SEP 19 1929 
 
 BR 44 .A7 P65 
 
 Arnold, Thomas, 1795-1842 
 
 Fragment on the church 
 
FRAGMENT 
 
 ON 
 
 THE CHURCH. 
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 IN WHICH ARE CONTAINED 
 
 APPENDICES ON THE SAME SUBJECT. 
 
 BY 
 
 THOMAS ARNOLD, D.D. 
 
 LATE HEAD MASTER OF RUGBY SCHOOL. 
 
 LONDON: 
 
 B. FELLOWES, LUDGATE STREET, 
 1845. 
 
LONDON : 
 GEORGE WOODFALL AND SON, 
 
 ANGEI, COURT, SKINNER STREET. 
 
»* 
 
 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The following pages, chiefly composed in 1839,40, 
 41, are a part of a much longer work which Dr. 
 Arnold contemplated, but which was interrupted 
 by his early death. 
 
 The executors having kindly allowed me to 
 fulfil my wishes as to this fragment, I have felt it 
 a duty not to withhold what remains from his 
 pen on the subject which so greatly occupied his 
 thoughts. 
 
 The earlier approaches to the same subject it 
 has been thought desirable, even at the risk of 
 some inconvenience to the purchasers of the first 
 edition, to publish in the form of Appendices to 
 the fragment of 1839, 40. The brief sketches of 
 1827, 1833, and 1840, may be useful in showing 
 how very small a portion of the Author's design 
 was actually accomplished in the following pages, 
 whilst the fragments of 1833, may illustrate a 
 portion of the argument which accidentally he had 
 
iv ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 treated of more fully in his earlier than his later 
 MSS. on the subject. 
 
 I have been entirely indebted to Mr. Stanley 
 for the whole arrangement and revision of the 
 ]}resent volume. 
 
 MARY ARNOLD. 
 Fox How, March 25, 1845. 
 

 THE CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The language of prophecy leads us to hope for 
 more than the salvation of a certain number of 
 individuals through the gospel. It speaks of a 
 general restoration, so complete as to repair al- 
 together the mischief which had been introduced 
 into the world by sin. And the language of St. 
 Paul, when declaring the great mystery of his 
 preaching, namely, the admission of the Gentiles 
 into the kingdom of God, seems also to go be- 
 yond the redemption of a few individuals, com- 
 paratively speaking, out of the multitude of all 
 nations. Christ was to present unto himself a 
 Church holy and without blemish ; and the dis- 
 tinction made by some between the visible and 
 invisible Church, seems only a later refinement 
 of interpretation, suggested by the fact that the 
 Church, in the obvious sense of the term, was not 
 pure and spotless. Now ought we to low^er the 
 language of prophecy, in order to make it agree 
 with the existing state of things ? or to be anxious 
 to amend the existing state of things, for the 
 
2 THE CHURCH. 
 
 very reason that it does not correspond with the 
 promises of Scripture ? 
 
 The spread of Christianity, speaking of the 
 geographical extent of its mere nominal dominion, 
 has been partial ; — its real moral effects have been 
 still more partial. The largest part of the world 
 does not acknowledge Christ so much as in name ; 
 and where he is acknowledged in name, he is yet 
 denied in many instances in works. The perfect 
 work of the Gospel has been seen only in in- 
 dividuals : Christ has laid his hands on a few sick 
 folk and healed them ; but he has done no mighty 
 work of spiritual healing on a whole church. It 
 is still most true, that we see not yet all things 
 put under him. 
 
 Now are we prepared to say that, whereas the 
 world was lost by one man's sin, it was only to be 
 in a small part recovered by one man's righteous- 
 ness? — that, whereas through Adam all died, only 
 a very small number were through Christ to be 
 made alive? This is directly contrary to the 
 language of Scripture, which represents the re- 
 demption as designed to be a full reparation of 
 the evil occasioned by the fall. 
 
 Or are we prepared to say that God's purposes 
 have been defeated by the greater power of God's 
 enemy? — that sin has been stronger than grace, 
 Satan mightier than Christ? — that the Church 
 with its divine Head and its indwelling Spirit 
 
THE CHURCH. . 3 
 
 has been unable to overcome the powers of evil? 
 — that the medicine was too weak to overcome 
 the disease ? 
 
 If neither of these alternatives be true ; if the 
 Scripture will not allow us to doubt of God's 
 gracious will towards us all ; and if to doubt his 
 power be blasphemy, — what remains, but that we 
 have weakened and corrupted that medicine, which 
 was in itself sufficient to heal us ? — that we have 
 not tried, and are not trying Christianity, such as 
 Christ willed it to be? — that the Church, against 
 which the powers of hell have so long maintained 
 an advantageous conflict, cannot be that same 
 Church against which Christ declared that they 
 should not prevail ? 
 
 Now here it is necessary, in order to prevent 
 much confusion and very much uncharitableness, 
 to distinguish carefully between what I may be 
 allowed to call Christian religion and the Christian 
 Church*. 
 
 By Christian religion, I mean that knowledge 
 of God and of Christ, and that communion of the 
 Holy Spirit, by which an individual is led through 
 life, in all holiness, and dies with the confident 
 hope of rising again through Christ at the last 
 day. This knowledge being derived, or derivable 
 at any rate, from the Scriptures alone, and this 
 communion being the answer to our earnest 
 
 * [See Serm. xxxix. in vol. iv. ; Lect. on Modern Hist, vi.] 
 
 B 2 
 
4 THE CHURCH. 
 
 prayers, it is perfectly possible that Christian 
 religion may work its full work on an individual 
 living alone, or living amongst unbelieving or un- 
 godly men, — that here, where the business rests 
 only with God and the individual soul, God's 
 glory may be exalted and the man's salvation 
 effected, whatever may be the state of the Church 
 at large. 
 
 But, by the Christian Church, I mean that pro- 
 vision for the communicating, maintaining, and 
 enforcing of this knowledge by which it was to 
 be made influential, not on individuals, but on 
 masses of men. This provision consisted in the 
 formation of a society, w4iich by its constitution 
 should be capable of acting both wdthin itself and 
 without ; having, so to speak, a twofold move- 
 ment, the one for its outward advance, the other for 
 its inward life and purification ; so that Christ- 
 ianity should be at once spread widely, and pre- 
 served the while in its proper truth and vigour, 
 till Christian knowledge should be not only com- 
 municated to the whole world, but be embraced 
 also in its original purity, and bring forth its 
 practical fruit. Thus Christian religion and the 
 Christian Church being two distinct things, the one 
 acting upon individuals, the other upon masses ; 
 it is very possible for the former to continue to 
 do its work, although the latter be perverted or 
 disabled. But then the consequence will be such 
 
THE CHURCH. 5 
 
 as we see before us, that Christianity, being de- 
 signed to remedy the intensity of the evil of the 
 fall by its religion, and the universality of the evil 
 by its Church, has succeeded in the first,' because 
 its religion has been retained as God gave it, but 
 has failed in the second, because its Church has 
 been greatly corrupted. 
 
 Christianity, then, contains on the one hand a 
 divine philosophy, which we may call its religion, 
 and a divine polity, which is its Church. 
 
 But it is precisely from an acknowledgment of 
 this last truth, accompanied with a misunder- 
 standing of its real nature, that the greatest part 
 of the actual mischief has arisen. When we say, 
 therefore, that Christianity contains a divine polity, 
 namely, its Church, it is of the utmost importance 
 that we have a clear notion of the Christian 
 Church, according to what we may gather from 
 the Scripture to have been the mind of its divine 
 Founder. 
 
 Now, that religion should be a social as well 
 as an individual concern, is nothing peculiar to 
 Christianity, if by religion we mean the outward 
 and visible worship of God. The act of sacrifice, 
 almost of necessity, involves the cooperation of 
 more than a single person; — festivals and solemn 
 processions, even hymns of thanksgiving and praise, 
 can scarcely be performed by one alone. Religion, 
 then, in that sense in which the ancient world 
 
6 THE CHURCH. 
 
 generally understood it, that is, public and visible 
 worship, has always been, and must always be, the 
 business of several persons together ; — the religion 
 of a single individual must, in this sense, be some- 
 thing imperfect, and only in a very small degree 
 possible. 
 
 But the peculiarity of Christianity consists in 
 this, that while it takes religion in another sense, 
 and means by it, not the visible worship of God, 
 but the service of the heart towards him; and whilst 
 it would thus appear that religion could exist 
 perfectly in one single individual, and required no 
 cooperation of more persons, yet still it is made 
 the business of a number or multitude, and our 
 spiritual relations to God are represented as 
 matters of a joint interest, no less than that visible 
 worship which, in its very nature, must be more 
 than individual. 
 
 Now it is seen and generally acknowledged, 
 that men's physical welfare has been greatly 
 promoted by the cooperation of a number of 
 persons endowed with unlike powers and resources. 
 One man having what another wants, and wanting 
 what another has, there is an obvious wisdom in 
 so combining their efforts, as that the strength of 
 one should supply the weakness of another, and 
 so the weakness should in no case be perceptible. 
 
 This cooperative principle, founded on the great 
 dissimilarity which prevails amongst men, was by 
 
TttE CHURCH. 7 
 
 Christianity to be applied to moral purposes, as 
 it had long been to physical*; each man was to 
 regard his intellectual and moral gifts as a means 
 of advancing the intellectual and moral good of 
 society ; what he himself wanted was to be sup- 
 plied out of the abundance of his neighbour ; — and 
 thus the moral no less than the physical weak- 
 nesses of each individual, were to be strengthened 
 and remedied, till they should vanish as to their 
 enfeebling effects both with respect to himself and 
 to the community. 
 
