These Sections teach that the Church and the State are both divine institutions, having different objects and spheres of action, different governments and officers, and hence, while owing mutual good offices, are independent of each other.

This is opposed —

1st. To the Papal doctrine of the relation of the State to the Church. According to the strictly logical ultramontane view, the whole nation being in all its members a portion of the Church universal, the civil organization is comprehended within the Church for certain ends subordinate to the great end for which the Church exists, and is therefore ultimately responsible to it for the exercise of the authority delegated. Hen(;e, whenever the Pope has been in a condition to vindicate his authority, he has put kingdoms under interdict, released subjects ^rom their vow of allegiance and deposed sovereigns because of the assumed heresy or insubordination of the

THE CIVrL MAGISTRATE. 405

civil rulers of the land. Our Confession teaches that the State is in its sphere entirely independent of the Church, and that it has civil jurisdiction over all ecclesiastical persons, on the same principles and to the same extent it has over any other class of persons whatsoever.

2d. The statements of these Sections are opposed also to the Erastian doctrine as to the relation of the State to the Church, which has prevailed in all the nations and national churches of Europe. This doctrine regards the State as a divine institution, designed to provide foi all the wants of men, spiritual as well as temporal, and that it is consequently charged with the duty of providing for the dissemination of pure doctrine and for the proper administration of the sacraments and of discipline. It is the duty of the civil magistrate therefore to support the Church, to appoint its officers, to define its laws and to superintend their administration. Thus in the State churches of Protestant Germany and England the sovereign is the supreme ruler of the Church as well as of the State, and the civil magistrate has chosen and imposed the confessions of faith, the system of government, the order of worship and the entire course of ecclesiastical administration.

In opposition to this, our Confession teaches that religious liberty is an inalienable prerogative of mankind (Chapter xx.), and that it involves the unlimited right upon the part of every man to worship God according to the dictates of his own conscience. Hence, ecclesiastical rulers, although endowed with the power of the keys, are not allowed to apply any civil pains or disabilities to coerce men to obey the laws they administer. Hence, also, the civil magistrate, while bound to protect

church membei's and ecclesiastical organizations in the peaceful enjoyment of their rights and discharge of their functions, is nevertheless allowed no official jurisdiction whatever in the affairs of the Church. The same person may be a civil magistrate and a church member. In the one case he is a ruler — in the other a subject. Or the same person may be a civil magistrate and a church officer, and rule at the same time in both spheres. But his jurisdiction in each case would have entirely independent grounds, objects, spheres, modes and subjects of operation.

These Sections also teach that obedience to civil magistrates, when making or executing laws within the proper sphere of the State, is a duty binding upon all the subjects of government for conscience' sake by the authority of God. This follows directly from the fact, as before shown, that civil government is an ordinance of God — that the powers that be are ordained of God for certain ends ; hence obedience to them is obedience to God. It follows hence — (1.) That this obedience ought to be from the heart and for conscience' sake, and not of constraint. Hence we will pray for and voluntarily assist our rulers, as well as render mere technical obedience. (2.) Rebellion is a grievous sin, since it is disobedience to God, and since it necessarily works such permanent physical ruin and social demoralization among our fellow-men. The limit of this obligation to obedience will be found only when we are commanded to do something contrary to the superior authority of God (Acts iv. 19 ; v. 29) ; and when the civil government has become so radically and incurably corrupt that it has ceased to accomplish the ends for which it was estal:»-

lished. When that point has unquestionably been reached, when all means of redress have been exhausted without avail, when there appears no prospect of securing reform in the government itself, and some good prospect of securing it by revolution, then it is the privilege and duty of a Christian people to change their government — peacefully if they may, forcibly if they must.

1. This section, in the first place, states the duty of subjects towards their rulers; and the proofs adduced by the compilers of our Confession clearly show that it is their duty to pray for the divine blessing upon them, to honour their persons, to pay them tribute, and to yield them a conscientious sub- ; jection and obedience in all their lawful commands. * MCrie's Appendix, pp. 142. 143.

