“Ordinationes eorum temerariæ, leves, inconstantes”: Rev. Thomas Stapleton’s Excoriation of Anglican “Orders,” 1565

His Holiness Pope Leo XIV shakes hands with a laywoman. Source.

Below, Fr. Thomas Stapleton, one of the great English Counter-Reformation apologists, looses a scathing attack against the Anglican religion’s pretended Orders, and declares that their crime is worse than idolatry.

An engraved portrait of Fr. Stapleton by L. Gaultier, possibly from an original oil painting. Source.

All of this and much more will be included in a forthcoming 350,000-word anthology, A Fortress of the Faith and Other Works of Elizabethan Catholic Apologetics, from Stabat Mater Press.

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Now Protestants refuse this Sacrament [of Holy Orders], deny such grace to be given, and occupy the seats of bishops without laying on of hands of the priesthood. We may therefore say of them as Saint Cyprian said of Novatus. “Novatus,” said he, “cannot be in the Church, who contemning the tradition of the Apostles, succeeding to man, was ordained by himself.”[1] For what else are these pretended bishops? To whom did they succeed in that religion which they teach? By whom were they consecrated? How do these men regard the commandment of Holy Scripture—namely of Saint Paul unto Timothy, whom, though he had before orderly made bishop of Ephesus, yet he bids be careful in his office, and “to lay hands suddenly on no man, lest he be partaker of their sins”[2]—who, being no bishops at all, call to the holy vocation of preaching God’s Word worthy and unworthy, pothecaries, tailors, saddlers, ropers, furriers, cappers,[3] and such others of all crafts and occupations, so fast and so thick that, as a worshipful man once jested with one of the pretended bishops who now usurp that vocation, asking merely as they rode a-hunting together, why his saddle and boots were so simple, being indeed very mean and bare: “Marry,” quoth he, “my Lord”—and bound it with an oath—“you have taken up all our saddlers and shoemakers, promoting them to your ministry, that” (swearing once again) “there are scarce any left in the country who will work for money.” And if in very deed one would view the whole corps of the pretended clergy that now is, might he not, think you, pronounce of them as Tertullian did of the heretics of his time? These are his words: Ordinationes eorum temerariæ, leves, inconstantes. Tunc neophitos collocant. Nunc sæculo obstrictos. Nunc apostatas nostros, ut gloria eos obligent, quia veritate non possunt. Nusquam facilius proficitur quam in castris rebellium, ubi illic esse, promereri est. That is, “Their giving of Orders is rash, light, and inconstant. Sometime they make young scholars in faith, sometime men of the world—and sometime our renegades, winning them by promotion whom by truth they cannot. In an army of rebels a man shall soon be aloft. For to be only amongst them is deserving enough.”[4] Does not Tertullian here hold up for us a glass[5] to behold in it the very state and condition of our time? Does he not give us a pattern of old heretics to try these new by? For all who are in the dissolute congregation of our Protestants are either young scholars, enticed and allured with worldly promotions, or worldly craftsmen leaping from their shops to the pulpit, or else (which are accounted the best and gravest sort) the renegades of the Catholic Church.

These pretended bishops therefore being unlawfully placed, themselves without authority from others, without laying on of hands of the priesthood, as Scripture expressly requires, their doctrine has no authority. Their ministers may return every one to their occupations again, and live like honest craftsmen, where[as] now they are unlawful ministers, worse than Core and Abiron,[6] than Jannes and Mambres,[7] than King Ozias,[8] all terribly plagued by God. For they meddled but with ceremonies about the Law of Moses. But these fellows take upon them the highest office in the Law of Christ—to preach the Word of God, to minister the Sacraments, and to bear the charge of pastors and Doctors. {An admonition to ministers.} But O merciful God, how they incur, miserable men, the dreadful displeasure and just indignation of Almighty God! How they heap unto themselves wrath in the day of vengeance! For will you see, you ignorant and unlearned ministers, deceived by your false pretended bishops, what danger you incur at God’s hand? Truly more than if you were idolaters, more than if you betrayed the books of Holy Scripture itself. Believe not me, if I say so only. Believe Holy Scripture if it tells you so and gives you example so. Harken therefore to learned Saint Augustine who out of Holy Scripture shall instruct you. These are his words: Non afferamus stateras dolosas ubi appendamus quod volumus, et quomodo volumus pro arbitrio nostro dicentes, hoc grave, hoc leve est. Sed afferamus divinam stateram de Scripturis Sanctis tanquam de thesauris Dominicis et in illa quid sit gravius appendamus, sed a Domino appensa recognoscamus. Tempore illo quo Dominus priora delicta recentibus pœnarum exemplis cavenda monstravit, et idolum fabricatum atque adoratum est, et propheticus liber ira regis contemptoris incensus, et schisma tentatum, et idololatriæ gladio punita est, exustio libri bellica cæde et peregrina captivitate, schisma hiatu terræ, sepultis, authoribus vivit, et cælesti igne consumptis, quis jam dubitaverit hoc esse sceleratius commissum, quod est gravius vindicatum?—“Let us not bring false weights to weigh what we please and how we please, saying. ‘That is heavy, this is light,’ but let us bring God’s weight out of the Holy Scripture, as though it were out of God’s treasure, and by it let us try which is the heavier, or rather, let us not try, but let us view and consider the matter already tried. At what time God would teach His people to beware of their former trespasses by new and fresh punishments, when an idol” (the golden calf) “being made and worshipped,[9] when the Prophet Jeremias’ book by the hasty king being burned,[10] when the schism of Core and his fellows being attempted,[11] the idolatry committed was punished with the sword,[12] the burning of the book was revenged with wasting war and foreign capture,[13] but the schism committed was plagued with the sudden gaping of the earth, swallowing up the authors of the schism alive, being after consumed with fire from heaven,[14] is it now to be doubted but that that was most wickedly committed which was most grievously punished?” Hitherto Saint Augustine, teaching the Donatists that schism is a fault more grievous in the sight of God than idolatry, yea or the burning of God’s Book.[15]

