Regeneration

§ 70.  Definition

      Regeneration in the sight of God, that is, in its essential aspect, is the union of conversion and justification in an individual.  It implies a change of relation towards God in justification, and also a change of will and affections in reference to the demands of the Divine law, or what Scripture calls a new heart; the person in whom these are combined is a regenerate person.  Negatively it is the crucifixion of the flesh with its affections and lusts; positively it is the new life in Christ.  It follows that if the word is to be taken in its full Scriptural sense, it means more than a mere ecclesiastical change of position; and more, too, than a mere mystical change, or one wrought, indeed, by the Spirit of God, but not necessarily involving moral renovation.

      The word παλιγγενεσία, or regeneration, occurs but twice in the New Testament: once in connection with spiritual renewal (Tit. 3:5), and once to denote the new state of things which the advent of Christ is to introduce (Matt. 19:28).  These passages do not throw much light on the meaning of the word; but the equivalent terms which are employed in Scripture do.  The most usual synonym is the metaphorical expression – new birth.  To Nicodemus it was declared that no one, unless born again, can enter the kingdom of God, or be in a state of salvation; and as to the Author of this change – it is directly referred to the Holy Spirit, being distinguished thereby from other changes which are within the powers of human nature.  The distinction between “born of the flesh” and “born of the Spirit” is one not of degree, but of kind: the natural man, however, adorned with moral graces, is flesh; the spiritual man is from above (άνωθεν) (John 2:3–6).  As an illustration of what is meant by the new birth, we may compare 2 Cor. 5:17, “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature; old things are passed away, all things,” affections, aims, hopes, as well as ecclesiastical standing, “have become new.”  The change implies as great a miracle as if it were a bodily resurrection, “You hath He quickened who were dead in trespasses and sins,” and quickened to a new life (Ephes. 2:1, Rom. 6:11).  “He that is born of God,” we are told, “doth not commit sin; he cannot sin” (willfully and habitually) “because he is born of God” (1 John 3:9); and again, “Whosoever is born of God sinneth not” (ibid., 5:18).  By S. Peter the Word of God is declared to be the, or an, instrument of regeneration (1 Pet. 1:23); and since the Word can only operate as a moral instrument, or one which appeals to the reason and conscience, its effect, when it is effectual, is of a moral nature, viz., repentance and faith; which, therefore, must form constituent elements of regeneration.  In short, an habitual sinful state, whether it exhibits itself openly or consists in the secret alienation of the heart from God, is inconsistent with the full Scriptural import of the term.

      Further, Christians are described as the sons of God, children of God; obviously because of their being born from above; and if the new birth involves a moral change, not less so, it would seem, does this filial relation.  It is replied, however, that this does not necessarily follow, because the term is sometimes predicated of those whom we cannot suppose to be all led by the Spirit of God.  Thus, all men are said to be by creation the “offspring of God” (Acts 17:28), and the Jewish people collectively received the title of adoption, “Israel is my son, my firstborn” (Exod. 4:22).  But the meaning of Scriptural terms varies with the dispensation to which they belong; as may be seen in the instances of election, sanctification, temple, priesthood, sacrifice, etc., which bear one sense in the Jewish, and another, though an analogous one, in the Christian, dispensation.  In general, the term child signifies in Scripture either similarity of some kind to a person or thing, or a relation of special privilege.  Thus, men are the offspring of God, because they alone of the animal creation are endowed with reason and a moral sense, which of themselves are sufficient to lead them to see the folly and sin of idolatry.  The children of Belial, or of the devil, are those who resemble Satan in disposition; the children of light, or of darkness, are those whose lives are holy or sinful respectively.  Zacchaeus was a Jew by birth; but when, on his conversion, he was described as “a son of Abraham,” it was because he had become a follower of the patriarch in faith and newness of life.  Under the typical dispensation, the Jewish nation was brought into covenant with God, and enjoyed remarkable privileges; which entitled it to the designation “son of God,” as contrasted with the heathens around it.  But the term was national rather than individual, and partook of the inferiority of the preparatory economy.  Like the dispensation itself, it was typical of good things to come; a shadow of them, but not the very substance.  So far, indeed, as it extended, it expressed a special relation to Jehovah, and the possession of real spiritual advantages; to Israel belonged “the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises” (Rom. 9:4).  But it did not imply individual regeneration.  Transferred to the Gospel dispensation it at once assumed a deeper meaning.  The gift of the Holy Spirit, the fruit of Christ’s atonement, as the principle and basis of a religious communion, was a new revelation (John 7:39); and informed the typical language of the old covenant with substance and life.  A child, or a son, of God is now one who is led by the Spirit of God, one who by the Spirit cries; “Abba, Father”; “if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.”  Christ came, S. Paul says, “to redeem them that were under the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons,” in a different and higher sense than was vouchsafed to the Jew (Gal. 4:6).  To sum up: It is impossible, under the Christian dispensation, that any one can be a child of God and a child of the devil at the same time.

      From this some conclusions seem to follow.  Regeneration, it is plain, does not consist merely in remission of sin, though it necessarily involves it so far as remission of sin is equivalent to justification.  It implies also conversion, or a new heart, or by whatever name we choose to call the inward change denoted by the term, new birth.  It is only in the order of ideas that these elements can be separated, and, in fact, they always go together.  Whomsoever Christ justifies them He also renews.  In the case of adults, the normal one of, Scripture, this is evident, for no one was admitted to baptism except on the presumption of repentance and faith.  That of infants presents greater difficulty.  The validity of infant baptism, as a practice of the Church, being allowed, the only sin which can be therein remitted is original sin; which, accordingly, is supposed to be the effect of the Sacrament in this case.  What is there in infants which can correspond to the qualifications required in adults for baptism?  Nothing ; as is fully admitted by strenuous advocates of infant regeneration.  It is obvious that infants cannot fulfill these conditions precedent; but neither is it asserted that baptism infuses into them holy dispositions; indeed, this is denied.  Morally, therefore, they remain in a neutral condition, to be determined in one way or the other if they survive.  Surely, their regeneration, if the term may be applied to them, is not what Scripture understands by it.

      Again, regeneration is more than a change of state, with which change, as is evident, no spiritual renovation is necessarily connected.  We must distinguish between a change of relation towards God, and a change of relation towards man or the visible Church.  The latter takes place when, by the sacrament of baptism, a person, whether adult or infant, becomes a recognized member of a Christian society, and is severed from the mass of heathenism.  It is a change, and an important one, of relative condition; but is it of necessity one towards God?  If it were so, then every secret unbeliever who should receive baptism would thereby become a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, that is, receive the gift of regeneration.  In the case of a qualified candidate justification, received through faith and attested by the witness of the Spirit, has already changed his relation towards God; and God does not need the Sacrament to assure Him of His own act.  It is man who needs it, as a seal of the gift previously bestowed, and as the door of entrance to those other means of grace which Christ has committed to the administration of the visible Church.  In the sight of God a mere ecclesiastical change of position, apart from the inward change of which the Holy Spirit is the Author, is of no value to justify, and, therefore, is not regeneration, which is always of salutary effect: so far is the former from being in itself salutary, it may be “a savour of death unto death,” on the principle that privileges despised or neglected turn to condemnation.

      Nor, again, does regeneration consist in a mystical grace of the Spirit, distinct from the qualifications required in adults for baptism, and from the effects which follow if the baptized person avails himself of his privileges – a mystical effect specially attached to baptism.  It is variously described as “the principle of a new life,” “a special gift of the Spirit,” “an initiatory gift or earnest of the Spirit,” “the covenanted consignation of the Holy Ghost,” “the infused virtue of the Holy Ghost,” “a potential faculty of renovation,” and the like.  Ordinarily it is conveyed only through one channel – baptism.  But (and this is the point to be noticed) it does not imply, or necessarily lead to, habits of actual goodness.  It occupies an intermediate position between the moral qualifications of repentance and faith and the moral effects to which the gift is intended to lead.  That a grace of the Holy Spirit should be neutral in moral tendency seems like a contradiction in terms, and certainly finds no warrant in Scripture.  Under the new dispensation the gifts of the Spirit are manifold (1 Cor. 12), but they are all intended for the edification of the Church, and their beneficial exercise rests on the presumption that their possessor is under the ordinary regenerating influence of the Holy Ghost.  To take one of the definitions above mentioned, that this gift is “an earnest of the Spirit,” it is difficult to reconcile the notion of this earnest’s being a mere mystical grace with such passages as these: “We ourselves which have the firstfruits” (or earnest) “of the Spirit groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23); “we that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened, not for that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life.  Now He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit” (2 Cor. 5:4, 5); “In whom after ye believed ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance, until the redemption of the purchased possession” (Ephes. 1:13, 14); “Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed unto the day of redemption” (ibid., 4:30).  Again, – repentance, faith, and actual holiness, the preceding qualifications for, and subsequent effects of, the gift – in other words, “circumcision of the heart” – are the very fruits of the Holy Spirit, the very fruits which, if He be “a principle of life” – of spiritual life, of course – He produces; yet we are told that regenerating grace, which is also “a principle of life,” is entirely distinct from them.  This grace is an “initiatory gift,” yet it has nothing in common with what follows – “an infused virtue,” which yet is not in itself virtue.  It is said to be exclusively conveyed in and by baptism, yet regeneration is in Scripture as often and as explicitly connected with the Word as an instrument as with baptism.  “Of His own will begat He us with the word of truth” (Jas. 1:18); “born again not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God” (1 Pet. 1:23); “ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus” (Gal. 3:26); but faith and the Word are correlative terms.  It is attempted to evade the plain sense of these passages, that the Word (not excluding baptism in some sense) is an instrument of regeneration, by making them mean that “the Word of God, joined with faith in that word, confers a saving efficacy on the waters of baptism, sanctifying them to this mystical washing away of sin and the mystical renewal of the human soul.”  What a “mystical,” apart from an actual, renewal of the soul may be, it is not easy to understand.  If the Word be a proper instrument of regeneration, regeneration must be more than a mere mystical grace, because the Word operates by appealing to the conscience and affections, and produces a moral change, if any.  Such are the inconsistencies which learned men fall into when they attempt to reconcile the statements of Scripture with the scholastic theories of the middle ages.  The fact is, that this notion of a special grace of baptism, neutral in character, a dormant principle determined neither to good nor to evil, is an adaptation to Protestant theology of the Romish doctrine of the “impressed character.”  Three of the sacraments of Romanism impress a character on the soul – baptism, confirmation, and orders; and this character is never obliterated, whence the ecclesiastical rule that baptism cannot be twice administered.  In the Romish Catechism the sealing of the Spirit (2 Cor. 1:22) is interpreted of this sacramental character, just as we have seen it identified with the mystical grace of regeneration.  But this character has no necessary connection with personal holiness.  It conveys neither remission of sin nor infused grace; it is not gratia gratum faciens, but gratia gratis data; it is a gift which simply determines a man’s position in the Church.  The fictus in baptism receives it equally with the repentant believer, and a morally vicious priest equally with the most holy.  To say the least, a grace of regeneration which is quite distinct from the antecedent qualifications for the normal case of baptism – viz., repentance and faith – and from the subsequent moral renovation of the true Christian, looks very like this impressed character of the Schoolmen and of the Romish Church.  The theory leads to startling conclusions.  The same writer who describes “the gift of righteousness,” which is the formal cause of justification and the effect of baptism, as “an inward yet not a moral gift, but a supernatural power or divine virtue,” gives the following account of regeneration: “It is, I say, a new birth, or the giving of a new nature.  Now, let it be observed, there is nothing impossible in the thing itself (though we do not believe it so), but nothing impossible in the very notion of a regeneration being accorded even to impenitent sinners.  I do not say regeneration in its fullness, for that includes in it perfect happiness and holiness, to which it tends from the first, yet regeneration in a sufficient sense in its primary qualities.  For the essence of regeneration is the communication of a higher and diviner nature; and sinners may have this gift, though it be a curse to them, and not a blessing.  The devils have a nature thus higher and more divine than man, yet they are not preserved thereby from evil.”  Here it is argued that regeneration in its root or essence may be of a different quality from the same grace in its fullness; that is, that the same root may produce good or evil indifferently.  What determines it one way or the other?  The exercise of free will?  This lands us in Pelagianism.  Scripture speaks of a tree which from its nature bears good fruit, and of another tree which from its nature bears evil fruit, and it was on this ground that Augustine met his opponent.  “Pelagius holds that we have a possibility implanted in us by God which, like a fruitful root, may develop itself in either direction, and at the will of the possessor issue either in the blossoms of virtue or the thorns of vice.  He does not perceive that in making one and the same thing the root both of good and of evil he teaches contrary to evangelical truth.  For the Lord says that a good tree cannot produce evil fruit, nor an evil tree good fruit.  If, then, the two trees, the good and the evil, signify two men, a good and an evil one, what is a good man but a man of good will –that is, a tree of good root – and an evil man but a man of evil will –that is, a tree of evil root?  A regeneration supposed to be the work of the Holy Spirit, but belonging to the same category as the higher nature of devils, speaks for itself.  At any rate, it is not that of the New Testament.”

      Regeneration, again, is not a mere “potential faculty” of renovation, by which expression is to be understood not actual renovation, but only the possibility of attaining thereto: the capacity of becoming holy.  This means that it liberates the will so far as to place it in a state of equilibrium, but not so far as to incline it to goodness (see § 60); and it is by the exercise of free will that the equilibrium is disturbed in one direction or the other.  On this theory the covenant of grace is nothing but the covenant of Adam over again, notwithstanding the proof afforded by the fall that this latter covenant is not sufficient to secure to the Saviour “the travail of His soul,” a Church to share in His glory.  A mere capacity for renovation is quite consistent with any amount of depravity short of the unpardonable sin, whatever that may be; it is but saying, in other words, that the most hardened sinner may be brought to repentance, which no one contests.  It is the “state of salvation” according to the interpretation sometimes put upon these words in the Catechism, notwithstanding the explanation of them given afterwards “who sanctifieth” (actually sanctifies) “me and all the elect people of God.”  Such a conception of regeneration is altogether inadequate.  If repentance and faith – faith as an apprehension under conviction of sin of the special promise of forgiveness – are present as necessary qualifications for the grace of baptism, the equilibrium is already disturbed in a saving direction, and by the direct influence of the Holy Spirit.  Or is it maintained that these preparatory qualifications are the product of nature, and not of prevenient grace?

      It is hardly necessary to add that the work of regeneration is carried on with the cooperation of the human subject.  The faith which procures justification antecedently to baptism is no dormant, or latent, principle, no gift bestowed on an unconscious subject, but an act which involves the stirring of our moral nature to its inmost depths, to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit; it involves a quickening of the conscience to the evil of sin, alarm at the consequences of sin, desire to be delivered from its guilt and power, earnest appropriation of the Gospel promise.  Of this character, too, is the repentance which precedes baptism.  The attempt to confine human cooperation to what follows baptism, in other words, to the sanctification of the Christian, while it is practically ignored in the preparatory qualifications, in order to make regenerating grace the sole act of God, excluding all notion of man’s cooperation, is an arbitrary limitation, devised only in the interests of a theory.  The throes of the new birth, the birth itself, the subsequent Christian life, all go to fill up the complex conception of regeneration.  Baptism comes between the past and the future; the completion of what has preceded, the symbol and pledge to the Church of what is to come; but man’s share in the process of salvation precedes the reception of that sacrament as well as follows it.

      That this conception of regeneration, as a mystical grace which does not in itself imply sanctification, has been framed to meet the case of infants is sufficiently plain.  They cannot comply with the preliminary conditions of baptism, repentance and faith, nor are they capable of moral renovation until a subsequent period; that is, the Word which Scripture declares to be an, if not the, instrument of regeneration of necessity cannot, in their case, discharge its office.  Nothing remains but to suppose that baptism may convey a grace of a potential, dormant character, and to this the term of “regeneration” is applied.  We may, of course, attach any arbitrary meaning we please to this term, but the question now before us is not whether infants may be baptized, or what the benefit is which they receive thereby, but what does Scripture teach respecting regeneration in itself, in the abstract, irrespectively of the proper subjects of baptism?  And a further question is, with what case of baptism it connects the term?  As regards the former point, there appears to be no doubt that it describes regeneration as a state of actual goodness; and as regards the latter, we are met by the same difficulty as occurs in the matter of justification, that Scripture furnishes only the case of adults from which we can draw conclusions.  Now, we must not lower the sense of a Scripture term so as to make it fit in with an exceptional case, respecting which Scripture leaves us very much in the dark; but rather, retaining the full Scriptural sense, examine to what extent, and with what modifications, it may be applied to such a case.  By what instrument, or instruments, regeneration is effected? who are the proper subjects of baptism? are questions to be debated on their own grounds; and the meaning of the term “new birth” in Scripture must also be determined on its own independent grounds.  The conclusion may be, as in the matter of justification, that the term is not strictly applicable to infants.  Happily, their salvation involves no such doubts; and much useless controversy might have been avoided had this term been adhered to.

§ 71.  Unio Mystica

      By the Lutheran theologians it is held that regeneration, in the full sense of the term just described, issues in a mystical union of the regenerate person with the Holy Trinity, with God as regards the substance, with each Person in a manner peculiar to Himself, salvo earum discrimine et ordine.  It is called mystical, as being a great mystery, and spiritual as being effected by the Holy Spirit, and after a spiritual, not a carnal fashion.  It is defined as an act of grace whereby the substance of the Holy Trinity and of the human nature of Christ is brought into most intimate union with the substance of the regenerate man, by means of the word and the sacraments; and its effect is a special presence and operation of God, certifying the believer of his adoption, and cooperating in the work of his sanctification.

      That the presence of God in creation may be regarded as operating variously, according to the subject, has already been observed (§ 14); and that the members of Christ enjoy a special degree thereof is taught in Scripture.  Christ is said to dwell in their hearts by faith (Ephes. 3:17); Christians are temples of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 3:16); the indwelling of the Father and the Son is promised to them (John 14:23); and in the performance of religious duties, especially in that of prayer, they are assisted by the Holy Spirit, as a Person, and as the Paraclete whom Christ promised to take His place, in a peculiar manner (Rom. 8:26).  This may with propriety be called a concursus specialis, a particular form and energy of the general attribute of omnipresence.  And such passages as the above are incompatible with the Socinian tenet, which some Arminian writers seem disposed to adopt, that the Holy Spirit is present in Christians only by the effects which He produces, and the gifts which He confers.  Yet it is hardly safe to speak as the Lutherans do of this union.  That the substance of God is in the Christian united to the substance of man has indeed been maintained by some mystical sects (Schwenkfeldians, etc.), but sober interpreters of Scripture will hesitate to endorse the assertion.  Even with the caution that no coalescence into one substance, or transmutation of one nature into the other, is intended, the language is objectionable.  Moreover: when we apply the term “substance” to God, we speak improperly or analogically; the substance of God must be something very different from what is meant by the logical category that goes under the name.  Of still more doubtful tendency is the notion that the human nature of Christ becomes united to the human nature of the Christian.  Indeed, it is but an inference from the Lutheran doctrine of the Eucharist, and stands or falls therewith.  It dates from a long time antecedent to the Lutheran Reformation.  According to Leo, in and by baptism “the body of the regenerate person becomes the flesh of the crucified One”; so soon did the doctrine of a physical connection with the manhood of Christ by means of the sacraments displace the Scriptural one of union with Christ by His Spirit dwelling in us.  The passages adduced by the Lutheran divines do not bear out their theory.  “We are members,” S. Paul says, “of His body, His flesh, and His bones”; certainly, but in the same sense in which husband and wife are said to be “one flesh”.  “That we might be partakers of the Divine nature” (2 Pet. 1:4); rather of a Divine nature (θείας, not της θείας, φύσεως), that is, of the regenerating grace of the Holy Spirit with the holy dispositions which it produces.  Not more to the point are the passages above cited.  We are the temple of God, we have put on Christ (Gal. 3:27), we have Christ in our hearts by faith, because His Spirit dwells in us.  The union with Christ, and through Christ with God, of which Scripture speaks, is of an ethical, not a metaphysical character; a union effected by faith, and moral in its nature; not of essences, whether Divine or human.  Physical conceptions on the subject are an intrusion of the natural creation into the higher region of supernatural grace.  “Baptizing them into the name of the Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,” into that fellowship which is a fellowship with the Holy Trinity (Matt. 28:19): “the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all” (2 Cor. 13:14): this is the Christian’s mystical union with God.  No other is needed, for no other can exceed this in blessedness and dignity; and Scripture, properly understood, speaks of no other.

§ 72.  Sanctification

      In regeneration, comprising conversion and justification, a child of Adam is born into a new state; and this change, just as baptism cannot be repeated, takes place once for all, and no more admits of repetition than its counterpart in the natural world.  But as natural birth, unless the process is prematurely arrested, is followed by successive stages of growth and development, bodily and mental, so the initial act of regeneration passes into a continuous act of dying to sin and rising again to righteousness, or sanctification.  And with this accords the symbolism of the sacrament of regeneration; signifying not only a death unto sin, as Christ by His death became free from any connection with sin, but also a resurrection to a new life, as Christ’s resurrection implies a perpetual living to God (Rom. 6:10).

      The term sanctification in the Old Testament is applied to whatever was set apart to the service of God, including even inanimate things (Exod. 19:23); and is used in a more general sense than under the Christian dispensation.  That is, justification and sanctification are not so clearly distinguished as afterwards.  Israel was to be a holy people, cleansed symbolically from guilt by the sacrifices and purifications of the law, and separated from the heathen world by circumcision in the flesh; but remission of sin and renovation of life indifferently receive the name of sanctification.  This is not to be wondered at, considering that under the law neither was a perfect atonement accomplished, nor the special gift of the Holy Ghost, the fruit of Christ’s ascension, vouchsafed.  In this extended sense the term is sometimes found in the New Testament, an instance among many of transferred modes of expression: thus, in such passages as Acts 26:18, “among them that are sanctified by faith that is in me,” and Heb. 2:11, “He that sanctifieth and they who are sanctified are all of one,” sanctification seems used for the whole complex term redemption. [Renovatio dicitur alias sanctificatio, quae itidem vel late accipitur, ut ambitu suo vocationem, illuminationem, conversionem, regenerationem, justificationem, et renovationem complectatur; vel stricte sumitur, prout cum renovatione stricte sic dicta coincidit.  Hollaz, P. iii., § 1, c. 10.]  Elsewhere, however, as in 1 Cor. 1:30, Rom. 8:30, the difference between it and justification is expressed.  They differ as the foundation (justification) differs from the superstructure (sanctification), and as a process complete in itself from one admitting of degrees and progressive.  Justification must, indeed, be continuous, but it can be neither more nor less; sanctification is always advancing towards perfection.  The subject of sanctification is properly neither the “new man,” that is, the Divine seed implanted in regeneration, nor the “old man,” or the corrupt nature derived from Adam.  Not the “new man,” for this is the ultimate result to which the process tends, and what it will eventually issue in, unless arrested, but it is a result which is never in this life actually attained: not the “old man,” for this cannot, and is not intended to, be sanctified, but rather crucified, with Christ and put to death.  The moral improvement which discipline and education can, and often do produce in the natural man differs specially from the sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit; a truth which is sometimes lost sight of in modern speculations on this subject.  The central personality, the ego, occupying a middle position between nature and grace, and capable of connection with either, is the true seat of the sanctifying influences of the Spirit, as it is of the struggle between the flesh and the Spirit of which the Christian is conscious, and which he deplores.  It is this central personality which S. Paul describes in Rom. 7 as emancipated indeed from the undisputed dominion of sin, but still bearing the traces of its former servitude, and liable to oscillation between the forces which contend for the mastery, until the cure is complete.  In a future state perfect moral freedom will be established, as the elect angels act freely yet with a moral necessity of choosing the good.  Commencing from this central ego, sanctification radiates in all directions, drawing within its influence successively the spirit, the soul (or rather the inner man viewed in different relations, § 29), and finally the body with its members.  The “redemption of the body” is its final triumph; whence S. Paul in Rom. 8:30 passes over the link between justification and final glorification, viz., the resurrection of the body (“whom He justified them He also glorified”), because sanctification is this glory begun here, and manifested hereafter.  Or, as he expresses it in verse 11, “If the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that raised up Christ shall also quicken your mortal bodies because of His Spirit (δια το πνευμα) that dwelleth in you.”  This is sanctification as it belongs to all Christians.  But inasmuch as each has an office to fulfill in the building up of the spiritual temple, and the extraordinary gifts of the Spirit are no longer vouchsafed, natural endowments, sanctified Divine grace, become the instruments of this ministry in its various aspects; and as, in a secondary sense, χαρίσματα, they contribute to the welfare of the body of Christ, until, collectively, Christians “come unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ” (Ephes. 4:13).

      That in this life sanctification in Scripture is never supposed to be complete has been subject of remark in a preceding section (§ 64); and experience proves that, whether the idea may be entertained or not, such grace is not ordinarily given.  Is it ever, in fact, bestowed?  We must distinguish between the removal of impediments to the attainment of such a state, and the mere fact of progression.  As a progressive process sanctification knows no limit; the vision of God, which the holy angels enjoy and which will be vouchsafed to the Church made perfect, can to finite creatures only be imparted by degrees, one stage after another; and the full enjoyment of it can only be reached in an eternity of existence, that is, it never can be fully reached.  In this sense, sanctification, at whatever stage, is capable of increase.  But if certain hindrances belong to a certain state of being, by which the progress is checked or rendered irregular, we may suppose these to be at some point or other removed, and the soul so far set free to pursue its upward course.  Now S. Paul does unquestionably connect the conflict of the flesh with the spirit with our present bodily organization.  The law which warred against “the law of his mind” was in his “members”; he prayed to be delivered from “the body of this death,” or “this body of death,” the body which by reason of sin is subject to death; “the body is dead” (liable to death) “because of sin” (Rom. 7:23, 24; 8”10).  The term “flesh,” though implying more than mere carnal impulses, could hardly have been arbitrarily chosen by him to denote the sinful principle.  What, then, is more likely than that death, which severs the bond between soul and body, severs also the connection between the soul and sin, and so far completes the Christian’s sanctification?  It is true the Apostle would not be “unclothed, but clothed upon”; he would prefer that, apart from the mortal stroke of the last enemy, “mortality should be swallowed up of life”; but failing this privilege, still death, it seems, would be to him deliverance from the burden of a corrupt nature, and however imperfect in other respects the intermediate state might be, it would be undisturbed by the conflict between nature and grace.  So much we may gather from his expressed anticipations, coupled with other hints of Scripture.  To the Christian, then, death, though the penalty of sin, is in reality a deliverance and a blessing.  The disembodied soul, (if indeed ever quite disembodied, § 107) longs for reunion with the body which has been sown in corruption, in order to resume its activity in the service of God (καρπος έργου, Phil. 1:22); but meanwhile its sanctification is so far complete that the flesh no longer lusts against the spirit (Gal. 5:17).  Möhler, arguing in favour of a purgatory, asks how Protestants can suppose that sin is finally expelled by a physical catastrophe [Symbolik, § 23.]; but exposes himself to the reply that a purgatorial fire is an equally mechanical conception.  On either side a difficulty exists.

      Although human cooperation is improperly excluded from the operations of Divine grace previously to the alleged mystical grace of baptism, it may be admitted that it is more conspicuous in the subsequent stage of sanctification.  We may inquire here to what extent the relapses of the regenerate man interfere with his growth in grace.  Involuntary sins, springing from the remaining infirmity of nature, are at once forgiven through the abiding habit of faith; those of a graver character are made, as in Peter’s case, the means of improving some Christian virtue which needed to be improved.  Yet both the one and the other call for confession and prayer.  Thus, sanctification can never dispense with the primary elements of religion; as it began, so it lives, in the exercises of repentance and faith.  Whether in the case of the regenerate such relapses may be final is a question considered in another place (§ 74).

      How far the law is binding on Christians is a point much debated in ancient and modern times.  A favourite topic with S. Paul is their freedom not from the law under every aspect, but from bondage to the law; and not merely the ceremonial, but, as appears from the instance in Rom. 7, the moral.  “I through the law am dead to the law”; “Ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ”; “Stand fast in the liberty wherewith Christ bath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage”; – such is the tenor of his teaching.  It has been interpreted to mean that in no sense have Christians to do with the law, and grave injury has resulted therefrom; either the law is supposed no longer to be useful in convincing of sin, this office being transferred to the Gospel; or not to be necessary as a rule of life, the Christian being a law to himself.  The ancient Manichaeans proceeded still further, and rejected the law as proceeding from an inferior and evil principle.

      To be under bondage to the law is not the same thing as to acknowledge its authority.  When S. Paul describes Christians as emancipated from legal bondage, he means that through faith in Christ they are free from the law as a covenant of works, that its condemning sentence does not apply to them.  This was exhausted in the person of their substitute and surety, so that in the matter of justification works have no place except as evidences of faith.  The bondage of expecting salvation on the ground of merit has been exchanged for the liberty of the children of God, whose faith is counted unto them for righteousness.  Yet even as regards Christians the law has its offices to discharge.  When, as in the Galatian Church, reliance on human merit (our innate tendency) threatens to supersede the simplicity of the Gospel, the law resumes its function, and by conviction of sin leads to a fresh appropriation of the finished salvation of Christ (usus elenchticus).  Or when the standard of Christian practice is, from various causes, in danger of being lowered, the law, by holding up the ideal, serves to check the process of decay.  It is true the Christian is taught of God; and on the whole is led by the Holy Spirit; but he is only sanctified in part, and dare not exclusively trust the light within.  Experience proves that conscience, however sensitive, and the best intentions, are no safeguard against obliquities of mental vision, and even grave failures in Christian duty.  Sometimes the code of morality is relaxed, sometimes religion assumes a superstitious or fanatical character; the latter being the common form of degradation in countries where the Bible is but little known and circulated.  The danger can only be averted by such an exhibition of the Divine law, and especially of its embodiment in our great Exemplar, as shall from time to time recall the attention of the Church to the genuine fruits of the Spirit, as distinguished from spurious admixtures (usus normativus). [By theologians three uses are ascribed to the law – (1) to restrain the outbreaks of crime, (2) to maintain conviction of sin, (3) to be a rule of life.  Hollaz, P. iii., § 2, c. 1, 239.  Form. Concord., P. ii., c. 5.  But the first belongs to civil polity, not to the Church.  The two latter only are of dogmatical import.]

