truths I have contended for in this work it were idle to number,—which places the passagein an altogether new aspect. He looks uponit, from v. 25 to y. 38 of 1 Cor. vii., as being the answer to a particular case put to the apostle by the Corinthians, as to the duties of a guardian towards his female ward. Not only is the absence of all mention of parental authority very remarkable in the passage, as well as the continuous reference to the marriage of men in a passage ‘‘concerning virgins,” but it certainly contains a verse which it is most difficult to explain on any other view: ‘‘ But ifany man think that he behaveth himself uncomely toward his virgin, if she pass the flower of her age, and need so require, let him do what he will, he sinneth not: let them marry.’ A plural pronoun very strange and unexpected, if the girl’s marriage alone is referred to, or if her husband be some undefined person,—but perfectly consistent with the text, if the marriage spoken of is that of two definite individuals placed in a special relation towards each other.

2 The later Church-Virgens.

self points out, to the “present distress” (1 Cor. vii. 26), to the perplexities and persecutions which lasted, let us never forget it,—with intervals it is true, but yet so as never to lose the character of a “present distress” —for at least nine consecutive generations of human beings. But although St Paul clearly speaks only of virgins who are in the power of their parents or guardians,—what would become of females thus devoted to celibacy, as age wore on, as family ties were snapped asunder? If deprived of their parents, would they not be about equally helpless and “desolate” with the widows themselves? Would it not become equally incumbent on the Church to take them wholly or partly in its charge, by allowing them, for instance, like the widows, to continue “in supplications and prayers night and day,’—or again, by assigning to them active duties to fulfil in the Church? We may thus imagine how easy would be the - growth of a distinct class of church-virgins—in effect prominent in later Church history—analogous to that of church-widows in some respects, to the deaconesses in others, and liable to be confounded alternately with both.

But again, there is another class of women whom we must be prepared to see grow up in Church records out of a mistaken interpretation of that passage of St Paul, in which, by our transla-

The Sister- Women. I3 tion, he is made to ask, “ Have we not power to lead about @ sister, a wife, as well as other apostles ?” (1 Cor. ix. 5), but which in the original may equally bear the sense of “ Have we not power to lead about a svster-woman, as well as other apostles?” ‘These ‘“sister-women, —ouve/canrol, as the Greeks most usually term them ; swdbintroduct@, as the Latins translate the term—-became in corrupt times, and with the growth of the dea of celibacy, persons answering to priests’ ‘ housekeepers,” &c., in many Roman Catholic countries, —too often, in plain words, the mistresses of the clergy; or if grosser sin was avoided, yet still the occasion of extreme scandal and wilful temptation. The decrees of councils, the works of the fathers, are full of denunciations of these private adoptive fraternities between male members of the clergy and persons of the other sex.

All the four classes of women I have mentioned, —the Deaconesses and Widows, both belonging to the apostolic days,—-the Virgins, dating from a scarcely later period, the suveioanros for sister-women, a mere corruption of later days, —as well as the female elders or presbyters of some schismatical churches,—have more or less been confounded together at some time or other by the views or practice of particular churches, and the so-called labours of commen-

14 The Female Deacons of tators ; and the history of the true female diaconate has to be disentangled from a mass of misconceptions and misapplications of texts, wilful, stupid, or ignorant, filling the pages of the best books of reference, repeated without inquiry from author to author, till they seem to borrow something of the weight of each, almost incredible to any one who has not traced passage after passage to its source. For myself, I have invariably referred to the original text, whenever it was accessible to me ; and I give fair notice that no array of modern names with or without Latin endings to them, against any of the distinctions of classes which J have laid down, will have any weight with me against these distinctions, when supported by one text of Scripture or of an early authority.

§ 3. Zhe Female Diaconate in the “ Apostolical Constitutions.”

Let us now turn to a work of which many varying judgments have been held by men of learning and weight—for some a clumsy forgery, for others a precious and genuine relic—the so-called “ Apostolical Constitutions.” Observe that, if they be forgeries, they are forgeries of an early age, and as such, possessed of real historical value. For every literary forgery must bear the impress of the time the “ Apostolical Constitutions.” 15 at which it was got up; it must look backward always, never forward; some vestiges of past reality must linger in it, and by those vestiges we may often complete a subsisting fragment of reality itself; somewhat as, by the footprints of some long-perished creature, left on the soft sand or clay, which the lapse of ages has turned into stone, the naturalist may piece out some fragment of its fossil skeleton, itself insufficient to reveal to us the entire creature.

Now, in the “ Apostolical Constitutions,” the female Deacon or Deaconess, the Widow, the Virgin, all come before us as distinct types ; the first as invested with an office; the second as the object of affectionate regard and support; the third of religious commendation. Of the Deaconess (as I shall call her henceforth) it is provided (Bk. vi. c. 17), that she shall be “a pure virgin,” or otherwise “‘a widow once married, faithful and worthy ;” a very natural provision, since the cares of a family would prevent a married woman from concentrating her whole energies on her diaconal functions. She was wanted, says an early constitution, for many purposes (Bk. ili. c. 15). At service, whilst the “ door-keeper” was to stand and watch at the men’s entrance to the church, the deaconess was in like manner to stand (Bk. ii. c.

