[Form of Gov., chap. xiii., sec. iv.—Digest of 1873, p. 346.]
The Committee of Bills and Overtures reported an overture from the Presbytery of South Alabama on the subject of ordaining elders and deacons with the imposition of hands. The committee recommended that it be left to the discretion of each Church session to determine the mode of ordination in this respect.
Under the old dispensation and in the Apostolic Church, the imposition of hands was used on all solemn occasions to signify the idea of communication. It is a fitting and becoming ceremony whenever the rights and privileges of a sacred office are conferred; but there is evidently no necessity or peculiar importance to be attached to it. There would seem to be something of the leaven of the Popish doctrine of the communication of a mysterious influence, producing the indelible impress of orders, still lurking in the minds of some of our brethren. If grace, in the sense of divine influence, was given by the laying on of hands, then indeed, it would be a serious question when that ceremony should be used. But if grace, in such connection, means what it often means in Scripture, and in the language of the English Reformers, office, considered as a gift; then it is obviously a matter of indifference, whether those in authority express their purpose of conferring a certain office by words or signs, or by both.
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