§ 73.  Good Works

      Good works, under that term being comprised not only overt acts, but the affections of the renewed heart, are the natural product of the sanctifying principle implanted in the Christian; just as the living tree brings forth fruit, or the bodily organs perform their functions by virtue of the mysterious principle called life.  They are inseparable from, but not identical with, what Scripture terms the new creature in Christ.

      That good works, in this extended sense, are not an accident of a state of salvation, but a necessary concomitant thereof, is the common doctrine of Romanists and Protestants.  “Good works do spring out necessarily of a true and lively faith, insomuch that by them a lively faith may be as evidently known as a tree discerned by its fruits” (Art. xii.).  Notwithstanding, however, the repeated declarations of the Protestant Confessions on this point, no charge is more persistently urged by Romanists against their opponents than that of dispensing in their teaching with the necessity of good works.  Not uncommonly the method is adopted of selecting passages from the private writings of the Reformers, especially Luther, which possess no symbolical authority; and drawing inferences therefrom inconsistent with the plain statements of the public confessions. [Möhler, Symbolik, §§ 22–24.]  Luther furnishes abundant material for this mode of controversy.  Though to a candid mind, observing the context, his meaning is clear enough, his mode of expression is, no doubt, sometimes unguarded, and liable to misrepresentation.  But what has this to do with the authentic symbols of the Protestant churches?  It is disingenuous, to say the least, of Bellarmine, after admitting that the Augsburg Confession and other public documents of the Reformation insist upon the necessity of good works, to cite Luther against them: “Whatever may be the case with their professions, when their principles and many sayings of Luther are examined, they seem to hold that a man may be saved, even if he does no works nor keeps God’s commandments.”*

            [*De Justif., L. iv., c. 1.  How far the charge is well founded may be judged from the following “professions” out of many: Bona opera tam non rejicimus ut prorsus negemus quenquam plene posse salvum fieri nisi huc per S. Christi evaserit ut nihil jam honorum operum in eo desideretur.  Conf. Tetrapol. cv.  Ad salutem omnino necessaria esse (bona opera) agnoscimus, quamvis non ut causas justificationis aut salutis meritorias.  Decl. Thor. iv. 9.  Quamvis doceamus cum Apostolo hominem gratis justificari per fidem in Christum, et non per ulla opera bona, non ideo tamen vilipendimus opera bona.  Cum sciamus hominem nec conditum nec regenitum esse per fidem ut otietur; sed potius ut indesinentur quae bona et utilia sunt faciat.  Conf. Helv. c. 16.  Docent nostri quod necesse sit bona opera facere, non ut confidamus per ea gratiam mereri, sed propter voluntatem Dei.  Conf. Augs. xx.]

      The word “necessary” has here a twofold application, and advantage is taken of the ambiguity to insinuate the charge just mentioned; it is an instance of the fallacy a dicto secundum quid ad dictum simpliciter.  When the Romanist urges the necessity of good works he means that they constitute a meritorious cause of justification, if not de congruo certainly de condigno; and it is only the same notion under another form when love is made the formal cause of justification.  When the Protestant admits that good works are necessary to salvation, as he does, his meaning is that no one is ultimately saved who has not proved that his faith is a saving one by the fruits which it has produced.  The difference relates not to the necessary existence of good works, which on both sides is acknowledged, but to the place which they hold in the economy of grace; which, according to the Romanist, is one of desert; according to the Protestant, of invariable accompaniment.  The Council of Trent anathematizes those who deny that justification “is increased by good works,” and also those who deny that by them a justified person merits increase of grace and eternal life. [Sess. vi., Canons 24 and 32.]  There is a wide distinction between deserving the fulfillment of a gratuitous promise either of increase of grace or of a greater reward in the life to come, and deserving eternal life itself.  As regards the latter, nothing can be allowed to cooperate with the meritorious work of Christ.  Nor is it to the point to urge, that, after all, the whole is of grace, since it is only through the grace of Christ that good works can be performed; the question relates not to the origin of good works, but to their ability to meet the demands of the Divine law, which the Protestant maintains they cannot do.  Yet salvation is not attainable without good works.  In the language of the schools, they are in ordine, the appointed way, to salvation.  They are a condition sine qua non, a very different thing from either the efficient or the meritorious cause.  By the command of God; by the nature of the case, for heaven itself could not be enjoyed without that change of heart of which good works are the fruit; by the continued obligation of the law as a rule of life; by the fact that the Author of the new birth is a Spirit of holiness, good works are indispensable to a state of salvation.  God saves no man in his sins.  The way to eternal life is not only narrow, but of a specific character, and only they who walk in it reach the goal.  But the walking in it is not what gives a meritorious title to the reward.  Thus, in one sense good works are necessary to salvation, and in another not; and the senses should be carefully distinguished.  Cases like that of the thief on the cross, in which, from lack of opportunity it is not possible to give evidence of a spiritual change, stand on their own ground.  Where opportunity is vouchsafed, good works cannot be absent from saving faith.

      Early in the history of the Reformation a controversy arose respecting the use of this expression.  The Formula Concordiae (Lutheran) holds that it is not a safe mode of speaking to say, without explanations, that good works are necessary to salvation, still less to justification.  In this it is followed by our own divine Davenant, whose remarks on the subject are worth quoting: “In controversy with Romanists it is not wise to speak thus, for, however the propositions may be explained and reduced to a good sense, the Romanists, when they are nakedly propounded, always understand that works are necessary, as from their own intrinsic worth deserving of salvation; which is most untrue.  Moreover, the common people, hearing these statements, either with or without explanation, are likely to attach a false meaning to them.” [De Just. Act., c. xxxi.]  “Good works,” he proceeds, “are not necessary to salvation if we understand by them either works perfectly and uninterruptedly good, such as the law requires; or works considered under the notion of meritorious cause.  If the former is the sense intended, no one could ever be justified, for the best works of the holiest men are neither perfect nor uninterrupted; if the latter, it interferes with the doctrine of Scripture that only the merits of Christ are the procuring cause of salvation” (Ibid.).  Again, “But good works are necessary under certain limitations.  Not as if they ever can be so perfect as to take the place of Christ’s merits, or so uniform in tenor as that the Christian may not occasionally falter in his course; but because God has marked out a certain path to the kingdom of heaven – the path of holiness; and by that path alone can the destination be reached.  If one prescribed road leads to a city, and no other, all who wish to arrive there must keep this road; and if any one wanders from it into forbidden paths (as may often happen), he will never succeed in his object unless he retraces his steps to the appointed road.  If the Christian falls into sin he must repent and do the first works, for as long as he continues in a sinful state he is out of the narrow way that leads to life” (Ibid., c. xxxi.).

      None of the passages of Scripture quoted by Bellarmine avail for his purpose.  “If thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments” (Matt. 19:17); – the context proves that it was our Lord’s intention, not to explain how eternal life is to be merited, but, by unfolding the spirituality of the law, to bring to light the latent insincerity of the inquirer; and besides, it is nothing but the fact that no one can enter into life except in the way of the commandments.  “Patience is necessary that after ye have done the will of God ye may receive the promise” (Heb. 10:36); “Work out your own salvation,” etc. (Phil. 2:12); “Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation” (2 Cor. 7:10); “If ye mortify the deeds of the body ye shall live” (Rom. 8:13); “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom; for I was an hungered, and ye gave Me meat,” etc.; – these and similar passages affirm, indeed, that there is a connection between good works and salvation; nay, that in a certain sense, as a condition, sine qua non, they are necessary; but as to the meritorious cause of salvation, which is the point at issue, they convey no information.  The sense in which S. James declares that a man is justified by works has been already explained (§ 65).  Nor is it necessary again to notice the evasion that S. Paul, in excluding works from a meritorious virtue, means works of the ceremonial law, or those done before the infusion of grace – not works the fruit of the Holy Spirit’s operation (Ibid.).

      The topic of good works as necessary belongs rather to justification in its continuance than to the first reception of that gift.  In whatever sense the preparatory steps (awakening, enlightening, etc.) may be called works, or good works, they are not so in the specific sense here intended, but rather such as our article describes as done “before justification” (xiii.), and which it pronounces, perhaps in too sweeping terms, as having “the nature of sin”.  How is a state of justification continued?  According to the Council of Trent, by means of good works.  This is, in effect, the doctrine of merit ex condigno; which means that there is a due proportion between the works and the reward, so that the latter may be claimed as a matter of right.  There is thus introduced a distinction between the beginning of justification and its continuance; the former is a free gift, the latter depends on, or lives in, obedience.  But S. Paul, in describing faith as the instrument of justification, makes no such distinction.  From first to last the Christian, conscious of imperfection, is thrown back on the word of promise, and his justification lives not in obedience, but in a constantly renewed appropriation of the merits of Christ.  If, however, by justification we mean the sense of it, or assurance, it may be admitted that this does live in obedience.  Carelessness in the Christian walk, whether in the way of omission or commission, grieves the Holy Spirit, and renders the witness of that Divine Agent in the heart less energetic.  But does this affect justification itself, or establish the doctrine of merit ex condigno?  A cloud may pass over the sun and obscure its beams, but the sun is still behind it, and in its native glory.

      Are the good works which are the fruits of faith really good, or only sins in disguise?  Strong expressions are found in the writings of Luther, Melanchthon, and other Reformers, to the effect that the best of good works are only venial sins, or even worse.  The meaning, of course, is plain, and quite Scriptural.  The best service which Christians can render is neither so free from admixture of human infirmity nor so uniform as to claim, on the footing of merit, a reward either here or hereafter.  Weighed in the balances of the Divine law it is found wanting, and defect of this kind springs from sin, and is of the nature of sin.  The statements referred to amount merely to this – that in itself, and without reference to the fact that it is rendered by a person accepted in Christ, the Christian’s obedience condemns him, which is nothing but the fact.  Nor is it more than what the prophet confesses, “We are all as an unclean thing, and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Isa. 64:6); or what S. John affirms, “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8).  The Romanist admits that venial sin cleaves, or may cleave, to our best performances: but since with him venial sin is, in fact, no sin, he can argue that the law may be perfectly fulfilled, and that justification, at least in its continuance, lives meritoriously in obedience.  Those who hold that venial sin, however venial, is sin, are precluded from this conclusion.  Nevertheless, it may be well to avoid statements which seem paradoxical, and may give rise to misapprehension.  However unable Christian obedience may be to claim, on the footing of strict justice, a reward, there is no reason why it should not be described as pleasing to God, and in a sense meritorious.  Scripture uses such language: “God is not unrighteousness, that He will forget your works, and labour that proceedeth from love”; “To do good and to distribute forget not, for with such sacrifices God is well pleased” (Heb. 6:10, 13:16); “Having received of Epaphroditus the things which were sent from you, an odour of a sweet smell, a sacrifice acceptable, well pleasing to God” (Phil. 4:18); “Come, ye blessed of my Father, for I was an hungered,” etc. (Matt. 25:34, 35); – from these and similar passages nothing can be clearer than that good works are acceptable to God.  Why should they not be?  They are in themselves such as He approves of; they are prompted by His Holy Spirit; they are performed by those whose persons are accepted; their object is the edification of the Church and the glory of God.  In these respects they differ from the good works of the unregenerate, which, though possessing a value of their own, do not spring from a supernatural source, and are not directed to the highest end.  The fruits of faith do not indeed, on account of their imperfection, possess a justifying efficacy; but they cannot with any propriety of language be called sin.  But they may even, in a certain sense, be called meritorious, so far as Scripture encourages Christians to expect a recognition of their services at the day of account.  “Rejoice and be exceeding glad, for great is your reward in heaven” (Matt. 5:12); “Whosoever shall give to one of these little ones a cup of cold water, he shall in no wise lose his reward” (Ibid., 10:42); “Knowing that of the Lord ye shall receive the reward of the inheritance” (Col. 3:24); “Behold I come quickly, and my reward is with me” (Rev. 22:12).  Not only so; but it is implied that this reward will be proportioned to the service rendered, or, in other words, that there will be degrees of glory in the life to come.  No doubt was entertained on this point in the Church, speaking generally, until Peter Martyr, though with some hesitation, questioned whether it could be proved from Scripture.  And it must be admitted that some of the passages adduced in its support are hardly conclusive.  Thus S. Paul’s illustration (1 Cor. 15:41), “There is one glory of the sun, and another glory of the moon, and another glory of the stars,” cannot, in its primary application, establish more than the fundamental distinction between the natural and the spiritual body.  Differences, the Apostle says, exist in terrestrial objects of the same class; why may not the human body be supposed capable of existing in different states?  There are others, however, more to the point.  Thus in Rev. 22:12, above quoted, Christ says not only that His reward is with Him, but that it will be bestowed on “every man according as his works shall be.”  And S. Paul declares that “every man shall receive his own reward according to his own labour” (1 Cor. 3:8); and that “He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly, and he that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully” (2 Cor. 11:6).  “In My Father’s house,” says Christ, “are many mansions” (John 14:6), which, among other interpretations, may mean that there will be differences of reward hereafter.  Theologians explain the matter thus: There is an essential bliss (the vision of God, etc.) which is common to all, special rewards for special services – omnibus una salus sanctis, sed gloria dispar.  There is nothing to be said against such a supposition, since even in this life we perceive different measures of grace bestowed, and, as a consequence, more or less inward peace and public usefulness.  How much more may this be expected in a state in which sin, conflict and trial no longer exist?  Degrees, then, of glory, proportioned to the more or less faithful discharge of our stewardship here, is a Scriptural conception, and one which has been too much lost sight of in popular teaching.  If objections are still entertained to it, as fostering a self-righteous temper, they may perhaps be removed by considering the secondary sense in which the word “merit” is used.  In its strict meaning it signifies an equality between service and wages; the reward is of debt, not of favour; it is a matter of commutative justice.  In this sense no merit can be pleaded before God.  Even if the Christian’s obedience were perfect, it would be only what he is bound as a creature to render, and could establish no claim upon the Divine favour.  The word “merit,” however, is used by classical writers, and very commonly in the Fathers, in a less exact sense, to signify the earning of a gift or reward in the way prescribed by the donor.  If a benevolent person offers food and raiment to a mendicant, provided the latter applies for them according to certain rules, the performance of the condition may be said to earn (mereri) the fulfillment of the promise; yet the promise itself was gratuitous.  Eternal life, in like manner, is promised to the faithful servants of God, and, further, special rewards to those whose devotion to their Master has been conspicuous; but their claim rests on this promise of God, not upon the value of the service itself.  It is just in God to fulfill His promise on the general principle that he who makes a promise places himself under an obligation to fulfill it, whence God is said to be just to forgive the sins of those who confess them (1 John 1:9), because He has promised to do so, though forensically He forgives them only for Christ’s sake.  If Scripture, then, connects reward with service, as it does, it is an instance of the exuberant goodness of God, who vouchsafes promises to those whom He had previously translated from a state of nature to a state of grace; the promises are gratuitous, though, once made, they may be called binding on the giver.  Thus are the heirs of glory stimulated to “fill their odorous lamps with deeds of light,” though they are the last to put forward a meritorious claim on this ground.  They know and feel that all is of grace, that they have nothing but what they have received, and that God rewards what He Himself has wrought in them – dona coronat sua.  Such is the sentiment of Paul: he had laboured more abundantly than his fellow Apostles, yet it was not he, but the grace of God which was with him (1 Cor. 15:10); and therefore the crown of glory which he expected was not a matter of debt, but of grace.

      The Romish doctrine of merit reaches its culminating point in that of works of supererogation.  Modern Romish controversialists, after the example of the Council of Trent, commonly pass over this delicate topic sicco pede, or at any rate with a reserve which is creditable to their candour.  The author of the “Symbolik” contents himself with observing that the Christian who realizes the infinite resources of Divine grace at his command must feel himself superior to the demands of the law, and endeavour to exceed them. His love knows, or ought to know, no limit, and is ever busy in inventing fresh modes of exhibiting itself; whence it arises that such Christians not seldom appear to those who occupy a lower level as enthusiasts or worse.  Only thus is the rise of the doctrine of works of supererogation to be accounted for.  It was, though resting on a solid basis of tradition, naturally rejected by the Reformers.  How could they who taught that the regenerate man never can become free from sin be expected to sympathize with the tender and elevated sentiment of this higher stage of religion?  The learned writer does well to say, “Only thus”; that is, as appears to be his meaning, to abandon all attempts to prove the doctrine from Scripture.  The gist of his argument is that the obedience required by the Divine law falls short of that which the Christian, by the aid of the Holy Spirit, may and ought to aspire to.  Bellarmine, as is his wont, is more explicit.  His defense of the monkish institute rendered this necessary.  For this rests on the distinction between precepts and counsels, between what is commanded and what is recommended in Scripture.  Precepts and counsels differ in several particulars.  In matter; for the duty contained in a precept is easier than that contained in a counsel; whence, where the matter is the same (e.g., continence), the counsel is superior to the precept; contains, in fact, the precept and something over and above.  As regards the subjects; for precepts are binding on all Christians, counsels not so.  In form; for precepts are absolutely binding, whereas counsels are left to each Christian’s discretion.  In result; for precepts, when observed, earn a reward, when disobeyed, a penalty; while disobedience to counsels incurs no penalty, and obedience ensures a superior reward.  The three heads to which counsels belong are continence, obedience, and voluntary poverty.

      The Scriptural evidence is of the scantiest.  Omitting that drawn from the Old Testament or the Apocryphal books, we may confine our attention to the New Testament.  Reference, then, is made to Matt. 19:12, in which our Lord speaks of those who make themselves “eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake”; to the case of the young ruler mentioned in the same chapter, to whom it was said, “If thou wilt be perfect, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and follow me” (verse 21); to 1 Cor. 7:1, where S. Paul affirms that “it is good for a man not to touch a woman”; and to Apoc. 14:3, 4, in which they who sing the new song are described as such as “were not defiled with women, being virgins”.  The first of these passages contains neither precept nor counsel, being simply an answer to the remark of the Apostles, that if the marriage tie is so indissoluble as their Master pronounced it to be, “it is not good to marry.”  Since the Jews held the married state to be superior to the single, this objection might naturally occur to them.  This does not follow, Christ replies, for unless there exists the gift of continency, the abridgment of liberty which, as contrasted with the Mosaic law, the Gospel enforces is as nothing compared with the evils which may arise from forced celibacy.  When, indeed, that gift is bestowed, and the advancement of the kingdom of God seems to demand the sacrifice, the Christian may “make himself a eunuch” without injury to himself, and with a prospect of greater usefulness; otherwise not.  The same remarks apply to 1 Cor. 7:1, which, indeed, is a comment on our Lord’s words.  It may be, under certain limitations, and with a reference to special circumstances, to the “present necessity,” “good for a man not to touch a woman”; but, the Apostle adds, where there is no gift of continency, it is “better to marry” (verse 9).  The advice, therefore, is not applicable to all persons and to all times as a counsel is, but with this limitation it may well be that a single life, by enabling the Christian to attend without distraction to “the things of the Lord,” is occasionally to be preferred.  But the Apostle says nothing touching the meritoriousness of such a state as compared with the conjugal.  As regards the test applied to the young ruler, it was nothing but a test.  Thou sayest thou hast kept the law from thy youth up.  What law? that of the first table, “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart”?  Prove it by selling all that thou hast at my command and following me.  The symbolical nature of the Apocalypse renders it hazardous to found doctrines upon it; and under any circumstances chap. 14:3, 4, must be reconciled with Heb. 13:4, “Marriage is honourable in all, and the bed undefiled.”

      If the two great heads of duty, to love God with all the heart and our neighbour as ourselves, are interpreted in their full extent and spirituality, no counsel can go beyond them.  The standard is one which the Christian may and ought to aspire to, but which he never can reach; and it is the same for all orders of men in the Church.  As regards what we owe to God, there can be no such thing as a work of supererogation; but in the employment of gifts or talents as evidences of love, questions of casuistry may arise, only to be determined by each individual on a careful review of his temperament or circumstances.  And he may no doubt arrive at the conclusion that by foregoing certain modes of life (if he can do so without dangers of another sort), which otherwise he would be at liberty to adopt, he will best promote the interests of religion.  But if he so decides, he is doing nothing over and above what he is commanded to do; for the command is that he should be willing to sacrifice everything but his own spiritual welfare if the kingdom of God can be advanced thereby.  The error of the scholastic doctrine on this point, from which that of Rome is derived, consists in making what it calls counsels a means of more effectually securing eternal life, instead as a means of more effectually serving God in this life.  Sacrifices for Christ’s sake will, He assures us, be rewarded a hundredfold in this life; and though He makes no mention of a special future reward, we may conclude that such sacrifices will not then be forgotten of God.  But if so, they will fall under the general rule that distinguished service, not as inherently meritorious, but by the gratuitous promise of God, will not fail hereafter of due recognition.  The Schoolmen, even the Augustinian like Thomas Aquinas, as they made precepts – that is, obedience to the law necessary, in the way of merit, to the attainment of life – so they made counsels a more direct and expeditious road to that end.  This was to confound eternal life itself with different degrees of glory in that life – special gifts with the grace necessary to all.  And the root of the system was the making the formal cause of justification to be an inherent quality, not the merits of Christ apprehended by faith.

      Scripture contains no counsels, as distinguished from precepts, on such points as abstinence from marriage or the renouncing of private property, because, from want of a proper motive, obedience even to the precept may be absent.  “Though I bestow all my goods,” says S. Paul, “to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing” (1 Cor. 8:3).  On the other hand, Scripture does not forbid such sacrifices if prompted by a right motive, the love of God, and not proceeding from ostentation, or as establishing a meritorious claim.  The Romish theory errs in attaching an independent value to the outward act, as appears from its artificial classification of counsels under the three heads above mentioned.  But the command itself is so comprehensive that nothing can be added to it.  It includes counsels instead of counsels including it, and, in fact, is never perfectly fulfilled in this present state.  As Thomas Aquinas rightly observes, the former is necessary, the latter optional; but he forgets to remark that what he calls counsels may indeed be proof of obedience to the precept, but can never comprehend more than it.  The practical results of this doctrine are written on the page of Church history.  When a double standard of Christian sanctity was established – a higher one for those who submitted to the three monastic rules, and a lower one for the Christian commonalty – it was inevitable that the latter should claim the right to frame their rules of practice for themselves, and such as were more adapted to the suggestions of the unrenewed heart.  The homely virtues of the domestic circle or the duties of public life sank in the scale as compared with the trivial round of ceremonial or the ecstatic raptures of the monastic life.  Still worse, nature, outraged, avenged herself, and hidden vices of the gravest kind prevailed under the garb of outward sanctity.  The state of the monasteries in Henry VIII’s time, which led to their dissolution, is proof sufficient of the pernicious effects which the system produced on the victims themselves of the illusion.  The open profligacy of the world is less repulsive than that which may, and has been, engendered among a mass of human beings, with instincts forcibly kept down, but still festering, under the pressure of irrevocable vows.  Ecclesiastically, too, it was most detrimental.  When Christians were taught that some of their number might exceed the requirements of the Divine law, why might not the redundant merits of these favoured few be applied to compensate for the deficiencies of their humbler brethren?  Thus arose the idea of a treasury of superfluous good works, the key of which was in the hands of the ecclesiastical authorities, and out of which, for a consideration, they dispensed what was necessary to shorten either the penances imposed by the Church or the pains of Purgatory.  The traffic in indulgences which was thus openly carried on is well known, and, indeed, was deplored by pious and influential voices in the mediaeval Church.  But no effectual remedy was applied until the Reformation disinterred the buried Gospel and brought it to light.  These scandals were the immediate cause of Luther’s renunciation of the Papal system.  The Council of Trent, alive to the exigency, endeavoured to put a check on the worst abuses, but left the root whence they sprang in the ground; to produce a similar crop under more favourable circumstances.

§ 74.  Perseverance

      Can those who have been truly regenerated cease to be so; that is, revert to their former natural condition?  This question is the same as that touching the perseverance of the saints, but is commonly considered as one of the “Five Points of Calvinism,” as if it were a necessary part of that system of theology, and could not be discussed on its own proper grounds.  This has been of detriment to the inquiry, since to many minds the word “Calvinism” carries a distasteful sound, and raises an antecedent prejudice to any doctrine supposed to be peculiarly connected with the name of the great French reformer.  In point of fact, the controversy is of ancient date, and in Augustine’s anti-Pelagian treatises, it occupies a conspicuous place.  It is on every account desirable to dissociate it from any system, Calvinistic or Arminian.

      A moment’s consideration will show that election, in the sense in which it was understood by most of the great theologians of former times, Romanist as well as Protestant, viz., election to eternal life, involves the doctrine of perseverance.  For the elect in this sense are not merely those who have been favoured with external privileges, and who may be saved if they do their duty, but those who shall finally be saved; and none such can or will perish.  To say then that the elect may not persevere to the end is to say that they are not elect, except in a lower sense of the word.  The elect are those who do persevere, and those who do not are not of the elect.  Further, it is to be observed that the question is not about perseverance merely, but about final perseverance, or perseverance up to the moment when, at death, we lose sight of the persons concerned.  It is possible, and generally admitted, that persons persevere, or seem to do so, for a time, and then draw back [As in the parable of the Sower. – Ed.]; but it is endurance to the end, until the individual passes into the unseen world, that is intended in the Calvinistic controversy.

      From these remarks it will be seen that the real question is not so much whether the elect persevere, as whether the elect and the regenerate are convertible terms; or, as we have stated it, whether a true regeneration can be finally lost.  The Lutheran divines, like Augustine, reply in the affirmative, the Reformed, following Calvin, in the negative.  The Lutherans admit that though the elect may fall away the lapse is but temporary, it is certain that they will be recalled to repentance before they depart hence; but the case is otherwise with the merely regenerate.  The reformed divines hold that the regenerate cannot finally fall away, since in fact they are the elect.  That our Church leans to this latter view seems implied in Art. xvii: “They be made sons of God by adoption, they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God’s mercy, they attain to everlasting life.”  No intimation is given that they may possibly come short of this destination.

      The question is discussed with his usual depth and fullness by the great theologian of the Western Church, and it may be useful to see how he treats it.  It occupies a large space in the books “De Correptione et Gratia” and “De Dono Perseverantiae”.  Augustine’s fundamental position is, that regeneration does not necessarily imply final perseverance.  “The elect,” he says, “are those who when they hear the Gospel believe, and in that faith working by love persevere unto the end; and if occasionally they go astray, they are recovered; and some by a premature death are delivered from the danger of falling away.”  But how came they to persevere, and others not?  “Not through their own care and watchfulness (at least not in the last resort), but in consequence of a special gift superadded to the general gift of regeneration.”  And by regeneration he does not mean, as might be supposed, a mere initiatory grace of baptism, or incorporation into the visible church, but a real spiritual change with its evidences.  “Who,” he says, “can deny that some persons may be called elect, seeing they believe, are baptized, and live according to the will of God?  Yet if they do not persevere they are not elect in His sight who knows that they have not that” (gift of) “perseverance which ensures eternal life, and though they stand now they will surely fall.”  “It is indeed a mystery that to some of His sons whom God has regenerated in Christ, to whom He has given faith, hope, and love, he does not vouchsafe perseverance.”  “Let it not surprise us that upon certain of His sons God does not bestow that gift. This, indeed, would be inconceivable if they were of the number of those who by predestination are truly the sons of promise.  As long as these persons live piously they are called sons of God; but since they will lapse into a sinful life, and die in that state, they are not sons in the sight of God.”  And again: “Of two pious persons, that to one should be granted the gift of final perseverance and to the other not, must be ascribed to the inscrutable judgments of God.  Only that the one is of the number of the predestinated, while the other is not, is an unquestionable fact.”  It is plain from these and similar passages that in Augustine’s view a person may be regenerate for a time, and then cease to be so; and further, that the cause of the failure is to be traced up ultimately to his not having received the special gift of perseverance.  The Lutheran theologians, agreeing with him as regards the fact, hesitate to ascribe the difference between the elect and the regenerate to the Divine predestination, and seek the cause rather in the individuals themselves, as free agents whose salvation depends on their behaviour.