 Nothing could be more general than such a 
 system of cooperation. It extended to every part 
 of life ; not only going far beyond that cooperation 
 for ritual purposes, which was the social part of 
 the old religions, but, so far as men's physical 
 well-being had been the sole object of existing 
 civil societies, it went far beyond them also. For 
 though it is possible, and unhappily too easy, to 
 exclude moral considerations from our notions of 
 physical good, and from our notions of ritual re- 
 ligion, yet it is not easy, in looking to the moral 
 good of man, to exclude considerations of his 
 physical well-being. Every outward thing having 
 a tendency to affect his moral character, either for 
 the better or for the worse, and this especially 
 holding good with respect to riches or poverty, 
 
 ^ [^See Introduction to Sermons on Christian Life, its 
 Course, its Hindrances, and its Helps, p. xlviii.] 
 
8 THE CHURCH. 
 
 economical questions, in all their wide extent, fall 
 directly under the cognizance of those whose 
 object is to promote man's moral welfare. 
 
 But while thus general, the object of Christian 
 co-operation was not to be vague. When men 
 combined to offer sacrifice, or to keep festival, 
 there was a definite object of their union ; but 
 the promotion of man's moral welfare might seem 
 indistinct and lost in distance. Something nearer 
 and more personal w^as therefore to be mixed up 
 with that whicli was indistinct from its very vast- 
 ness. The direct object of Christian cooperation 
 was to bring Christ into every part of common 
 life ; in scriptural language, to make human society 
 one living body, closely joined in communion with 
 Christ, its head. And for this purpose, one of 
 the very simplest acts of natural necessity w^as 
 connected with the very deepest things of religion : 
 — the meal of an assembly of Christians was made 
 the sacrament of the body and blood of Christ. 
 And the early church well entered into the spirit 
 of this ordinance, when it began every day by a 
 partaking of the holy communion. For when 
 Christ was thus brought into one of the com- 
 monest acts of nature and of common society, it 
 w^as a lively lesson, that in every other act through 
 the day he should be made present also : if 
 Christians at their very social meal could enter 
 into the highest spiritual communion, it taught 
 
THE CHURCH. 9 
 
 them that in all matters of life, even when sepa- 
 rated from one another bodily, that same commu- 
 nion should be preserved inviolate; that in all 
 things they were working for and with one another, 
 with and to Christ and God. 
 
 Such appears, even from the meagre account of 
 a stranger, to have been the manner of living of 
 the Christians of Bithynia, about a hundred years 
 after the birth of our Lord, and about seventy 
 therefore from the first preaching of Christianity. 
 They met before day, and sang together a hymn to 
 Christ : then they bound themselves to one another 
 by oath, — according to Pliny's expression, " Sacra- 
 mento," but in reality, we may be sure, by their 
 joint partaking of the communion of Christ's body 
 and blood, — that they would neither steal, nor 
 rob, nor commit adultery, nor break faith, nor 
 refuse to restore what had been entrusted to 
 them. Then they went to their day's work, and 
 met again to partake their meal together; wdiich 
 they probably hallowed, either by making it a 
 direct communion, or by some prayers, or hymns, 
 which reminded them of their Christian fellowship. 
 
 Now in this account, short as it is, we see the 
 two great principles of the Christian Church : first, 
 cooperation for general moral improvement, for 
 doing the duties of life better ; and secondly, the 
 brinsfinof Christ as it were into their communion, 
 by beginning the day with him, and deriving their 
 
10 THE CHURCH. 
 
 principle of virtuous living directly from liis sacra- 
 ment. The church of Bithynia existed on a small 
 scale, in a remote province ; but here are precisely 
 those leading principles of the Christian Church 
 exemplified, which were fitted for all circum- 
 stances and all places, and which contain in them 
 that essential virtue which the Church was to em- 
 body and to diffuse. 
 
 It is obvious, also, that the object of Christian 
 society being thus extensive, and relating not to 
 ritual observances, but to the improvement of the 
 whole of our life, the natural and fit state of the 
 Church is, that it should be a sovereign society 
 or commonwealth ; as long as it is subordinate and 
 municipal, it cannot fully carry its purposes into 
 effect. This will be evident, if we consider that 
 law and government are the sovereign influences 
 on human society ; that they in the last resort 
 shape and control it at their pleasure; that in- 
 stitutions depend on them, and are by them 
 formed and modified ; that what they sanction 
 will ever be generally considered innocent ; that 
 what they condemn is thereby made a crime, and 
 if persisted in becomes rebellion ; and that those 
 who hold in their hands the power of life and 
 death must be able greatly to obstruct the pro- 
 gress of whatever they disapprove of, and those 
 who dispose of all the honours and rewards of so- 
 ciety must, in the same way, be greatly able to 
 
THE CHURCH. 11 
 
 advance whatever they think excellent. So long, 
 then, as the sovereign society is not Christian, and 
 the Church is not sovereign, we have two powers 
 alike designed to act upon the whole of our be- 
 ing, but acting often in opposition to one another. 
 Of these powers, the one has wisdom, the other 
 external force and influence ; and from the divi- 
 sion of these things, which ought ever to go to- 
 gether, the wisdom of the Church cannot carry 
 into effect the truths which it sees and loves; 
 whilst the power of government, not being guided 
 by wisdom, influences society for evil rather than 
 for good*. 
 
 The natural and true state of things then is, 
 that this power and this wisdom should be united ; 
 that human life should not be pulled to pieces 
 between two claimants, each pretending to exer- 
 cise control over it, not in some particular portion, 
 but universally; that wisdom should be armed 
 with power, power guided by wisdom ; that the 
 Christian Church should have no external force to 
 thwart its beneficent purposes ; that government 
 should not be poisoned by its internal ignorance 
 or wickedness, and thus advance the cause of God's 
 enemy, rather than perform the part of God's 
 vicegerent. 
 
 This is the perfect notion of a Christian Church, 
 
 a [[See Lectures on Modern History (Inaug. Lect. and Ap- 
 pendix).] 
 
12 THE CHURCH. 
 
 that it should be a sovereign society, operating 
 therefore with full power for raising its condi- 
 tion, first morally, and then physically ; operating 
 through the fullest developement of the varied 
 faculties and qualities of its several members, and 
 keeping up continually, as the bond of its union, 
 the fellowship of all its people with one another 
 through Christ, and their communion with him as 
 their common head. 
 
 With this notion of a perfect Church two things 
 are utterly inconsistent : — first, the destroying of 
 the principle of cooperation through the varied 
 talents and habits of the several members of the 
 society, and substituting in the place of it a sys- 
 tem in which a very few should be active and the 
 great mass passive* ; a system in which vital heat 
 w^as to be maintained, not by the even circula- 
 tion of the blood through every limb, through the 
 healthy cooperation of the arteries and veins of 
 every part, but by external rubbing and chafing, 
 when the limbs, from a suspension of their inward 
 activity, had become cold and paralyzed. 
 
 Secondly, the taking of any part or parts of hu- 
 man life out of its control, by a pretended dis- 
 tinction betw^een S2:>iritual things and secular; a 
 distinction utterly without foundation, for in one 
 sense all things are secular, for they are done in 
 
 ^ [[Intiod. to Sermons on Christian Life, its Course, its Hin- 
 drances, and its Helps, pp. xlviii, xlix.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 13 
 
 time and on earth ; in another, all things are spi- 
 ritual, for they affect us morally either for the 
 better or the worse, and so tend to make our 
 spirits fitter for the society of God or of his ene- 
 mies. The division rests entirely on principles of 
 heathenism, and tends to make Christianity, like 
 the religions of the old world, not a sovereign 
 discipline for every part and act of life, but a 
 system for communicating certain abstract truths, 
 and for the performance of certain visible rites 
 and ceremonies. 
 
 These two notions, both utterly inconsistent 
 with the idea of a true Christian Church, have 
 been prevalent alternately or conjointly almost 
 from the very beginning of Christianity. To the 
 first we owe Popery in all its shapes, Romanist or 
 Protestant ; the second is the more open form of 
 Antichrist, which, by its utter dissoluteness, has 
 gone far to reduce countries nominally Christian 
 to a state of lawlessness and want of principle 
 w^orse than the worst heathenism. 
 
 But these two Antichrists have ever prepared 
 the way for each other ; and the falsehood of the 
 one has led directly to the falsehood of its appa- 
 rent opposite, but real ally and cooperator. 
 
 I begin, then, with the first of these two evils : 
 the substitution of the activity of some in place 
 of the activity of all ; the distinction of the grand 
 characteristic of the Christian Church, the co- 
 
14 THE CHURCH. 
 
 operation, namely, of society through the several 
 faculties and qualities of its members, for the at- 
 tainment of the highest moral good of all. 
 
 This life, as it may well be called, of the Church, 
 may be injured by an extreme predominance of 
 the activity of some members, by which the others 
 are necessarily rendered less active. A mere ex- 
 aggeration of the principles of government may 
 effect this, and it may arise out of the most bene- 
 volent feelings. Kind and earnest teachers com- 
 mit this very mistake when they assist their pupil 
 too much ; they feel that they can do the work 
 better than he can, and that their assistance will 
 enable him to accomplish his task in a shorter 
 time, and more effectually. But they really injure 
 him ; because the greater completeness and clear- 
 ness of any one particular piece of knowledge is 
 a far less benefit than the strengthening of his 
 own faculties by exercise: the knowledge thus 
 given is not power, but is gained at the cost of 
 power, and is a hindrance rather than a help to 
 the wholesome acquisition of knowledge hereafter. 
 Even so benevolent governments, seeing the ig- 
 norance and mistaken notions of their people, are 
 eager to fence them in on every side by their 
 own care, and to act for them, because they 
 were likely of themselves to act wrong. But 
 unhappily with the tares they thus pluck up the 
 good seed also ; the people get accustomed to let 
 
THE CHURCH. 15 
 
 the government act for them ; they thus may ac- 
 quire the innocence of infancy or death, but they 
 acquire also the incapacity of those states for 
 good ; and the result is not a living spirit but a 
 lifeless corpse. 
 