Learn here, you ministers who from your shops get yourselves to pulpits and maintain a schism which you know not, preach heresies which you understand not, and divide yourselves against the Church which you esteem not—learn, I say, of Holy Scripture, that you sin herein more grievously and are to be punished by God more sharply than if you committed idolatry in your own persons, where the harm would extend but to yourselves only, or betrayed God’s books in persecution, which yet might proceed of fear and infirmity, such as in this case you cannot pretend. Learn that at the planting of our Christian faith wherein you were baptized, bishops of the realm were ordained by laying on of hands required in Holy Scripture, by which authority they made other priests and inferior minsters to serve church underneath them. Your pretended bishops have no such ordination, no such laying on of hands of other bishops, no authority to make true priests and minsters, and therefore neither are you true ministers, nor they any bishops at all.

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[1] Letter [69] to Magnus, [ch. 3, § 2 (PL, vol. 3, col. 1140B; CSEL, vol. 3, pt. 2, p. 752; ACW, vol. 47, p. 34; CPL no. 50.69). Cf. esp. ch. 5, § 1: “How, too, can a man be considered as its shepherd, if the true shepherd is still there presiding in the Church of God, having been duly appointed in succession to another, whereas he is the successor to no one but has his beginning with himself?” (ACW, p. 53; PL, cols. 1141C-1142A; CSEL, p. 753).]

[2] I Tim. [5.22].

[3] [Pothecaries are apothecaries, ropers, ropemakers, furriers fur-dealers, and cappers capmakers.]

[4] Præscriptionibus [contra hæreticos, ch. 41 (PL, vol. 2, cols. 56B-57A; ANF, vol. 3, p. 263)].

[5] [I.e., a looking-glass, a mirror.]

[6] [Cf. Num. 16.]

[7] [Cf. Ex. 7.11 et sqq.; II Tim. 3.8. Their sufferings are mentioned in Ex. 9.11.]

[8] [Cf. IV Kgs. 15.1–5; II Par. 26.16–21.]

[9] Cf. Ex. 32[.1–6].

[10] Cf. Jer. 36[.20–32].

[11] Cf. Num. 16[.1–11].

[12] [Cf. Ex. 32.25–29.]

[13] [Cf. Jer., chs. 37–52.]

[14] [Cf. Num. 16.31–35.]

[15] De Baptismo contra Donatistas, bk. 2, ch. 6, [§ 9 (PL, vol. 43, col. 132; CSEL, vol. 51, p. 184; WSA, vol. I/21, pp. 428 f.)].

The Church is Visible: The 1582 Rheims New Testament's Stirring Annotation on Acts 11.24

The Composition of Body in Receiving Communion: A Seventeenth-Century Jesuit's Instructions for Reception of the Most Holy Sacrament

The following was extracted from a Jesuit devotional treatise and edited by Boone Larson. The complete book will be reprinted by Recusant Press at a future date. 

