this Section teaches —

1st. That our Lord Jesus Christ, as meditatorial King, has appointed a government for his Church ; and,

2d. That this church government is distinct in all respects from the civil government.

1st. Christ the God-man, as mediatorial King, by his inspired apostles and their writings, appointed a government for his Church, and by his providence and Spirit he continues graciously to administer it to the end of time. Hence the Church is a theocratic kingdom. All authority and power descends, and does not ascend. Pastors and elders teach and rule in the name of God, and not of man. It is the commission of Christ, and not of the Churchy that the minister carries with him, and by authority of which he acts. The Church only witnesses to the genuineness of this commission, and sees that it is faithfully discharged by the bearer of it. Hence all the power of church officers, either in their several or collective capacity, is ministerial and declarative. They have only to define what . Christ has taught, to carry that teaching to all men, and to execute the laws he has given, and to administer the penalties he has designated according to his will and in his name.

2d. This theocratic government of the Church which Christ has established is entirely independent of the civil government. To very many in Europe it appeared impossible that two independent governments should exercise jurisdiction at the same time over the same subjects without constant collision. But the experience of the dissenting bodies and free churches of Great Britain, and of all the churches in America, abundantly proves that there is no danger of interference whatever when both the Church and the State confine themselves to

42 *

their respective provinces. The persons subject to the juiisdiction of the government of the Church are also subject to the jurisdiction of the government of the State, but the ends, the laws, the methods and the sanctions of the two are so different that the one never can any more interfere with the other than waves of colour can interfere with vibrations of sound.

While all Christians, with the exception of the Erastians, agree with the two principles taught in this Section as thus generally stated, they differ very much as to the human agents with whom Christ has deposited this power, and whom he uses as his instruments in administering it. There are four radically different theories on this subject:

" 1st. The popish theory, which assumes that Christ, the apostles and believers constituted the Church while our Saviour was on earth, and this organization was designed to be perpetual. After the ascension of our Lord, Peter became his vicar, and took his place as the visible head of the Church. This primacy of Peter, as the universal bishop, is continued in liis successors, the bishops of Rome ; and the apostleship is perpetuated in the order of prelates. As in the primitive Church no one could be an apostle who was not subject to Christ, so now no one can be a prelate who is not subject to the pope. And as then no one could be a Christian who was not subject to Christ and the apostles, so now no one can be a Christian who is not subject to the pope and the prelates. This is the Romish theory of the Church. A vicar of Christ, a perpetual college of aposJes, and the people subject to their infallible control.

** 2d. The prelatical theory assumes the perpetuity of

the apostleship as the governing power in the Church, which therefore consists of those who profess the true religion and are subject to apostle-bishops. This is the Anglican or High-Church form of this theory. In its Low-Church form, the prelatical theory simply teaches that there was originally a threefold order in the ministry, and that there should be now. But it does not affirm that mode of organization to be essential.

" 3d. The Independent or Congregational theory includes two principles : first, that the governing and executive power in the Church is in the brotherhood ; and secondly, that the church organization is complete in each worshipping assembly, which is independent of - every other.

"4th. The fourth theory is the Presbyterian. , . . This includes the following affirmative statement : (1.) The people have a right to a substantive part in the government of the Church. (2.) Presbyters who labour in word and doctrine are the highest permanent officers of the Church, and all belong to the same order. (3.) The outward and visible Church is, or should be, one, in the sense that a smaller part is subject to a larger, and a larger to the whole. It is not holding one oi* these principles that makes a man a Presbyterian, but his holding them all.^'*

Christ has in fact vested all ecclesiastical power in the Church as a whole, none of its members being excluded; yet not in the Church as a mob, but as an organized body consisting of members, their representatives ruling elders, and ministers or bishops. Elders or bishops

* " What is Presbyterianism ?" Rev. C. Hodge, D.D. : Pres. Board of PuU

were ordained by the apostles, have always continued in the Church, and were designed to be perpetuated as the. highest class of officers in the Church. 1 Tim. iii. 1; Eph. iv. 11, 12. All Church power vests, then, jointly in the lay and clerical element, in the ministers together with the people.