      There is something repulsive in the notion that a real work of regeneration can ever finally come to nothing.  Analogies between natural and spiritual things may, no doubt, be pressed too far; but we cannot suppose it without significance that the spiritual change, apart from which no one can enter the kingdom of God, should be described in terms drawn from natural birth, or from creation.  In neither of these cases can a relapse into nothingness be conceived.  Once born into this world the personality of the individual is indestructible; so at least, without presuming to define the limits of omnipotence, it appears in fact to us.  Whatever changes the bodily organization may undergo, including even the last great change, we suppose the “I” of personal identity to remain unaffected and no human soul to revert to annihilation.  And as to creation – we can no more imagine the existing frame of the universe passing into nothing than we can understand how it first came into being out of nothing.  If the analogies are to hold good, it should seem that the new birth, the second creation, is irreversible, and that the old saying contains truth, Once regenerate, always regenerate; to say nothing of the covenant of God with Christ by which, as the Calvinistic divines contend, it is secured.  Certainly, it would seem that a second regeneration can no more be expected than a second natural birth; according to the remark of Nicodemus, “How can a man be born when he is old?  Can he enter the second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” (John 3:4).  But the ultimate appeal is, of course, to Scripture.  We are referred to numerous passages in which a final lapse from regenerating grace seems to be supposed possible; to the parables of the sower, the vine, and the ten virgins [A list of these passages will be found in Whitby, Five Points, Dis. v.]; to the admonitions and warnings addressed to Christians as if their perseverance depended on themselves (which no doubt it does in a certain sense); to the incestuous Corinthian; to individual cases (Hymenxus, Philetus, Demas, etc.) of those who have been numbered among Christians, but failed to persevere. [But the true reading in Matthew 25:8 σβέννυνται refutes any reference to a lapse from grace; for they never had any oil; they lit the dry wick which at once went out. – Ed.]  That a danger is contemplated, and a warning conveyed, in such passages is unquestionable; yet it may be doubted whether they establish the conclusion intended.  Two general remarks are applicable to them; supposition is not position, and preparatory operations of the Holy Spirit are not to be confounded with regeneration (§§ 60–61).  The Apostle in Heb. 6:4 declares that under certain circumstances (“if they shall fall away,” verse 6) the persons described cannot be again brought to repentance.  Assuming that they were really regenerate, we certainly find a difficulty in supposing a second regeneration possible; but, after all, the case is only a supposititious one, “if they shall fall away.”  It may be said that unless it were possible, it would not have been employed as a warning; but to this it may be replied that no one contests the abstract possibility of its occurring, or denies that sin unchecked may issue in results little anticipated; the utmost we are warranted in believing is that provision is made, and means will be used to prevent a final catastrophe.  Nothing but perseverance itself can be to us an evidence that we are really regenerate.  Be this as it may, no dogmatical conclusions can be founded on hypothetical statements.  On the assumption, then, that the persons intended were regenerate the conclusion is not certain; but even this is by no means the universal opinion of commentators.  There were many in the Apostolic age (and the same holds true of every age) who may have been subjects of spiritual influence up to a certain point, without becoming new creatures in Christ; may have been “enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and the powers of the world to come, and been made partakers of the Holy Ghost” (Heb. 6:4, 5), and yet may not have had Christ formed in them, the hope of glory.  It is no wonder if such converts, “having no root in time of temptation fall away,” or permit the cares of this life to choke the good seed, so that it bears no fruit.  “There is a sin unto death,” the Apostle John tells us, but he does not specify wherein it consists, or whether any had been guilty of it; if it should appear in the church, intercessory prayer for the offender would be useless (1 John 5:16).  The warnings of Scripture, “Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,” etc., occupy a necessary place in the spiritual training of the Christian.  Since no one can read his name in the book of life, nor is a revelation vouchsafed to any one that he shall persevere to the end, the assurance of hope, founded on the witness of the Spirit and the consciousness of a spiritual change, is the state of mind which befits the church militant on earth.  The work of sanctification advances amidst opposition from within and without; through many a fall inward, if not outward; even, as in the cases of David and Peter, through overt sins of a deep dye.  Subjectively, therefore, or a parte hominis, nothing can be more appropriate than that the Christian should be admonished to watch and pray lest he fall into temptation, the spirit being willing but the flesh weak.  Certainty of final salvation is not for those thus compassed with infirmity; yet in the midst of trial and danger they may be persuaded, with S. Paul, that “neither life nor death nor any other creature shall be able to separate them from the love of God” (God’s love towards them) “which is in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:38–39).  Among other means which God employs to preserve them are these warnings with which Scripture abounds ; they are no mere economy, but expressive of the truth that the Christian, considered in himself, may at any moment yield to temptation ; and further, that he cannot certainly know what a downward course may eventually issue in. But whether objectively, or a parte Dei, the new birth is reversible is another question.  The general testimony of Scripture is rather against such a supposition.  “My sheep shall never perish” (John 10:28); we may not dilute such statements by the limitation, unless indeed they themselves leave me: let each passage speak for itself, and retain its full meaning, even if we cannot fully reconcile it with others.  The parting prayer of Christ was that the Father would keep through His own name (His almighty power) those who had believed on Him (John 17:11); and we know that the Father always hears Him (Ibid., 11:42).  S. John, who records these sayings of Christ, writes himself in a similar strain: “He that is born of God doth not commit sin” (live contentedly in sin); “he cannot do so because he is born of God, and his seed” (the holy principle of the new life) “remaineth in him” (1 John 3:9; comp. 5:18).  If some who seemed to be the children of God had fallen away, he accounts for this fact not on the ground that such lapses may be expected in the regenerate, but that these professors never were really regenerate.  “They went out from us because they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have continued with us; but they went out that they might be made manifest that they were not all of us” (Ibid., 2:19).  Their fall was only a manifestation of their hidden unsoundness, known to God all along.

      The parables which seem to favour an adverse conclusion do not, with one exception, present much difficulty.  That of the sower contains three cases of failure, with the first of which we have nothing to do.  In the other two the seed did spring up, and gave promise of fruit; but in neither was the soil properly prepared for ultimate success.  The work of the law convincing of sin had not been thorough and universal.  Hence the seeming conversion of the one was but a temporary emotion, such as often occurs in the annals of revivalism, and which, though not to be despised, may disappear without permanent result.  The same may be said of the persons compared to the seed falling among thorns.  There is nothing in these instances inconsistent with the supposition that they represent certain preliminary operations of the Holy Ghost, which, however, fall short of a true regeneration.  The foolish virgins had “oil in their lamps,” a certain amount of religious feeling and profession; but not “oil in their vessels,” not the permanent indwelling of the Holy Spirit.  Or, to vary the image, the spiritual water of which they had tasted was not “in them a well of water springing up into everlasting life” (John 4:14).  The parable of the vine and the branches is the exception referred to.  In almost every instance – indeed, we may say in all – the terms “in Christ” or “in union with Christ” signify not merely incorporation into a visible church, but personal saving connection with Christ Himself; and that this is intended in the parable may be inferred from Christ’s speaking of the fruitless branches as having, equally with the fruitful, partaken of the sap of the tree, and really grown upon it.  They were not attached to the vine by external ligatures.  The difference between them and the other branches consists not in the point of vital union, but in the absence of fruit; as, in fact, such branches may be seen in the natural vine.  These, our Lord says, are “taken away”; “taken away,” though they derived life from the vine.  The difficulty of supposing that a visible connection with a local church is all that is meant is so great, that it seems to follow from the parable that not all who are in vital union with Christ necessarily persevere to the end.  We cannot, therefore, say more than that, on the whole, the evidence is in favour of the permanency of a real regeneration.

      That the regenerate man, even if he does not finally perish, may sin grievously is plain from the instances of David and Peter, and indeed is matter of common experience.  The question may be asked, Do such sins entirely obliterate the seal of God, so that, if the backslider is recovered, a second new birth virtually takes place; or does the holy principle, however for the present overpowered, retain its vitality, and in the work of repentance reassert its dominion?  The Lutheran divines take the former view, the Reformed the latter: the former hold that a true faith may be totally lost; the others that the “habit of faith” continues even in the worst cases, and in due time will resume its activity.  And the latter opinion seems, on the whole, most in accordance with Scripture.  Practically, the difference is immaterial.  Even the Canons of Dort admit that the sense of adoption is destroyed by willful sin; while the Lutherans can, in case of recovery, assign no other evidence thereof than that which was an evidence of conversion at the first – viz., repentance and faith.

§ 75.  Election

      Effectual calling, as has been observed (§ 60), presupposes that mankind, through Adam’s fall, labours under a spiritual incapacity to respond to the invitations of the Gospel, even when the privilege of hearing it is enjoyed without sufficient – that is, special – grace.  And, further, that this special grace means more than a liberation of the enslaved will by some mystical grace of baptism, whereby the baptized person receives power to choose good or evil, or is replaced in the state f probation in which we may suppose Adam to have been before the fall.  Where this special grace is vouchsafed, and issues in an advance from the enjoyment of outward privileges to a saving personal relation to Christ, Scripture refers it to the eternal purpose of God; or, in other words, special is also electing grace: “Many” may be “called, but few are chosen” (Matt. 20:16).  It is only with this personal election to eternal life that dogmatic theology is properly concerned.  The order of salvation includes salvation itself, which can be predicated of individuals only, not of masses or churches as such.  The remark is necessary, since the notion of election, or rather selection, in an inferior sense, has a foundation in Scripture, and, as expounded by some writers, errs rather in defect than in principle.

      Thus in the Old Testament election is national, and to temporal as well as spiritual privileges.  The principle pervades the whole history, but is directed to a temporary object.  Abraham is severed from his idolatrous connections to become the progenitor of an elect nation.  Of Abraham’s immediate descendants, Jacob was chosen, while Esau was set aside; of the tribes of Israel, Judah was that from which the Messiah was to come.  Israel was a holy nation, a peculiar people, chosen out of the nations of the earth to be the depositary of the oracles of God.  But since nations as such have no existence beyond the grave, the election was not to eternal life, nor is it ever so described. In this point, as in others, the law was a shadow of good things to come, a typical figure of the heavenly reality.  In the same sense some nations of the present day may be said to be elect as compared with the mass of mankind – elect to the reception and profession of Christianity.  The greater part of the world is still not even nominally Christian, notwithstanding that contact with Christian nations and missionary effort ought apparently to have issued in a different result.  Even national Christianity remains, after the lapse of so many centuries since the Christian era, the exception, not the rule.  Why should this be so?  It may be replied that some races or nations are naturally more susceptible than others of Christian influences; and this, no doubt, is the fact.  Western civilization seems in this point to possess an advantage over Eastern.  It can hardly be attributed to accident that the Roman Empire has, as a whole, accepted Christianity; while Oriental nations, even those which have long enjoyed a measure of civilization, continue outside its pale.  Prophecy forbids us to despair of the ultimate universal prevalence of the Gospel; but an earlier or later reception of it may depend upon national peculiarities of civilization and temperament, for which we can assign no reason except the inscrutable purpose of God, Who, in conducting the government of the world, has so arranged it that some nations and races come to the front as depositaries of the light of revelation, while others remain behind.  Even in Scripture itself we find traces of this rule of Divine Providence.  When the Apostles were intending to preach the Word in Asia, they were forbidden by the Holy Ghost to do so, and directed by the same Divine Agent rather to choose Macedonia as a field of action (Acts 16:6–10).  What reason can be assigned, except that certain districts of Asia were not as yet so ripe for their ministrations as others of Greece?  Even among Christian nations differences exist in respect of the quality of their Christianity, and their religious influence in the world.  Some, for example, have accepted the Reformation, with its beneficent results; others have not.  Some are leaders in the missionary field; others have done little for the spread of the Gospel.  It does not follow that those nations which have hitherto rejected the Gospel, or rejected it in its apostolic purity, will always do so, or that more advanced Christian nations will always retain their preeminence; but it is plainly the method of the Divine Providential government that, for wise purposes unknown to us, the conversion or spiritual progress of some should be postponed, while others are more highly favoured.  As in the case of the Jewish people, so here there is an election in time which we cannot but ascribe to the eternal purpose of God; but it is not an election to eternal life.  Many nations have been called, but few chosen; not to mention that some have arisen and disappeared without ever having enjoyed the opportunity of hearing the Gospel.  As nations, with merely a temporal existence, and not being subjects of prophecy like the Jewish people, these communities have passed into the abyss of time with their destination unfulfilled.

      When a nation becomes professedly Christian, this implies that the Christian Church, under the form of a visible Christian society, has gained a footing in it.  It implies that the Scriptures are accepted as the Word of God; that the preaching of the Word and the administration of the sacraments, as well as other means of grace, are in operation; that Christian instruction is given in families and schools.  These are spiritual advantages which as far transcend those vouchsafed to the ancient chosen people of God as the promulgation of a completed redemption transcends a typical adumbration of it; and place the members of such a community in a very different position from that of the most polished nations of antiquity, or of those to whom the Gospel has come without having effected a national conversion.  They are not merely under the rule of natural Providence, determining “the times appointed and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26), and possibly training them for a future submission to the cross; not merely under the paedagogical influences of the Logos, who has always been more or less “the light of men” (John 1:4); but they are in immediate contact, so to speak, with the motions of the Holy Spirit, the special grace of the Christian dispensation.  They live in an atmosphere of Christianity, insensibly pressing upon them in the laws, the customs, the social standard, the accepted maxims of a Christian country; all of which the Church, without identifying itself with the state, permeates and elevates.  They are drawn not merely by the Father – God in his natural attributes – to the Son, but they are drawn by the Son – the incarnate and risen Saviour – to the Father. [“No man cometh unto the Father,” in a saving sense, as the First Person of the Trinity of redemption, “but by Me.”  John 14:6.]  On the supposition that infant baptism is in accordance with the mind of Christ, or even if it is allowable, it is a sign and seal of the Divine intention that in a Christian country no rank or age should be excluded from participation in the blessings of the Christian covenant and the approaches of Divine grace.  Yet experience proves that the enjoyment of these privileges does not necessarily, or in all cases, lead to saving union with Christ.  That they should be vouchsafed is a distinguishing mark of grace; but the election is not to salvation, but only to the possibility of attaining salvation – to the opportunity of using the means of grace.  A considerable school of writers amongst ourselves stops short at this notion of election, affirming that no other is found in Scripture.  All who are baptized, let us suppose in infancy, are the chosen of God (as, indeed, in one sense they are), and the choice ends here; with the further inference that the subjects of election are rather nations or Christian societies than individuals.  But how comes it that out of the mass of persons thus favoured it is only a comparatively small number that actually avail themselves of their privileges, and pass from the preparatory and often transitory approaches of the Holy Spirit to become subjects of His regenerating grace – regeneration being understood in its full Scriptural meaning?  If it be replied that it is owing to a proper exercise of free will, we are on the confines of Pelagianism.  The doctrine of effectual grace solves the difficulty; but only to prompt the further question, Why should this or that person come under its influence, and not others?  The circumstance cannot be considered as a mere contingency, an afterthought, occurring in time; especially by those who believe, and rightly believe, that every event, whether as regards communities or individuals, is foreknown and ordered by a supreme intelligence.  We are thus led step by step to the doctrine of election in its highest form, as “predestination to life,” or “the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) He hath constantly decreed by His counsel, secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom He hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation” (not merely to the opportunity of securing it), “as vessels made to honour” (Art. xvii.).  This was the doctrine understood under the name by all the great theologians of the Church – Augustine, Anselm, Thomas Aquinas, the Reformers, English and foreign (with some modifications), Bellarmine, Calvin, Luther himself – and we find it stated in our own Article on the subject.  It is the doctrine, too, of our Catechism.  The child presumed at baptism to be regenerate is supposed in this formulary never to have lost the gift or fallen from it: pious instruction and example having been made instrumental to carry on the work.  He is regarded as a Christian child – a child of God really, and not merely ecclesiastically; a member of Christ by vital union as well as by incorporation in a visible church.  He declares that he is actually sanctified by the Holy Ghost, and that he trusts he is one of the elect as being thus sanctified.  This is the “state of salvation” for being called to which he returns thanks, and which he prays he may continue in unto his life’s end.  Not, surely, a mere access to the means of grace, which may never be used, or a mere possibility of being saved, which may never be realized; but an actual saving participation in Christ and His work.  It would be strange if prayer were made for grace to continue in the former undetermined state.  The language of S. Paul, providentially raised up to be the chief inspired expounder of this doctrine, seems plain enough, except to those who have a theory to maintain.  Israel, he explains, was as a nation chosen of God to the privileges of “the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the law, and the service of God, and the promises” (Rom. 9:4); yet not all who enjoyed these advantages were the true Israel, the spiritual children of Abraham (verses 6, 7); “for he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, neither is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh; but he is a Jew which is one inwardly, and circumcision is of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (chap. 2:28, 29).  Such spiritual Judaism was never coextensive with the national.  In the time of Elijah, for example, their number was reduced to seven thousand – an insignificant portion of the whole nation.  So, he continues, it was in his own day; the nation, as a whole, rejected Christ, but there was a “remnant” who believed, and this remnant owed its existence and its preservation “to the election of grace”; not to any merit of its own.  It was as gratuitous an act of grace as the distinction between Esau and Jacob which was made, “the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil,” and was recorded that “the purpose of God according to election might stand,” or be established – might be proved to be “not of works, but of Him that calleth.”  Thus “God had not cast away His people which He foreknew” – that portion of the Jewish people for which, in consequence of this Divine foreknowledge, He intended salvation – “for whom He foreknew He predestinated,” not merely to privileges, but “to be conformed to the image of His Son,” and effected His purpose in time by calling, justifying, and glorifying them; the future consummation being regarded as certain, although at present only the earnest was given (Rom. 9, 11).  With the general drift of this principal passage the Apostle’s statements in other epistles is in agreement.  Thus Christians are said to be “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world,” to be “predestinated unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ,” not on account of foreseen holiness, but that they might be “holy and without blame before Him” (Ephes. 1:4, 5); to be “chosen from the beginning to salvation” (2 Thess. 2:13); to be saved with an holy calling, according to God’s own purpose and grace, given them in Christ Jesus before the world began (2 Tim. 2:9).  Of himself, as an eminent example of Divine grace, the writer declares that he was called indeed in due season (vocatio efficax), but that before he came into the world he had been separated, in prescience and designation, to the work intended for him (Gal. 1:15).  Light is thus thrown on the statements of Christ Himself, which substantially agree with those of this chosen vessel.  In one sense the Apostles officially were given Him; a selection, however, which was not inconsistent with final perdition; but in another and a higher one, as believers, they and those who should be effectually called by their word, are described as the Father’s before they were Christ’s: “Thine they were, and Thou gayest them Me, and they have kept Thy word” (John 17:6).  Election, indeed, in the gospels, usually signifies the operation of Divine grace in time; the elect are those who, as a matter of fact, have been severed from a sinful world, and this not externally only but inwardly.  The eternal purpose is not so explicitly announced as afterwards by S. Paul; but in one passage it is indirectly intimated.  We read in Matt. 24:24 that in the last days of tribulation false Christs and prophets shall be permitted to show such signs and wonders as, if it were possible (ει δυνατον), to deceive the very elect.  It is not possible, because the elect, as such, are “kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation” (1 Pet. 1:2).  Such is the testimony of Christ and His Apostles, and it may be summed up in the following particulars:

      Election must not be confounded with the Stoic, or any other form of fatalism.  Philosophical speculations are foreign to the spirit of Scripture, and of little practical moment to the mass of mankind; they should not be imported into this subject. [In this section Litton seems to take a wrong line.  He should rather have pointed out that the problem is identical both in philosophy and in religion and that the recognition by all the best philosophers that it is insoluble should confirm our faith when we find it treated as insoluble in Scripture also.  See Rom. 9:19 seqq, and Hume’s Essay on Human Understanding, chap. xxxix. 8, fin. – Ed.]  It is not easy, for example, to refute apparent inferences from the theory of causation, according to which every event, and therefore the work of regeneration, must have a cause, and the latter again another cause, and so on until we pass beyond this sublunary region, and ascend to the first great Cause, on which the whole chain depends, and which directs its movements.  Something, too, may be said for the pantheistic fatalism of Spinoza; and, in truth, to meet it effectually, we must insist on the fact of an independent free will in man, capable of resistance to the will of God, and this itself is an incomprehensible mystery.  Whether true or false, such theories should not be mixed up with the Scriptural doctrine of predestination.  According to it, the spiritual prerogatives of nations or of individuals are determined by a personal God of infinite wisdom and goodness, who, not without reasons, but for reasons only partially revealed to us, acts in this matter as He wills, yet not so as to destroy the concurrent action of the creature whom He has endowed with the mysterious attribute of free will.  And it cuts short philosophical objections with the practical appeal, which yet involves a reiteration of the doctrine of election according to grace, “Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast Thou made me thus?” (Rom. 9:20).

      The terms “predestination,” “election,” “saints,” “effectual calling,” represent the same fact under different aspects.  Predestination (πρόθεσις) signifies the general intention of God to provide a plan of salvation, and has no direct reference to the individuals comprised in the plan.  It is otherwise with foreknowledge (πρόγνωσις) and predetermination (προορισμός), the former of which implies distinct recognition [Primum omnium est, quod accurate observari oportet, discrimen esse inter praescientiam et predestinationem sive aeternam electionem Dei.  Praescientia simul ad bonos et malos pertinet: praedestinatio seu aeterna Dei electio tantum ad bonos et dilectos Dei filios pertinet.  Form. Conc., P. i., c. ii.  The πρόγνωσις in Rom. 8:29 is more than a mere prescience.] of the individuals who should believe; the latter, the providential arrangements leading to that result.  These expressions relate to the Divine acts before time.  Election is predestination carried into effect in time, and, whether national or individual, presupposes individuals as in existence; individual election comprising effectual calling (whence “chosen” and “called” are so often used synonymously), conversion, regeneration, etc.  National election is one of the stages towards individual.  But since the devout mind cannot but ascribe these saving operations to God, election comes to mean nearly the same as predestination – we infer the eternal purpose from what actually takes place in the present life.

      Election is not merely to spiritual privileges, but, in its full sense, to eternal life.  If churches are collectively called elect or holy, it is the language of presumption – viz., that the reality corresponds to the idea.  Human discipline can only separate those who are visibly tares from the wheat, the rest are taken at their profession, which is to be real, not nominal, saints.  They may not be so, in fact; but since we cannot read the heart, we are compelled to treat them collectively, as what they profess to be.  The last day alone will disclose who have been real members of Christ and who not.  The same conclusion follows even if, with some writers, [Ebrard, Dogmatik, §§ 556–561.] we confine the term εκλογή to the gathering of heathen converts into the visible church, for these converts are baptized on the presumption of saving repentance and faith, of being already inchoate members of Christ.  But it is an error so to confine it.  As appears from S. Paul’s reasoning in Rom. 9:11, there is also an election out of every visible church – necessarily so, because every visible church, however purged by discipline, remains a mixed body, and never can in this life perfectly correspond to its idea.

      Election to eternal life is not conditional, in the sense of being on account of foreseen repentance and faith.  The point here at issue should be borne in mind.  It is not whether repentance and faith are not always found in the elect, as indispensable qualifications for salvation, nor whether God in election had not a reference to Christ as the indispensable channel of saving grace.  No difference of opinion exists on these points.  The most extreme Calvinist admits that the elect are chosen in Christ, and is so far from dispensing with holiness as a qualification for life, that he infallibly secures it by including it in the decree itself.  Those whom God intends to save, He also intends to sanctify.  The question is concerning the ground of election: whether it is on account of foreseen goodness, or goodness is the consequence of election; and here the Lutheran and the Calvinist part company.  In their earlier writings, Luther and Melanchthon, like Calvin, held that election has no ground but the good pleasure of God; but in later years they receded somewhat from this position, not so much in the way of negation, as in insisting on the counter-balancing statements of Scripture respecting the universality of redemption, and the guilt of those who refuse obedience to the invitation; just as in our Article the two lines of Scripture statement are placed in juxtaposition without an attempt to reconcile them.  Some “are chosen in Christ out of mankind, as vessels made to honour”; and yet “that will of God is to be followed which we have expressly declared unto us,” viz., that all men should be saved.  The Reformers just mentioned and their Lutheran successors adopted substantially the scholastic notion of a twofold will in God – one antecedent, i.e., a general purpose to save mankind through Christ; and the other consequent, i.e., a particular purpose to actually save those who believe and continue in that faith; and they did so, as the best mode of giving due effect to the whole testimony of Scripture.  But, as thus stated, it does not touch the main difficulty, viz., why the antecedent will, if a serious one, fails to become efficacious?  If the reply be, because it meets in some cases with persistent resistance, this, no doubt, is true.  But why does it not in other cases meet with such resistance?  In truth, the Lutheran doctrine labours under inherent defects.  If it be a matter of contingency, who out of the mass to whom the Gospel is preached will proceed to saving faith, election, except in the lower sense of national election or to privileges, cannot be predicated of any one.  How can God be said to have an “everlasting purpose” to bring certain persons to “everlasting salvation” (Art. xvii.) if, after all, there is no certainty of their being so brought?  The very idea of personal election to life is evacuated.  Moreover, it is Pelagian in tendency.  It is one thing to say that men may resist the motions of the Holy Spirit (an undoubted fact), and another to say that they can produce in themselves the praevisa fides of the Lutherans; that they can “turn and prepare themselves to faith and calling upon God” (Art. x.).  Scripture declares that faith itself is the gift of God (Ephes. 2:8).  Election, therefore, on the ground of foreseen faith, unless the gift of faith is included in the decree, amounts to no more than saying that if men to whom the Gospel comes repent and believe, and continue to do so, they will be saved; the idea of election disappears.  If it be contended that even in the case of unqualified candidates for admission to the Church (ficti), the will is liberated by baptismal grace, the reply is that we know for a certainty of no grace bestowed in baptism on those destitute of the appointed qualifications.  But, as we have seen, the tenour of Scripture language is against such a view, whether held by Lutherans or others.  If Christians do good works, it is because they are “created,” born again, to such works; because God before ordained that such works should be wrought by them (Ephes. 2:10).  They are elect unto obedience, not because of it (1 Pet. 1:2).  It may be added that the difficulty which in Rom. 9 the Apostle cuts short with a reference to the inscrutability of God’s ways (ver. 20) would not, on the Lutheran hypothesis, exist, for reason itself dictates that foreseen faith should be rewarded in some way or other.  The question how far an “intuitus Christi” (J. Gerh.) – that is, a regard to the merits and sufferings of the Saviour – is a ground of election really belongs to the debate on universal and particular redemption.  One supposition may be that Christ was intended to be a Saviour of mankind, and then, lest His work should be fruitless, an elect Church must be gathered out of the mass, and by an act of distinguishing grace (effectual calling); and this, perhaps, is the doctrine of most of those who are called Calvinists.  Or the elect may be supposed to have been arbitrarily chosen, without reference either to Christ or their own behaviour, and Christ to have been given merely to carry out the decree, which obviously leads to particular redemption.  And this is the view of the more rigid and consistent Calvinists, e.g., F. Turrent., Lib. iv., Q. 10.

      Calvin’s doctrine of reprobation (which is by no means adopted by all that are called Calvinists) finds no warrant in Scripture.  It involves the further inference that the fall itself was predetermined – that is, that God was the Author of sin – in order to furnish material for an exhibition of the Divine justice; as the salvation of the elect was decreed to manifest the Divine mercy.  This, the Supralapsarian hypothesis, is refuted by the simple statement, “God is love.”  Not less distinct are the statements of the whole world’s being in some sense included in the appointment of a Saviour, and of the sufficiency of the great atonement for all who are willing to avail themselves of it (John 3:16, 1 John 2:2, 1 Tim. 2:4).  Even of the “vessels of wrath fitted to destruction” (Rom. 9:22.  Comp 1 Pet. 2:8) nothing is said respecting their eternal destiny.  On the stage of history, the Apostle says, there appear from time to time men like Pharaoh, upon whom neither the long-suffering nor the judgments of God appear to make any impression: fitted to destruction because they fitted themselves.  But the fact that long-suffering was shown them proves that no decree antecedent to time condemned them to perdition, either temporal or eternal.  Their temporal destruction was a manifestation of God’s wrath against sin; this was sufficient for the Apostle’s argument, and beyond it he does not advance.  It is true that Sublapsarianism in its turn is logically defective, which may have given occasion to the philosophical mind of Calvin to complete the theory at all hazards.  If all are equally guilty, and all equally under a fatal indisposition to sue for mercy, why should some be pardoned because they do thus sue?  It is sometimes argued that the substitution of preterition for reprobation unties the knot.  The impenitent, it is argued, lie under no decree to remain so; they are simply passed over, left to themselves.  If several persons are in debt to us, we may sue as m any as we like, and discharge the rest.  “Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” (Matt. 20:15).  The analogy fails, because God is here regarded not as a creditor, but as a Judge and Sovereign combined, conducting the moral government of the world on the principle of punishing the guilty and absolving the innocent.  As a Judge, He is bound to decide according to strict rules of justice, to condemn impartially all whose demerit is the same; as a Sovereign, He is bound to carry out the legal decision unless, as regards some individuals, circumstances should come to light warranting on their behalf an exercise of the prerogative of mercy.  To make a difference without any such reason, and of His own arbitrary choice, does not commend itself to our ideas of justice.  And if the offer of mercy to the favoured ones is to be dependent on the fulfillment of a condition which it is known beforehand they are indisposed and unable to fulfill, the difficulties are increased.  This reluctance must be removed in some way or other if a salutary result is to be secured.  If removed in some instances, why should it not be in all?  If it is not, those who are passed over are virtually excluded from the benefit, and preterition becomes only a milder name for reprobation.  We can only bow our heads before the mystery.  On the one hand we are assured that God so loved the world as to give His only-begotten Son for it, and with this an antecedent decree of reprobation cannot be reconciled; on the other, Scripture affirms, and experience proves, that in carrying out this design the Divine Agency pursues a method of selection; that the true Church, in the present dispensation of things, is evermore a remnant according to the election of grace.