252 CONFESSION OF FAITH. [^CHAP. XXIIT.

2. It is affirmed, in opposition to a Popish tenet, that " infidehty, or diiFerence in religion, doth not make void the magistrate's just and legal authority, nor free the people from their due obedience to him." Christ himself paid tribute to Caesar, and his apostles inculcated upon Christians subjection to " the higher powers" then existing, although all these powers were heathen. It must be admitted, however, that nations favoured with supernatural revelation ought, in choosing their rulers, to have a respect to religious qualifications. And nations that have made great attainments in reformation, and pledged themselves, by national vows to the Most High, to hold fast their attainments, certainly ought, in setting up magistrates, to look out for those who will concur with them in the maintenance of the true religion, and rule them by laws subservient to its advancement. On this principle our Reformers acted; for they provided, by their deed of civil constitution, that the sovereign over these realms should be of the same religion with the people, and co-operate with them in prosecuting the ends of the national covenants. But where a magistrate has authority, by the will and consent of the body politic, or majority of a nation (this being what renders his authority "just and legal," according to the "Word of God), " infidelity, or difference in religion, does not make void his authority," nor release individuals, or a minority, from subjection and obedience to him in all lawful commands. With this principle, so clearly laid down in our Confession, accords the practice of " our reforming fathers in Scotland under Queen Mary, and of their successors during the first establishment of Episcopacy, and after the Restoration, down to the time at which the government degenerated into an open and avowed tyranny."

3. It is affirmed that " ecclesiastical persons are not exempted" from due obedience to the civil magistrate. This is an explicit denial of the Popish doctrine of the exemption of the persons and property of ecclesiastics from the jurisdiction of the ordinary criminal and civil tribunals. Our Confession decidedly maintains that the civil magistrate may not claim authority to control or over-rule the office-bearers of the Church in the discharge of their proper functions ; but it no less clearly teaches that ecclesiastical persotis are not exempted from his authority in matters that fall under his rightful jurisdiction, as being of a civil nature. The apostolic injunction is general, and extends to all sorts of persons: " Let every soul be subject imto the higher powers." — Rom. xiii. 1. The expression every soul is very emphatical, and seems intended to brino; the idea c( the universality of the

obligation more strongly out than the use of the ordinary phrase, every one, would have done. The civil and ecclesiastical authorities have separate and distinct jurisdictions. In ecclesiastical matters, civil rulers have no rightful jurisdiction ; and in civil matters, ecclesiastical persons, as they are members of the commonwealth, are equally bound with others to be subject to the ruling authorities.

4. It is further affirmed, that the Pope hath no power or jurisdiction over magistrates in their dominions, or over any of their people. The Popes, when in the plenitude of their power, usurped a supremacy over the whole earth, in temporals as well as in spirituals. They pretended to have authority, by divine right, over kings and their dominions, and claimed a power to dispose of crowns and kingdoms at their pleasure. This arrogant claim they have, in innumerable instances, reduced to practice. They have deposed and excommunicated kings, on the ground of pretended heresy or schism — absolved their subjects from their allegiance, and transferred their dominions to others. Since the Reformation, however, the exorbitant power of the Pope has been greatly restrained. Protestants disclaim his authority, not only in temporal, but also in spiritual matters ; and even in the most of those countries where his spiritual authority is still acknowledged, his temporal supremacy is disowned; but since Papists boast of the unchangeable ness of their Church, and since the Roman Pontiffs lay claim to infallibility, it cannot be supposed that they have renounced their right to universal dominion; and should they again attain to power, it may be presumed that their ancient extravagant principles would be openly avowed, and their universal supremacy enforced as rigorously as in the darker ages. Every friend of civil and religious liberty ought, therefore, strenuously to resist eveiy encroachment of " the Man of Sin, who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called god."