" Ruling elders are properly the repeesentatives OF THE PEOPLE, chosen by them for the purpose of exercising government and discipline in conjunction with pastors or ministers.^'* *^ The powers, therefore, exercised by our ruling elders are powers which belong to the lay members of the Church.'' "They are chosen by them to act in their name in the government of the Church. A representative is one chosen by others to do in their name what they are entitled to do in their own persons; or rather to exercise the powers which radically inhere in those for whom they act. The members of a State Legislature or of Congress, for example, can exercise only those powers which are inherent in the people.''t

To suppose, as some have done, that the government of the Church is ambulatory, or that no particular form has been appointed by Christ, but that he has left it to be moulded according to the wisdom or caprice of men, and varied according to the external circumstances of the Church, is to impeach the love of Christ to his Church, and his fidelity to Him who hath appointed him to " reign over the house of Jacob." No human society can subsist without government; how absurd, then, to suppose that the Church of Christ, the most perfect of all societies, has been left by her king destitute of what is essential to the very being of society ! Under the Old Testament a most perfect form of government was prescribed to the Church; but order and discipline are as necessary to the Christian as they were to the Jewish Church. And can it be reasonably supposed, that while the government of the latter was minutely prescribed, that of the former has been totally neglected ? All sects of Christians, indeed, plead the authority of Scripture for that form of government which they prefer; and thus they implicitly jicknowledge that the outlines, at least, of some particular form may be found in the Scriptures.

Even the advocates of the divine right of ecclesiastical

government differ widely respecting the precise form of it which has been appointed by Christ. Papists, conceiving that the Bishop of Rome, as the successor of Peter, and the vicegerent of Christ, is the visible head of the whole Church, maintain that in him the supreme government of the universal Church is reposed, and that from him all other bishops derive their authority. Episcopalians, holding a distinction of rank among the ministers of religion, vest the government of the Church in bishops, archbishops, &c. Independents, conceiving that every congregation forms a complete Church, and has an independent power of jurisdiction within itself, lodge the government of the Church in the assembly of the faithful. Presbyterians, holding, in opposition to Episcopalians, that all the ministers of the Word are on a level, in respect of office and authority; and, in opposition to Independents, that particular congregations are only parts of the one Church, maintain that the government of the Church is committed, under Christ, to the presbytery, or the teaching and ruling elders; and that there is a subordination of courts, in which the sentence of inferior courts may be reviewed, and either affinned or reversed. It would be out of place here to examine the claims of these different systems. That the Presbyterial form is " founded upon, and agreeable to, the Word of God," is, in our judgment, fully established in " the Form of Church Government" drawn up by the Westminster Assembly.

It is only necessary to advert to the opinion of the Erastians, who maintain that the external government of the Church belongs to the civil magistrate. This opinion is directly opposed to all that the Scriptures say about the spiritual nature of the kingdom of Christ. That remarkable declaration of Christ, " My kingdom is not of this world," plainly shows that his kingdom, though in the world, is totally and specifically distinct from all others in it; and when he forbade the exercise of such dominion over his subjects as the kings of the Gentiles exercised, the different nature of the government to take place in it was clearly pointed out. Among the various office-bearere which Christ has " set in the Church," the civil magistrate is never mentioned. And were it true that it belongs to the ci\al magistrate to model the government of the Church, Christ must have left his Church more than three hundred years without any government; for it was not till the fourth century that the Church received any countenance from the civil powers.

" The formal and specific difference betwixt the Church and the kingdoms of the world, and, consequently, between

304 CONFESSION OF FAITH. [cHAP. XXX.

civil and ecclesiastical authority, in respect of origin, ends, subjects, laws, privileges, means, extent, «&:c., has, by many writers, been very particularly explained. No doubt, the Church on earth hath some things in common with other societies, and the authority in both may often have the same objects, materially considered; they admit also of a mutual respect, and reciprocal acts and duties towards each other; but none of these are inconsistent with their formal distinction, but rather suppose it; so that all the power and peculiar actings of each, whatever matters they respect, must ever be of the same nature with that of the society they belong to— in the one wholly spiritual, and in the other always and wholly secular. When following their proper line, and keeping within their proper sphere, they can never jar or impede one another by interference: like two straight and parallel lines, they can never meet or be confounded together. Whatever dangers have arisen, or may arise, from abuse, none can arise merely from the distinct and independent nature and actings of these societies; so that there can be no reason for subjecting one of them to the other. The common plea of the necessity of one undivided supreme power in all states, and of the danger of an ' imperimn in imperio/ applies only to societies and powers of the same nature and order, and is impertinently urged for a supremacy of temporal rulers over a Church of Christ, whose authority is of a different kind."*