 Still, it must not be forgotten that with go- 
 vernment the error is only in the excess or in 
 the unseasonableness of its activity. In itself it 
 is beneficent and necessary. Its abuses are no 
 argument against its existence; it is founded on 
 truth, and is indispensable in every state of so- 
 ciety. But the life of the Church was impaired 
 far more fatally by the introduction of another 
 principle very distinct from that of government, 
 the principle of priesthood. Persons unaccus- 
 tomed to examine the subject thoroughly have 
 often very confused ideas about priesthood ; they 
 profess utterly to disclaim it, while in fact they 
 are zealously maintaining it. But the essential 
 point in the notion of a priest is this, that he is 
 a person made necessary to our intercourse with 
 God, without being necessary or beneficial to us 
 morally. His interference makes the worshipper 
 neither a wiser man nor a holier than he would 
 have been without it ; and yet it is held to be in- 
 dispensable. This unreasonable, unmoral, unspi- 
 ritual necessity is the essence of the idea of priest- 
 hood. 
 
 Priesthood, then, is properly mediation, taking 
 
16 THE CHURCH. 
 
 this last word in its etymological rather than in 
 its common meaning. When the act on the wor- 
 shipper's part is already complete, whether the 
 worship be ritual or spiritual, the presence or in- 
 terference of a priest is made a necessary medium 
 through which alone the act can be presented to 
 God. For instance, suppose that the worshipper 
 has a right belief concerning God, and knows 
 what he desires to ask of God, the act of prayer 
 on his part is complete ; but if it be said that 
 his prayer must be offered to God by another, and 
 that otherwise God will not accept it, then here is 
 the exact notion of priesthood. It ceases to be 
 priesthood, and becomes teaching or assistance, if 
 the act on the worshipper's part cannot be morally 
 or reasonably complete without the aid of another. 
 He who knows not what to j^ray for, cannot by 
 himself complete the act of prayer, but requires 
 to be taught in order to do it. This teachino-, 
 however, is not priesthood, because the necessity 
 for its interposition is reasonable, moral, and spi- 
 ritual. 
 
 A priest, therefore, as he does not make the 
 worshipper more fit to worship in himself, implies 
 necessarily that man cannot approach God. The 
 necessity for his mediation arises out of this : man 
 cannot approach God, but he may approach to 
 some other being, and this other being may ap- 
 proach God. Thus this intermediate being stands 
 
THE CHURCH. 17 
 
 to man in the place of God, and man's direct re- 
 lations towards God himself are declared to be an 
 impossibility. 
 
 We have arrived at a great and divine truth ; 
 the very foundation stone, indeed, of Christianity. 
 We cannot come to God directly ; we require one 
 to be to us in the place of God. But one in the 
 place of God and not God, is as it were a false- 
 hood ; it is the mother falsehood from which all 
 idolatry is derived. The mystery of Christianity 
 has met this necessity of our nature, and at the 
 same time has avoided the evil of the falsehood. 
 We have one who is to us in the place of God, 
 but who is also God trulv ; — we have one whom 
 we may approach, although we cannot approach 
 God, for he is also truly man. 
 
 It has been well said, that no error is mere 
 error ; something there is of truth ever mixed 
 with it. So the error of human priesthoods does 
 indeed but express a great truth, that man cannot 
 come to God without a mediator. But this truth 
 is to man, when left to his own devices, either 
 useless or mischieA^ous. He attempts to act upon 
 it by devising for himself a human mediator, and 
 he falls at once into superstition and idolatry. 
 
 Again, the human mediator, as I have said be- 
 fore, does nothing to bring us in ourselves really 
 nearer to God. His interference at all, implies 
 that we are separated from God ; this separation 
 
 c 
 
18 THE CHURCH. 
 
 is a moral thing, arising out of our unlikeness to 
 God. But the human mediator does nothing to 
 restore to us God's likeness. It is strictly true, 
 therefore, that his interposition has no moral 
 value : it makes us neither better nor holier ; it 
 therefore shows the falsehood of its own claim ; 
 for while professing to bring us to God, it leaves 
 us as far from him as ever. 
 
 But the true Mediator does not so : while he 
 reconciles God to man, he also reconciles man to 
 God. He works by his Spirit upon our own na- 
 ture, and weeds out from it the seeds as it were 
 of our alienation from God. Thus he does bring 
 us near to God, for he makes us like God. And 
 he is our one and only Priest, our one and only 
 Mediator. 
 
 Some there are who profess to join cordially 
 in this doctrine, and ask who disputes it. So 
 little do they understand the very tenets which 
 they uphold. For they themselves dispute and 
 deny it, inasmuch as they maintain that the sacra- 
 ments are necessary to salvation, and that they 
 can only be effectually administered by a man ap- 
 pointed after a certain form. And thus they set 
 up again the human mediator, which is idolatry, 
 iind they show the falsehood of his claim, because 
 they make a man like ourselves necessary to bring 
 us near to God, and this man, who is to complete 
 Christ's work, and reconcile to God those whom 
 
tHE CHURCH. 19 
 
 Christ had left alienatedj cannot touch the slight- 
 est part of the soul or mind of any one. If we 
 were separated from God, he cannot bring us to 
 him ; for we remain in ourselves, when his minis- 
 tration is over, just the same as we were before. 
 
 This dogma, then, of a human priesthood in^ 
 Christ's church, appointed to administer his sacra- 
 ments, and thereby to mediate between God and I 
 man, from no reasonable or moral necessity, is a ■ 
 thing quite distinct from any exaggerated notions : 
 of the activity of government : it is not the excess 
 of a beneficent truth, but it is, from first to last, 
 considering that it is addressed to Christians, who 
 have their Divine Priest and Mediator already, a 
 mere error; and an error not merely speculative, 
 but fraught with all manner of mischief, idolatrous 
 and demoralizing, destructive of Christ's Church ; 
 injurious to Christ and to his Spirit ; the worst and 
 earliest form of Antichrist. 
 
 This error is demoralizing, because it has led to 
 the false distinction between secular things and 
 spiritual, and has tended to bring back Christianity 
 to the likeness of a heathen religion, by changing 
 it from a law of life to a matter of rites and out- 
 ward observances ; from which the care of the 
 general moral character of every man is a thing 
 altogether different. 
 
 It has led to the false distinction between se- 
 cular things and spiritual. For in all the acts of 
 
 c 2 
 
20 THE CHURCH. 
 
 life into wliicli it was the design of Christianity 
 to bring God and Christ, the priest is altogether 
 excluded. In the works of justice and mercy, 
 in the feelings of devotion, of hope, of fear, of love, 
 the priest can find no place, for what is real and 
 moral repels him. His element is only what is 
 formal, shadowy, ceremonial ; and in order to make 
 himself of importance, he must raise what is 
 shadowy and ceremonial into the place of what 
 is real and moral. Men can act in life without 
 him, and feel without him ; but he tells them 
 that certain ceremonial acts cannot be performed 
 without him, and then he goes on and teaches 
 that these ceremonial acts are the essence of re- 
 ligion. 
 
 But in Christianity his task was hard, because 
 even in its very ceremonies the essence was some- 
 thing real and moral. When Christians met to- 
 gether and received the bread and wine of their 
 common hving as the body and blood of Christ, 
 such an act had a real tendency to strengthen and 
 confirm their souls, and the Holy Spirit made 
 such a comnmnion a constant means of grace to 
 those who partook of it. But here there was no 
 place for the priest ; on the one side there was 
 Christ's Church assembled, on the other there 
 was Christ and his Spirit to bless them. The 
 priest then steps in, diverts attention from the 
 moral part of this communion, from its peculiar 
 
THE CHURCH. 21 
 
 union of things divine and human, of social feelings 
 and religious, from its hallowing of common life, 
 by making us even eat and drink to God's glory 
 and our own salvation, and fixes it upon a sup- 
 posed mystical virtue conveyed to the bread and 
 wine by the pronouncing of certain words over 
 them by a certain person. The bread and wine 
 became the sacrament of Christ's body and blood 
 according to Christ's ordinance, by the assembled 
 church receiving them as such ; by their con- 
 verting an act of nature into an act of religion ; 
 by their agreeing to partake together as of their 
 earthly food, so also of their spiritual, and thus 
 being joined to one another in Christ. The agree- 
 ment, therefore, of those communicating, their 
 common faith and love constitute the real con- 
 secration of the bread and Avine ; it is this w^hich, 
 through Christ's Spirit, changes the supper into 
 the sacrament. 
 
 But the priest says, " Not so : it is not your 
 common faith and purpose to celebrate the com- 
 munion ; it is not the fact of Christ having died 
 and risen again which can bring him to you or you 
 to him : I must interpose, and pronounce certain 
 words over the bread and over the cup ; and then 
 what neither your faith nor Christ's redemption of 
 you had made other than common food, becomes 
 now, through my mediation, a thing endowed with 
 a divine virtue ; nay, it is become Christ himself. 
 
22 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Whether there be any communion of yourselves 
 or no, whether you are alone or with one another, 
 whether you are concurring in spirit or no, still 
 because I, the priest, have pronounced certain 
 w^ords over it, it has acquired a miraculous power, 
 and unless you are partakers of this you cannot 
 be saved." So the communion of the Church, 
 which morally was so essential, is thus made un- 
 essential ; and the uttering certain words by a 
 particular person, of which neither Christ nor his 
 apostles had said any thing, and which morally 
 can have no virtue at all, is made essential. And 
 thus w^as the Church supplanted by the priest; 
 and the communion, which is the very life of the 
 Church, became the mass, with all its superstitions 
 and idolatries. 
 
 The Church being set aside, and the principal 
 part in the communion being transferred from it 
 to the priest, his office grew in importance, and 
 the Church, in the same proportion, became re- 
 moved from Christ, and desecrated. Then the 
 priest was regarded as the minister of Christ in 
 spiritual things, the Church only in temporal. For 
 not only in the communion, but in the public 
 prayers and exhortations of the Church, the Church 
 itself was reduced more and more to a passive 
 ' condition, — the priest alone was active. Thus 
 there were some whose business was religion, and 
 others whose business it was not. Religion and 
 
THE CHURCH. 23 
 
 life were separated ; the one was called spiritual, 
 when it was in reality become less so ; the other 
 was called, and became too truly, secular. The 
 salt which Christ had given to the Church, that 
 each man might by it render the world and 
 worldly things pure and holy to him, the Church 
 had now to seek from the priest ; and because it 
 was to be sought from another, it in great measure 
 lost its savour. 
 
