ORDER, in Architecture, is a system of the several members, ornaments, and proportions of columns and pilasters; or a regular arrangement of the projecting parts of a building, especially the column, so as to form one beautiful whole. See Architecture. Order is also used to signify a division or class of any thing. Thus the tribe of animals called birds is subdivided into orders.

Order, in Rhetoric, is the placing of each word and member of a sentence in such a manner as will most contribute to the force, beauty, or evidence of the whole; according to the genius and custom of different languages. With regard to order, we may observe in general, that, in English, the nearer we keep to the natural or grammatical order, so much the better; but in Latin we are to follow the use of the best writers, a joint regard being always had to the judgment of the ear, and the perspicuity of the sense, in both languages.

Order is also used to signify a class or division of the members of a state, with regard to assemblies, precedence, levees, and other circumstances.

Orders, by way of eminence, or Holij Orders, denote a character peculiar to ecclesiastics, by which they are set apart for the holy ministry.

In no reformed church are there more than three orders, namely, bishops, priests, and deacons. In the Roman Catholic church there are seven, exclusive of the episcopate, all of which the council of Trent enjoins to be received and believed, on pain of anathema. They are distinguished into petty, or secular orders; and major, or sacred orders.

Orders, the petty, or minor, are four; those of doorkeeper, exorcist, reader, and acolyte. Persons in petty orders may marry without any dispensation. In effect, the petty orders are loohted on as little other than formalities, and as degrees necessary to arrive at the higher orders. The Greeks disavow these petty orders, and pass immediately to the subdeaconate; and the reformed churches to the deaconate. Their rise Fleury dates in the time of the Emperor Justinian. There is no call nor benefice required for the four petty orders; and even a bastard may enjoy them without any dispensation, nor does a second marriage disqualify.

Orders, sacred, or major, are, as has already been observed, three, viz. those of deacon, priest, and bishop. The council of Trent, reviving the ancient discipline, forbids any person being admitted to the major orders, unless he be in peaceable possession of a benefice sufficient for a decent subsistence, and allows no ordinations on patrimonies or pensions, except where the bishop judges it for the service of the church. A person is said to be promoted to orders per saltum, when he has not before passed the inferior orders. The council of Constantinople forbids any bishop being ordained without passing all the degrees; yet ecclesiastical history furnishes us with instances of bishops consecrated without having passed the order of priesthood; and Panormus still thinks that such an ordination is valid.

Military Orders are companies of knights, instituted by kings and princes, either for defence of the faith, or to confer marks of honour and grant distinctions to meritorious subjects.

Religious Orders are congregations or societies of monastics, living under the same superior, in the same man· ner, and wearing the same habit. Religious orders may be reduced to five kinds, namely, monks, canons, knights, mendicants, and regular clerks. Father Mabillon shows, that till the ninth century, almost all the monasteries in Europe followed the rule of St Benedict that the distinction of orders did not commence till after the reunion of several monasteries into one congregation; that St Odo, abbot of Cluny, first began this reunion, bringing several houses under the dependence of Cluny; and that, a little afterwards, in the eleventh century, the Camaldulians arose, then the congregation of Vallombrosa, the Cistercians, Carthusians, Augustines, and at last, in the thirteenth century, the Mendicants. He adds, that Lupus Servatus, abbot of Terrières, in the ninth century, is the first who seems to distinguish the order of St Benedict from the rest, and to speak of it as a particular order.

White Order denoted the order of regular canons of St Augustin.

Black Order denoted the order of Benedictines.

These names were at first given to the two orders in question, from the colour of their habit; but were disused after the institution of several other orders, who adopted the same colours.

Gray Order was the ancient name of the Cistercians; but, since the change of the habit, the name is no longer applicable.

Orders, religious military, are those instituted in defence of the faith, and privileged to say mass; but who are prohibited marriage, and subjected to other restraints.

Of this kind were the knights of Malta, or of St John of Jerusalem, the Knights Templars, the knights of Calatrava, the knights of St Lazarus, the Teutonic kgights, and various others.