57) at the women’s entrance (a function which

16 The Female Deacons indeed, in a constitution of the eighth and latest book, is ascribed to the sub-deacon), and was, moreover, to act in the same manner as the male deacon with respect to placing females in the congregation, whether poor or rich (Bk. 1. c. 58). She was also to fulfil the duties of a male deacon in those cases where “a man-deacon cannot be sent to some houses towards women on account of unbelievers” (Bk. ill. c. 15), 2¢@, to prevent scandal. Lastly, her most important offices were those relating to the baptizing of women (Bk. ill. cc. 15, 16), the necessity for which has been obviated in later times by the discontinuance of the practice of baptism by immersion, or the practice of immersion under a form which the early Church would not have recognised as valid. It is even provided that “no woman shall approach the deacon or the bishop without the deaconess” (Bk. il. c. 26). And it said generally, in a constitution concerning the deacons, that “the woman” (an expression strongly recalling 1 Tim. il. 11, and affording additional ground for construing it as relating to the deaconesses) “ should be zealous to serve women ;” whilst “to both pertain messages, journeys to foreign parts, ministrations, services” (Bk. iii. c. 19). The traditional journey of Phoebe to Rome with St Paul’s Epistle would thus be strictly within the limits of her functions.

ordained to their Office. 17

Towards fulfilling these duties, the deaconess is represented as receiving an ordination from the . bishop, under a simple and beautiful form of ser- ‘vice attributed to the Apostle Barthclomew (Bk. Vill., CC. 19, 20) :—

“Touching the deaconess, I Bartholomew do thus ordain: O bishop, thou shalt lay on her thy hands, in the presence of the presbytery, of the deacons, and of the deaconesses, and thou shalt say :—

“O everlasting God, Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Creator of man and woman, who didst fill with Thy Spirit Mary and Deborah, and Hannah and Hulda : who didst not disdain to cause Thine only-begotten Son to be born of a woman ; who didst admit into the tabernacle of the testimony and into the temple the women guardians of Thy holy gates: Thyself look down even now upon Thy servant now admitted into the diaconate, and give to her Thy Holy Spirit, and cleanse her from all pollution of thy flesh and spirit, that she may worthily fulfil Thy work thus intrusted to her, to Thy glory, and to thy praise of Thy Christ, with whom to Thee be glory and worship, and to the Holy Spirit, for ever and ever. Amen,”*

* Two other forms of service for the ordination of deaconesses (besides a Nestorian one), I believe, exist—one in the ‘‘ Liturgy of Basil and Chrysostom,” the other in the *‘ Ordo Romanus.” 5

B

-

18 The “Apostolical Constitutions”

Some may feel shocked at the idea of the ordination of a woman, of the Holy Ghost being invoked upon her. A distinction has even been made by some Protestant, as well as Romish writers, between the imposition of hands as a ceremonial benediction and a real ordination. The original word certainly affords not the slightest ground for such a distinction, which other writers, like. Bingham, wholly repudiate. But it seems to me that the laying on of hands upon a deaconess “was eminently characteristic of the faith of early times. It was because men felt still that the Holy Ghost alone could give power to do any work to God’s glory, that they deemed themselves constrained to ask such power of Him, in setting a woman to do church work. Nor did such ordination in the least interfere with any needful distinctions of office. ‘The deaconess,” it is said, “‘ does not give the blessing, nor does she fulfil any of the functions of the presbyters or of the deacons, beyond the guarding of doors, and the supplying the place of the presbyters in the baptizing of women” (Bk. viii., c. 28). In other words, she was ordained not to preach, not to bless, exactly as others were ordained to preach and to bless. From other provisions, it may be seen that the deaconess ranked after the presbyter and deacon, and at least on a par with, if not before, the sub-deacon (Bk. viii. pason Widows and Virgins. 19 sim). Her position indeed is, in the earlier part of the work, set forth in language absolutely blasphemous to our ears, the bishop being likened to God the Father, the deacon to Christ, the deaconess to the Holy Ghost, as “ doing naught nor saying without the deacon, even as the Comforter speaketh nor doeth aught of Himself, but glorifieth Christ, and attendeth to His will” (Bk. ii., c. 26).

Very different is the language of these Constitutions respecting widows. ‘The eight first chapters of the third book treat of these, and breathe entirely the spirit of the Pastoral Epistle, though eked out and diluted, as it seems to me, into intolerable verbiage. ‘They are represented as provided for by the Church, with no other duty than that of prayer, as well for their benefactors as for the whole Church. Mention is made of some who “ask without shame, and take without stint, and have already made the many lukewarm to give.” Elsewhere it is said expressly, “ The widows should be grave, obedient to the bishops, and to the priests, and to the deacons, and also to the deaconesses” (Bk. ill, c. 7). And it is specifically stated that “ the widow is not ordained” (Bk. viii., Cr25);

On the subject of virgins, the Constitutions only exhibit this departure from the language of St Paul, that they treat the virgin as having dedicated

20 What the Constitutions herself to Christ, not as having been dedicated by others. It is specifically stated of her, as of the widow, that she is “ not ordained” (see Bk. viil., c. 24) The virgins are not yet represented as forming a distinct class, nor are even spoken of with widows as persons to be relieved, although ‘“‘ orphans ” are in one or two places.

The contrast between the ordained deaconess and the non-ordained widow or virgin illustrates well the typical, universal character which belongs to the offices of the Christian Church. Deaconesses were ordained, because the Diaconate was the type of that universal duty of serving one another, which our Lord so specially inculcated in the washing of His disciples’ feet. Widows were not ordained, because widowhood and virginity are not offices, but mere conditions of life; because they have nothing of a universal character, but are merely exceptional in their nature. So with, as it seems to me, perfect consistency, are sub-deacons and readers included in the ordained clergy, whilst confessors and exorcists are excluded (Bk. viil. asszm).