CHAPTER 11. 
 
 It has been stated generally that the efficacy 
 of the Church has been destroyed by the excess 
 of a good and necessary principle, that of govern- 
 ment, and the introduction of another principle 
 wholly false and mischievous, that of priesthood. 
 The first in itself the Church recognises, and must 
 ever recognise ; the second she wholly repudiates. 
 And thus we shall find that, while there is much 
 sakl in Scripture in commendation of the one, the 
 other is altogether omitted, as an element belong- 
 ing to Heathenism and not to Christianity. 
 
 Now, omitting all the commandments given us 
 .to obey government in general, and all such 
 passages as claim obedience to the Apostles j)er- 
 sonally, we find several injunctions to submit our- 
 selves to the rulers of the church, being Christians, 
 and yet not being Apostles; — and all these in- 
 junctions are a proof of our first position, that the 
 principle of government in the Christian Church 
 is recognised and sanctioned in the Scriptures. 
 
 I. St. Paul, in the earliest of all his Epistles, 
 
THE CHURCH. 25 
 
 the first to the Tliessaloiiiaiis, entreats the church 
 of Thessaloiiica to acknowledge or recognise, el- 
 Bevai, those that laboured among them, and were 
 over them in the Lord, and who admonished 
 them, vovOerovvras v/juas. And he calls on the 
 church to " esteem them very highly in love for 
 their work's sake." ^ 
 
 II. In two passages, (Galatians vi. 6, and 1 
 Timothy v. 17,) he asserts the claim of the go- 
 vernors of the church to be maintained by the 
 church. In the first, indeed, he speaks only of 
 such governors of the church as are instructors; 
 KOtvcjvecTO) Se o KaTrj^ovfJievos tov \oyov ro) Karij-yovvTi 
 €v ircLGLv cL'yadols ; — but in the second passage, 
 -while he acknowledges the especial claim of 
 such, he extends the right to all rulers of the 
 church generally, whatever may be their particular 
 functions : ol Kokws Trpoearwres Trpecr^vrepoi StTrX?)? 
 7t/jL7]9 a^LovaOwaav. 
 
 III. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews 
 says also, " Obey your rulers and submit to 
 them;" — and that this means the Christian rulers 
 of the church is evident by w^liat follows, " for 
 they watch as men who are to give an account for 
 your souls ;"— which of course could not be said 
 of Heathen authorities. 
 
 IV. To these may be added all that is said of 
 the qualifications of an liriaKOTros in the first 
 
 a 1 Thess. V. 12, 13. 
 
26 " THE CHURCH. 
 
 EjDistle to Timothy and in that to Titus ; and 
 which implies that government in the church was a 
 thing essential, and recognised from the beginning. 
 
 V. St. Peter, as if writing under the liveliest 
 recollection of our Lord's charge to himself, and 
 of the strong contrast which Christ had drawn 
 between the common practice of heathen go- 
 vernment and that which should prevail among 
 Christians, thus writes in his first Epistle (v. 2) to 
 the elders of the several churches — " Feed the 
 flock of God which is among you, taking the over- 
 sight thereof," ( ^Tno-KoirovvTes,) " not by constraint, 
 but willingly;" (Lachman adds Kaia 6e6v, ' as be- 
 comes a servant and child of God ;') " not for filthy 
 lucre," (which implies that lucre might be a motive, 
 that is, that the rulers of the church were main- 
 tained by the church,) " but of a ready mind." 
 
 VI. We read also in the Acts, that Paul and 
 Barnabas appointed elders to govern the churches 
 which they founded in Lycaonia and the south of 
 Asia Minor*; and St. Paul addresses the elders 
 of the church of Ephesus ^ in the same language 
 as St. Peter, charging them " to feed the church 
 of God." Now this term of " feeding as a shep- 
 herd feeds his flock," is one of the oldest and most 
 universal metaj:>hors to express a supreme and at 
 the same time a beneficent government. 
 
 It is needless to multiply other passages, as 
 
 ^ xiv. 23. i> XX. 28. 
 
THE CHURCH. 27 
 
 those already quoted are abundantly sufficient to 
 show that Christianity supposes and sanctions the 
 principle of government in the church, and re- 
 ciprocally the principle of obedience ; that in this 
 respect the church was to resemble all other so- 
 cieties ; — some of its members were to rule and 
 others were to be subject. 
 
 But of the principle of priesthood, by which 
 one man or set of men are declared to be neces- 
 sary mediators for their brethren, so that without 
 them their brethren cannot worship God accept- 
 ably or be suffered to approach him, the Scriptures 
 contain not one word, except as rejecting and 
 condemning it. This of course cannot be shown 
 by extracts as to the negative part of it : it will 
 be sufficient to show that the passages usually 
 quoted by the advocates of the priesthood as 
 sanctioning their notions are all misinterpreted, or 
 misapplied ; and then to give some passages which 
 assert the contrary to the doctrine of the priest- 
 hood, and describe it as one of the great privi- 
 leges of the Christian Church, that its one great 
 High Priest Jesus Christ has given it full access 
 to God for ever, so that there is nothing for 
 priesthood to do, or rather for human priesthood 
 to pretend to do for it, any more, so long as earth 
 shall endure. 
 
 The principle of priesthood unmixed with any 
 other is seen in the Christian Church most plainly 
 
28 THE CHURCH. 
 
 in the claim to administer the Lord's Supper. I 
 saj this rather than, in the claim to administer 
 the sacraments generally, or in the so-called power 
 of the keys, — because although something of the 
 notion of priesthood has undoubtedly been mixed 
 with both these, and especially with the latter ; 
 and although in practice absolution has come to 
 be a proper priestly act, yet in their origin both 
 the power of baptizing and that of absolving 
 were in a great degree acts of government ; 
 being in fact the power of admitting or of restoring 
 members to the privileges of the Christian society. 
 But the claim of administering the Lord's Supper 
 is the assumption of a power exclusively priestly ; 
 it interposes in an act with which government 
 has nothing to do, and its supposed object is 
 merely inward and spiritual — to give a spiritual 
 efficacy to that which without its interference 
 would have been common food. The Scripture, 
 then, might recognise an exclusive power of bap- 
 tizing or of excommunicating and absolving, with- 
 out at all countenancing the notion of a priest- 
 hood, because it might view such a power as one 
 naturally belonging to the rulers of any society, 
 and as connected therefore with government only. 
 But if it be found to recognise an exclusive claim 
 of administering the Lord's Supper, then no doubt 
 it must be allowed in the strictest sense to re- 
 cognise in Christianity a hunjan priesthood. 
 
THE CHURCH. 29 
 
 This power is said accordingly to be recognised 
 by tlie Apostle Paul in two passages, 1 Corinth, 
 iv. 1, and again in the same Epistle, x. 16. 
 
 I. In the first passage St. Paul says, " Let a man 
 so account of us as of the ministers of Christ, and 
 stewards of the mysteries of GodT It is contended 
 that, by this last expression, St. Paul means to say 
 that himself and his fellow ministers were " dis- 
 pensers of the sacraments." 
 
 But, in the first place. Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper are not in the Scripture sense mysteries 
 at all. A mystery, in the Scripture, is a hidden 
 truth ; — almost always, it signifies a truth hidden 
 generally from men, but revealed to the people of 
 God. By a figure, Christ himself is twice called 
 " the mystery of God," or " of godliness," * be- 
 cause his manifestation in the flesh is the great 
 truth which Christianity has revealed to us. Bap- 
 tism and the Lord's Supper are actions connected 
 with the Christian mysteries, but they are not 
 mysteries themselves ; much less are they so 
 especially deserving of the term as to engross 
 it to themselves, and to become the prominent 
 idea expressed by it. 
 
 Again ; by Avhatever name St. Paul might have 
 
 called himself, it certainly would not have been 
 
 "* a dispenser of the sacraments." He had just 
 
 before said that his business was not to baptize, 
 
 ^ Coloss. i. 27. 1 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
30 THE CHURCH. 
 
 but to preach the gospel; that, so far from its 
 being his office to " dispense the sacraments," he 
 had only baptized three or four individuals in the 
 course of his whole ministry at Corinth. He who 
 thus studiously devolved on others the ministra- 
 tion of one of the sacraments, could scarcely have 
 desired the Corinthians to regard him as being ap- 
 pointed especially to dispense them. 
 
 On the other hand, we find him saying, a little 
 before, that he and his fellow ministers were in 
 the habit of speaking of " the wisdom of God in 
 a mystery," or rather " God's secret or hidden wis- 
 dom," — the wisdom hidden from men, which God 
 foreordained before the world unto our glory. And 
 again, further on in the Epistle, he uses the expres- 
 sion, " I have had a dispensation " (or ' steward- 
 ship,' if olKovofjbos in the former passage be trans- 
 lated ' steward ') " entrusted to me." Now this 
 dispensation is so certainly the " dispensation of 
 the Gospel," by preaching, that the gloss evayye- 
 Xlov has actually found its way into the text, and 
 is expressed in the common editions, and in our 
 translation. It is shown by the whole context, 
 in which he repeatedly says that his business is 
 " to preach the Gospel." There can be no doubt, 
 therefore, that when he describes himself as " a 
 steward or dispenser of the mysteries of God," he 
 means that very same " speaking of the wisdom 
 of God in a mystery," that very same " dispensa- 
 
THE CHURCH. 31 
 
 tioii of the Gospel by preaching," which in other 
 parts of this Epistle he declares to have been his 
 business as an Apostle ; just as he declares also 
 that " to dispense the sacraments" was not his bu- 
 siness; for he says, "God called me not to baptize, 
 but to preach the Gospel." 
 
