Crossword-Solution: PRESBYTERS 10 letters, 1 clue 🏆 scrabble score: 17

And it appears from the ancient Canons that some one celebrated the Mass from whom all the other presbyters and deacons received the body of the Lord; for thus the words of the Nicene Canon say: Let the deacons, according to their order, receive the Holy Communion after the presbyters, from the bishop or from a presbyter.

Nothing could be more reverent than the spirit of the revisers, and the nineteenth century has known few historical events of more significant and touching beauty than the participation in the holy communion by all these scholars--prelates, presbyters, ministers, and laymen of churches most widely differing in belief and observance--kneeling side by side at the little altar in Westminster Abbey.

But lest I should be condemned of introducing license, while I oppose licensing, I refuse not the pains to be so much historical, as will serve to show what hath been done by ancient and famous commonwealths against this disorder, till the very time that this project of licensing crept out of the Inquisition, was catched up by our prelates, and hath caught some of our presbyters.

The public functions of religion were solely intrusted to the established ministers of the church, the _bishops_ and the _presbyters;_ two appellations which, in their first origin, appear to have distinguished the same office and the same order of persons.

They were either bishops and presbyters, the persons the most distinguished among the Christians by their rank and influence, and whose example might strike terror into the whole sect; 70 or else they were the meanest and most abject among them, particularly those of the servile condition, whose lives were esteemed of little value, and whose sufferings were viewed by the ancients with too careless an indifference.