      In recent times the controversy has assumed another aspect, chiefly under the influence of Schleiermacher and his followers; of whom on this point we may take Martensen as an example, though the Danish theologian in others differs materially from his German predecessor, and, indeed, is a professed Lutheran.  But on the subject of predestination both these writers are nearly in agreement.  According to them, predestination means the eternal purpose and intention of God, which can only be the salvation of all men.  But as boon as the purpose passes into time and takes actual effect, it assumes the form of election (which, therefore, is not quite identical with predestination), and submits to the law of historical progress and of the natural government of the world, according to which both nations and individuals are successively gathered into the fold of Christ – the former in privilege, the latter really.  The eternal purpose, in dealing with free agents, becomes subject to limitations.  It cannot, and does not, work in the way of necessity; it must attain its end as a history; suffering many apparent failures; now advancing, now receding; resisted by free will, but eventually gaining the victory; and hence in each successive age it is only a few who yield themselves to the yoke of Christ.  These are the elect for the time being; but the rest are only postponed.  Their time will come either in this world or the next, and then the predestinate and the elect will be convertible terms; in short, election has only to do with them, predestination with eternity. [That election is only concerned with time is not a novel doctrine.  J. Gerh. alludes to Bucanus as having held it, but rejects it himself; Quando de electione ad vitam usurpat Scriptura, semper de aeterno Dei eligentis decreto accipitur.  L, xii., c. 2, § 31.]

      As regards this verbal distinction, it may be doubted whether it has ground in Scripture.  Both election and predestination date from eternity.  Christians are chosen in Christ “before the foundation of the world” (Ephes. 1:4), “from the beginning” (2 Thess. 2:13); indeed, every event in time must be ultimately referred not merely to the Divine foreknowledge, but to the Divine prearrangement.  Nor would this be contested by these writers.  But the view maintained by them rests on two postulates – a state of probation after death, and, to say the least, the possibility of a universal restoration of the fallen creature.  This latter, indeed, is openly defended by Schleiermacher, and forms the corrective of his almost fatalistic doctrine respecting free will.  It is matter of fact that the majority of nominal Christians, to say nothing of the heathen, pass out of this life without saving union with Christ.  Can we suppose that their destiny is then finally determined?  This life must surely only form a fragment of the great drama of redemption; and in the ages to come those who have failed to obtain an entrance into the kingdom here may, by means unknown to us, succeed hereafter.  The process of election is going on before our eyes; why should it stop until it has effected its end?  Why should not the voluntas antecedens and the voluntas consequens ultimately coincide?  There is time enough for it to run its course, and as the first may be last, so the last may gain an entrance into the vineyard and receive a reward.  Then will come the end, when God will be all in all (1 Cor. 15:28).  So Schleiermacher reasons.  His Lutheran disciple is more cautious.  Admitting that grace may be resisted unto the end, that a state may supervene analogous to that of those beings who say, “Evil, be thou my good,” Martensen can only express a hope that no human being will in fact pass into such a state; to the detriment, however, of the consistency of his theory.  Since the assumptions here involved belong to the topic of Eschatology rather than to the present subject, it will be expedient to postpone the further consideration of them until that topic comes under discussion.  If the restoration of all fallen creatures is the ultimate issue of redemption, it is obvious that election can only mean their earlier or later entrance into the kingdom of God.

The Communion of Saints

      [It is well known that this clause of the Apostles’ Creed is of later date than the rest (see Pearson, note, vol. ii., p. 473.  Oxford Edit., 1833), and that it has been variously interpreted.  By Luther and the earlier Reformers it was taken to be a definition of what the “holy Catholic Church” is – viz., a society or congregation of saints.  Thus Conf. Augs.: “Item docent, quod una sancta ecclesia perpetuo mansura sit.  Est autem ecclesia congregatio sanctorum.”  The word κοινωνία will hardly bear this meaning; it means properly participation of some common benefit.  But if the emphasis is laid on the word “saints,” the clause may be understood as such a definition or description.  “What is the holy Catholic Church?  Saints, or a communion of saints who have fellowship in certain particulars with each other,” In this sense it forms the heading of this part of the volume.]

      “The visible Church of Christ is a congregation of faithful men in the which the pure Word of God is preached and the sacraments be duly ministered according to Christ’s ordinance in all those things that of necessity are requisite, to the same” (Art. xix.).  “Sacraments ordained of Christ be not only badges or tokens of Christian men’s profession, but rather they be certain sure witnesses and effectual signs of grace and God’s goodwill towards us, by the which He doth work invisibly in us, and doth not only quicken, but also strengthen and confirm our faith in Him.  There are two sacraments ordained of Christ our Lord in the Gospel, that is to say, Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.  Those five commonly called sacraments – that is to say, Confirmation, Penance, Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction – are not to be counted for sacraments of the Gospel. ... The sacraments were not ordained of Christ to be gazed upon or to be carried about, but that we should duly use them.  And in such only as worthily receive the same have they a wholesome effect or operation” (Art. xxv.).  “Although in the visible Church the evil be ever mingled with the good, and sometimes the evil have chief authority in the ministration of the Word and sacraments, yet forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by His permission and authority, we may use their ministry both in hearing the Word of God and in the receiving of the sacraments.  Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away by their wickedness” (Art. xxvi.).  “Baptism is not only a sign of profession and mark of difference whereby Christian men are discerned from others that be not christened, but it is also a sign of regeneration or new birth, whereby, as by an instrument, they that receive baptism rightly are grafted into the Church ; the promises of the forgiveness of sin and of our adoption to be the sons of God by the Holy Ghost are visibly signed and sealed; faith is confirmed, and grace increased by virtue of prayer to God.  The baptism of young children is in any wise to be retained in the Church, as most agreeable to the institution of Christ” (Art. xxvii.).  “The supper of the Lord is not only a sign of the love that Christians ought to have one to another, but rather it is a sacrament of our redemption by Christ’s death; inasmuch as to such as rightly, worthily, and with faith receive the same, the bread which we break is a partaking of the body of Christ, and likewise the cup is a partaking of the blood of Christ.  Transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the supper of the Lord cannot be proved by holy writ, and is repugnant to the plain words of Scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given rise to many superstitions.  The body of Christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner, and the means whereby the body of Christ is received and eaten in the supper is faith” (Art. xxviii.).  “The wicked and such as be void of a lively faith, although they do carnally and visibly press with their teeth the sacrament, yet in no wise are they partakers of Christ” (Art. xxix.).  “The cup of the Lord is not to be denied to the laity” (Art. xxx.).  “The sacrifice of masses, in the which it was commonly said that the priest did offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of sins or guilt, were blasphemous fables and dangerous deceits” (Art. xxxi.).  “The Bp. of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England.”  “It is lawful for Christian men, at the command of the magistrate, to serve in the wars” (Art. xxxvii.).  “Christian religion doth not prohibit but that a man may swear when the magistrate requireth” (Art. xxxix.).  “Docent quod una sancta ecclesia perpetuo mansura sit. Est autem ecclesia congregatio sanctorum, in qua evangelium recte docetur, et recte administrantur sacramenta. ... Quamquam ecclesia proprie sit congregatio sanctorum et vere credentium, tamen in hac vita multi hypocritae et mali admixti sunt” (Conf. Aug., vii., viii.).  “Ecclesia non est tantum societas externarum rerum et rituum, sicut aliae politiae, sed principaliter est societas fidei et Spiritus S. in cordibus” (Apol. Conf., c. iv. 5).  “Haec ecclesia sola dicitur corpus Christi quod Christus Spiritu suo renovat, sanctificat, et gubernat”‘ (Ibid.).  “Sic definit ecclesiam et articulus in symbolo, qui jubet nos credere quod sit sancta Catholica ecclesia.  Impii vero non sunt sancti” (Ibid.).  “Ecclesia non potest ullum aliud habere caput quam Christum.  Nam ut ecclesia est corpus spirituale, ita caput habeat sibi congruens spirituale utique opportet” (Conf. Helv., Expos. Simp., c. 17).  “Unde et ecclesia invisibilis appellari potest, non quod homines sint invisibiles ex quibus ecclesia colligitur, sed quod oculis nostris absconsa, Deo autem soli nota, judicium humanum saepe subterfugiat” (Ibid.).  “De baptismo docent quod sit necessarius saluti, quodque per baptismum offeratur gratia Dei” (Conf. Aug., ix.).  “Baptismus nihil est aliud quam verbum Dei cum mersione in aquam secundum ipsius institutionem et mandatum” (Art. Smal., v.).  “In baptismo signum est elementum aquae ablutioque illa visibilis quae fit per ministrum.  Res autem significata est regeneratio vel ablutio a peccatis” (Expos. Simp., xix.).  “De coena Domini docent quod corpus et sanguis Christi vere adsint et distribuantur vescentibus in coena Domini” (Conf. Aug., x.),  “In coena Domini signum est panis et vinum sumptum ex communi usu cibi et potus, res autem significata est ipsum traditum Domini corpus. et sanguis ejus effusus pro nobis, vel communio corporis et sanguinis Domini” (Expos. Simp., xix.).  “Vera et Christiana est excommunicatio quae manifestos et obstinatos peccatores non admittit ad sacramentum et cornmunionem ecclesiae donec emendentur et scelera vitent” (Art. Smal., ix.).

The Church

      That Christ came into the world not only to reveal certain truths, or to establish an unseen fellowship between Himself and the believer, but to found, in the words of Butler, “a visible church,” or rather visible churches, “to be the repository of the oracles of God; to hold up the light of revelation in aid to that of nature, and propagate it throughout all generations to the end of the world,” [Anal., P. ii. c. 1.] lies on the surface of Scripture.  Butler might have added, to satisfy the social instincts of human nature, and to promote mutual edification by the exercise of discipline, and of the various spiritual gifts of which the Holy Ghost is the Author.  No complete form of ecclesiastical organization can be traced to Christ Himself; but the foundations were laid by Him.  He appointed two visible ordinances, one to mark the admission of converts into the Christian society; the other their continuance therein; and by anticipation He committed to the society (that is, to each one) the powers of “binding or loosing” (whether by these terms we are to understand the promulgation of the Gospel, or framing and abrogating ecclesiastical regulations), with the power of discipline (Matt. 18:15–18).  He attached a special blessing to social prayer (Ibid., 19–20).  After His departure from the world, the visible church, in the persons of the Apostles and first Christians, came into actual existence.  They that received the message of salvation were baptized; “they continued steadfastly” under the Apostles’ teaching, in fellowship, in breaking of bread, and in prayer (Acts 2:41–42); and thenceforth it was the rule of the Divine administration to “add to the church the saved” (Ibid., 47).  Every accession to converts was to an already existing body, and through the agency of that body; and the Holy Ghost who united each believer to Christ united him at the same time to the community of those who had already been made temples of the Holy Ghost.

§ 76.  Definition

      The name which a Christian society usually bears in the New Testament is εκκλησία, which is the LXX translation of the Hebrew word קָהָל, “the congregation” of Israel, that is, of the whole elect nation, not of any portion thereof.  In Greek authors εκκλησία signifies a popular assembly convened by authority (Acts 19:39), as distinguished from the βούλη, or senate.  It is needless to say that in the New Testament it never means the building in which Christians assembled for worship.  The term was adopted partly as expressing the fact that Christians are the called – called out of a sinful world; and partly to distinguish the Church from the Jewish synagogue.  The latter term is occasionally used for the Church (Jas. 2:2), but it gradually fell into disuse.  Another name is founded on the transfer of the idea of the Jewish temple to a Christian application; Christians are individually spiritual stones in the new temple, and collectively the new temple itself in which God dwells (1 Pet. 2:4–6).  Hence the term κυριακον, or Lord’s house, with its derivatives, church, kirk, kirche, etc.  The nature and constitution of the Christian Church has now to be considered; and in the first place we have to ask, In what does its essential being consist, what is its true idea?  Or in other words, how are we to define it?

      The records of revealed religion, which alone are the sources of dogmatic theology, present us with two forms of ecclesiastical organization, intimately connected with each other, and yet distinct – the Mosaic and the Christian – the former standing to the latter in the relation of prophecy to fulfillment, but, as a religious institute, founded on a different principle.  What God has thus joined together we may not separate; but we may and must distinguish between them, if the specific character of either is to be ascertained.  What the Christian Church is in its idea cannot be understood without some remarks on its predecessor; on its mode of operation, its sanctions, its objects, and its results; what it naturally led to, and how it naturally passed into its fulfillment in Christ.  We may add that Romanism, in its various phases and stages, is nothing but the literal reintroduction of the law of Moses under the Gospel.

      Why more than four thousand years were permitted to elapse between the promise of a Saviour and its fulfillment must remain a difficulty; but one reason, we may surmise to have been, the necessity of mankind’s passing through a process of preparation for the reception of the Gospel.  The sacred history teaches that the corruption of man after the fall was speedy and universal; and it was consistent with the Divine wisdom to allow the evil to run its course until the effects were fully developed, as they were in the heathen world.  In the latter case the preparation was negative.  Enlightened heathens, at the coming of Christ, were ready for the Gospel, because every mythical system, and every school of philosophy, had proved its inability to curb the corrupt passions of human nature, or to meet its spiritual necessities.  But it is obvious that something more than this was needed, viz., a positive historical basis, especially in the locality in which the Saviour was to appear, directly preparing the way for His Advent, and securing a footing for the Gospel whenever it should be promulgated.  Such was the object of the Mosaic dispensation.  It may be considered under a twofold aspect: as a school of discipline, and as a system of prophetic symbolism.

      The law was a school of discipline.  It presupposed in the subject a lack of spiritual insight and self-determination which needed the guidance and constraint of an external rule.  Such, according to inspired authority, was the Jew, especially in the earlier portion of his history; though an heir he differed nothing from a servant, and was under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father (Gal. 4:2, 3).  Now a system of education works mainly from without inwards, and by means of discipline and habituation.  Innate capacities on which virtuous habits may be engrafted are all that the teacher expects to find at first; the habits themselves he proposes to form by rules which necessarily wear an arbitrary aspect, and obedience to which is enforced by temporal sanctions.  Such, according to the great philosopher of antiquity, is the object of lawgivers in framing their codes; they aim at educating the citizens by the force of habit. [Εθίζοντες ποιουσιν αγάθους  Arist., Eth. Nic. ii. i.]  The Jew was compelled to practice what was, at first, irksome, and the meaning of which he did not comprehend, until habit had wrought its effect, and he had learned to do a willing service.  But many generations had to elapse before this result was attained, before the pious Jew could exclaim, “Oh how I love Thy law I it is my meditation all the day” (Psa. 119:97).  For centuries the wayward pupil rebelled against the yoke of Divine ordinances, and to the last the carnal part of the nation misunderstood them.  Religion in such a stage was necessarily rather drastic than contemplative; the act had a value in itself irrespective of the motive that prompted it.  The undisciplined impulses of human nature were met and overcome by external authority; acting, indeed, not capriciously, but still from without, in the way of positive enactment and sanctions appealing to sense.  And it is evident that the more the enactments were multiplied, the less the pupil was left to his own discretion, the more efficacious the system would be for its appointed end.

      But the Mosaic law, especially the ceremonial, was also a system of prophetic symbolism.  Symbolism is the remedy dictated by nature for immaturity in the powers of reflection and abstraction; as young children are best instructed by pictorial representations.  The didactic element of the law was scanty in proportion as the symbolism was rich and varied.  And this symbolism had a prospective reference to the Christian dispensation; it was nothing less than the place where the Lord lay (Heb. 10).  The elect nation, elect not to eternal life, but to be that from which the Author of life should come, typified the New Jerusalem, or mystical body of Christ; the legal sacrifices pointed to the one all-sufficient atonement for sin; the Levitical priesthood foreshadowed the incommunicable priesthood of the glorified Redeemer.  But at the time of their institution this prospective reference was not revealed, and therefore it would not have been safe to leave the Jew at liberty either to curtail or to add to his ritual, still less to introduce changes into it.  He could not know what might be a true prophetical symbol, and what the reverse.  Therefore, as little scope as possible was allowed to human fantasy, and the worshipper found himself anticipated by a Divine law in all the essential parts of his religious service.  And this law was enforced by temporal sanctions, which are out of place where religion exists in its essential character, as a service of “spirit and of truth” (John 4:23).  Idolatry, properly a sin not a crime, was made a crime, an act of treason, against the Sovereign: in no other way, in the existing state of spiritual illumination, could it be effectually suppressed: the rights of conscience must have been, as with us, respected, and the punishment of the idolater transferred to a future state.  The dispensation presented a perfect fusion of church and state; the only one which has ever had Divine sanction.  It is only in an improper sense that it can be termed a church; for no church but the Jewish has been armed with sovereign power to secure at least external obedience to its ritual, and by penalties which properly belong to the state.  The Jew found himself, as regards his religious duties, hemmed in on every side by a law which, by its incessant and importunate demands, placed him under a yoke of bondage, which he confessed it was difficult to bear (Acts 15:10).

      A system of this kind, however necessary in the infancy of religion, was manifestly unfitted for it in its maturer stage; and, indeed, it tended, by a natural process, to its own dissolution.  In proportion as the discipline of the law succeeded in its object, it prepared the way for a more spiritual system.  The Jew, as he advanced in spiritual perspicacity, could not but perceive that the ordinances by which he was taught the elements of religion (στοιχεια, Gal. 4:9) could only have a provisional use.  By the application of the moral law to the conscience he gained ever deeper views of the nature of sin and of his own sinfulness; and this must have led to the conviction that the legal expiations were insufficient – that the blood of bulls and goats could never take away sin (Heb. 10:4).  He came to feel that a broken and contrite heart is better than sacrifice, and that a religion which consisted chiefly in a round of ritual observances could not be the ultimate object of the revelation of God.  Yet the ideas of expiation, atonement, remission of sin through blood, so constantly pressed on him, must have inspired an expectation of some more perfect sacrifice to supersede the legal appointments, and to effect what they could not effect.  At this juncture prophecy came in, and confirmed every anticipation of the longing heart.  It stamped with the Divine approval the dictate of an enlightened conscience, that moral duties are more acceptable than outward service; it did not hesitate to speak of the Levitical ritual itself, compared with such duties, in the language of depreciation. [Isa. 1, 66; Jer. 6:20; Amos 5:21.]  But further, it opened up the prospect of a better covenant, founded on better promises, of which the leading features should be, the plenary remission of sin through the vicarious sufferings of a Redeemer (Isa. 53); its expansion beyond the limits of Judaea (Isa. 59, 60); its spiritual nature (John 2:28); and its corresponding new worship (Mal. 1. 2).  Instead of the twilight of typical ordinances, the Sun of Righteousness Himself was to appear, and shed spiritual light upon the world.  “This,” God declared through His prophet, “is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel.  After those days I will put My law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be My people; and they shall no more teach every man his neighbour and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord; for they shall all know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them, saith the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:31–34).  And thus, through these various influences, it came to pass that at the coming of Christ there were many who were “waiting for the consolation of Israel,” and it only needed the joyful ευρήκαμεν of a Philip to transform the Israelite without guile into a Christian believer [Twesten, Dog., § 22.] (John 1:45).

      The progression was manifestly from a symbolical religion to one of spirit and truth; from a religion working from without inwards to one working from within outwards; from a coercive law to the liberty of a law of spirit and life.  When the fullness of the time was come the Saviour appeared, but was preceded by one who should prepare His way.  The preaching of the Baptist was no enforcement of the existing ceremonial law nor the introduction of a new one; but the recalling the attention of a people sunk in formalism to the lessons which their own prophets had inculcated – that religion is primarily a matter of the heart, and that mere natural descent from Abraham was of little value in God’s sight.  The entrance into the kingdom of heaven must be through repentance and a change of heart (Matt. 3:2).  When Christ commenced His ministry the Baptist’s type of teaching was not exchanged for another.  Christ was the end of the law, not merely as the fulfillment of its types, but as the Expositor of its inner meaning.  His first considerable discourse is throughout occupied in enforcing the moral law in its full spiritual import, as distinguished from human glosses and immoral formalism.  He chooses disciples (learners) to be instructed, not subjects to be ruled.  A ministry of the Word is inaugurated, to be afterwards a vehicle for the ministration for the Spirit.  The Christian church did not as yet exist, but so far as the Saviour laid the foundations of it, He proceeded on a method opposed to that of the Mosaic institute.  No ceremonial law can be traced to Christ Himself; still less a system intended to form habits by repetition, and working ex opere operato.  The two sacraments which He appointed were not, as regards the symbols, new ordinances, but adaptations of already existing ones. Lustration by water was a prominent feature of the ceremonial law, and familiar to the Jew [It is by no means certain, as is commonly assumed, that the baptism of proselytes was usual in our Lord’s time.  In the Old Testament no mention is made of any other ordinance for the reception of Gentiles into the covenant than circumcision, to which sacrifice was afterwards added.  The same may be said of the Apocrypha, of the writings of Philo and Josephus, and of the older Targumists.  The first allusion to proselyte baptizing appears to be that in the Gemara, babyl.  Jebamoth, 46, 2, the date of which is uncertain.  The practice appears first distinctly in the fourth century.  But the various lustrations of the law, and the figurative language of prophecy (Isa. 52:15, Ezek. 36:25) were sufficient to account for the question of the Pharisees to John, “Why baptizest thou, if thou be not that Christ, nor Elias, neither that prophet?” (John 1:25).  See Fairbairn, Herm. Man., p. 274; and Winer, Real W. B., Proselyten.]; so was the Passover, on which was engrafted the Lord’s Supper; and so was the synagogue, destined by Divine Providence to form the basis of the polity and worship of the visible church.  Above all, these ordinances were not appointed by Christ for His church, except on the presumption of a living faith in the recipients or celebrants.  Not to produce, or vivify, faith, but to manifest it, when already produced by the ministry of the Word, was the office of the sacraments.  They were, as the old writers say, a verbum visibile, declaring the same truths as the Word, but after a peculiar manner and with a more individual application.  Had Christ come as a lawgiver in the sense in which Moses was, He would, in instituting a visible church, have commenced by establishing a graduated hierarchy, liturgical formularies, and a prescribed ritual, apart from which the ordinances would have been invalid.  Such, indeed, in after-times, was the mode of proceeding ascribed to Him; but the New Testament knows nothing of it.  Believers are to be baptized in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost; baptized Christians are to eat the bread and drink the wine in remembrance of Christ’s death; this is all that is positively commanded : and the ordinances themselves were only invested with their full efficacy when the church was formally constituted by the descent of the Holy Ghost on the Day of Pentecost.

      This last-named event was, properly, the birthday of the Christian church.  There is much truth in the observation that Christianity came into the world as an idea, rather than as an institution,’ [Newman, Develop., p. 116.] if for the word “idea” we substitute the presence of Christ by His Spirit in the hearts of believers.  Christianity did come into the world much more as a spiritual influence than as a visible institution; and still more so than as a training institution, working, like the Mosaic law, from without inwards.  It came, not as a new ecclesiastical organization, having its essence in rites or polity; but as the full realization of the predicted relations between God and His people.  It appeared in the persons of the primitive 120 on the Day of Pentecost, as a company of men of whom nothing more is said in the way of description than that they were all filled with the Holy Ghost, and that they continued under the guidance and teaching of the Apostles (Acts 2:42).  There was the Church in its true idea, as distinguished from its subsequent developments in polity or ritual.  And what it was in the first moment of its existence will for ever determine its definition to the end of time.  It is, in its true being and essence, the temple of the Holy Ghost, founded and built up on the doctrine of the Apostles, transmitted to us in the New Testament.  Its progress was in accordance with this beginning; it followed the law of all societies which have their true being within; it developed itself from within outwards – not in the reverse direction.  When it became necessary to visibly organize; but not until then; the Church threw itself out, under Apostolic guidance, into such forms as were suitable to its nature and age.  These forms grew up gradually, and as need required; the want was always allowed to be felt before it was supplied.  Deacons were appointed to relieve the Apostles of secular duties, and Bishops (if, which is doubtful, Timothy and Titus may be considered as prototypes of the office), to preside in the absence of the Apostles.  Not because a covenanted virtue was, by Divine appointment, attached to any particular form of organization, but on common practical grounds of necessity, or of order, the work proceeded.  As long as the simpler arrangements sufficed, they were suffered to remain; when they proved insufficient further steps were taken.  Instead of passively receiving a superinduced stamp from without, the Christian society supplied its needs from within, and of itself; that is, the invisible Church, as Protestants call it, preceded the visible.  No doubt the arrangements proceeded under Apostolic sanction, or precedent; and therefore possessed a relative fixedness of form and continuity; but no Christian ceremonial law, taking the place of the old, is visible; no independent and intrinsic virtue, as if the true being of the Church consisted therein – still less, any virtue jure divino – belongs to the external framework. This has its appropriate place and sanctions, but they are of another kind.

      The result is, that when we come to define the Church – when the question relates to its essence, not to its accidents – we must adopt the old explanatory addition of the Article in the Creed, and speak of it as “the communion, or congregation, of saints” [“The Holy Catholic Church, Communio Sanctorum: this part” (the latter clause) “of the Art. in the creed hath a manifest relation to the former, in which we profess to believe in the Holy Catholic Church; which church is therefore holy, because those persons are such, or ought to be, who are within it; the church itself being nothing else but a collection of such persons.”  Pearson, Creed, A. ix.  Comp. his observations on the clause in note A.]; of saints not merely by profession, or external dedication (though this, of course, is included), but in reality and truth.  And now let us turn to the Romish doctrine on the subject.  It is simply the degeneration of Christianity, by a retrograde movement, into Judaism.  “If any one,” the Council of Trent declares, “shall say that Jesus Christ was given to man as a Redeemer to trust in, and not as a Legislator to obey, let him be anathema.” [Sess. vi., Can. xxi.]  At first sight there appears nothing remarkable in this – Christians, no doubt, are bound to obey Christ; but on closer examination we perceive why the word “Legislator” was used, and not, e.g., “Master.”  In fact, it was used of set purpose – to convey the notion that the Gospel is a ceremonial law like that of Moses, only freed from defects which unfitted the latter for a universal religion. It is the ‘ new law,’ [Sacramenta novae legis, Conc. Trid., Sess. vii.] an unhappy expression with which the errors of many centuries are connected.  The “new law” is, like the old, a system of coercive discipline;* with priests by ordination instead of priests by birth; with the sacrifice of the Mass instead of the legal sacrifices; with a corresponding ritual; with episcopacy jure divino; and a visible, infallible head of the Church, also jure divino.  That is, the essence of the Church is made to lie, not in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, but in the sacraments which work ex opere operato, [Ut aliquis dici possit absolute pars vera ecclesiae, de qua Scripturae loquuntur, non putamus ullam requiri internam virtutem, sed tantum externam potissimum fidei et sacramentorum communionem, quae sensu ipso percipitur.  Bellarm., De Eccl. Mil., iii., c. 2.] and an external succession, failing which the sacraments themselves are robbed, partially at least, of their efficacy.  The worship and polity of the Church became, not the expression of its inward life, but the instruments of forming that life, and forming it on the principle of the preparatory dispensation.  Thus Christians are once more brought under the yoke of the law, or, as Luther expressed it, delivered into Babylonish captivity.  And it is obvious that it is immaterial whether we stop short at an intermediate halting place (the via media), or go on to the full development of the theory in the Papacy.  Every definition of the Church which makes the indwelling of the Holy Ghost, in His quickening and sanctifying agency, a separable accident thereof, and places its true being in its ritual or visible organization, deviates so far from the sense of Scripture, and is inconsistent with the genuine doctrine of the Protestant Churches.

            [*“The church, as God’s vicar upon earth, subjugates the whole energy of man which struggles against the will of God.  By her inward discipline the will is once more enthroned supreme, and its energies united with the will of God.  Obedience passes by little and little from deliberation and conscious effort to a ready and almost unconscious volition.  We are brought under the discipline of childhood.  And since to a law, if it is not to remain a dead letter, there must be added a living authority to enforce its provisions, God has constituted an order” (the clergy) “which shall bear rule over His people, and shall bring them under the yoke of obedience to Himself.”  Manning (Archdeacon), “Unity of the Church,” pp. 230–251.  The writer was not then a Roman Catholic, but the passage is the more valuable, as showing the real tendency of the school to which he belonged.  So another writer, whose career was similar: “Catholic Christendom” (i.e., the Church) is a vast assemblage of human beings with willful intellects and wild passions, brought together into what may be called a large Reformatory or training school, for the melting, refining, and molding, as in some moral factory, the raw material of human nature, so excellent, so dangerous, so capable of divine purposes.”  Newman, Apol., 391.  As in the previous passage, the agent of this molding process is not, as Scripture asserts, the Holy Ghost, but the clerical institute, of which the Papal infallibility is the crown.  See pp. 389, etc.]