1. Let the hands be held high before the breast, not lifted so high that they may hinder the priest. 
2. Let the head be conveniently lifted up, and inclined unto neither side, that without difficulty the mouth may be reached. 
3. Let the eyes be shut or bent downward: for it is unseemly at that time either to look upon the priest, or to turn the eyes otherwhere. 
4. Let the mouth be altogether quiet, without any reading or moving of lips, reasonable open, and not gaping. 
5. Let the tongue touch the side of the lip (not too much put forth), that it may receive the Host, and bring it into the mouth, and that being reverently held so long that it may be moistened, it may be let down into the body. For it is not to be chewed with the teeth, nor to be brought to the roof of the mouth, but to be swallowed (if it may be) before the ablution. 
6. Let the whole body be erected and quiet without any motion, sighings, blowings [of breath], groanings, knocking of the breast, exclamations, vocal prayers, and other like things, which oftentimes bring danger, either of the fall of the Host, or of the touching of the teeth, or lips, and in the time of receiving are to be omitted. 
7. After the receiving of the holy Host, let the head not indecently be cast down, but remain erected, with the hands joined before the breast, until the ablution, which everyone ought to take. 
8. Finally, for the space of a quarter of an hour after receiving, let spitting be avoided: which if it cannot be, at the least it is decent to spit where it [the spittle] may not be trodden on.

Reposted from Substack on the Feast Day of Saint Gilbert of Sempringham, 4 February 2026.

"Does any Faith Suffice?" by Leonardus Lessius, S.J., NOW AVAILABLE.

A SHINING LIGHT of the Society of Jesus returns to print. Recusant Press's latest publication, Does any Faith Suffice?, written by Leonardus Lessius, Servant of God, Doctor of Philosophy and Sacred Theology, and esteemed member of the Society of Jesus, is now available via Amazon in paperback and digital formats. This affordable new edition, carefully typeset and decorated with period-accurate drop-capitals and print decorations by Mr. Daniel Crooks, translated by the Rev. Dr. William Wright (also of the Society of Jesus), and edited by Boone Larson (editor of our previous publication, The Folly of Heresy), contains an editor's introduction, explanatory footnotes, textual-critical endnotes, and three indices, including a very useful topical index. The original edition's theological approbation has also been included.

     We at Recusant Press hope that the volume will be a useful tool for study and even teaching in this, our confused and unfortunate age.

Boone Larson.

Feast of St. Sylvester I, Pope, 31 December 2025.

Soon-to-be-Released Title from Recusant Press.

A SHORT WORK by the notable Jesuit scholar and Servant of God Leonardus Lessius is in the works and will be released by Recusant Press soon. Father Lessius's subject, the indefensibility of religious indifferentism (and, by consequence, its total inappropriateness for Roman Catholics), is dealt with in about thirty-five pages, with the volume totaling around sixty pages.

    The volume—which will be titled Does Any Faith Suffice?—will also include a frontispiece, bearing an engraved portrait of the author.

    We hope the essay will revive an awareness of the dangers of indifferentism and a renewed appreciation for Pope Blessed Pius IX's condemnation thereof:

CONDEMNED: "Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true."

CONDEMNED: "Man may, in the observance of any religion whatever, find the way of eternal salvation, and arrive at eternal salvation."

CONDEMNED: "Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ."

CONDEMNED: "Protestantism is nothing more than another form of the same true Christian religion, in which form it is given to please God equally as in the Catholic Church."

(Syllabus errorum, 8 December 1864, § 3, nos. 15–18.)

Boone Larson.

Ember Wednesday in Advent, 3 December 2025.

Work Continues on the "Fortress" Anthology.

WORK CONTINUES on our upcoming anthology, A Fortress of the Faith. Apart from the editorial preface, foreword, and parts of the longest Appendix, the volume's content is present and being reviewed. A huge amount of time has gone into background research, footnotes, double-checking citations, etc. It is exhausting work. An estimated 300,000 words will, we hope, fit into one fat volume. We shall see whether this will be possible.

Boone Larson.

Feast of Saint Frances Xavier Cabrini, 13 November 2025.

"The Folly of Heresy" Reviewed by Historian Stephanie A. Mann.

HISTORIAN Stephanie A. Mann has kindly reviewed Recusant Press's first publication, The Folly of Heresy by Blessed Germain Gardiner. See her review at her website, Supremacy and Survival: The English Reformation.* Mann has stated the following of the edition: 

…[T]he introduction and footnotes (often providing extended quotations from the Fathers, etc.) certainly make the work accessible. Blessed Germain Gardiner's concern for John Frith and his great efforts to reconcile him with the Eucharistic teaching of the Catholic Church certainly shine through. It's an important document and the editor is to be commended for his diligence and excellent work.

I as the volume's editor extend my thanks to Miss Mann for taking the time to read and comment on the book.

Boone Larson.

Feast of Saint Martin of Tours, 11 November 2025.

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* The full Internet link: supremacyandsurvival.blogspot.com/2025/10/book-review-blessed-germain-gardiner-on.html.