 II. The second passage is as follows: " The cup 
 of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion 
 of the blood of Christ? The bread which we 
 break, is it not a communion of the body of 
 Christ?" This shows, it is argued, that it be- 
 longed to the Apostles to bless the cup at the 
 communion, and to break the bread ; in other 
 words, to consecrate the elements, and so to give 
 to them their sacramental character and virtue. 
 It is necessary to say that I have myself heard and 
 read this interpretation ; I do not pretend to 
 know how many there are who adopt it. 
 
 It is evident that the whole force of this pas- 
 sage depends on the meaning of the word " we." 
 If " we" means " we Apostles," as distinguished 
 from other Christians, then the argument would 
 have some plausibility; but if "we" means not 
 "w^e Apostles," but " we Christians," then the 
 whole argument falls to the ground at once. 
 Now the very next verse goes on as follows: 
 " For we being many are one bread and one body, 
 for we are all partakers of that one bread." It 
 is then, not " we the Apostles," but " we Chris- 
 
32 THE CHURCH. 
 
 tians," " we being many," " we all," " who bless 
 the cup of blessing, and break the bread." So 
 far from proving that there exists in Christianity 
 a priestly power in the administration of the com- 
 munion, this passage rather shows the contrary. 
 
 The contrary also fully appears from the gene- 
 ral lano'uao:e of the New Testament. It is de- 
 clared as plainly as words can speak, that, in a 
 religious sense, all Christians are equal before God, 
 and that all are brought near to him, have access 
 to him, are reconciled to him, are his heirs, and 
 his children. Now some of these terms were ap- 
 plicable to the whole Jewish church, and yet in 
 that church there was undoubtedly a human priest- 
 hood. But the Epistle to the Hebrews shows the 
 great distinction, wdien it says that " we are sanc- 
 tified by the offering of the body of Jesus Christ 
 once for all ;" that sacrifices must therefore cease 
 to be offered ; and that as the especial object of 
 the Jewish priesthood was to sacrifice, so it may 
 be presumed, that where no sacrifice remains to 
 be offered ^ so neither should there be any priest. 
 It is not pretended that all Christians are equal 
 socially; for some are governors and others are 
 governed : nor are they so equal as to render dis- 
 tinctions for order's sake in their public meetings 
 
 ^ For his own view of what was the true Christian sacri- 
 fice still continued, see Introd. to Serm. vol. iv. p. 1 ; Serm. 
 vol. V. p. 273. 
 
THE CHURCH. 33 
 
 unnecessary ; for women are not allowed to speak 
 in the congregation : but they are equal religiously, 
 as being all alike redeemed by Christ, and brought 
 by him near to God ; that is, put into a condition 
 to offer to him acceptably all religious offices ; and 
 in the only remaining kind of sacrifice, the spi- 
 ritual offering of themselves to God, commanded 
 to be, every man his own priest ; inasmuch as by 
 ourselves alone can our own hearts and bodies be 
 devoted as thank-offerings to him who made them 
 and redeemed them. 
 
 We find, then, no place in Scripture for the no- 
 tion that any human mediation is required in order 
 to perfect the purely religious acts of Christians. 
 As all Christians can pray acceptably through 
 Christ's mediation, so can all communicate ac- 
 ceptably in the signs of his body and blood; such 
 communion being manifestly not an act peculiar 
 to the rulers of the society, but belonging to all 
 the members of it ; and therein differing from 
 baptism, which is an act of government, so to 
 speak, as well as an act of religion ; and may, 
 therefore, be fitly appropriated to one particular 
 order of society, not as priests, but as governors. 
 
 It will be understood in what sense I call bap- 
 tism an act of government, if it be considered that 
 it is, amongst other things, the admission of a new 
 member into the Christian society, and that, as 
 such, it belongs properly to those who have au- 
 
 D 
 
34 THE CHURCH. 
 
 thority given to them in that society ; for where 
 is the private individual, who is allowed at his own 
 choice to admit strangers to the rights of citizen- 
 ship in the commonwealth ? It does not follow 
 that baptism is nothing more than an act of go- 
 vernment ; but because it is clearly this, whatever 
 it may be besides, therefore it is at least possible 
 that when the power of administering it is ascribed 
 exclusively to one particular order in the church, 
 there should be in this no allowance of any priestly 
 power, but simply of the power of the magistrates 
 or rulers of a society. We shall see, by and by, 
 that this distinction is not unimportant. 
 
 Farther; it may appear on examination, that the 
 very power of the keys itself, when rightly under- 
 stood, implies nothing of a priesthood, but only 
 the legitimate power of government. 
 
 It will be asked, however, what is the right un- 
 derstanding of this well-known expression, " The 
 power of the keys?" And the answer must not 
 be given lightly; for we are here concerned not 
 with the careless words of fallible men, but with a 
 solemn promise to the Church, made at three se- 
 veral times by Christ our Lord. Undoubtedly, 
 therefore, the powder of the keys means something 
 and that meaning cannot be a matter of indiffer- 
 ence. 
 
 The promise was made by our Lord on three 
 several occasions : viz. 
 
THE CHURCH. 35 
 
 1st. To St. Peter, apparently as a reward to 
 that Apostle for his confessing his Master to be 
 the Christ ^ 
 
 2nd. To the whole body or church of Christians, 
 as a sanction to their sentence, when he had or- 
 dered that all quarrels between Christian and 
 Christian should in the last resort be referred to 
 the decision of the church^. 
 
 8rd. To the eleven Apostles, when our Lord, 
 after his resurrection, was giving them their com- 
 mission to found and govern his Church". 
 
 In the first two of these promises the words 
 are identical, and they are figurative. They run, 
 " Whatsoever thou" (or 'ye') "shalt bind on earth 
 shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou " 
 (or * ye ') " shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in 
 heaven." In the third the words are different, 
 although the sense is generally supposed to be 
 nearly the same. They are, " Whosesoever sins 
 ye remit, they are remitted unto them ; and whose- 
 soever sins ye retain, they are retained." 
 
 " To bind and to loose" are metaphors certainly, 
 but metaphors easy to be understood. They ex- 
 press a legislative and a judicial power. To bind, 
 legislatively, is to impose a general obligation ; to 
 say that a thing ought to be done or ought not to 
 be done : to bind men's consciences either to the 
 
 a St. Matthew, xvi. 19. ^ St. Matthew, xviii. J 8. 
 
 "^ St. John, XX. 23. 
 
 2 D 
 
36 THE CHURCH. 
 
 doing of it, or to the abstaining from it. Thus, 
 St. Paul speaks of a woman being bound so long 
 as her husband lives ; but of being free to marry 
 whom she will, if her husband be dead. In the 
 one case there was a binding of the conscience, in 
 the other a loosing of it. And this is one part of 
 the sense of the expression. Again ; to bind ju- 
 dicially, is to impose a particular obligation on an 
 individual, to oblige him to do or to suffer certain 
 things for the sake of justice, which, if left to 
 himself, he would not choose to do or suffer. 
 And to loose judicially, is to pronounce a man 
 free from any such obligation; to declare that jus- 
 tice does not require of him, in this particular case, 
 to do or to suffer any thing for its satisfaction. 
 Justice has no claim upon him, — she leaves him 
 free. This is the second part of the expression. 
 
 It is to this second part, to the binding and 
 loosing judicially, that the third promise of our 
 Lord belongs. For the retaining and remitting of 
 sins is clearly a judicial power: the retaining of 
 sin is the pronouncing that a man is bound to do 
 or suffer something as a satisfaction for it ; the 
 remitting of sin is the pronouncing that justice 
 has no hold upon him, that he is acquitted, 
 loosed, freed from all her demands on him. 
 
 But such a legislative and judicial power is a 
 power of government ; government in fact consist- 
 ing mainly of these two great powers, the legisla- 
 
THE CHURCH. 37 
 
 tive and judicial. We do not as yet find any thing 
 tlien in the power of the keys that bears any 
 relation to priesthood, according to that defini- 
 tion of it which was given above — that it is an 
 interposition between God and man supposed to 
 be necessary to our acceptance with God, yet 
 Avithout being necessary or beneficial to us mo- 
 rally. And this is strictly the idea of priestly 
 absolution. For whether it be said that he who 
 is absolved is forgiven by God, or that he who is 
 not absolved is not forgiven by God ; there is 
 in either case an act made essential or beneficial 
 to our salvation, w^iich yet makes us morally 
 neither the better nor the worse. Absolution 
 then so understood is a proper act of priest- 
 hood. But does such a power of absolution form 
 any part of the Christian power of the keys ? 
 
 It has been contended that it does, and our 
 Lord's words to his Apostles are appealed to as 
 the proof of this : — " Whosesoever sins ye remit, 
 they are remitted unto them ; and whosesoever sins 
 ye retain, they are retained." Now here there are 
 two questions : — First, What was the meaning of 
 our Lord's promise as addressed to the Apostles ? 
 Secondly, How much of this meaning was intended 
 to apply to any except the Apostles ? 
 
 1st. It is allowed that this promise confer- 
 red on the Apostles a judicial power, as distinct 
 from a legislative one ; it gave them authority 
 
38 THE CHURCH. 
 
 to decide on individual cases; to pronounce 
 that such or such a man was forgiven, in some 
 sense or other; and that such or such a man 
 was not forgiven. But the great question is, 
 whether this power can be shown to be distinct 
 from a power of government; that is, were the 
 forgiveness or refusal of forgiveness here spoken 
 of distinct from some outward sentence passed 
 upon a man with reference to the Christian so- 
 ciety; and were they grounded upon any thing 
 more than actions cognizable by human j)ercep- 
 tion, and therefore the fit objects of human reward 
 or censure. For the peculiarity of a priestly power 
 consists in this : that its sentence, in its essence, 
 is not outward but inward ; affecting a man not in 
 his relations to the Christian society, but in his 
 relations towards God, and grounded therefore 
 upon a knowledge of more than actions cognizable 
 by human perception ; namely, of the thoughts 
 and motives of the heart. For there is no doubt 
 that our state towards God depends mainly on 
 the state of our hearts, so that a judgment of the 
 former cannot be passed without a knowledge of 
 the latter. 
 