      It does not follow, as the Romanist would have it, [Möhler, Symbolik, § 48.] that inasmuch as Christ the Incarnate Son was given to the Church from without, the true being of the Church consists in what is visible in it.  It is true that the kingdom of God, so far as it was present in Christ, could not propagate itself amongst men save through the human nature of the Saviour – this is a self-evident truth; but what the Saviour was, or what He came to do, did not reveal itself to all who came into external contact with Him.  Multitudes saw and heard Him who never recognized that He was the Christ, the Son of the living God; and of that Apostle who is especially mentioned as having arrived at this knowledge it is declared by Christ Himself that the conviction was grounded, not upon what was visible in the Saviour, but upon a special revelation from above (Matt. 16:17).  Nor does the conclusion above mentioned follow, as the same author argues, from the fact that the ministry of man, first the Apostles, and then of their successors, was employed to found the Church.  No doubt this was the method employed; God does not, as a rule, implant religion in the heart by an invisible and immediate operation of grace: “How shall they believe in Him of Whom they have not heard, and how shall they hear without a preacher?” (Rom. 10:14).  But the Apostles were not to execute their mission until a certain spiritual change had passed over them; nor did they depart from Jerusalem until the event had occurred.  Christ was first fully formed in them by the descent of the Holy Ghost, and then, but not until then, did they set forth to preach.  And this relation of the inward gift to the outward commission established the rule for all succeeding ages: the visible Church, in its various manifestations, has ever proceeded from the invisible, not in the reverse order.  The Church may, and must always, be viewed under a twofold aspect: as the manifestation and as the instrument of Christ’s saving power; it is both the evidence of the Holy Spirit’s unseen operation, and the means whereby, from age to age, He gathers men into the visible enclosure, and thence into His mystical Body. [This is one way of putting the process.  But the more ideal process is the New Birth placing the man into personal relation with Christ, and therefore into relation both with the mystical body – the invisible Church – and also with the outward, visible Church. – Ed.]  But this proves nothing as to the precedence to be assigned to either aspect, any more than the fact that a man consists of body and soul decides which of the two is more properly the man.  To the full idea of humanity both are necessary; yet, while the body without the soul turns to corruption, the soul may exist, and perhaps be active, without the body.  The Church came into being on the Day of Pentecost, antecedently to the visible organization which it afterwards assumed; and, apart from the life within by which it was animated, the organization would not have advanced, or must have soon collapsed; as the newborn child develops his bodily organs by force of the principle of life within, so in the Church all healthy expansion and outward activity proceed from the animating Spirit from heaven.  And so, indeed, writes Maier himself, who thereby undermines his own theory: “It is not to be doubted that Christ maintains His Church in spiritual energy by means of those who live in the faith of Him, who are spiritually united to Him; that in these lives His truth, which otherwise would be forgotten, or degenerate into an empty form.  Yes; these, who are transformed into His image, are the true supporters of the visible Church, whereas mere professors would not for a day maintain it even in its outward forms.” [Symbolik, § 49.]  Nothing can be more true.  It is the members of Christ who are in Him as the living branches in the vine that are the true source of the visible activity of the Church, in public worship, in works of charity, in missionary effort; without these, the animating soul, the mechanism of polity and ritual would decay, and in time come to an end.  But what is this but an admission, even on the part of the Romanist, that the specific difference of the Church, that which distinguishes it from earthly communities, and especially from its predecessor the Mosaic institute – that, therefore, which constitutes its true definition stripped of accidental adjuncts – is, that it is a company of men filled with the Holy Ghost (congregatio sanctorum)?

§ 77.  Visible and Invisible Church

      In the foregoing observations the expression “visible Church” has been more than once used, and it may be proper to explain what is meant by it.  In the Gospels by Christ Himself, and in the Apostolic epistles, especially those of S. Paul, the Church is spoken of under a twofold point of view – as a local society of Christians or the aggregate of such societies, and as one body under one head, Christ.  Thus we read of a church in a single house (Rom. 16:5); of the churches of Ephesus, Rome, Philippi, etc.; of the churches of Asia (1 Cor. 16:19).  There is no reason why we should not extend this mode of speaking, though Scripture seems to furnish no instance of it, to the aggregation of Christian churches throughout the world; which, therefore, may be termed the visible Catholic Church.  It is however, not a strictly accurate term; for it is not one Church under one Head, but a collection of independent societies, that would be meant by it.  But we also read of a Church which is the Body of Christ, Christ bearing the same relation to it as the head does to the human body.  “We being many,” S. Paul says, “are one body in Christ” (Rom. 12:5); “By one Spirit we are all baptized into one body” (1 Cor. 12:13); “There is one body and one Spirit” (Ephes. 4:4).  As regards Christ, He is said to be “the Head over all things to the Church” (Ephes. 1:22) – a Head of vital influence, and not merely of authority (Ibid., 4:15–16, Col. 2:19); for enemies can be ruled by force, but this Church is in willing and loving subjection to Christ.  Christ loved the Church, and gave Himself for it that “He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word,” [If the sacrament of baptism is here alluded to, it follows that the church which S. Paul calls the bride of Christ is cleansed by baptism ; not that all who receive baptism belong to it.] so as to “present it to Himself” as His bride, inchoatively at present, perfectly hereafter, “a glorious Church, without spot or wrinkle, holy and without blemish” (Ephes. 5:26, 27).  This bride of Christ is spoken of in the Apocalypse under another figure, as the new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven (chap. 21:2).  The other Apostles use similar language.  By S. Peter Christians are said, from the analogy of the Jewish fabric, to form a spiritual temple, into which each Christian is built as a lively stone, and for the purpose of offering spiritual sacrifices; the Church here intended being collectively a holy priesthood (1 Pet. 2:5).  In the Epistle to the Hebrews these Jewish converts are described as having been incorporated into “the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, the general assembly and church of the firstborn, who are written in heaven” (Heb. 12:22).  The expressions of Christ Himself are anticipatory of this twofold aspect of the Church.  He directs that an offending brother, who cannot otherwise be reclaimed, shall be reported to “the church” – that is, the local Christian society to which he belongs; but to Peter He says that on the rock of the Apostle’s confession He will build a church, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail (Matt. 18:17, 16:18).  He speaks of His sheep, which are to form one fold under one Shepherd, but who are also to be, under another aspect, a scattered flock (John 10:16).  Of the prophecy of Caiaphas the beloved Apostle, who best knew the mind of his Master, says that it had a meaning unknown to the high priest himself – viz., that Jesus should by His death be the means of gathering together the children of God, dispersed throughout the world, both Jew and Gentile, into one body (εις έν).  In accordance with this view of the Church, the Apostles’ Creed teaches us to profess our faith in “the” – that is, the one – “Holy Catholic Church.”

      If we attempt to identify these two applications of the word “church”, we shall find difficulties in the way.  One attribute of the Church, as the body and bride of Christ, is that it is holy; and Scripture will not allow us to understand thereby a mere external dedication to God, as the vessels of the tabernacle were called holy.  The love of the bridegroom and the bride is reciprocal; the sheep are not merely called so, but they hear the Shepherd’s voice and follow Him, and He gives unto them eternal life (John 10:27, 28), which cannot be said of mere professors.  From the head descends a quickening influence to all the members, uniting them both to Him and to each other; among the spiritual sacrifices offered in the spiritual temple is that one, so difficult to the unrenewed heart, the sacrifice of self to the glory and will of God (Rom. 12:1).  But the aspect of the visible Church – of the Church as it appears – is anything but this.  While the general influence of Christianity may have banished from its precincts some gross vices which disfigured the best forms of heathenism; while it has introduced milder sentiments and practices in many departments of national and social life; vital religion, as proved by its fruits, is a rare thing in any local or national Church as such, to say nothing of the corruptions of doctrine which prevail in large portions of visible Christendom.  That can hardly be the bride of Christ which exhibits no love towards Him, nor that the body, or any part of it, which manifestly does not derive life from the Head by vital union.  It may be urged that this discrepancy is but an accidental circumstance – the misfortune of a particular age, and not a necessary feature.  There is no doubt that the visible Church may approximate more and more to its ideal, according to circumstances.  To be baptized was, in the apostolic age, as now in heathen lands, a surer test of inward renewal than in later times; it involved greater sacrifices, and furnished a greater presumption of sincerity.  Times of persecution, too, are, as regards the visible Church, sifting and purifying.  This explanation, however, is insufficient, because from our Lord’s own statements the discrepancy is normal and inevitable.  The visible Church, or any one such, is always, from the nature of the case, a mixed body – like the field sown with tares and wheat, and the net containing good and bad fishes (Matt. 13:24–27, 47–48).  And it is not in human power perfectly to separate the one from the other.  Discipline can be applied only to acts of overt delinquency, sins of the heart it cannot reach; and the latter, if habitual, as effectually exclude from saving communion with Christ as do sins of the life.  The hidden tares and wheat must both grow together until the harvest, when an unerring judgment will separate the one from the other.  The visible Church, therefore, never can be exactly coextensive with the body of Christ; or, in other words, the Church as it now appears is necessarily affected with imperfections which do not belong to the Church in its true idea.  When the body of Christ becomes visible under the form of local Churches, some by external adhesion are connected with it who do not belong to it inwardly.  Hence the error of sectarian movements, such as that of the Plymouth Brethren.  Offended with the presence of sin in the Church in which he was born and baptized, the separatist endeavours to form a perfectly pure Church, only with the result of reproducing a mixed body; on which a further schism takes place, and so on to the end of time.  It is a vain attempt, because it ignores the conditions under which the body of Christ is at present compelled to exist in locally organized societies.

      There is another reason, too, why the visible Church can never exactly correspond to the true Church – viz., that it furnishes only an approximation to the real position which each member of Christ’s body occupies in it.  The spiritual aristocracy of the Church, whether as regards personal holiness or special gifts, does not always occupy, as it ought to do, its true position.  After every effort to secure its due recognition mistakes will occur: many are last who ought to be first; and a visible Church will never be, as regards its orders and offices, quite as it would be were Christ Himself to distribute them.  Official position is not always a guarantee for sanctity or spiritual wisdom.  In this respect, too, there is a hidden life of the Church which, in spite of attempts to ensure its manifestation, remains more or less a hidden one.

      These remarks may be particularly illustrated by a reference to the attribute of unity which, as in the Creed, we assign to the body of Christ – not merely oneness, but organized unity. [By organic unity is meant a vital connection of the members of an organism with the head and with each other; like that which prevails in the human body.  It implies more than mere oneness in the sense of singularity, and more, too, than mere sameness.]  It is obvious that there can be only one Holy Catholic Church, out of which, ordinarily, there is no salvation, two universal Churches being a contradiction in terms.  This one Church is described in Scripture as being in organic unity with Christ, as the members of the human body are with the head, animated by one spirit, with a diversity of offices, but all governed and directed by a central source of influence.  But this is not the aspect which the normal state of the visible Church presents.  Unless we adopt the Romish theory of one supreme visible head, it is an aspect of division and independence.  To say nothing of subordinate forms of schism, the only unity of which local churches, as such, are susceptible, is sameness of polity, faith, and sacraments, or brotherly recognition; in no proper sense are they one society, one respublica which implies a central government; they are independent communities, formed on common principles, and with the same object, and only so far are one: they are one as the monarchies of Europe are one.  The following remarks of a writer who at an earlier period of his career was the chief advocate of the Anglican, or Cyprianic, doctrine of unity, but who subsequently became sensible of its incompleteness, except as a stepping stone to the Papacy, are deserving of attention: “It may possibly be suggested that this universality which the Fathers ascribe to the Catholic Church lay in its apostolical descent, or again in its episcopacy, and that it was one, not as being one kingdom, or civitas, at unity with itself, with one and the same intelligence in every part, one sympathy, one ruling principle, one organization, one communion, but because, though consisting of a number of independent communities, at variance (if so be) with each other even to a breach of communion, nevertheless, all these were possessed of a legitimate succession of clergy, or all governed by bishops, priests, and deacons.  But who will in seriousness maintain that relationship, or resemblance, makes two bodies one?  England and Prussia are both monarchical, are they, therefore, one kingdom?”  England and the United States are from one stock, can they, therefore, be called one state?  England and Ireland are peopled by different races, yet are they one kingdom still.  If unity lies in the apostolical succession, an act of schism is, from the nature of the case, impossible; for as no one can reverse his natural birth, so no Church can undo the fact that its clergy have come by lineal descent from the Apostles.  Either there is no such sin as schism, or unity does not lie in the episcopal form, or in episcopal ordination.  Nothing more true was ever written.  Now, Scripture does assign this organic unity under a single Head, with one sympathy, one ruling principle, to some Church , as appears from the passages already quoted.   The “body of Christ” is described exactly in such terms as the above, as no mere aggregation of independent communities, but as one organism under one central authority.  The Romish theory of the Papacy does really succeed in producing something like this; those who reject that theory, and stop short at brotherly intercommunion of independent units, do, and must always, find themselves confronted with the difficulty which this writer states as having lain in his way.

      The distinction, then, between the visible and the invisible Church is imposed upon us by facts, and is sanctioned in Scripture.  The Romanist does not deny that within the visible Communion, to which alone he gives the name of the Church, there is an inner circle of those who are in saving union with Christ, and who are the real strength, the very soul, of the visible Church; but he will not allow that in this inward life lies the true being of the Church, nor does he admit the propriety of applying the term “Church” to the aggregate of these true members of Christ.  According to the teaching of Rome, a man is a member of Christ who has received baptism and acknowledges the supremacy of the Pope, whatever he may be inwardly; and the Church itself is defined to be in its essence a visible body, as visible as the republic of Venice, or any other secular community.  But if, as has been attempted to prove (preceding §) what is invisible in the Church, viz., the work of the Holy Spirit, constitutes its true being, we argue from the facts of experience and the notices of Scripture that the Church in its visibility never, in the present life, perfectly corresponds to the Church in its truth.  That is, that the distinction between the Church visible and the Church invisible is a legitimate one, and deserving of the prominent place which it holds in all the Protestant Confessions.  In fact, next to the doctrine of justification by faith, it is one of the leading points of controversy between us and Rome.  Our great divines of the Elizabethan age, and even later, were well aware of this (see the passage cited in the next section from Jeremy Taylor).  Instar omnium, let Hooker be heard: “That Church of Christ, which we properly term His body mystical, can be but one; neither can that one be sensibly discerned by any man, inasmuch as the parts thereof are some in heaven already with Christ, and the rest that are on earth (albeit, their natural persons be visible) we do not discern under this property whereby they are truly and infallibly of that body.  Only our minds by intellectual conceit are able to apprehend that such a real body there is; a body collective, because it containeth a huge multitude; a body mystical, because the mystery of their conjunction is removed altogether from sense.  Whatsoever we read in Scripture concerning the endless love and the saving mercy which God showeth towards His Church, the only proper subject thereof is this Church.  Concerning this flock it is that our Lord and Saviour hath promised, ‘I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish’ (John 10:28).  They who are of this society have such marks and notes of distinction from all others as are not object unto our sense; only unto God, who seeth their hearts and understandeth all their secret cogitations, unto Him they are clear and manifest.”  And he adds, not without reason, “For lack of diligent observing the difference between the Church of God mystical and visible, the oversights are neither few nor light that have been committed” (Eccles. Pol., B. iii. 2, 9).

§ 78.  Continuation

      Since the Protestant does not (as is sometimes alleged) make two Churches, or even a Church within a Church, it is necessary to point out how the invisible Church is connected with the visible.  The persons who compose it are, of course, visible.  It is not a Platonic republic, or a company of pure spirits; it is not an idea, in the sense of having no actual existence.  But it is invisible, to use the words of Bishop Jeremy Taylor, “in respect of that quality and excellence by which Christians are constituted Christ’s members, and distinguished from mere professors and outsides of Christians.  All that really and heartily serve Christ in abdito do also profess to do so; the invisible Church ordinarily and regularly is part of the visible, but yet that part only which is the true one; and the rest but by denomination of law, and, in common speaking, are the Church – not in mystical union, not in proper relation to Christ.  They are not the house of God, not the temple of the Holy Ghost, not the members of Christ; and no man can deny this.  Hypocrites are not Christ’s servants, and therefore are not Christ’s members, and therefore no part of the Church, but imperfectly and equivocally, as a dead man is a man; all which is summed up in those words of S. Austin, saying, ‘that the body of Christ is not bipartitum; it is not a double body.  Non enim revera Domini corpus est quod cum illo non exit in aeternum; all that are Christ’s body shall reign with Him for ever.’”  Nor, again, is it accurate to speak of two Churches, or, like some of our own divines, [“For because this visible church doth enfold the other, as one mass doth contain the good one and the base alloy,” etc. Barrow, “Unity of the Church.”] of one society within another.  It is one and the same Church, but considered from different points of view, according as we fix our attention on its external notes and its visible condition in this world, or on its true essential being.  Thus Field “On the Church,” chap. x: “Hence it cometh to pass that we say there is a visible and invisible Church; not meaning to make two distinct Churches, as our adversaries falsely and maliciously charge us, though the form of words may seem to insinuate some such thing; but to distinguish the divers considerations of the same Church; which, though it be visible in respect of the profession of supernatural verities revealed in Christ, use of Holy Sacraments, order of ministry, and due obedience yielded thereto, and they discernible that do communicate therein; yet in respect of those most precious effects and happy benefits of saving grace, wherein only the elect do communicate, it is invisible; and they that in so happy and gracious and desirable things have communion among themselves, are not discernible from others to whom this fellowship is denied, but are known only to God.  That Nathanael was an Israelite all men knew; that he was a true Israelite, in whom was no guile, Christ only knew.”  What, then, is the bond of connection between the two?  The means of grace; that is, the preaching of the Word and the administration of the Sacraments; which are the instruments whereby members of the visible Church are transferred into the invisible; [But see note above: “This is one way of putting the process.  But the more ideal process is the New Birth placing the man into personal relation with Christ, and therefore into relation both with the mystical body – the invisible Church – and also with the outward, visible Church. – Ed.”] so that we must never go beyond the visible pale in search of the true Church.  Extra vocatorum coetum non sunt quaerendi electi.  The invisible Church is neither to be sought nor found except in local Christian societies; it is not, indeed, coextensive with those societies, but it cannot at present manifest itself except through them, and in the imperfect form of which they admit.  That is to say, the true Church cannot at present manifest itself in its corporate capacity, as one body under one Head; but only under the form of an aggregate of visible Churches.  Of this aggregate, or of any portion of it, Christ is not the Head directly, not a Head of vital influence, but only indirectly, in so far as the Christian faith is professed by these Churches.  Of the Church of England, for example, as a local Church, ecclesiastically the Archbishop of Canterbury, politically the King, is the head.  This imperfection, however, belongs to the invisible Church only during its earthly pilgrimage; the time is coming – that of “the manifestation of the sons of God” (Rom. 8:9) – when it will appear in its proper unity, purged from the heterogeneous elements which here cleave to it.  The Church militant will then become of one quality with the Church triumphant, which latter even now contains no admixture of evil; and together they will form the full body of Christ.  The Romish conception, and every kindred one, of the Church militant as a body containing good and bad, united merely by the external bonds of polity and Sacraments, fails to explain how the Church triumphant can eventually coalesce into one body with it; for this conception is obviously consistent with the supposition that not a single member of the Church militant may be in saving union with Christ.  Two bodies so essentially different in quality cannot form one Church.  Hence we may perceive the true meaning of the notes of the Church in Art. xix.  They do not belong to that Church which is the mystical body of Christ, but to visible Churches.  “The” (or rather “a”, for there is no one visible Church on earth) “visible Church is a congregation of faithful men in which the pure Word of God is preached and the Sacraments be duly administered.”  The word “faithful” is here used for professing the Christian faith; and for a visible Church to be a true one it is enough that in it the pure Word is preached and the Sacraments are administered “according to Christ’s ordinance”; i.e., in all essential points.  That local Christian societies are here meant is plain from the mention of the “Churches of Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch” in the latter part of the Article.  It is not said that any of these is the one Holy Catholic Church.  What is laid down is that if any professing Christian society has within itself the pure preaching of the Word and the due administration of the Sacraments, it has a right, as against the pretensions of Rome, to the designation of a true branch of Christ’s visible Church.  But further, we may confidently assume that in every local society a portion of the invisible Church will be found, since the preaching of the Word and the Sacraments are the appointed means of gathering it in.  The connection, therefore, between the Church visible and the Church invisible is a necessary one; the former administers the means of grace, the latter is the result of their saving operation.  The two are indissolubly united, but they do not cover the same ground.  It is on account of this connection that the attributes of the body of Christ, which really belong only to it, are transferred presumptively to a visible Church collectively; as when S. Paul addresses the Ephesian Church as “saints,” “faithful brethren,” chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world,” etc.  He did not, as is sometimes contended, use these expressions in a lower, but in their full and proper sense.  He describes the whole Church according to its idea, which idea is to be found only in the Church considered as invisible.  It must not be supposed that the Apostle was ignorant of the mixed character of every visible Church; but since it was not given him to determine who were and who were not real Christians, he was compelled to assume that all were so.  On no other ground could he proceed, as he does, to urge motives, reasonings, and exhortations, which his correspondents could not be conceived either to understand or admit unless they were led by the Spirit of God.  Nor does it affect this conclusion that he censures various members of the Church for errors of doctrine or inconsistencies of practice: for it only follows from this that, in his view, they were not perfect Christians, but babes in Christ; and babes still are living beings.  The Corinthians, with all their deficiencies, were presumed to be spiritually quickened; otherwise the Apostle’s admonitions would have been unintelligible to them.  Even the incestuous person is supposed to have fallen from grace, as many saints have done; and to be restored as they have been.  It may be remarked that the question is not about the indefectibility of grace, but of grace existing at the time.  The introduction of the Calvinistic controversy is irrelevant to the point here at issue.  It may be remarked, too, that liturgical formularies are, and must be, constructed on the same principle; that is, on the presumption that those who are to join in them are real Christians.  We cannot frame confessions of sin, prayers for pardon or spiritual blessings, and hymns of praise, avowedly for mere external professors.  The forms must be made to express sentiments and desires which none but the spiritually regenerate do or can feel.  It is not forgotten that there may be tares among the wheat; but the necessity of the case compels us to take no account of the tares, and to treat them as nonexistent.  It is not the tares, but the wheat, who are supposed to he worshippers.  We deal with the congregation, not as it may be in fact, but according to the idea – according to its profession; which profession is to be an assemblage of real Christians, in various stages, it may be, of Christian proficiency.  In like manner the visible Church is described in terms which really belong to the invisible; for if we suppose the imperfections removed which prevent the full manifestation of the latter in its essential sanctity and its corporate unity, as they will be one day, the distinction disappears, and the visible and invisible Church become coextensive and identical – the one body and bride of Christ.

§ 79.  Continuation

      It is a common mode of speaking, and sanctioned by Scripture, to call Christ the Head of His mystical Body; but, however He may stand in that relation to the Church triumphant, that part of the Church which is in paradise, in strict accuracy He, as the Incarnate Son, is not the Head of the Church militant on earth.  For He is no longer upon earth Himself, nor will be until He returns in His proper person; and in the meantime He has delegated the active administration of the Church militant to His divine Vicar, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity (John 14:16).  It is, therefore, the Holy Ghost who is the active and operative Head of the Church upon earth; though, by reason of the unity of Persons, where the Holy Ghost is Christ is: whence these terms are used interchangeably in Scripture for the Divine indwelling presence.  Formally, however, the Head of the Church militant is a Spirit, and is invisible; and to an invisible head an invisible body (invisible in the senses explained, corresponds.

      It is only the Protestant who can really make the Church an article of faith.  We believe in the one Holy Catholic Church because we cannot see it – see it in its true glory, its undivided unity, its sanctity, its perpetuity founded on Christ’s promise.  The Church of Romanism is an object of sight, and has no proper place in the Creed.  According to it, the one Holy Catholic Church is an earthly polity, as conspicuous, as mixed, as destitute (in its idea) of living, sanctifying faith, as the kingdom of England is.  Thus it is robbed of all that gives it value in a dogmatical point of view.  Such is the aspect of the Body of Christ which the Romish Catechism presents us with. [Bonos igitur et improbos ecclesia complectitur.  Haec autem ecclesia nota est, urbique supra montem sitae comparata, quae undique conspicitur.  Nam cum illi ab omnibus parendum sit, cognoscatur necesse est.  Ecclesia est una; rector visibilis is est qui Romanam Cathedram Petri legitimus successor tenet. ... Appellatur sancta quod Deo consecrata dedicataque sit, ... Apostolica, Spiritus enim S. qui ecclesiae praesidet eam non per aliud genus ministrorum quam per Apostolicum gubernat.  Cat. Trid., De Symb., A ix.]  What is it that we believe in respecting the Church?  That, in spite of its apparent divisions, its apparent imperfections, its scandals, its errors, as it meets the eye under its present manifestation in the shape of particular visible Churches, it is still there in its essential being; invisible to the eye of man in its corporate unity, but known to God; the holy seed, hidden but indestructible; the true source of all fruitfulness and progress in the visible Church; the Church against which the gates of hell shall never prevail.  In spite of sense, we believe all this; and so, with other spiritual verities which belong not to sight but to faith, it forms an article of the Creed.

      It may still be thought an improper use of the word “church” to employ it in this sense, since a church, it is urged, [Non dici potest societas nisi in externis et visibilibus signis consistat; nam non est societas nisi se agnoscant ii qui dicuntur socii; non autem se possunt agnoscere nisi societatis vincula sint externa et visibilia.  Bellarm., De Eccl. Mil., L. iii., c. 12.  The Protestant may admit this, and yet hold that there are other vincula besides the sacraments and the Papal hierarchy, and, generally, besides the external organization of a church.] must consist not only of visible persons, but of some bonds of union, and modes of expressing that union, among its members; without which it becomes a mere union of opinion or sentiment, lacking local habitation or name.  A Protestant theologian of reputation, Rothe, sides on this point with Bellarmine, and, admitting that the inward communion of saints is something real, asks, How can it be called a church, to the conception of which a visible manifestation is essential?  The Reformers, he observes, found themselves in a difficulty; they held fast to the article of the Creed, the Holy Catholic Church, but could discover nothing, especially after the breaking up of the Romish Communion, in the visible state of Christendom corresponding to it; they were compelled, therefore, to transfer the unity of the Church, with other attributes, to an invisible body, which is a contradiction in terms. [Rothe, Anfänge der christlichen Kirche, § 14.]  It is unnecessary to ask how far the learned author’s theory that the state is the form in which the Church must eventually lose its distinctive character may have influenced him in his opposition to a fundamental tenet of Protestantism; but the objections themselves do not seem of much weight. In the first place, the attribute even of corporate visibility is not absolutely denied to the invisible Church; it is only postponed.  What is affirmed is that in its present imperfect state, in which neither the aggregate of visible churches nor any one visible church (did such exist) can be a perfect manifestation of it, its substantial and most real unity cannot be an object of sense; an imperfection, however, which will in due time be supplied by the “manifestation of the sons of God” under a visible head, Christ.  But, further, it is a narrow and superficial view of the “communion of saints” to suppose that it can only be manifested by joint use of sacraments, or joint submission to ecclesiastical authority.  Far deeper, far more real, are the spiritual ligatures which even now knit the body of Christ into a whole: one faith by which all its members depend on Christ; one Holy Spirit by Whom they are all quickened and sanctified; one hope which they all entertain; one principle of love by which all are animated.  The members of the body may be scattered here and there, in the various Churches which make up visible Christendom; but the unity of the Spirit survives local separation, and wherever two or three real Christians are gathered together with Christ by His Spirit in the midst, whether to hear the Word, or to engage in prayer, or to join in the anthem of praise, or to form plans for the evangelization of the world, they know that all other real Christians are one with them – even those whom they have never seen or can see in the flesh.  Compared with this spiritual communion, what would be e.g., the spread of episcopacy or of a liturgical ritual throughout the world?  The chaff to the wheat.  Such external bonds of union would, after all, possess value only as a manifestation of the unseen unity of the Spirit; apart from it they would be a forced, artificial product, without power of growth and adaptation to circumstances.  We may ask, too, how could the departed saints have fellowship with us if these external bonds of union are the only essential ones, since they are confessedly but provisional and temporary, and do not pass into the world of light and love beyond the grave?  Certainly some mode of manifesting its existence is essential to the Church invisible; but the demand is abundantly satisfied by the fruits of the Spirit, active and contemplative, which make Christians the salt both of the visible Church and the world, the instruments of arresting decay in the mass of professors and of reviving spiritual life where, through adverse influences, it has lost its vigour.

§ 80.  The Christian Ministry

      The Confession of Augsburg thus expresses itself on this subject: “That we may attain to saving faith, the ministry of the Word and the Sacraments was instituted.  For through the Word and the Sacraments as instruments, the Holy Spirit, the Author of faith is given.”  “They” (i.e., the Protestants) “condemn the Anabaptists, whose opinion it is that the Holy Spirit is given to men apart from the external Word.” [Conf. Aug., Art. 5.]  And so the first Helvetic Confession (or Expos. Simp.): “God has always employed ministers to establish and govern His Church.  He employs them now, and will do so as long as there is a Church upon earth.  The origin, therefore, institution, and office of Christian ministers are from God Himself.  God, indeed, could by an immediate exercise of His power gather a Church out of mankind; but He chooses rather to deal with men through the ministry of men.” [Expos. Simp., c. 18.]  Nor do the Romish formularies, in the abstract, speak otherwise. [Conc. Trid., Sess. xxiii., c. 1.]  All branches of the Christian Church then, agree in holding that the Christian ministry, whatever different notions may be entertained of its nature and constitution, is of Divine institution.  This, however, is not sufficiently to the point.  In a certain sense, all the natural relations of superior and inferior by which society is held together are of Divine origin; as, for example, those of parents and children, governors and subjects.  “The powers that be are ordained of God” (Rom. 8:1).  But it is not thus that we speak of the Christian ministry as of Divine appointment.  It is a part of the special economy of grace – one of the supernatural provisions of the religion of redemption.  It is the gift of Christ to the Church; and our present inquiry is, how far and in what sense it can be traced to the appointment of Christ.  Everything in Christianity, really jure divino, must, directly or indirectly, be derived from this source.

      On examining the New Testament we find that Christ appointed the ministry, in its outward form, no further than that He appointed Apostles for various functions and with special qualifications.  He chose the twelve to be His constant associates, in order to receive at first hand the impress of that personality which stands alone in history, and which they have transmitted to us in the gospels; to be the Chosen witnesses of His resurrection; to receive from His lips, after that event, such instruction in “things pertaining to the kingdom of God,” its nature and ordinances, as they were able to receive (Acts 1:3); to be present at His ascension; and after His departure to exercise supreme authority in the Church when it should formally come into existence.  Their properly ministerial function dates from an early period, but it was also the last charge committed to them by their Master.  They were to go forth and preach the Gospel to every creature, to the Jew first, and then to the Gentile.  The Sacrament of Christ’s body and blood had already been instituted in their persons, and now they were commanded to admit disciples of all nations into the visible Church by baptism.  Not merely a missionary, but a pastoral charge was laid upon them; for we cannot suppose that the command to Peter to feed the sheep and the lambs of Christ’s flock (John 21:15, 16) was given to him in a personal capacity, and not rather as a representative of the Apostolic college. [The passage (John 20:21–23), usually understood to refer to the Apostles alone, has not been quoted in this connection, because the evidence is not clear that it does refer to them alone.  In Luke 24:36, we have evidently another account of the same transaction.  On the evening of the day on which Christ rose, it is said by that Evangelist that the two disciples whom He accompanied to Emmaus returned to Jerusalem, and reported what had occurred to “the eleven and them that were with them” (v. 33); that is, to the whole body of believers then present.  To this body, then, the commission recorded in John 20:21–23 was addressed.  The Church is sent as Christ Himself was sent, and to the Church it belongs to remit and retain sins (Comp. Matt. 18:18).  It is thus that Augustine correctly understood the passage; viz., as applying not to the Apostles only but to the whole Church.  “Deus habitat in templo suo, hoc est in sanctis suis fidelibus, in ecclesia sua: per eos dimittit peccata qui viva templa sunt.”  Serm. xcix. 9.  “Ergo si ecclesiae personam gerebant (Apostoli), et si hoc dictum est tanquam ipsi ecclesiae diceretur, pax ecclesiae dimittit peccata.”  De Bapt. Cont. Don., hi. 18.]  The Apostles, may, in fact, be regarded under three aspects.  On some occasions they represent the whole body of believers, as at the institution of the Lord’s Supper.  After the departure of Judas the Apostles were “clean through the word” that Christ had spoken unto them (John 15:3) – fit representatives of the blessed company of all faithful people to the end of time.  To them, in this capacity, our Lord gave the symbols of His body broken and His blood shed, and in them, to His Church, until He should come again.  Here their official character is merged in their Christian.  Again, they were to be the special instruments of the Holy Spirit in founding and building up the Church; the ultimate authority in matters of faith and practice; for the discharge of which office they received, as no Christians have since received, the gift of inspiration.  And, lastly, they were, as has been observed, ministers of Christ – prototypes, in their offices of preaching and pastoral work, of the ordinary Christian ministry, and as such a distinct order in the Church.  From this it will be seen in what sense they have successors.  As inspired teachers and rulers of the Church they can have no successors.  We are built upon “the foundation of the Prophets and Apostles” (Ephes. 2:20); but a foundation does not repeat itself.  We may have ten thousand instructors in the faith, but we have not, and cannot have, many fathers (1 Cor. 4:15).  Nor is there any necessity for such a personal succession.  For though the men were removed one after another, their place was taken, under a superintending Providence, by their writings, in which, though dead, they yet speak.  The New Testament Scriptures are the only real Apostolate which the Church now possesses; and, we may add, the only one which is suitable to the spiritual constitution of the Church, as the temple of the Holy Ghost.  In every Christian society which is in a healthy state Matthew, John, Paul, Peter, still decide points of doctrine, order its affairs, and preside in its councils with undisputed authority.  As representatives of the mystical body of Christ, the Apostles have successors only in the sense that the true Church never can fail nor the gates of Hades prevail against it.  But, as ministers of Christ, they are the predecessors of all Christian ministers; their office stripped of its personal prerogatives, propagates itself; the functions of preaching and teaching never can become obsolete.  Their example, especially that of S. Paul, is that to which Christian ministers must evermore endeavour to conform.  In this sense it is true that no ministry deserves the name of Christian which is not Apostolical or derived from the Apostles.

      What notion we are to form of this derivation from the Apostles is a matter of primary moment.  There are but two theories on this point, substantially distinct.  We may suppose either that the sacred office is constituted from without, and descends in a certain line, irrespectively of moral or spiritual qualifications; or that it springs from within, and descends, it may be, in an ascertainable line of succession, but not without regard to the fitness of the possessor.  The former is the mode peculiar to the Law of Moses; the latter belongs to the Gospel.  The Levitical priesthood was instituted ab extra – that is, a certain family was arbitrarily chosen to discharge the office – and the priesthood descended from father to son by natural birth, liable, no doubt, to forfeiture for misconduct as in his case, but otherwise independent of personal qualifications.  This was quite in harmony with a system, typical in structure, and intended to operate on the subject from without inwards.  Natural birth, the holy garments, anointing with oil, and typical sacrifices, consecrated the priest of the old covenant (Exod. 28, 29).  And this is the theory of Rome.  Faithful to its fundamental principle of transmuting the Gospel into the law, it approximates in this point more closely to the legal institute.  There is the same idea of a purely external succession with inherited powers, for the absence of which no fullness of natural or spiritual endowment can compensate; only, instead of priests by natural, we have priests by spiritual descent; the existing body of Bishops having the power, in and by the Sacrament of Orders, of spiritually generating pastors for the Church.  If we ask, what is the gift transmitted? the answer is, the sacramental grace of orders; that is, not increase of sanctifying grace, not grace to use natural or acquired endowments aright, but a mystical grace of priesthood for the valid performance of holy functions; which grace is quite separable from spiritual renovation.  And as the priests of the law were always priests, no one having it in his power to reverse his natural birth, so in order to confer the same permanency of office on the priests of the new law, the doctrine of the “impressed character,” or spiritual stamp, was invented; which, conferred at ordination, for ever distinguishes him who receives it from his brethren in Christ.

      The point in debate is not concerning an Apostolic succession of doctrine, which, as our article declares, is the test of the legitimacy of a visible Church.  “The pure Word of God preached” in any Christian society, whatever may be its history or its constitution, connects that society with the Apostolic Church.  That is to say, the claim of that society to be a true portion of the visible Church depends not on episcopal succession, but on the correspondence of its professed doctrine with that of the Apostles, as found in Holy Scripture.  Nor is it the question whether the ministerial commission is to descend from the existing body of ministers or to be derived from the popular voice.  Although the consent of the general body was always required to the appointment of ministers, we find no trace in Scripture of the rule that the delegated authority to preach or to rule proceeded from it.  The Apostles themselves received their commission from Christ, and from no lower authority.  When it became necessary to appoint deacons the Church was directed to select qualified persons, but the Apostles formally set them apart to the new office by the imposition of hands (Acts 6:6).  When a further addition was made to the ministry the Apostles are said to have “ordained elders in every church” (Acts 14:23); not, we may be sure, without the consent of each church, however expressed, but still reserving to themselves the formal act of investment.  In the Apostolic epistles to churches we find no allusion to what, had it belonged to them, would surely have been one of the most important duties ; viz., the appointment or removal of their pastors.  In the pastoral epistles it is to existing ministers – Timothy and Titus, Apostolic delegates – to whom directions on this point are given.  But if so, the Apostles are the first link in the chain, and there is no reason why a succession, as regards the external commission, should not proceed from age to age, the existing body of ministers handing down the official authority to their successors, and these latter in turn to theirs.  It is obvious that an important counterpoise would thus exist to popular influence, sure to make itself unduly felt wherever the minister is looked upon as a creature of the congregation.  It is one of the many defects of the Independent, or Congregational, regimen that, in the point before us, it is not in harmony with Scripture precedent.  The erroneous notion that a single congregation under its pastor, and that only, is a Church in the Scriptural sense of the word, not only reduces the Christian body in any locality to a collection of atoms, lacking in higher forms of unity, but excludes the idea of a ministerial devolution of office.  On the removal of a pastor the congregation proceeds to elect a successor; but there is no recognized body of ministers to transmit the commission.  An attempt is sometimes made to remedy the defect by inviting neighbouring pastors to assist in the setting apart of the new minister; but this is only regarded as an act of brotherly recognition.  The qualifications of the candidate are not formally authenticated by any official college, and his call proceeds not from above, but from below.

      It is with the inner constitution and origin of the ministry that we are at present concerned; and as against the Romish doctrine of a transmission of certain gifts and powers, mystical but not moral, with its indelible character (this too mystical, not moral), we gather from the New Testament that the Christian ministry is primarily a gift from above, not tied to any official act, but proceeding directly from the Holy Ghost, and only secondarily an office.  It is founded on the spiritual priesthood of all Christians, as that principle was recovered and enunciated at the Reformation.  Each Christian, and the whole Church, is a temple of the Holy Ghost (1 Cor. 6:19, 2 Cor. 6:16); each Christian is empowered and exhorted to exercise priestly functions, to offer up spiritual sacrifices of praise and thanksgiving, and of the willing devotion of the heart.  Invested with this privilege, he needs no earthly priesthood to intervene between himself and God; through the one incommunicable priesthood of the Redeemer he draws near to the throne of grace, in the full assurance of faith.  If it be suggested that the Jewish people was also called a kingdom of priests, and yet had earthly mediators, we reply that this dignity was indeed promised to the Jews, but on a condition, which condition never was or could be fulfilled by the Jew as such.  “If ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then shall ye be unto Me a kingdom of priests and an holy nation” (Exod. 19:5, 6).  The command stood over against the Jewish people, but it was never obeyed; and this because the law was not written on their heart.  The privilege was conditional, and failed through the weakness of the flesh; and so they never collectively became a kingdom of priests.  And the Divine prescience had arranged for this defect, by providing from the first an earthly priesthood to mediate between a sinful nation and a holy God.  The Law issued requirements which unaided human nature could never satisfy, and therefore it only convinced of sin.  The Levitical institute was a standing memorial that the ideal set before the typical Church could not be reached under that dispensation, and by it there was “a remembrance of sins” daily and yearly (Heb. 10:3), sins not yet taken away.  But the promise of the Gospel is that the law shall be written on the hearts of believers – they shall be all taught of God; and the true Church, the mystical body of Christ, is really a holy priesthood, though not as yet perfect.  Hence all priestly, all ministerial functions, reduced to their essence, belong to the whole Church, and to each member thereof.  In the last resort the Christian ministry is constituted in the very being of the Church, and is no mere appendage ab extra.

      Yet not every Christian is called to the exercise of special ministerial functions.  For on the basis of the universal priesthood there was vouchsafed to the Church, as an essential feature of the New Dispensation, a vast variety of particular spiritual gifts, all manifestations of the same Spirit, and all intended for edification.  “As the human body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body, so also is Christ” (Christ and His Church).  “To one is given by the Spirit the word of wisdom; to another, the word of knowledge, by the same Spirit; to another, faith; to another, the gifts of healing; to another, the working of miracles; to another, prophecy; to another, discerning of spirits; to another, divers kinds of tongues; to another, the interpretation of tongues.  But all these worketh one and the self-same Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will” (1 Cor. 12:8–11).  Some confusion of thought has arisen from supposing that S. Paul here intended to enumerate different orders of the ministry, [“To make us understand that we must not confound the functions in the Church with the gifts of the Spirit, much less mistake the one for the other, let us number the gifts of the Spirit that are noted in this one chapter (1 Cor. 12), and see whether the public functions of the Church can in any way be proportioned unto them.  Here are nine gifts of the Holy Ghost mentioned; and I trust there were not so many distinct offices in the Church.  He (St. Paul) speaketh indeed (Rom. 12) of divers gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit; of divers offices he speaketh not.”  Bilson., Perpet. Gov., c. x.  “I beseech them, therefore, which have hitherto troubled the Church with questions about degrees and offices of ecclesiastical calling, because they principally ground themselves upon two places (1 Cor. 12, Ephes. 4), that, all partiality being laid aside, they would sincerely weigh and examine whether they have not misinterpreted both places; and all by surmising incompatible effects when nothing is meant but sundry graces, gifts, and abilities, which Christ bestowed.”  Hooker, E. P., v, c. 78.] but no permanent orders (the Apostolate was not such), except presbyters and deacons, appear in the New Testament.  What the Apostle is speaking of is not offices, but gifts, as appears from the fact that several of the functions named might be united in one person.  Thus an Apostle might be an evangelist “and a teacher”; and so might a deacon, as appears from the instance of Philip (Acts 8); a “prophet” might be a “pastor,” and a “pastor” a “prophet,” and both might be “helpers” and “governors”.  What we learn from these and similar passages is, that the ministry, as it comes directly from Christ, is a gift rather than an office; and that it is the Holy Ghost who, in the last resort, gives overseers to the Church.  The natural ministry – that is, persons gifted but not yet commissioned – exists before the formal; the gift precedes the office; the office is supposed to be conferred on those who possess the inward qualification; and this latter comes from the Holy Spirit, Who refuses to be tied in His operations, and distributes to every man severally as He wills.  That these miraculous gifts have long ceased is true; they were bestowed for a temporary purpose, and, having served it, gradually disappeared.  The transition to the normal state is visible in S. Paul’s pastoral epistles. In place of what we see in 1 Cor. 14, when one member had “a psalm,” another “a tongue,” a third “a revelation,” a fourth “an interpretation,” a fifth “a doctrine”; of none of which gifts does the Apostle discourage the exercise, only laying down the rule that “all things be done decently and in order”; natural aptitude, moral qualifications, the habitual graces of “power and love and of a sound mind,” are what S. Paul directs Timothy to require in presbyters and deacons.  The gift of “discerning spirits” gives place to examination of candidates for the sacred office; proved ability succeeds to miraculous “helps and governments”; natural endowments, sanctified to holy purposes, are to be employed.  But though circumstances may change, the principles of the new economy remain the same in every age ; and these, on the point before us, are that even the permanent ministry is not given from without, but is inherent in the spiritual constitution of the Church : in its essence, or as it emanates directly from Christ, it is a gift rather than an office.

      Yet due cautions are to be observed.  Not every one who conceives he has a gift, and perhaps is not mistaken, is at liberty, without authority committed to him, to come forward as a teacher.  In the earliest age great liberty prevailed on this point, as it did in the Jewish synagogue; and the Apostle Paul, far from desiring to abridge this liberty, exhorts the Thessalonians “not to quench the Spirit” or “despise prophesyings”. [Had the Church of England always borne in mind this injunction, her history might have been a different, and in some respects, a more agreeable one.]  With the cessation, however, of extraordinary gifts, as a counterpoise to which that of “discerning spirits” existed in the Apostolic Church, other arrangements became necessary.  False prophets and false spirits appeared in the Christian assemblies; doctrines not of heavenly origin began to be taught.  It was no longer safe to trust to unpremeditated efforts, or to allow the natural ministry free scope; for experience had shown that it might not be really an endowment of the Holy Ghost.  Rules, restrictions, the application of tests became necessary to ensure, as far as might be, that the gift was from above.  And then was seen the wisdom of the apostolic usage, already mentioned, of reserving the formal investiture of office to persons specially qualified for that duty.  And who so likely to be qualified as those already in office?  Christ bestows the gift, but it belongs to the Church, represented by her officers, to “call and send ministers into the Lord’s vineyard” (Art. xxiii.): to examine into the validity of a spiritual call, to authenticate it, and by prayer and the imposition of hands to confer the external commission.  “It is not lawful for any man to take upon himself the office of public preaching, or ministering the sacraments, before he be lawfully called and sent to execute the same” Ibid.); and by this appointed channel the natural ministry passes into the formal, and the persons gifted into an order.  What is divine in the ministry is the gift; what is human in it is the commission, conveyed by fallible men, and therefore liable to the imperfection which cleaves to the Church in all its visible manifestations.  And hence the formal ministry is never quite coextensive with the natural, any more than the true Church is coextensive with the visible Church.  Mistakes may and do occur: not always does the gift find its way into formal exercise, nor is the external commission a certain guarantee of the possession of the inward qualification.  The order and rule, as enunciated by our Church; “Do you trust that you are inwardly moved by the Holy Ghost to take upon you this office and ministration?” (Ord. Serv.); and yet, “It is not lawful for any man to take upon him the office of public preaching before he is lawfully sent to execute the same” (Art. xxiii.); hold good to the end of time.

§ 81.  Polity of the Church

      It has been shown that the visible organization of the Church, unlike that of the Mosaic institute, proceeds from within outwards, and as need required; deacons being first appointed, then presbyters, while the apostolate, the only office which can be traced directly to Christ, passed away as soon as the volume of the canonical writings was completed and took its place.  But it has not been explained why the particular form of polity (deacons and presbyters) should have been adopted by the Apostles.  Why, for example, should they not have chosen – with, perhaps, modifications rendering it suitable to the Gospel Dispensation – the organization with which they were so familiar, viz., that of the temple, with its graduated hierarchy of high priest, priests, and Levites?  It is asserted, indeed, that this was the pattern which they followed; but with no warrant as far as the Scripture evidence is concerned.

      The reply sometimes is, that the various offices mentioned in Scripture were formally included in that of apostle, and were by the Apostles shed off successively as they became necessary or expedient.  That some of the functions discharged at first by the Apostles were delegated to others – such as attending to the poor, the local ministry of the Word, or the management of local ecclesiastical affairs – admits of no doubt; this was the very reason of their appointing deacons and presbyters.  But this is not enough to establish the theory.  It must be shown that such subordinate offices were ever formally conferred on the Apostles – that is, that they were by Christ, at some time or other, formally created, first deacons, and then presbyters.  For, however a person may devolve certain functions on others, he cannot transmit an office unless he has been first invested with it himself.  But there is no trace in Scripture of any such formal institution of these orders in the persons of the Apostles.  The twelve were chosen to be simply Apostles, the apostolate including all the functions which were afterwards distributed among the various orders of the ministry, and a great deal besides; but they never were formally deacons, presbyters, or bishops.  The notion may be dismissed as a fanciful one, resting on no sufficient evidence.  Nor is there any need to resort to it; for, side by side with the legal hierarchy, there had grown up, and in the time of Christ come to maturity, an institution not directly of Divine origin, but providentially intended to become the cradle of the visible polity of the Christian Church – viz., the synagogue.  To the synagogue, properly so called, a higher antiquity cannot be assigned than some period subsequent to the Babylonish Captivity; and this event sufficiently accounts for its rise.  The exiles “by the waters of Babylon,” deprived of the temple services, endeavoured to supply the want by such religious exercises as remained within their reach.  They came together as opportunity offered, to hear at the mouth of a prophet words of instruction and consolation (Ezek. 14:1).  Restored to their native land, they continued these weekly assemblies, the homiletic services of which would be the more valued when the gift of prophecy was withdrawn.  In the Book of Nehemiah we have an account of a religious service closely resembling what afterwards became the stated worship of the synagogue: Ezra ascended a pulpit of wood; read portions of Scripture, which, since the Hebrew tongue was no longer understood by the people, were interpreted by persons appointed for that purpose; and the whole concluded with prayer and thanksgiving.  The service on this occasion took place in the open air; the first erection of buildings for the purpose is probably to be ascribed to the extra-Palestine Jews, whose example was speedily followed by their brethren in Judea; and synagogues so multiplied that in our Lord’s time [Vitringa, De Syn.  Vet. ii, p. 2, c. 12.] there are said to have been hundreds in Jerusalem alone.  The dispersion of the Jews after the Captivity produced a corresponding diffusion of the new mode of worship.  The Jews of the dispersion maintained their connection with the temple by attendance at the principal feasts, while in the particular places in which they resided they were fain to content themselves with the simpler devotions of the synagogue.  And thus in every considerable city of the Roman Empire synagogues, in the time of Christ, existed.

      From the foregoing remarks the nature of the synagogical worship may be gathered.  With the temple, or the Levitical worship, it had no immediate connection.  The services were not sacrificial or symbolical, but homiletic; a priest, as such, had no place in the synagogue.  As to teaching, great latitude prevailed.  While this office properly belonged to the rulers of the synagogue, and could not be exercised without their permission, it was commonly delegated to any qualified member of the assembly who might intimate his wish to discharge it.  Thus it excited no surprise when our Lord, who was of the tribe of Judah, stood up in the synagogue at Nazareth “for to read” (Luke 4:16); and when S. Paul and Barnabas entered the synagogue in Pisidia, the rulers sent them a permissive message, “if they had any word of exhortation to say on” (Acts 8:14).  Such is a brief sketch of the institution which had, in the lapse of ages, gradually established itself wherever there were Jews – that is, everywhere; and perhaps there is no circumstance in the history of the chosen people more strongly indicative of a superintending Providence, more clearly intended to prepare the way for the Gospel.  Christianity was to embrace all nations within its pale; but if the Jews had not, after their dispersion, adopted this form of worship, there would not have existed any religious centers to which the new faith could have appealed, as the Apostles in the exercise of their mission traversed the world.  But in the synagogue exactly what was wanting was supplied.  These places of worship could be multiplied indefinitely without affecting the unity of the temple, or the connection of the worshippers therewith; by them the Jewish mind became habituated to the offerings of prayer and praise instead of the legal sacrifices, and to a ministry of the Word instead of a ministry of types.  Thus on their arrival at any new scene of labour the Christian missionaries, themselves Jews, had but to repair to the local synagogue to find, as far as regards external preparation, the way smoothed for the successful promulgation of the Gospel.

      With these two, and only these two, systems of worship, that of the temple and that of the synagogue, the Apostles were conversant; which were they likely to engraft on the Christian Church?  Let it be remembered that as long as the temple stood, no Jew instructed in the principles of his religion could ever have thought of setting up a counterpart of the temple in heathen lands; still less in close proximity to the sacred structure.  It was a fixed maxim with this people that the Levitical ritual was to be confined to one spot, viz., Jerusalem: there alone, according to the law, God was to be approached with sacrifice.  When Onias, driven from Judaea, and disappointed in his hope of succeeding to the high priesthood, persuaded Ptolemy (B.C. 145–80) to permit the erection of a temple at Leontopolis, in Egypt, his greatest difficulty, as Prideaux observes, was to reconcile the Jews to this project, since they believed it sin to sacrifice to God anywhere but upon the altar at Jerusalem. [Prideaux, Connect., p. ii., 64.  Josephus calls this attempt of Onias αμαρτίαν και του νόμον παράβασιν.  Antiq. Jud., xiii. c. 3.]  Nothing but a special revelation from heaven that the temple services were no longer to be confined to Jerusalem, or some providential catastrophe rendering these services impossible, could have overcome these objections.  Such a catastrophe, did, indeed, occur, viz., the destruction of the temple A. D. 70, by which Christianity was released to pursue its independent career; but at this time the elements of Christian worship were firmly established throughout the world.  And, far from there being any command of Christ in this direction, He Himself, in the few prospective hints which He gave, contemplated the Christian societies as assuming the synagogical form; as when He promised His presence to two or three gathered in His name, and still more distinctly when He committed authority to such societies to bind and loose, and the power of excommunication – functions which belonged not to the temple but to the synagogue.  There is, indeed, no fact more significant, or more important to notice, than the light in which the first Jewish converts regarded themselves, and were regarded by their unbelieving brethren.  They did not admit, nor was the accusation ever brought against them (except in S. Paul’s instance), that they were separatists from the divinely appointed ritual of Moses.  “This way,” “this sect,” was the usual title bestowed upon them.  How could they entertain such a supposition when the temple and its ritual, which they believed to be of Divine origin, existed before their eyes, and no intimation was given of the immediate fulfillment of their Master’s prophecy (Matt. 24:2)?  At any rate, it is clear what their attitude was.  They frequented the temple at the appointed hours of prayer (Acts 3:1); and it was the testimony of S. James, when advising his brother Apostle to make it clear that he was no subverter of the “customs” of Moses by himself fulfilling a vow, that the believing Jews at Jerusalem were “all zealous of the law” (Acts 21:20); and he mentions the fact without any mark of disapprobation.  And the Apostle of the Gentiles, who so zealously vindicated the freedom of the Gentiles from the yoke of the law, thought it expedient for himself as a Jew to follow this advice.  So far was the infant church of Jerusalem from assuming a hostile or even indifferent attitude towards the Jewish ordinances.  It was regarded as a new sect among the many which existed side by side in the bosom of Judaism, the peculiarity of which was that its members believed Jesus of Nazareth to be the promised Messiah. [This is exactly Gamaliel’s view of them in Acts 5:34–39.]  But to have established in the Christian Church a transcript of the temple and its sacrificial ritual, would have placed the new sect in direct opposition to the existing economy, and seriously impeded the progress of the Gospel.  S. Paul could with truth challenge his accusers to gainsay his statement, that “neither against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple” had he “offended anything at all” (Act 25:8).

      Such is the antecedent probability in favour of the derivation of the polity of the Church from the synagogue; and the facts convert it into certainty.  The “young men” who carried Ananias to his burial (Acts 5:6) do not seem to have occupied an official position it was natural that the younger members of the society should undertake this office; but it is otherwise with “the seven” formerly chosen by the Church and set apart by the Apostles with the imposition of hands (Acts 6).  These are justly considered as the prototypes of what afterwards became the diaconate.  Vitringa, indeed, labours to prove that this was not so; that their office was an extraordinary one, and in many respects did not correspond to that of the deacons who appear in S. Paul’s epistles. [De Syn. Vet., L. iii. p. 2, c. v.]  There is no doubt that such men as Stephen and Philip play a more important part in the history of the early Church than that which we commonly associate with the name of deacon, but this was because they were filled “with the Holy Ghost and with wisdom”.  Such personal qualities would not be transmissible, but the duties to which they were appointed, such as distributing the alms of the Church, must have been permanent, and could be discharged by any trustworthy men.  Once the office was established it gradually drew to itself other duties, such as those mentioned in 1 Tim. 3; the deacons of S. Paul probably took an active part in the office of instruction, public and private.  In the lapse of time the diaconate lost much of its original dignity, especially in the extra-Palestine Churches.  The deacons attended to the poor and sick; but their main duty was to assist the bishop in the details of public worship to see “that all things were done decently and in order”; to look after the vestments; to select the portions of Scripture to be read; to assist at the distribution of the Eucharistic elements; and to convey them to those who through infirmity were unable to be present at the celebration.  Now, the similarity between such an office and that of the Chazanim, or inferior ministers of the synagogue, as described by the Rabbinical writers, is obvious; and no doubt can be entertained that, with the necessary modifications, the latter, under the form of the diaconate, reappeared in the Christian, especially the Gentile-Christian, Churches. [Although the first deacons are never afterwards so called in the book of Acts, but always “the seven,” the name is implied in διακονία τη καθημερινη, and διακονειν τραπέζαις, Acts 6:1, 2.]  It has, indeed, been objected that the analogy fails, because each synagogue, as a rule, had only one Chazan; [Lightfoot, Phil.] but this is by no means certain.  The number seems to have varied according to the size and importance of the synagogue; and Vitringa quotes a passage which speaks at least of two, and his inference is justified that if there were two there might have been more. [Synagogue passim unum habuerunt ministrum (חוֹן), ut ex iis quae supra disputavimus, abunde constat: majores tamen habere potuerunt et habuerunt etiam plures, ut ex testimonio supra ex Colbo producto liquet, “locus ubi duos facere solent Chazanitas.”  Si duos, ergo et plures habere potuerunt Synagogae diaconas, prout circumstantiae suadebant.  L. iii., p. 2, c. 23.]  But whatever uncertainty may rest on the derivation of the Christian diaconate, none such can attach to the next order of ministers, the Presbyters, first mentioned in Acts 11:30.  From what other source but the synagogue could the Apostles, all Jews, have borrowed this class of ministers?  There were no Presbyters, or elders, officially connected with the temple.  But in the synagogue they were the ruling body, entrusted with the regulation of public worship, the care of the poor, and the administration of discipline.  In the New Testament they sometimes bear the title of “rulers,” or “Αρχισυνάγωγοι,” but their proper Jewish name was זְקֵנִים, or elders.  In the smaller synagogues one such elder presided; in the larger there were several who formed a college (πρεσβυτήριον, 1 Tim. 4:14); whence the varying statements of Scripture, which sometimes speaks of the “ruler” (Luke 13:14), more commonly of “the rulers” of the synagogue (Acts 13:15).  The duties of Christian Presbyters, as described by S. Paul in 1 Tim. 5:17, correspond with those of the Jewish elders, only that labouring “in the world and doctrine” is more particularly ascribed to and commended in the Christian office. [The notion that lay-elders, such as are found in the Calvinistic Churches, are mentioned in the New Testament, is conclusively refuted by Vitringa, L. 2, c. ii.  The Apostolic Presbyters were both teachers and rulers; though one or the other function predominated according to circumstances.]  We may suppose, in short, that what took place on a certain occasion is a fair example of the formation of a Christian society.  When S. Paul arrived at Corinth he repaired, as usual, to the synagogue, and claiming his right to speak, he endeavoured to convince his hearers that Jesus is the Christ.  When he found that the majority refused to be convinced, he separated the believing Jews from their unbelieving brethren, and with the Gentiles who believed, formed them into a Christian synagogue, retaining as far as possible the features of the elder institution.  It was the celebration of the Lord’s Supper that formed the essential point of distinction between the two.  This Christian synagogue was the nucleus of the visible Corinthian Church, but only the nucleus.  As time went on, and the Church grew in numbers, other regulations became necessary; Christianity, after A.D. 70, began to crystallize itself independently, as regards its polity; the immediate occasion being the destruction of the Jewish temple.  But not until a much later age did the Church quite lose sight of its synagogical parentage, as regards polity and ritual.