 We must separate, then, all such judicial acts 
 as the declaration of forgiveness implied in the 
 admission of new converts to baptism ; and as the 
 declaration of the retaining of sins implied in the 
 striking of Elymas with blindness, in the visiting 
 
THE CHURCH. 39 
 
 the incestuous Corinthian with some bodily pu- 
 nishment, in excommunication, and in tlie deaths 
 of Ananias and Sapphira. In all these cases 
 there was an outward sentence, affecting men out- 
 wardly and visibly in their earthly condition ; and 
 this sentence was grounded on some outward ac- 
 tion ; in baptism for instance, on the profession of 
 repentance and faith ; and in the other instances 
 on acts of a similar character to those which hu- 
 man law habitually punishes. 
 
 But can we find, over and above such instances 
 as these, any cases in which the Apostles, without 
 any visible or outward sentence, passed a judg- 
 ment simply on the state of an individual towards 
 God; and a judgment founded, not on outward 
 and tangible acts, but on a knowledge of the sin- 
 cerity or insincerity of his feelings ? We read of 
 no such cases ; but we find such language used re- 
 specting Christ's judgment, and God's knowledge 
 of the thoughts of the heart, as is agreeable to 
 our common impression, that of the state of a 
 man's heart with respect to God, God is the only 
 judge*. 
 
 It may seem that in one instance an Apostle 
 did possess a power of reading the heart, when 
 Paul is said to have perceived that the cripple 
 who stedfastly listened to his speech at Lystra, 
 
 a [1 Sam. xvi. 7. 1 Kings, viii. 39. Jerem. xvii. 9, 10. 
 St. Luke, xvi. 15. 1 Cor. iv. 4, 5.~\ 
 
40 THE CHURCH. 
 
 " had faith to be healed." It is not certain, how- 
 ever, that there was in this case any reading of 
 the heart ; " the stedfast listening," the expression 
 of deep interest in Paul's words manifested in the 
 whole countenance and attitude of the hearer, 
 were an evidence not to be mistaken that he was 
 thoroughly convinced by what he heard. But ad- 
 mitting for a moment that the Apostle's was a 
 deeper judgment than he could have formed by 
 his mere natural faculties ; yet in this case we 
 have God's warrant that he had judged rightly, 
 inasmuch as the man's faith was proved by his 
 being cured of his lameness at Paul's word. So 
 that even if there was a sentence grounded on 
 such things as man cannot naturally discern, yet 
 the proof was given that the judgment was right, 
 by its being followed by an outward consequence, 
 greater than man alone could have effected. 
 
 2nd. So much of the power given by our Lord 
 to his Apostles, as depended on their possessing a 
 greater than human knowledge, would not, of 
 course, be given to those who do not possess that 
 knowledge. And if any man says that he does 
 possess such knowledge, and if the claim does not 
 prove itself, as in prophecy or in telling to a man 
 what was in his thoughts, then we may call upon 
 him for some sign that he does possess it. If he 
 says positively that such a man has his sins for- 
 given in the sight of God, then he should tell him 
 
THE CHURCH. 41 
 
 as St. Paul did, to stand upright on his feet, or 
 should relieve him from some trouble or infirmity 
 by which he is manifestly afflicted. If he says as 
 positively that such and such a man is not for- 
 given, then let him also show his power of de- 
 livering such an one to Satan for the destruction 
 of the flesh, that his spirit might be saved in the 
 day of the Lord. 
 
 It does not appear that the Apostles ever ex- 
 ercised what w^as properly a priestly power. Ad- 
 mitting however, for the moment, that they had 
 exercised it, yet as such a power is of an extra- 
 ordinary character, and requires more than the 
 ordinary attributes of human nature to exercise 
 it properly; and as the Apostles were endowed 
 with certain extraordinary gifts, such as are not 
 possessed by men in general ; we should be justified 
 in assuming some connexion between their powder 
 and their gifts, and might safely conclude that 
 those who had not the latter could not enjoy the 
 former. But the case is stronger, now that it 
 cannot be shown that even the Apostles possessed 
 a priestly power. If such a power was too great 
 even for them to wield, how can it be supposed 
 that others can wield it, on whom none of their 
 extraordinary qualifications have descended ? 
 
 The nearest approach to a priestly power re- 
 cognised in the New Testament is in the effects 
 of intercessory prayer ; for if we pray for grace 
 
42 THE CHURCH. 
 
 for our brother, and God grants our prayer, we 
 seem to be in some sort the channel of God's 
 mercy to him, without producing any effect upon 
 him morally ; and this was laid down to be the 
 characteristic of a priestly powder as distinct from 
 a ministry or cure of souls, which acts on those 
 committed to its charge through moral means. 
 
 First, however, the virtue of intercessory prayer 
 is in itself widely different from the pretended 
 priestly power to give a virtue to the sacraments. 
 The peculiarly unchristian part of this latter claim 
 is this, that it makes a human mediator necessary 
 to those who are actually acknowledging, trusting 
 in, and earnestly desiring to enjoy the fruits of 
 Christ's mediation ; whereas no one would say that 
 our own prayers, offered up according to Christ's 
 Spirit, and in Christ's name, will not be accepted, 
 unless others will also pray for us. The prayers 
 of others in our behalf are not made the condition 
 on which alone our own earnest prayers shall be 
 accepted. 
 
 Intercessory prayer in its highest cases supposes 
 that a man has not the grace of repentance and 
 faith ; that he is not at present morally in a state 
 of acceptance with God. It is the very worst part 
 of his condition, that he will not pray for himself 
 Under these circumstances that God should have 
 graciously left a way open by which his friends 
 may labour with hope in his behalf; that over and 
 
THE CHURCH. 43 
 
 above the secret and inscrutable ways by which 
 he, according to his own pleasure, sometimes 
 touches the heart of the impenitent sinner, he 
 should have also revealed one way in which the 
 love of his friends may work for him ; this 
 would be a very different thing from declaring 
 that a man's own faith, and love, and prayers, shall 
 be of no use unless other men shall also inter- 
 pose for him. It is one thing to enable human 
 charity to be serviceable to him who, if left to 
 himself, would be lost ; and another to allow human 
 presumption to declare its aid necessary to him, 
 w^ho having received Christ's grace through faith, 
 is already saved. 
 
 But there is yet another great difference which 
 effectually separates the intercessory prayer of 
 Christians from the mediation of a priesthood ; 
 namely, that its efficacy is not limited, or given 
 especially, to the prayers of any one order of 
 men : it is not the priest who is to pray for the 
 people, but the ministers and the people who are 
 to pray for each other ; nay a peculiar stress is laid 
 on the efficacy of the united prayers of many ; so 
 that we may assume that the prayers of the people 
 are at least as important to the minister, as his 
 prayers are to them. 
 
 Here, however, we shall be referred to that 
 well-known passage in the epistle of St. James, 
 which directs the sick to call in the elders of the 
 
44 THE CHURCH. 
 
 church, and speaks of the elders praying over them 
 and anointing them with oil in the name of the 
 Lord, and of their being raised up by virtue of 
 this prayer. Now here again a manifest distinc- 
 tion must be taken, between those elders who 
 possessed the gift of healing, and others who have 
 it not ; it cannot be maintained that with regard 
 to the especial subject there spoken of, the re- 
 covery, namely, of a sick person, a general con- 
 clusion follows as to the peculiar efficacy of the 
 prayers of presbyters in all times, because they 
 were peculiarly efficacious when combined with 
 the gift of healing. But I should be unwilHng to 
 limit the words of the Apostle entirely to bodily 
 cures, or to the circumstances of the early church. 
 I would allow, most readily, that they are of gene- 
 ral and perpetual application, but their meaning 
 makes against any priestly power in the clergy, 
 rather than establishes it. 
 
 The object of the passage is to encourage the 
 exercise of those mutual spiritual aids rendered by 
 Christians to each other, which are one of the 
 great objects and privileges of the institution of 
 the Church. The body was to sympathize with 
 its several members. If a man was in trouble, he 
 was to pray ; if in joy, to sing hymns : in neither 
 case is the Apostle speaking of private prayer or 
 private singing ; but of those of the Christian con- 
 gregation : there every individual Christian could 
 
THE CHURCH. 45 
 
 find the best relief for his sorrows, and the liveliest 
 sympathy in his joy. St. Paul's command, " Re- 
 joice with them that do rejoice, and weep with 
 them that weep," applies to this same sympathy, 
 which the prayers and hymns of the church 
 services were a constant means of expressing. 
 But if a man were sick and could not go to the 
 congregation, still he was not to lose the benefit 
 of his Christian communion with them ; he might 
 then ask them to come to him ; and as the whole 
 congregation could not thus be summoned, the 
 elders were to go as its representatives, and their 
 prayers were to take the place of the prayers of 
 the whole church. Care, however, is taken to 
 show that the virtue of their prayers arises not 
 from their being priests, but from their being 
 Christians, and standing in the i3lace of the whole 
 church. For these words immediately follow; 
 " confess therefore to one another your sins, and 
 pray for one another, that ye may be healed ; there 
 is much virtue in a just man's prayer, when it is 
 offered earnestly." Now this most divine system 
 of a living church, in which all were to aid each 
 other, in which each man might open his heart to 
 his neighbour, and receive the help of his prayers, 
 and in which each man's earnest prayer, offered in 
 Christ's name, had so high a promise of blessing 
 annexed to it, has been most destroyed by that 
 notion of a priesthood, which claiming that men 
 
4G THE CHURCH. 
 
 should confess their sins to the clergy, not as to 
 their brethren, but as to God's vicegerents, and 
 confining the promised blessing to the prayers of 
 the clergy as priests, not as Christians, nor as the 
 representatives of the whole church, has changed 
 the sympathy of a Christian society into the 
 dominion of a priesthood and the mingled careless- 
 ness and superstition of a laity. 
 