      With the institution of deacons and presbyters the inspired writings fail us, except in the way of indirect precedent.  The synagogue had no office corresponding to that of Diocesan Bishop, nor does the New Testament furnish us with any instance of the office.  The “bishops” of S. Paul’s epistles are, as is now universally acknowledged, the same persons who are elsewhere called presbyters. [Πρεσβύτερος was the Jewish title; that of επίσκοπος is of Gentile origin.  The Athenians used to send public officers called επισκόποι to inspect subject states.]  Timothy and Titus, usually cited as bishops in our sense of the word, were never permanently fixed in one place; at least, not during S. Paul’s lifetime.  They were Apostolic delegates, left for a time to “set in order the things that were wanting” in certain churches (Tit. 1:5); to do what the Apostle himself would have done, had he not been detained elsewhere; but when their work was finished they rejoined their master, to be employed, no doubt, in the same way in other places. [“Do thy diligence to come shortly unto me,” 2 Tim. 4:9.  “When I shall send Artemas unto thee, or Tychicus, be diligent to come unto me to Nicopolis,” Tit. 3:12.  The tradition that Timothy and Titus became, after S. Paul’s death, diocesan bishops of Ephesus and Crete, may be well founded; but it cannot be proved from the New Testament.]  The utmost that can be inferred from these instances is that it is not at variance with the mind of S. Paul that the chief management of a church, whether for a longer or a shorter time, should be vested in an individual; and so far as this favours the episcopal regimen, let it prevail.  But no order of diocesan bishops appears in the New Testament. [It is a curious and characteristic circumstance that of the three orders which have, for the most part, prevailed in the Church, that particular one which, as regards Scriptural evidence, has the least to say for itself, should, in certain quarters, be described as emphatically “the divine element” of Church polity.]  The evidence is in favour of the supposition that Episcopacy sprang from the Church itself, and by a natural process, and that it was sanctioned by S. John, the last survivor of the Apostles.  The presbytery, when it assembled for consultation, would naturally elect a president to maintain order; at first temporarily, but in time with permanent authority; an office such as that which S. James appears to have exercised at Jerusalem.  Thus it is probable that at an early period an informal episcopate had sprung up in each church.  As the Apostles were one by one removed, and as local churches came to consist, not of one, but of several congregations, the office would assume increased importance and become invested with greater powers.  Christianity, when not enfeebled by sectarian influences, tends to visible forms of unity, of continually expanding circumference.  We need not refuse assent, with the necessary qualifications, to Möhler’s remark, “that the craving of the faithful in Christ for union cannot rest satisfied until it sees itself expressed in some type or representation.  The Bishop is the visible expression of this longing – the personification of the mutual love of the Christians of a certain locality – the manifestation and the living centre of that Christian spirit which ever strives after unity.” [Einheit in der Kirche, p. 187.]  That is to say, Episcopacy, like the inferior orders, developed itself from within outwards, and we have no need of a Divine prescription to account for it.  With the departure of the living Apostolic authority, acknowledged by the whole Church, factions, and heresies, as Jerome remarks, began to prevail, and, in his view, the Episcopate was instituted as a remedy against these evils.  “When every man began to think those whom he had baptized to be his own, and not Christ’s, it was decreed throughout the world that one chosen out of the presbyters should be set above the rest, to whom the care of the whole Church should appertain, that thus the seeds of division might be rooted out.” [Quoted by Bilson, Perp. Gov., p. 268.]  The Cyprianic idea of the Episcopate followed in due time.  Each bishop came to be regarded not only as a centre of unity to his own Church, but as a means of communication with all other Christian Churches; the office assumed an ecumenical as well as a diocesan character.  The universal episcopate formed a kind of corporation, of which each particular bishop was in his diocese the representative.  “As the one Church,” says Cyprian, “has been divided by Christ into many members throughout the world, so the one episcopate is everywhere diffused by the multiplicity of many bishops.” [Epist. 52, ad Anton. Comp.  “Episcopatus unus est, cujus a singulis in solidum pars tenetur.”  De Unit. Eccles.]  Thus the universal episcopate was supposed to have taken the place of the Apostolic College, and each bishop to enjoy a portion of the Apostolic grace and authority.  It is unnecessary to pursue the subject further.  Bishops grew into metropolitans, metropolitans into patriarchs; and by the same law of natural expansion.  It is easy to comment on the errors, doctrinal and practical, which disfigured the Christianity of those ages.  None the less, it presents a remarkable phenomenon.  A vast association, extending over the greater part of the Roman Empire, maintained its ground not only without the aid, but under the disfavour of the state; exhibiting everywhere the same general features, and pervaded throughout its parts by a common sympathy and a compactness of adhesion which to the heathen statesman or philosopher must have appeared inexplicable.  It is easy, with the infidel historian, to ascribe the characteristic features of the visible Church of those ages to priestly ambition or other evil tendencies.  The Christian of larger views and greater candour will see in them a proof of the power of his religion, even when declined from the Apostolic standard, to knit men together in a bond of union far exceeding in depth and comprehensiveness any the world had yet seen.

§ 82.  Powers of the Clergy (The Keys)

      According to the Council of Trent, the government of the Church is a hierarchy, or the relation of the clerical order to the Christian people is that of secular rulers to subjects; [Dominus noster Jesu Christus a terris ascensurus ad coelos sacerdotes sui ipsius vicarios reliquit, tanquam praesides et judices.  Sess. xiv., c. 5.] and, moreover, the clergy are a priesthood in the strict sense of the word – mediators between God and man.  But the relation of magistrate to subject belongs to the state, not to the Church and the New Testament knows no other proper priesthood but that of Christ Himself.

      On the Romish theory, the laity are in a state of tutelage, under a paternal, but despotic government, to which has been committed ample means of subduing the refractory impulses of human nature, and enforcing implicit obedience; viz., the power of the keys; by which is understood, not the remitting and retaining of sins by the ministry of the Word, but the priestly prerogative of absolution, whereby the gate of heaven is opened or shut to the penitent.  The priest has but to “retain” sin by refusing absolution, and no pardon can be hoped for; while excommunication is a complete severance from Christ.  Not without reason is the potestas jurisdictionis, or power of government, assigned by Romish writers to the sacrament of penance; for in truth this one “nerve of discipline,” as the Council calls it, is sufficient, in all ordinary cases, to crush any symptoms of an insubordinate spirit.

      It was not without expressions of dissent that the Tridentine Canons on this subject were promulgated.  That Christian instinct, which has never been wholly extinguished in the Romish Church, even in its worst times, asserted itself against the despotic power claimed for the Pope over the bishops, for the bishops over the other clergy, and for the whole spirituality over the laity.  The very name, it was remarked at the Council, carried with it an unchristian sound.  The New Testament describes the clergy as the ministers, or servants, of the Christian people, and not as their rulers in a secular sense.  But these protests were unavailing.  The Gallican Church, indeed, as a whole, made a successful stand against the concentration of ecclesiastical power in the Papacy; but to admit the laity to an effective share in the government of the Church would have been as strange a notion to Bossuet as to Bellarmine.  The latter sums up the Romish doctrine thus: “It has always been believed in the Catholic Church that the bishops in their dioceses and the Roman Pontiff in the whole Church, are real ecclesiastical princes; competent by their own authority, and without the consent of the people or advice of the presbyters, to enact laws binding on the conscience to judge in matters ecclesiastical, like other judges; and, if need be to inflict punishment.”  The only popular element in the system, is that any one may become a member of the episcopate, or governing body.

      The restoration – in theory, at least – of the laity to their proper place in the Church was an immediate result of the Reformation.  The reassertion of the universal priesthood of Christians was inconsistent with any difference in kind between clergy and laity, and the doctrine of justification by faith robbed the confessional of its terrors.  The lay members of the body of Christ emerged from the spiritual imbecility which they had been taught to consider as their natural state, and became free, not from the yoke of Christ, but from that of the priest.  In some instances, as was natural, the recovered liberty of the Church ran into license.  In others, the rights of the laity, though acknowledged in treatises and confessions, were never fully restored, the secular government being made the depository of those powers which had formally been wielded by the Pope or his delegates.  The proper adjustment of lay and clerical influence in the Church is a problem which yet remains to be solved by most of the Reformed Churches of Europe.

      The distinction between clergy and laity, if considered one of kind, is at variance with Scripture.  S. Peter speaks of the whole Church, and not any particular part of it, as the Lord’s κλήρος or portion (1 Pet. 5:3); nor, in the view of any of the sacred writers, is the ministry more essential to the Church than the Church to the ministry.  A distinction may, indeed, be founded on a diversity of spiritual gifts, but this is not one of kind.  On the other hand, Scripture does assign an independent position to the ministers of Christ; they are not mere organs of the congregation, but presidents and leaders (1 Thess. 5:12, Heb. 13:17).  Titus is directed to “rebuke sharply” certain members of the Church (chap. 1:13), and the warning which S. Peter addresses to presbyters not to “lord it over the flock” (1 Pet. 5:3) presupposes powers which they might be tempted to abuse.  In short, the sovereignty of the Church resides neither in the people apart from their pastors nor in the pastors apart from the people, but in the whole body.  There are three rules commended to us by Apostolic precedent, which, wherever they prevail, operate as a check to hierarchical despotism.

      The first is the right of the laity to a voice in the councils of the Church.  In the Council held at Jerusalem to consider the question of the obligation of the ceremonial law on Gentile converts, “the whole Church” was present, and the decree ran in the name of “the apostles, and elders, and brethren” (Acts 15:22, 23).  Whether the clergy and laity form one mixed assembly, or distinct ones, is not of primary importance; though the latter seems the better arrangement.  What is of moment is an effective vote, or veto, to be possessed by the lay assessors, or chamber; otherwise their presence is of little use.  It would be interesting, did space permit, to trace the steps by which the Apostolic model was gradually abandoned, until not only the laity, but the presbyters and deacons, were excluded from any real share in the government of the Church.  The synodal system, in itself beneficial, was the proximate cause of the change.  The diocesan synods long retained that popular element which is the proper counterpoise to sacerdotal influence.  Cyprian himself, the chief assertor of Episcopal authority, declares it to have been his rule, from the time that he became bishop, to do nothing without the advice of his presbyters and the consent of the people.  “Common decency,” he writes to his clergy, “as well as a rule of discipline and manner of (church) life, requires that we, the bishops, with the clergy, and in the presence of the steadfast laity, should settle all matters by piously consulting together.”  But when diocesan synods expanded into provincial it became the practice for the bishops only, as representatives of their respective churches, to be summoned; the presbyters, if any, appearing merely as attendants on their bishops; while the laity were excluded, or were present merely as spectators.  At length, in the greater councils, whether provincial or general, the whole administrative power passed into the hands of the bishops; they alone possessed the right of voting, and if a few presbyters or laymen attended it was only to discharge subordinate functions.  It is of little avail to urge that the bishop, being one with his people and the people with him, the laity were, in fact, represented at synods in and through their bishop: [Möhler, Einheit in der Kirche, p. 211.] considerations of this mystical character are not found in practice to be of much value.  A clerical corporation, like every other, inevitably tends to its own aggrandizement, and this without being conscious of the motives which influence it.  It would be unjust to ascribe to the bishops of the third and fourth centuries a deliberate design to exalt their own order at the expense of the others; such, nevertheless, was the result.  The circumstances of the times – especially the difficulty of keeping within bounds that singular class of persons, the “confessors” – might be pleaded in excuse of Cyprian’s assumptions; but these became the ordinary style of his successors; every contest between the presbyters or the laity and the bishop terminated in favour of the latter; and thus, by continual accretions, the hierarchical system attained the proportions under which it presents itself in the middle ages.

      No church can be in a healthy condition which excludes from the administration of its affairs any constituent part of the body ecclesiastic.  Those who are thus excluded lapse into a state of indifference to the spiritual welfare of the community, as a limb never used perishes of atrophy; or they secede to other religious bodies in which church life is more active and diffused.  The monarchical form into which the government of the English Church seems to have settled cannot be deemed favourable to the vitality or progress of that Church.  The history of the disestablished Irish Church may read us some lessons, particularly as showing what can be accomplished by the cordial cooperation of the different orders of clergy and of the clergy and laity, each with recognized powers and duties, in the work of organization.

      The second rule is that the laity should have a voice in the appointment of pastors.  Such we gather to have been the mind of the Apostles.  If on any occasion they might have claimed to act independently, the appointment of a successor to Judas Iscariot was such; yet they did not so act.  The case was brought by S. Peter before the whole company of believers, and at his request they selected two individuals as best fitted for the vacant office; all joined in prayers for Divine direction; all “gave forth their lots” (Acts 1:24–26).  So it was in the appointment of deacons.  The Apostles directed “the multitude of the disciples” to choose from themselves whom they judged most competent.  The persons thus selected were presented to the Apostles to be formally inducted into office (Acts 6:5, 6).  The mode of selecting presbyters is not so distinctly recorded; but the natural meaning of the word used (χειροτονήσαντες, Acts 14:23) is that of appointing by suffrage, and we gather from it that Paul and Barnabas followed the precedent of the diaconate.  This is confirmed by the testimony of Clement of Rome.  “Those,” he writes, “whom either the Apostles or other distinguished men” (their delegates) “placed in the ministry, with the consent of the whole Church (συνευδοκησάσης της εκκλησίας πάσης), ought not to be deposed from their office.” [Epist. i., p. 44.]  For several centuries after the Christian era the Apostolic rule was observed.  “The faithful laity,” says Cyprian, “ought the rather to avoid communion with a delinquent bishop and sacrilegious priests, because it possesses the power both of choosing worthy priests and of rejecting unworthy.” [Epist. lxviii.  See also Apost. Const., viii., c. 4.]

      The third and perhaps the most important of the rights of the laity is concerned with the exercise of discipline; which by Christ Himself is vested in the whole Church, and not in the clerical body alone.  “Tell it unto the church” is His command (Matt. 18:17); not to the rulers as a distinct class, but to the whole society, with which it rests, in the last resort, to inflict the penalty of excommunication.  That the presiding bishop, or elders, should be the persons to pronounce the sentence may be admitted, but that the decision should rest with the community is clearly the sense of Scripture.  When S. Paul, by virtue of his Apostolic authority, informs the Corinthians that, owing to their remissness, he had resolved to deliver a certain offender “to Satan for the destruction of the flesh,” he takes care to associate, as far as he could, the Church with himself, and to make it a joint act.  Absent in body he would be present in spirit when the Church was “gathered together” to carry out the sentence.  And he afterwards speaks of it as a “punishment inflicted of many” (1 Cor. 5:4, 2 Cor. 2:6).  Now of all ecclesiastical acts the expulsion of a member is the most sovereign; indeed, it is the only sovereign act which a church, as such, can perform, and corresponds to capital punishment by the State.  Wherever the clergy possess an uncontrolled power of inflicting spiritual censures, it is next to impossible but that a spiritual despotism, of a peculiarly oppressive kind, will be the result.  The two dogmas, that the sovereignty of the church resides in the clergy, and that the latter are proper priests, were sufficient to enslave the mind of Europe for a thousand years.  Nor were they to become again dominant, would they be found to have lost aught of their potency.  These spiritual weapons may be despised by the philosopher, but with the multitude, especially where the light of Scripture is not diffused, the case is different.

      If the relation of pastors to people is not that of governors to subjects, still less is it that of a mediating priesthood, such as existed in the preparatory dispensation.  What has been incidentally observed in the notices of the synagogue, and its offspring the earliest Christian societies, sufficiently proves that the sacrificial element except in an improper and figurative sense, formed no part of the first Christian worship.  And the direct testimony of Scripture confirms this conclusion.  In no single instance does it assign to Christian ministers the proper title of a sacrificing priest (Ιερέυς, sacerdos).  They are Presbyters (whence the word priest in our formularies), ministers, overseers, but never mediators between God and man.  There are extant three epistles of S. Paul, addressed to Christian ministers, and directly on their duties; but among these duties we search in vain for any of a sacerdotal character.  Timothy is directed to “preach the word,” to “give attendance to reading, exhortation and doctrine,” to exercise discipline, to ordain elders; but no instructions are given him touching the matter or ritual of the Christian sacrifice.  Omissions of this kind in pastoral epistles are, on the supposition of the Christian ministry’s being a proper priesthood, unaccountable.  For wherever there exists a visible sacrifice and priesthood, they occupy a position of decided superiority to every other act of worship.  So it was under the law of Moses, and so it is in the Church of Rome; in which latter the sacrifice of the Mass is the central feature of worship, around which everything else revolves.  If S. Paul had regarded Timothy and Titus as priests, it is natural to suppose that directions concerning their sacerdotal duties would have filled as large a space in his epistles as they do in the Book of Leviticus.

      But it may be urged that the question does not turn so much upon names as upon facts; and, though it may be granted that neither the Apostles nor the two orders of the ministry traceable to them bear the name of priests, yet that sacerdotal functions are ascribed to them in Scripture.  But the assumed fact is not a fact.  Neither the Apostles, nor the presbyters, to say nothing of deacons, ever appear in Scripture as discharging such functions.  When and where were the Apostles appointed priests?  The Council of Trent replies, when, in the institution of the Lord’s Supper, Jesus spake the words, “Do this in remembrance of Me.” [Si quis dixerit illis verbis, Hoc facite in meam commemorationem, Christum non instituisse Apostolos sacerdotes; aut non ordinasse ut ipsi, aliique sacerdotes offerrent corpus et sanguinem suum; anathema sit.  Sess. xii., Can. 2.]  It is not easy to discover so momentous a doctrine in this simple direction.  The words Hoc facite, which as spoken by Christ we hold to mean, Celebrate this ordinance, must, according to the Council, be translated, Perform the sacrifice of the Mass. [“The plea from Hoc facite, when first set up, was abundantly answered by a learned Romanist, I mean the excellent Pickerell, who wrote about 1362.  Protestants also have often confuted it; and the Papists themselves, several of them, have long ago given it up.”  Waterland, Christian Sac. App., c. 3.]  Which interpretation is the correct one let the terms of institution decide: “When He had given thanks He brake it and said, Take eat; after the same manner also He took the cup, saying, As often as ye drink it; this do ye in remembrance of Me” (I Cor. 11:24, 25).  The eleven Apostles, Judas being separated from them, represented on this occasion the mystical body of Christ in every age, not a sacerdotal order.  The remitting and retaining of sins, even if it had been a special Apostolic privilege, is sufficiently explained by such instances as those of Ananias and Sapphira, Simon Magus, and Elymas the sorcerer, in which a supernatural gift of spiritual discernment was exhibited; but in fact, as has been observed, the commission was given, not to the Apostles alone, but to the whole company of assembled believers; it is the Church, as the witness for Christ from age to age, that remits or retains sins, not a priestly caste by the power of absolution.  It is remarkable that the baptismal commission should not have been insisted on in this connection, for this does seem to have been addressed to the Apostles only; but the fact is, it would not have been convenient to press the passage, for, as is well known, the Church of Rome not only admits the validity of lay baptism, but in cases of supreme necessity allows a midwife to baptize.  The following words, “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world” (Matt. 28:20), make it plain that the charge was given to the Apostles as representatives of the Christian ministry, not as inspired founders of the Church, for as such they were not to remain to the end of the world.  The subsequent history also is silent on the point.  They who on the Day of Pentecost received Peter’s message were baptized; by whom we are not informed (Acts 2:41).  Philip, though but a deacon, baptized the Eunuch.  Peter, beholding the sealing of the Spirit vouchsafed to Cornelius and his friends, “commanded them to be baptized” (Acts 10:48); whether by himself or others is not specified.  Paul declares that Christ sent him not to baptize but to preach the Gospel, and congratulates himself that he had only baptized a few of the Corinthian Church (1 Cor. 1:14–17); which, to say the least, negatives the supposition that he considered it a special part of his office to administer this sacrament.  With respect to the Eucharist, the evidence is still more scanty.  The first believers “broke bread from house to house,” celebrating, probably, the Lord’s Supper immediately after these love feasts; they came together on the first day of the week to break bread (Acts 2:46, 20:7); but whether any, or what, ritual was observed on the occasion; what the form of consecration was, if any; by whom the elements were distributed – on these, and suchlike points, which on the sacerdotal theory we should expect to find minutely described, the record is silent.  In one passage (1 Cor. 11:23–26) S. Paul treats at some length on the Eucharist; but on the question what is necessary to the validity of the ordinance he delivers no rule.  “The cup of blessing which we bless, the bread which we break”; from whose lips the blessing proceeded we are not told.  It will not be contended that the Apostles themselves could be present at all celebrations, and no mention is made of presbyters taking their place.  To “make the sacrament” [Conficere sacramentum – the usual expression employed by Romish writers.] was, as far as appears, not the prerogative of a priestly caste, but of Him from whom all ordinances derive their virtue; the true consecration was the living faith of the partakers.  S. Paul describes himself and his fellow Apostles as “stewards of the mysteries of God” ; that is, as is known to intelligent readers of Scripture, of doctrines hitherto hidden but now revealed, not of ordinances; [“How that by revelation He made known unto me the mystery ... that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs,” etc. (Ephes. 3:3–6).] stewards and dispensers of divine truth, as indeed the requirement that they should be “faithful” sufficiently proves.  #He does indeed speak of discharging a priestly office, but it was the preaching of the Gospel (ιερουργουντα το ευαγγέλιον), and the Gentile world was the sacrifice which he had to present to God (Rom. 15:16).  The Apostles had all their life been familiar with earthly priests and visible sacrifices; how came they in their promulgation and exposition of the Gospel to abstain so entirely from such associations?  The whole scope of the Epistle to the Hebrews is that the Levitical institute, still in existence when the author wrote, having served its purpose, was “ready to vanish away” (Heb. 8:13); not because it was the Levitical institute, but because a human priesthood and corresponding sacrifices are incompatible with the eternal priesthood of Christ, and the sufficiency of His one sacrifice of Himself on the Cross; and therefore may not, under whatever guise, find a place under the Gospel.  An analogy exists on the point before us between the relation of the synagogue to the temple, and that of local churches to the one true, or as Protestants call it, the invisible Church.  However synagogues might be multiplied, there was but one temple, one altar, one priesthood; and the synagogues, otherwise distinct societies, bore a common relation to the temple, and so were connected together.  In like manner local churches, otherwise distinct, find their unity in the mystical Body of Christ, evermore offering spiritual sacrifices through its one High Priest; that is, the sacerdotal elements of Judaism, its temple services, have passed into Christianity, not literally, but figuratively, or rather in the spiritual antitype; while the synagogue, an institution which possessed nothing of a sacerdotal character, reappears literally and visibly under the form of local Christian Churches.

      It must be observed that the question is not what the law of order may have dictated, or rendered necessary, but whether a divine law, affecting the validity of the sacraments, can be produced.  The law of order gave rise to many changes of ritual which, so far as they are not unscriptural, rest on their own foundation: only this foundation is not jure divino, but jure humano.  Transporting ourselves in imagination to the fifth century, the spectacle which we behold is very different from that which we find in Scripture.  An organized episcopacy extends like a network over all Christendom, each bishop being at once the chief pastor in his own church, and the instrument of union between it and other churches; the primitive upper chamber has given place to gorgeous structures: if we enter which, there will meet our eye, in the outer vestibule, the penitents and catechumens; then, in the nave, the faithful to whom access to the Lord’s Supper was permitted; and at the upper end, divided by the chancel rail from the rest of the congregation, the bishop with his presbyters and deacons.  Carefully worked creeds test the orthodoxy of candidates for baptism; formal liturgies lead the devotions of the people; distinctions unknown to the Apostolic Church prevail, of inquirers from catechumens, of catechumens from the baptized, of the lapsed from the steadfast.  The Eucharist, especially, is fenced round with restrictions, to guard it from profanation.  In what light are we to regard these additions to the simple polity and worship of the first church?  As divine appointments? or as corruptions, the offspring of superstition and priest-craft?  Strictly speaking, neither the one nor the other.  If we cannot approve of all that we find in this age, if we cannot shut our eyes to the growth of superstitious doctrines and practices, a considerable part, nevertheless, of these external developments was the result of a natural and necessary effort of the Church to adapt herself to changing circumstances, and on this ground may be justified.  A mixed multitude pressing into the sacred enclosure had to be handled otherwise than the primitive 120 upon whom the Holy Ghost fell; external organization is the remedy which nature provides for a diminution of the animating spirit: when effervescence ceases, crystallization commences.  And had the changes or additions been suffered to remain on this ground, they might, after the excisions necessary, have held their place.  But the temptation presented itself, as it has always done, to discover, if possible, a Divine sanction for what was the result of a natural law; and to insinuate into Scripture conclusions which it does not warrant.  No distinction was made between what is commanded and what is merely recommended by precedent and example between the sacraments ordained by Christ Himself and Apostolic appointments, between the latter and those of the Church of after-ages, between the essential parts of ordinances and additions of human origin.  The earlier dispensation had priests and sacrifices, therefore the Gospel must have something not merely analogous but similar; and Scripture must be put to the question to yield a testimony thereto.  That a believing deacon, for example, should not, while an unbelieving presbyter should, have power to consecrate the elements; is this of Divine or of human appointment?  Not of Divine, but of human; and as long as this is acknowledged, as long as the restriction is considered a matter of order, the arrangement stands on its own sufficient grounds.  The case is different when it is made a law of Christ Himself, or of the Apostles; and when violence is done to Scripture to make it support the statement.  “There is no reason to establish the right of men without succession from the Apostles to administer the Holy Eucharist, which will not justify the taking away the cup from the laity” [Manning, Unity, etc., p. 326.] – did the writer of these words find his theory in Scripture, or introduce into the sacred page what belongs to the age of Cyprian or later?  The law which has presided over the rise and progress of spurious Catholicism is to claim a divine origin, and a legally binding force, for developments in polity or ritual which can be clearly traced to natural causes; and this with the result, if not the object, of transforming the Gospel into a new ceremonial law, and replacing Christians under a yoke of bondage from which Christ has set them free.  By spurious Catholicism is meant that which, not content with being itself, with being what legitimate Catholicism is, an adaptation of Apostolic precedent to changing circumstances, lays claim to a direct enactment from heaven.  Among these spurious assertions is that of the clergy’s being a proper priesthood.  The more reason is there to guard against its first advances.  It is connected, for example, not remotely with the notion that the visible church is the representative of Christ on earth, or as Möhler expresses it, the perpetual incarnation of the Saviour. [Symbolik, § 36.]  For it is obvious that the whole Church cannot stand between itself and God, or be a representative of Christ to itself; and so the Church comes to mean the clergy, and the clergy a priesthood, whether we call them by that name or not.  What is really meant by the Church’s being the continued incarnation of Christ is that the Saviour, having completed the work of redemption, has withdrawn from the active administration of this dispensation in and by His Divine Vicar, the Holy Ghost: having previously delegated His powers, royal, priestly, and prophetical, to a certain order in the Church.  But vicarius est absentis, Christus est praesens; present not as the incarnate Son, but as the Comforter whom He promised to send, and who, as regards the Godhead, is one with Him.  He does indeed exercise sacerdotal functions elsewhere, and, by His perpetual intercession in heaven as our High Priest has for ever superseded the necessity, and the existence, of human mediators between God and man.*

            [*At the Council of Trent a candid Portuguese theologian (George d’Ataïde) counseled the Fathers not to attempt to prove the doctrine of a human priesthood from Scripture but from tradition.  His observations are worth transcribing; Il dit d’abord; qu’on ne pouvait pas douter que la messe ne fût un sacrifice, parceque les pères l’avoient enseigne ouvertement.  Il rapporta la témoignage des pères Grecs et Latins, et parcourant ensuite tous les siècles jusqu’au nôtre, il soutint qu’il n’y avait aucun écrivain chrétien qui n’eût appellé l’eucharistie un sacrifice (and therefore requiring a priest to celebrate it).  Mais il ajouta: que c’etait affaiblir ce fondement que de lui en joindre d’imaginaires; et qu’en voulant trouver dans l’Écriture ce qui n’y était pas, on dounait occasion de calomnier la vérité à ceux qui voyaient qu’on l’appuyait sur un sable aussi mouvant.  De-là il passa à examiner l’un après l’autre les endroits de l’ancien et du nouveau Testament rapportés par les théologiens, et montra qu’il n’y en avait aucun dont on pût tirer une preuve claire du sacrifice.  Sarpi, vol. ii., p. 384.  The historian adds that this theologian’s presence at the Council was thenceforward dispensed with.]

§ 83.  Primacy of the Bishop of Rome

      What has been remarked concerning the visible organization of the Church in its earlier stages, that it proceeded by a natural law, and was engrafted on institutions already in existence holds good in all that followed.  The destruction of the temple about A.D. 70 relaxed the connection between Judaism and Christianity, and set the church free to pursue her own course.  The first result, probably, was the episcopate, informal in its beginning, but afterwards consolidated into an order, and to all appearance either proposed or sanctioned by surviving apostles.  From time to time it was natural for the bishops of a certain district to meet together for the purposes of mutual recognition and consultation; on such occasions they were commonly accompanied by delegates of the presbyters and laity.  This was the origin of synods.  Nor did the centralizing process stop here.  As the presbyters of each church formed a council presided over by the bishop, so the bishops developed from themselves centers of unity; accidental circumstances, such as a church’s having been founded by an Apostle, or its importance in a political point of view, determining where each centre should be.  Thus it was that metropolitan sees, and provincial synods, came into being.  The advantages were manifest, especially in the appointment of bishops to vacant sees.  Popular election, even with the consent of the presbyters, had its dangers; but these were mitigated by the rule that prevailed, that two or three, at least, of the neighbouring bishops, and always the metropolitan, should assist at the consecration, and that no appointment should be valid which had not received the approval of the other churches of the province.  Still more extensive combinations succeeded, as indeed there was no reason why they should not.  Provinces coalesced into patriarchates, considerations partly ecclesiastical, partly political, determining the patriarchal sees to Rome, Antioch, and Alexandria.  Later on, Rome, the capital of the ancient world, is seen taking the lead in the councils of Christendom, not by any formal delegation of authority, or by Divine right; for no such claims were either advanced or acknowledged for many centuries after Christ; but because the dignity of the capital shed a reflected light upon its bishop, and made him the natural centre of the Western church.  Nor was this advantage materially affected by the transfer of the seat of government to Byzantium, with its attendant patriarchate.  New Rome never succeeded in supplanting the ancient mistress of the world, nor could its patriarch, though the attempt was often made, succeed in prevailing other churches to acknowledge his supremacy.  The Roman bishops displayed the same capacity for government which had distinguished civil Rome, and while the Orientals spent their strength in theological disputation, Leo and his successors were successfully employed in extending the practical supremacy of their see.  Appeals to Rome from all quarters were encouraged, refugees from other dioceses were kindly received, and no opportunity was lost of making the influence of the Roman Church felt throughout Christendom.  And thus by slow accretions the Papal power became what it was in the middle ages.

      Such is what may be called the natural history of this remarkable institution.  And as long as it was regarded merely as the topmost stone of the edifice of unity, it cannot be described as anti-Christian in character.  If it was not unreasonable for the bishops of a province to evolve out of their body a metropolitan centre or the metropolitans a patriarchal, no more was it so, as long as the political conditions were favourable, for the whole Western Church to desire a visible symbol of unity.  This is the position taken up by the philosophical school of modern Romanists.  “They,” says Möhler, [Einheit in der Kirche, A. 2, § 68.] “who demand before Cyprian’s time incontrovertible proofs of the existence of the primacy demand what is unreasonable, the law of a true development not admitting of it; and vice versa, the trouble which some have given themselves to discover, before the same epoch, the full idea of a pope, or the notion that they have discovered it, must be considered vain, and their conclusions untenable.  As throughout the inferior organization of the Church, so in this point, the want must be felt before the supply could be found.”  “It is evident that during the first three centuries, and even at the close of them, the primacy is not visible save in its first lineaments; it operates as yet but informally, and when the question is put, where and how did it practically manifest itself, we must confess that it never appears alone, but always in conjunction with other churches and bishops; though it is true that a peculiar character is already seen to attach to the Roman see.” [Ibid., A. 2, § 72.]  This view of the growth of the Papacy is not only historically true, but enables the author to dispense with the proofs from Scripture which his predecessors, e.g., Bellarmine, are wont to allege, to the detriment rather than the advantage of their cause.  Only a council which discovered that “from the very beginning of the Church seven orders of ministry and their names existed,” [Ab ipso ecclesiae initio sequentum ordinum nomina, et unius cujusque eorum propria ministeria, subdiaconi, scil. acolyti, exorcistae, lectores, et ostiarii, in usu fuisse cognoscuntur.  Conc. Trid., Sess. xxiii., c. 2.  The two remaining orders are diaconi and sacerdotes (presbyters).] could have authorized its catechism to declare that the Papacy was instituted when Christ said to Peter: “Feed My sheep”; or, “On this rock I will build My church,” that is (according to the older and better interpretation of the passage), on the living faith exhibited in the Apostle’s confession: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matt. 16:16); or, “Unto Thee will I give the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” which, if some personal prerogative may be thought intended, is explained by the fact that to Peter it was given to admit first the Jews and then the Gentiles into the Christian Church (Acts 2, 10); or, “Whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Matt. 16:19), an authority, whatever it may mean, which was afterwards conferred on all the Apostles (Ibid., 18:18).  On no occasion in the sacred history is any preeminence assigned to this Apostle.  The Apostle James has better claims to such precedence.  Uninspired history is equally silent.  There is no proof that Peter was ever at Rome, or that he was Bishop of Rome, or that if he was bishop, he could transmit his personal prerogatives to his successors.  The chronology of his history is against the supposition.  From the 18th year of Tiberius, when Christ was crucified, to the 13th of Nero, when, according to Romish writers, Peter suffered martyrdom at Rome, there is a space of about thirty-six years.  At the council held at Jerusalem (Acts 15), about A.D. 51, Peter was present, and the next notice is that he was at Antioch (Gal. 2:11), about A.D. 58, where tradition reports that he resided some years.  Little time remains for his alleged Roman episcopate.  The Book of Acts, which narrates at length several important events in Peter’s life, passes over his episcopacy, and even his residence at Rome in silence.  S. Paul, writing to Rome, and writing from Rome, makes no mention of him.  The view then which Möhler takes is the only one that has a semblance of historical truth.  And, no doubt, there is some truth in it.  In the writings of Cyprian the idea of a visible centre for Western Christendom is common, and already the see of Rome is invested with an undefined superiority.  “This” (the evil of schism), he writes, “arises from men’s not recurring to the fountain head of truth, and the doctrine of our heavenly Master.  There is no need of prolix argument; the proof is short, and easy of comprehension.  The Lord says to Peter: ‘Thou art Peter,’ etc., and again: ‘Feed My sheep.’  Upon him alone He builds His church; to him He commits His sheep to be fed.  And although after His resurrection He invests all the Apostles with equal power: ‘As the Father hath sent Me,’ etc., yet that He might exhibit the principle of unity, He, by His authority, so disposed matters, that that unity should take its beginning from one (Peter).  All the Apostles, indeed, were what Peter was, endowed with an equal share of honour and power; but Christ begins with one, and the primacy is assigned to Peter that it may be shown that there is one church and one chair. ... Of this church how can he be supposed to hold the faith who holds not the unity?  How can he who resists the Church (who deserts the chair of Peter upon whom the Church is founded) hope that he is in the Church?” [De unit. eccles.  It is right to mention that the words enclosed in brackets are adjudged by Baluzius to be an interpolation.]  “Where, and by whom, remission of sins is given is plain.  For to Peter first, upon whom the Lord founded the church, and from whom He derived the origin of unity, was committed a power of remitting on earth sins which should be remitted in heaven.  And after His resurrection, He declared to all the Apostles: ‘As the Father hath sent Me,’ etc.” [Epist. lxxiii.]  “In addition to their former misdeeds, they (the schismatics) having appointed a pseudo-bishop for themselves, dare to repair to Rome, and to the chair of Peter, the chief church whence the unity of the priesthood took its rise.” [Ibid., lv.]  “Those who took their journey to you (Cornelius) we exhorted that they would acknowledge and hold fast by the root and mother of the Catholic Church.  We directed letters to be sent throughout our province, exhorting all our colleagues to ratify your election, and steadfastly to maintain fellowship and union with you, that is, with the Catholic Church itself.” [Ibid., xlv.]  Well may Wailer point to such passages as proof that so early as the third century “the Pope was but waiting a summons to make his appearance.” [Einheit, etc., p. 247.]

      And if his appearance had been ascribed to human causes, and the providential course of events, it might have been acquiesced in.  To make it either of Divine or of Satanic origin is equally wide of the truth: human passions, human sins, and, we may add, the love of unity inherent in Christianity, all had a share in bringing it about.  The successive Popes as much obeyed as they led the tendencies of their age: western Christendom was as ready to confer upon the Bishop of Rome the supremacy as he was to receive it.  De Maistre has reminded Protestants that where there is on one side a voluntary surrender of inherited rights, it is idle to talk of usurpation on the other ; and that the mediaeval bishops of Rome only exercised powers which had been delegated to them by the free, or apparently free, consent of both churches and states.  And this cannot be gainsaid.  Moreover, a pious mind, contemplating the social disorders of the age, might well think that no remedy was likely to be so efficient as a central authority, feeble in a temporal point of view, but wielding spiritual powers of unlimited scope.  A common Father to the half-civilized nations of Europe was no ignoble conception.  The disapprobation which we must feel at the language and actions of certain Popes may be mitigated by bearing in mind that they were men, and that their position was one of difficulty and temptation.  Who, in fact, will venture to ascribe to Leo the Great a deliberate design to erect a spiritual throne on the ruins of Apostolic Christianity?  The event, indeed, has proved that to no human hand can the scepter of universal empire, temporal or spiritual, be safely confided; but the evils which sprang from the Papacy were as yet in the womb of time, and unforeseen.  In short, regarding the Papacy as a visible symbol of the unity of the whole Church; as a sheltering enclosure for the fundamental truths of Christianity in periods of wild license; as a moderating influence amidst barbarism and anarchy; we can neither feel surprise at its appearance, nor refuse to recognize therein the traces of a superintending providence bending human error and sin to its own purposes.  It is worthy of note that at the commencement of the Reformation it was not the mere fact of the primacy of the Roman bishop to which its leaders took exception: they even declared that if the Bishop of Rome would acknowledge that his superiority to other bishops was but by the custom of the Church, they, on their part, would be willing to leave him in undisturbed possession of his Patriarchal relation to the churches of Europe.  The passage of Melanchthon to that effect is well known: “Concerning the Roman Pontiff, my opinion is that should he admit the Gospel, the precedence which he has hitherto enjoyed, as compared with other bishops, may, to preserve the peace and tranquility of those Christians who acknowledge his jurisdiction, be by us also accorded to him; but only jure humano.” [Art. Smal., ad. fin.]  Only jure humano; the essence of the controversy lies in those words.  It is the Tridentine dogma, not the fact, of the Primacy, which Protestantism repudiated, and must ever repudiate. The Bishop of Rome was asserted to be by Divine appointment the Vicar of Christ, and ruler of the whole Church; the Papacy was made an essential constituent of Christianity. [“De qua re agitur cum de primatu Pontificis agitur? brevissime dicam; de summa rei Christianae.”  Bellarm.  Praef. ad Lib. de S. P.]  In matters of faith infallibility has lately been ascribed to it.  It followed that no Church, however Scriptural in doctrine, or apostolic in polity, which did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Pope jure divino could be a true Church: its members are out of the pale of salvation, except through the uncovenanted mercies of God.  “He that reigneth on high,” so runs the Bull of Pope Pius against Elizabeth, “to whom is given all power in heaven and earth, has committed the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, out of which there is no salvation, to one alone on earth; namely, to Peter, prince of the Apostles, and to the Roman Pontiff,” successor of Peter; “to be governed with a plenitude of power,” [Quoted by Barrow, Supremacy, etc., Introd.]  “We declare, define, and pronounce,” says Boniface VIII., “that it is necessary to salvation that every human being should be subject to the Roman Pontiff.” [Ibid.]  To establish these claims, and invest them with the sanction of antiquity, pretended decretals of the early bishops of Rome were made to speak the language of later times; just as in the so-called Apostolical constitutions, which were composed about the beginning of the third century, and which throughout favour the legal, hierarchical spirit which had begun to pervade the Church, the Apostles are introduced as laying down canons after the fashion of the age of Cyprian.  In short, in the doctrine of the Papacy, as finally declared by the Council of Trent, we have a signal example of the principle on which spurious Catholicism, of every age and under all its forms, proceeds: viz., the transformation of ecclesiastical developments into Divine laws, of Christianity into a system of legal ordinances as essential to its being as those of Moses were to the Jewish economy.  And we may ask, Of what avail is it to expend time, labour, and learning, in disproving the doctrine of the Papal supremacy, while we leave untouched the roots whence it sprang, and, which, if in its existing form it were abolished, would reproduce it or something like it?  The efflorescence of the disease has been mistaken for the seat of the disease.  If any form of polity, Presbyterianism, Episcopacy, Metropolitanism; if the distinction in kind between clergy and laity; if the appointments of ritual and worship save in their first elements; are held to be jure divino; no defensible position can be taken up against the errors of Romanism on these points.

§ 84.  Church and State

      There are points in which these two forms of social union seem to approximate to each other, and to aim at the same results.  The State, not less than the Church, is of Divine origin, so far as it rests ultimately on the instincts implanted in man by his Creator, and on the providential government of the world.  Like the family, it is natural to man, not the product of an imaginary social compact between governors and governed.  It is not left to our choice whether our early life shall be passed under parental guidance, and the social influences of the family; the question is by Divine Providence decided for us.  Neither is it a matter of choice whether we shall be members of a state or not; here, too, nature and Providence anticipate us.  And, thus, in a real sense, the powers that be are ordained of God (Rom. 13:1).

      The State, too, has for its object, or one of its main objects, the moral training of its members.  To regard it merely as an institution for the protection of life and property (one, no doubt, of its chief purposes), would be as imperfect a notion of it as it would be to consider the family as merely intended for the physical nurture of children.  Heathen writers, such as Plato, entertained juster views.  They looked upon the State as the greatest of schools of natural education; and, in fact, in the absence of revelation, no higher or more comprehensive organization for that purpose presented itself to them.

      The State, moreover, and the Church operate on the same material, viz., fallen human nature; the former on man in his secular, the latter on man in his spiritual, capacity; but both alike on man as he is actually found.  The national life, in its complex relations, furnishes the matter on which the State operates; and, like the Church, it has to contend against the ignorance and sin which it finds.  Hence the Church is in Scripture described in terms derived from the two inferior but Divinely ordered institutions, the family and the State: sometimes it is called the family of God, and sometimes “the city of the living God” (Heb. 12:22), the new Jerusalem: an intimation that these subordinate forms of union, Family, State, and Church, will one day be merged in the higher unity of the consummated kingdom of God.

      And yet the distinction between the State and the Church is an essential one.  The State promotes morality under the form of compulsion; the Church under the form of freedom.  The State operates by the force of external law; the Church aims at making every man a law to himself.  It is not, indeed, correct to say that the function of the State is confined to repressing outward crime, and maintaining social order; for laws possess a power of awakening and educating the slumbering conscience, by stamping the brand of criminality on practices which previously had been thought indifferent – or even praiseworthy; as, for example, nations have been trained to abandon vices, or immoral customs, such as infanticide, which they had previously indulged in, with no sense of their being crimes.  The effect of treating such things as crimes is gradually to produce a feeling that they are so. [Εθίζοντες (νομοθέται) ποιουσιν αγαθούς. Arist., Eth. Nic., ii. 1.]  Still it remains true that the State does not demand or anticipate free action: what it enjoins and prohibits, it does so from without; it does not profess to furnish hidden springs of action, or to rectify the will.  With such a moral standard, or such obedience as this, the Church is not satisfied.  The inner man is the direct subject of the renovating powers committed to her administration; and spontaneous virtue is her aim.  Hence the distinction between sin and crime.  The State deals with crime, the Church with sin. Innumerable moral delinquencies, with which the State cannot interfere, are condemned by the Church, such as ingratitude, covetousness, selfishness in its various forms, and the like; often more repulsive than those which the State visits with penalties.  The Jewish theocracy, as became its preparatory function, treated sin, in certain cases, as crime, e.g., idolatry; and so formed an external barrier behind the shelter of which spiritual religion might expand its blossoms.  And the State occupies a somewhat similar position towards the Church: it stands between Christianity and the impulses of unbridled human nature, which, were they permitted to act unchecked, would leave no place for the peculiar mode of operation of the Church.  So far it possesses a pedagogical character.  It secures, at any rate, a negative basis; life and property are protected, selfish violence suppressed.  On this basis the Church prosecutes her mission.

      The weapons, too, which the Church employs are different from those of the State.  The State secures obedience by temporal pains and penalties, which the Church is forbidden to use.  To attempt to employ the temporal power, whether in the shape of positive penalty or civil disability, to produce religious conviction, or rather conformity, is a blunder as well as a crime; it is an assumption by the State of what does not belong to it; it is an interference with the rights of conscience; and can only issue in hypocritical compliance, or religious indifference.  Internal discipline, and, in the last resort, expulsion from the society, neither of which ought ever to be associated with temporal damage; are the only means which the Church possesses to secure obedience; and if profanity bursts these tender meshes, she must beware of attempting to strengthen them by an appeal to the secular arm.

      From this it follows that the State and the Church never can become formally one.  Let us suppose that a material identity exists between them; that is, that all the members of the body political are also members of the body ecclesiastical; still this would not affect the essential distinction between the one and the other.  The same man might hold office in the State and in the Church; but in the one capacity he would have to act on one set of principles, in the other on another.  As a civil magistrate it might be his duty to condemn a man to death, whom, on apparent repentance, he might, as a member of the Church, console with the promises of Divine forgiveness.  Still less can the State be regarded as the ultimate form which the Church will assume, when the latter has accomplished its mission and served its purpose. [Rothe, Anfänge der Christ.  Kirch., § 18.]  The State never can become an instrument of redemption, which is the very essence of the Church’s office.  States, as such, have no existence hereafter; but the Church, as the company of the redeemed, will exist for ever.  The Church never can be conceived of, except as in spiritual union with its Head, Christ, that is, under the influence of His Spirit; as perpetuated and sustained (in its earthly condition) by the means of grace; modes of influence of which the State, as such, is not the depository.  Yet their common origin from above, and their common objects, forbid that they should be antagonistic the one towards the other.  The State prepares the way for the Church; the Church leavens all departments of the State with a Christian spirit.  Every citizen will perform his civil duties the better for being a Christian.  Hence, on the one hand, the Christian will endeavour to further the interests of the State; to awaken sentiments of patriotism, to promote beneficial changes in the laws, to correct social evils; while the State, without infringing the rights of conscience, will lend the Church the protection of the civil power in securing its liberty of action, its endowments, and its rights of appeal in matters which fall under the cognizance of the secular courts.  The term “Church” in the foregoing remarks needs to be defined.  It is obvious that when speaking of the connection of Church and State, we do not mean the Church in its essential being, the invisible Church of Scripture and of Protestantism; for this, as has been explained, is not yet manifested in its corporate capacity.  As the State is a local body, so must the Church be, which is supposed to be in alliance with it.  And yet the definition that a true visible Church is a society in which the pure Word is preached and the sacraments duly administered, is too narrow for our present purpose; for, however small the society, these notes may belong to it.  To understand the connection of Church and State we must realize the conception of a national Church.  A national Church is the particular form which the Christianity of a nation assumes under the circumstances of race, temperament, and history, which have contributed to make the nation what it is.  It matters not how this form has been produced; whether spontaneously, or by the direction which the national history has taken, or by an impulse from the civil power; it is sufficient if in the lapse of time it has settled down into a certain type.  It may be difficult to analyze in what the difference between national Churches consists; but it is none the less matter of observation.  The Church of England seems suited to the genius of the English people, as a whole; the Church of Scotland to that of the Scotch.  Either is a Christian Church, and a valuable embodiment of Christianity; but the one cannot be mistaken for the other, even setting aside external differences.  A really national Church is a great providential boon to any nation.  It must be distinguished from a mere State Church, the creature of conquest, or of law, or of choice for special purposes.  For example, a Church which the government for the time being may select to hallow its public acts with the offices of religion, such as the coronation of a sovereign, or the inauguration of a president, thanksgivings for a victory or peace, humiliation in times of famine or pestilence; may, for the nonce, be called the National Church.  Most Christian States would desire, as most heathen did, to add solemnity to such public events by associating religious services with them.  But the Church thus selected may be the Church of the minority; and, moreover, it may give place to another Church, in succession, for similar purposes.  In such a case it is not really the national Church: much less can it be so called if it depends for existence on the civil power.  Any Church may be forced on a conquered people; but if it does not express on the whole the national religious sentiment, it will be an exotic, and remain so.  This was the position of the Established Church in Ireland, not through its fault but its misfortune; and this would have been the position of an Episcopal Church in Scotland had the injudicious attempt of Charles II and his advisers, at the close of the seventeenth century, succeeded.  There can be no national Church of Ireland, for there is not, and never has been, a united Irish people; in Scotland there was, and is, a really national Church, which has freely developed itself on the Presbyterian model [There is no distinction on this point between the Established and the Free Church  of Scotland.] and if the scheme of establishing Episcopacy by the secular power had there succeeded, nothing could have averted a civil rupture and grievous injury to religion.  The counsels of a wise king and wise statesmen averted the calamity.  In all such cases, the test whether a State Church is also a national one is easy of application: if the pressure of the civil power were removed, would the nation freely and spontaneously adopt the form of Christianity sought to be imposed upon it?

      Where a national Church, in the proper sense of the word, exists, the problem of reconciling the rights of the State with the rights of conscience scarcely arises, or is comparatively easy of solution.  Were the nation and the Church materially one – as Hooker supposed they might be, and, in his time, not without show of reason – intolerance or persecution would be simply impossible.  A man cannot persecute himself; and, in the case supposed, ecclesiastical legislation would be nothing more than the nation’s legislation for itself in its religious capacity, to which no objection could be made.  Difficulties arise when either there is no national Church (as in the United States of America), or the dissentients from it are so numerous as to make it impossible to disregard the fact.  In the former case the State must keep aloof from special connection with any religious body (as in the United States), in the latter great caution in religious legislation is needed.  It must be accounted, therefore, a misfortune if, owing to unfavourable circumstances, the nation has not been able spontaneously to mould its Christianity into a national shape, with special characteristics and historical traditions.  It may still, however, be a Christian nation; as the United States justly claim that name.  We may observe that of the United Kingdom as a whole there is no national Church, no one Church of the three kingdoms which are represented in the Imperial Parliament.  England and Scotland have each their own Church, and if a national Church exists in Ireland, it must be confessed to be the Roman Catholic.  Nevertheless, the United Kingdom is a Christian kingdom, and must be regarded as such.  One advantage of a truly national Church is the bulwark which it raises against Ultramontane Romanism, the deadly foe of national independence.  “The Bishop of Rome hath no jurisdiction in this realm of England” (Art. xxxvii.); the day on which the principle here asserted should be abandoned or practically forgotten, would be fraught with momentous consequences to the country.  Of Churches, only a national one, such as the Galilean Church in its palmy days, can effectually cooperate with the State in resisting the Papal pretension.

      Judicial oaths, the subject of Article xxxix, prove the necessary connection of religion with the State, but not necessarily of the Christian Religion.  All that the State requires for the administration of justice is a recognition of the fundamental truths of natural religion, such as the existence of a God, and of a future state of reward and punishment [See Warburton, “Alliance of Church and State.”]; if it finds Christianity accepted by the nation, so much the better; it is, as Coleridge expresses it, [“Idea of Church and State,” p. 59.  In Omichund v. Barker (Smith’s leading cases) it was held that the depositions of a pagan idolater, sworn according to the custom of his country, may be received in evidence.] “a happy accident,” on which the State has reason to congratulate itself; but well-ordered states have existed without the enjoyment of the privilege.  It might even be supposed that the tendency of Christianity is to deprive the State of this particular support in securing the ends of justice; for, interpreted literally, our Lord’s prohibition seems to extend to oaths of every kind (Matt. 5:34).  And the passage in S. James’ epistle, which evidently alludes to the former, seems to confirm this interpretation (chap. 5:12).  But we cannot suppose that the prohibition is to be taken in this extended sense.  In the Old Testament oaths appear as in common use, and are not forbidden; on the contrary they are enjoined in certain cases (Exod. 22:11).  The law sanctioned the practice, but guarded it from abuse.  The Jew was not to swear falsely (Lev. 19:12), nor to swear by false gods (Josh. 23:7); when he took a vow or oath to the Lord, he was to take care to fulfill it (Num. 30:2); but he was nowhere commanded not to swear at all.  Our Lord Himself not infrequently passed beyond a simple affirmation (“Verily, verily”), nor did He refuse to reply to the adjuration of the High Priest to declare whether He was the Son of God (Matt. 26:63).  The Apostle Paul in many passages of his epistles appeals to God for the truth of what he says (Rom. 1:9; 2 Cor. 1:23, 11:10; Gal. 1:20); and there is nothing in the passages to lead to the conclusion that his correspondents would otherwise have doubted his word.  What, then, are we to understand by Christ’s prohibition in the sermon on the mount?  A system of immoral casuistry among the Jews had established distinctions between oaths in which the name of God occurred and those in which it did not, the former only they held to be absolutely binding.  It was said to them of old time, “Thou shalt not forswear thyself,” and thus, if His name is used, take His name in vain (Exod. 20:7); all such vows thou shalt not fail to “perform unto the Lord,” as a duty the violation of which He will visit; – such injunctions Christ did not mean to abrogate, but only to warn His hearers against a corrupt interpretation of them.  He reminds them that to swear by any of the creatures is, in fact, to swear by God who created and sustains them, and thus exposes the sophistry of the distinction which the Scribes and Pharisees had introduced.  But solemn judicial oaths He does not allude to, or condemn.  Thou shalt perform what thou hast promised, whatever be the object by which thou hast sworn; this has nothing to do with oaths imposed by the State for the promotion of justice.  A question, however, may arise, whether such voluntary oaths are in themselves permissible, and our Lord replies in the negative.  If Christians were always what they ought to be, neither mistrustful of their brethren nor themselves liable to be tempted to mislead, their simple affirmation (Yea, yea; Nay, nay) would be sufficient for all purposes of social intercourse.  “Whatsoever is more than these,” any strengthening of statement, whether by an oath or not, betrays a consciousness of the sin that still cleaves to the regenerate.  In proportion as Christ is formed in us, the superfluity will disappear.  Oaths in common life, like “a writing of divorcement” (Matt. 5:31), were permitted, even sanctioned, under the law, because of the spiritual imbecility of those subject to it; but both the one and the other, except in certain cases, are out of place under the Gospel; and in this sense it is, but not as abrogating judicial oaths, that Christ has supplied what was wanting in the law.  In short, the prohibition seems to glance at needless, thoughtless, expletives, such as too frequently occur in common life, and not, at least directly, to oaths in a court of justice.  What may be in the consummated kingdom of God we know not; we do know that at present the ideal is far from being reached.  Even in Christians the State has to deal with those liable to temptation and to lapses, and, therefore, needing every support which religion can furnish to keep them in the path of duty.  Just, therefore, as the analogous commands touching the lex talionis (verse 38–42), cannot be understood literally without injury to society (what, e.g., is of greater detriment than promiscuous and ill-regulated charity?); nay, without going counter to the example of Christ Himself who did not turn His cheek to the smiter (John 18:23), and of the Apostle Paul, who did not hesitate to appeal to the law and the civil power for protection from popular violence (Acts 16:37, 22:25, 25:11); so the administration of judicial oaths is not forbidden in a Christian state.  Required and taken in a proper spirit they serve to remind the parties concerned of their duty towards the Supreme Being, and their subjection to His authority.  How the State is to proceed towards those who do not acknowledge any Supreme Being is a question for jurists to decide.  Where oaths are retained they should be freed from unnecessary additions, particularly those which in any way resemble heathenish adjurations, or invoke spiritual or temporal vengeance from heaven on perjurers.  The penalty for false swearing, so far as it reaches beyond this world, must be left to Him who alone can mete it out with accuracy.  It is possible that the objections which some pious persons entertain to even judicial oaths would be abated, if the wording and the ceremonial of them were freed from such associations.

      May the Christian, as a member of the State, lawfully engage in war?  Some of the ancient Fathers and some modern sects hold it unlawful, and, as they do on the question of oaths, allege certain passages of the Sermon on the Mount as justifying their opinion (Matt. v. 21, 38–41).  And the foregoing remarks apply to this subject as well as to the other.  When Christianity has gained complete dominion over the evil tendencies of human nature, whether in the millennium or afterwards, coercive laws will be no longer needed, and universal peace will prevail.  And it is, no doubt, the duty of Christians to keep before their minds the ideal presented in this discourse of Christ.  But the present state of things is an imperfect one, and Scripture recognizes the fact by never recommending violent attempts at reformation, content with enunciating principles which sooner or later work a change.  Thus civil government, which involves the employment of force even in the extreme form of capital punishment, is not only left undisturbed, but commended as the appointment of God.  Slavery is not denounced as inconsistent with Christian profession, while yet principles are enunciated which were sure in time to bring about its abolition.  Still less is the division of mankind into nations, however the effect of sin and apparently favourable to the spread of the Gospel, interfered with, or the virtue of patriotism disparaged.  This seems sufficient to establish the lawfulness of war.  For if the normal state of mankind, under this dispensation, is one of separate political communities; if a universal empire under one government is a dream which never can be realized; then the judicial machinery, which in each particular state decides between the claims of individuals and controls, by force if need be, the undisciplined impulses of human nature, can as regards nations have no place.  There is no external authority to which they are bound to render obedience.  International law, from which so much seems sometimes to be expected, is in reality no law at all, if by that term is to be understood a tribunal by the decision of which the litigant parties are compelled to abide.  On certain points agreements or understandings may be entered into by nations; but, on due notice given, they may be broken; and, in the last resort, each nation must decide for itself what is or is not for its interests, or whether an aggression on the part of its neighbour is or is not justifiable.  If the conclusion arrived at is that the national welfare, independence, or dignity is at stake, and may be compromised by yielding to what is demanded, resistance must be offered; and if no compromise is possible, war becomes inevitable.  No doubt the guilt of the rupture lies at the door of the nation which allows ambition or the lust of conquest to prevail over the dictates of justice and moderation, but considerations of this kind do not in practice operate very strongly.  If the aggrieved party submits, the national honour may be compromised, if it does not, this means war.  Accordingly, Scripture contains no prohibition of war, and, indeed, furnishes examples of eminent piety in the military profession (Luke 7:5, Acts 10:2).  But although Christianity does not abrogate this ultimate arbitrament of nations, it has done a great deal in mitigation of its attendant horrors.  As in every department of human agency, so in this, it has introduced a new spirit into what it does not forbid.  The cruelties practiced by conquerors in ancient times are not tolerated by Christian nations, and appliances in relief of suffering, never thought of by the polished nations of antiquity, now form a regular accompaniment of belligerent operations.  Nor can it be doubted that the condemnation which the Gospel pronounces on wars undertaken from purely ambitious motives has done much to discredit frivolous and unnecessary appeals to arms.

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