 St. John's language agrees with that of St. 
 James : " If any man see his brother sinning a 
 sin which is not unto death, he shall pray, and 
 Christ shall give him life, for those who are not 
 sinning unto death. There is a sin unto death ; — 
 it is not for that that I am bidding him to pray." 
 Here the very same blessing which St. James 
 speaks of as following the elder's prayers, is said 
 by St. John to follow the prayer of any Christian : 
 — a clear proof that the elders were sent for as 
 the representatives of the church, and not as if 
 their prayers possessed a peculiar virtue, because 
 they stood as priests between God and the people. 
 
 Thus then we find much in Scripture which 
 recognises high powers of government in the 
 Christian church ; but nothing which acknow- 
 ledges a priesthood. The distinction is of immense 
 importance, for from the covert intermixture of 
 priesthood with government has followed the 
 great corruption of the divine plan of the Christian 
 church. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 The chapter which I am now going to write is in 
 truth superfluous. Nay, although its particular 
 object were proved ever so fully, yet this would 
 be a less gain than loss, if any were by the nature 
 of the argument encouraged to believe that we 
 are to seek for our knowledge of Christianity any 
 where else but in the Scriptures. What we find 
 there is a part of Christianity, whether recognised 
 as such or no in after ages ; what we do not find 
 there is no part of Christianity, however early or 
 however general may have been the attempts to 
 interpolate it. If this be not so, we must change 
 our religion and our Master : we can be no longer 
 Christians, servants of Christ, instructed by him 
 and his own Apostles; but Alexandrianists, Sy- 
 rianists, Asianists, following the notions which 
 happened to prevail in the Church according to 
 the preponderance of particular local or temporary 
 influences, and following as our master neither 
 the wisdom of God, nor even the wisdom of men ; 
 but the opinions of a time and state of society, 
 
48 THE CHURCH. 
 
 whose inferiority in all other respects is acknow- 
 ledged, — and the guidance of individuals, not one 
 of whom approaches nearly to that greatness which 
 in the case of the great Greek philosophers made 
 an implicit veneration for their decisions in some 
 degree excusable. 
 
 If it could be shown that the unanimous voice 
 of men eminent alike for goodness and for wisdom, 
 had from the earliest times insisted upon some 
 doctrine or practice not taught or commanded in 
 the New Testament as an essential part of Christ- 
 ianity; if it should appear that this doctrine or 
 practice w^ere in no way favourable to their own 
 importance or interest ; and if it could be shown, 
 also, that it was not in accordance with the way 
 of thinking prevalent in their age and country, — 
 but could have commended itself to their minds 
 by nothing but its intrinsic excellence, — then, in- 
 deed, the doctrine might be concluded to be 
 reasonable, and the practice good : but the omis- 
 sion of all notice of them by our Lord and his 
 Apostles would be a fact so unaccountable and so 
 staggering, that the triumph of ecclesiastical tra- 
 dition would be the destruction of all well grounded 
 faith in the authenticity of our records of Christ- 
 ianity, nay it would involve in the most painful 
 uncertainty the very truth of the Christian revela- 
 tion. For if Christ and his Apostles omitted any 
 essential part of Christianity; if their revelation 
 
THE CHURCH. 49 
 
 was not perfect ; then the dispensation of the 
 fuhiess of times must be sought for elsewhere : 
 and the claim of Mohammedanism, that it is the 
 perfecting of the earlier dispensations, the Jewish 
 and Christian, ceases to be blasphemous. Or if 
 it be said that the doctrine or practice in question 
 were inculcated by Christ and his Apostles, al- 
 though they are not noticed in the New Testa- 
 ment, then what is our security that other vital 
 points have not been omitted in like manner in 
 our epistles and gospels ? And when we consider 
 what the New Testament is ; that it contains 
 four detailed accounts of our Lord's life and teach- 
 ing, one of which was written by his beloved 
 disciple St. John ; that it contains an account of 
 the first propagation of Christianity by our Lord's 
 Apostles ; that it contains, farther, thirteen or four- 
 teen epistles of St. Paul, written some to churches, 
 some to individuals, and comprehending systematic 
 views of what Christianity is; appeals innumer- 
 able to its motives, its hopes, and its consolations ; 
 exhortations innumerable to cling to its truths 
 and to walk in its precepts, with specific mention 
 of these truths and precepts ; — when we consider, 
 farther, that we have in tlie same Scriptures an 
 epistle from St. James, the head of the church of 
 Jerusalem, whose mind and views, humanly speak- 
 ing, were least like those of St. Paul ; and that we 
 have epistles also from St. Peter and St. John, 
 
 E 
 
50 THE CHURCH. 
 
 two of our Lord's very chiefest Apostles, and that 
 these epistles are addressed to Christians gene- 
 rally, and dwell on those points of Christian faith 
 and life which it was most essential to bear in 
 mind; then if all tliese writers, all these great 
 Apostles, in these long and varied writings, have 
 omitted with one accord themselves, and have 
 represented our Lord as omitting, any essential 
 doctrine or practice of Christianity, how can we 
 believe that they were indeed partakers of that 
 Holy Spirit which was to guide them into all 
 truth ? How can we think that they were really 
 empowered by God to be the preachers and au- 
 thoritative teachers of his revelation ? 
 
 Or, thirdly, it may be said, that the New Testa- 
 ment refers only to the beginnings of the Gospel ; 
 that the new converts received, indeed, ra avar^- 
 Kaiorara rfjs TraiSetas rov Xpiarov, — such truths as 
 were most indispensable, and without which they 
 could not have been Christians at all ; but that the 
 full development of the system of Christianity was 
 reserved for a later season ; that the Scriptures 
 themselves imply this, inasmuch as, in the epistle 
 to the Hebrews, a distinction is expressly drawn 
 between the first principles of the doctrine of 
 Christ and the going on unto perfection, and the 
 writer of that epistle complains that they v^diom 
 he was addressing were not yet fit for this more 
 perfect truth. That in this manner the doctrine 
 
THE CHURCH. 51 
 
 of the Christian priesthood and of the mystic 
 virtue of the sacraments is not, indeed, fully de- 
 veloped in the New Testament, but was taught 
 by the Apostles at the very close of their career, 
 and received by the Church as their last and most 
 perfect instruction, which was to complete the 
 revelation of Christianity. 
 
 It has pleased God that of the peculiar teaching 
 of the great majority of the Apostles we should 
 know nothing ; we cannot say with certainty what 
 they taught individually at any period of their 
 lives. But we can say positively that the latest 
 teaching of St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John, con- 
 tained in it no more perfect revelation concerning 
 the priesthood and the sacraments than they had 
 made known at the beginning of the gospel. St. 
 Paul's second epistle to Timothy must surely be 
 considered as containing his latest views of Christ- 
 ianity; and as being addressed to one who was 
 himself a teacher, it must have contained those 
 views fully ; it cannot be pretended that St. Paul 
 had any doctrine too esoterical to be communi- 
 cated to Timothy. But his latest epistle, amidst 
 many differences of expression from his earlier 
 writings, such as the lapse of years brings to all 
 men, contains in substance the very same view of 
 Christianity which we fiiid in the epistles to the 
 Thessalonians. Paul's gospel is still Christ's re- 
 surrection, God's free salvation, Christ's coming to 
 
 E 2 
 
52 THE CHURCH. 
 
 judgment. He is still as averse as ever to strifes 
 about words; he warns Timothy that the time 
 will come when Christians shall turn away their 
 ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto 
 fables. He refers him to his past doctrine ever 
 since Timothy first knew him, not as to an imper- 
 fect system, to which he was now going to add 
 some great truth hitherto suppressed, but as that 
 very system which he earnestly wished to save 
 from corruption and interpolation. This was 
 Paul's language at a period when he declares that 
 he had finished his course on earth, and had only 
 to enter into his reward. 
 
 As we learn St. Paul's latest sentiments from 
 his second epistle to Timothy, so we learn those 
 of St. Peter from his second epistle general. He 
 too speaks of himself in that epistle as leaving 
 to the church his dying admonition, as telling 
 them the things which they might have always 
 in remembrance after he was gone. Does this 
 epistle contain that great doctrine of the priest- 
 hood and sacraments which, when he wrote his 
 first epistle, the Church was too weak to bear? 
 In that first epistle, having used the expres- 
 sion " that baptism saved Christians," he hastens 
 at once to explain his meaning, lest any should 
 understand him superstitiously ; and says that 
 he does not mean by baptism's saving us, that 
 the bodily washing with water saves; but the 
 
THE CHURCH. 53 
 
 answer of a good conscience towards God, when 
 men in repentance and faith were admitted into 
 the fellowship of Christ's redemption. His ex- 
 planation is clearly intended to draw off our at- 
 tention from the outward rite to the moral state 
 of the person receiving it: it was the repentance 
 and faith of the person baptized, which, through 
 God's mercy in Christ, saved him ; and not the 
 outward rite of immersion in Avater. Now no- 
 thing is to be found in the second epistle which in 
 any degree qualifies this : every word of his latest 
 charge turns upon moral points ; upon growth in 
 all Christian graces, on improving to the utmost 
 their knowledge of Christ. He speaks, indeed, of 
 some who would soon introduce grievous heresies 
 and corruptions of Christianity; but for himself 
 he has nothing to add to his former teaching ; he 
 is only anxious that it should be remembered, and 
 practically turned to account. 
 
 Lastly, Christ's beloved disciple ; he who lived 
 so long that some of the brethren supposed that 
 he was never to die at all ; he who in an especial 
 manner connects the first age of the Church with 
 the second : — do his epistles, written evidently late 
 in his life, — does his revelation, which so empha- 
 tically bears the character of a final declaration of 
 God's will, — contain this supposed perfect doctrine 
 of the priesthood and the sacraments ? Not one 
 word of either. Written to those who had an 
 
54 THE CHURCH. 
 
 unction from the Holy One, and knew all things, 
 to the Church of Christ, with no distinction of 
 priest and layman, St. John's epistle contains 
 no new commandment, but the same which the 
 Church had received from the beginning: his 
 gospel is Paul's gospel also ; God's infinite 
 love in Christ, Christ dying for us; faith work- 
 ing by love ; holiness being the mark of God's 
 people ; sin the mark of false brethren. Of priest- 
 hoods, of one body of men ministering grace 
 to the rest through certain outward rites which, 
 unless administered by them, lose their efficacy, 
 St. John, like St. Peter and St. Paul, says no- 
 thing. Something, indeed, he does say of the 
 spirit of priestcraft, in order to condemn it ; there 
 was one Diotrephes who loved to exercise au- 
 thority, and to cast out of the Church those of 
 God's people who were strangers to his particular 
 portion of it ; and reproved those who knew 
 better the largeness of Christian charity. But 
 Diotrephes, the true prototype of priestly and 
 fanatical presumption, is condemned by Christ's 
 beloved Apostle, as prating against him with ma- 
 licious words ; as disobeying by his bigotry the au- 
 thority of the loving apostles of Christ Jesus. 
 
 The latest writings, then, of these three great 
 Apostles — Paul, Peter, and John — contain no 
 traces of any other or more mysterious doctrines 
 than they had received from our Lord and taught 
 
THE CHURCH. 55 
 
 to their first converts at the beginning of the gos- 
 pel. And the expressions ah^eady alluded to in the 
 epistle to the Hebrews, like the whole of that 
 epistle, are, in fact, directly opposed to the notion 
 of a more mystical Christianity, which was to be 
 the rew^ard of a due improvement of the first 
 principles of Christian knowledge already com- 
 municated. The " perfection " of which the 
 writer speaks as opposed to the principles or the 
 elementary doctrine of Christ, is an understanding 
 that the law, its priesthood, and its sacrifices w^ere 
 no longer necessary, inasmuch as Christ, by his 
 eternal priesthood and one sacrifice, had done ef- 
 fectually that w^ork which they could but typically 
 foreshadow\ It is w^ell known that the Jewish 
 Christians still observed the ceremonial law ; and 
 the Apostles sanctioned this, not only to avoid un- 
 necessary offence to the unbelieving Jews, but 
 also because the converts themselves would have 
 been shocked at the notion of renouncing it. St. 
 Paul, however, and those who followed him, w^ere 
 well aware that this observance of the law was very 
 apt to be coupled with a belief of its necessity in a 
 spiritual point of view, and therefore they represent 
 the full grown Christian as one who feels the un- 
 importance of all Jewish ceremonies, and who 
 places his whole reliance upon Christ. " Let us, 
 as many as are perfect," says St. Paul to the Phi- 
 lippians, "be thus minded ;" where his meaning is 
 
^Q THE CHURCH. 
 
 exactly the same with that of the epistle to the 
 Hebrews, where he speaks of going on unto per- 
 fection. So far, then, was the perfection of 
 Christian doctrine from consisting in the belief 
 in a human priesthood, and in the mystic virtue 
 of outward ordinances, that it was the very op- 
 posite of this, and consisted in clearly understand- 
 ing that Christ's death and resurrection had ren- 
 dered all priesthoods, sacrifices, and ceremonies, 
 for the time to come, unimportant. It was be- 
 cause this perfection was not generally attained 
 to, because the minds of so many Christians could 
 not embrace principles so pure, that the doctrine 
 of the priesthood and the sacraments gradually 
 made its way into the church, as the natural suc- 
 cessor of Judaism. For when the Jewish temple 
 and sacrifices were destroyed, those Christians 
 who had till then regarded them as important 
 parts of Christianity, Avere naturally led to substi- 
 tute another priesthood and another sacrifice of 
 the same sort in the place of those which they 
 had lost : and as they had joined the Levitical 
 priesthood with that of Christ, and the daily 
 sacrifices of the law with his sacrifice, so after- 
 wards, in the same spirit, they made a new priest- 
 hood out of the Christian ministry, and a new 
 sacrifice out of the communion of the Lord's 
 Suj)per. 
 
 It may be safely said, that whatever we find in 
 
THE CHURCH. 57 
 
 the New Testament, as to a gradual communica- 
 tion of Christian truth, relates to this one point : 
 that the disciples were to be led on gently to a 
 full sense of the unimportance of the ceremonies 
 of the Jewish law. Christianity w^as given com- 
 plete, as to its own truths, from the beginning of 
 the gospel : but the absolute sufficiency of these 
 truths, and the needlessness of any other system 
 as joined with them, was to be learned only by de- 
 grees ; and, unhappily, it never was learned fully. 
 The perfection of which the epistle to the He- 
 brews speaks as not having been yet reached by 
 those to whom the author was writing, was, by 
 the great mass of the Church, never reached at all. 
 The errors of the Judaizers continued, and as- 
 sumed a shape far more mischievous ; because 
 the Judaism of the succession priesthood, and 
 the sacrifice of the communion, did not, like the 
 older Judaism, simply exist by the side of pure 
 Christianity, but incorporated itself with Chris- 
 tianity, and destroyed Christian truths to substi- 
 tute in the place of them its own falsehood. 
 
 Thus, then, as the Scriptures wholly disclaim 
 these notions of a human priesthood, as the per- 
 fection of knowledge to which they would have 
 us aspire consists in rejecting such notions 
 wholly; it is strictly, as I said, superfluous to 
 inquire into the opinions of early Christian 
 writers, because, if these upheld the doctrine of 
 
58 THE CHURCH. 
 
 the priesthood ever so strongly, it would but show 
 that the state of mind of which the epistle to the 
 Hebrews complains, was afterwards more universal 
 and more remote from Christian perfection. But 
 it is satisfactory to find that this was not so ; that 
 although the germs of the mischief may be here 
 and there discernible, yet that the doctrine of the 
 Apostles was in the main faithfully taught by 
 those who, in point of time, came nearest to them; 
 that it needed more than one generation to cor- 
 rupt so deeply the perfect purity of Christian 
 truth. 
 
 Our inquiry will not be a very long one. For 
 when that favourite expression with some, " the 
 voice of Christian antiquity," is analyzed, it ap- 
 pears that, besides the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment, the first century and a half of the Christian 
 era produced no more than ten writers, or, if w^e 
 include Justin Martyr, eleven. These were all 
 whom Jerome could discover, although he pro- 
 fesses to give a complete list of the Christian 
 writers from the earliest times, and even swells it 
 with the names of Josephus, Philo-Judseus, Justus 
 of Tiberias, who was also a Jewish writer, and L. 
 Seneca. 
 
 The ten writers of Jerome's list are the follow^- 
 ing: Barnabas, Hermas, Clemens of Rome, Ig- 
 natius, Polycarp, Papias, Quadratus, Aristides, 
 Agrippa, and Hegesippus. Of this number the 
 
THE CHURCH. 59 
 
 works of the five last have perished, with tlie ex- 
 ception of a few passages preserved in quotations 
 by other writers. But Quadratus and Aristides 
 were only known to Jerome himself as the au- 
 thors of two apologies in behalf of Christianity, 
 addressed to the emperor Hadrian ; and Agrip- 
 pa's works were an answer to the heretic Ba- 
 silides, of which it is not certain that it was extant 
 in the time of Jerome. Of Polycarp and Ignatius, 
 Jerome knew no other works than those which 
 we still possess under their names ; that is, Poly- 
 carp's epistle to the Philippians, and the seven 
 epistles of Ignatius : 1, to the Ephesians ; 2, to 
 the Magnesians ; 3, to the Trallensians ; 4, to the 
 Romans ; 5, to the Philadelphians ; 6, to the 
 Smyrnseans ; and 7, to Polycarp. Barnabas, also, 
 and Hermas were known to Jerome only by the 
 Epistle of the former, and by the Shepherd of the 
 latter ; both of which we possess. And the only 
 undisputed work of Clemens, his epistle to the 
 Corinthians, is also still in existence. The only 
 important remains of Christian antiquity which 
 Jerome possessed, and which are lost to us, are 
 therefore the Apologies of Quadratus and Aris- 
 tides, the Ecclesiastical History of Hegesippus, and 
 Papias's five books, entitled " A Setting Forth of 
 the Words of the Lord." 'EKOeats \6jwv Kvpiov. 
 It is not my present purpose to inquire into the 
 genuineness of the epistle of Barnabas, or of the 
 
60 THE CHURCH. 
 
 other writings of the so-called Apostolical fathers. 
 I am willing for the present to assume that they 
 are genuine, because I wish to meet the advo- 
 cates of the priesthood on their own ground; 
 and I contend that their system can no more be 
 derived from the reputed works of the earliest 
 Christian writers, than from the Scriptures them- 
 selves. If there be no works remaining of the 
 Christian writers of the first century and a half, it 
 is idle to talk about a tradition running back to 
 the very times of the Apostles ; the links of the 
 chain are wanting in the very most important 
 part, and the wide gap between the Apostles and 
 Justin Martyr must resist every attempt to con- 
 nect the opinions of the end of the second century 
 with the Christianity of the Apostolical age. 
 
 I. The epistle of Barnabas is directed mainly 
 against the notions of the Judaizers. The writer 
 is so earnest against the observance of the Jewish 
 law by Christians, that he ascribes a figurative and 
 spiritual meaning to all those passages in the Old 
 Testament which enjoin the several ceremonies of 
 the Jewish ritual. Even circumcision, he con- 
 tends, meant the circumcision of the heart, and 
 not the outward rite ; and after stating an objec- 
 tion to this view of it, in the words of a supposed 
 opponent, who observes, " that the Jews were cir- 
 cumcised as a seal of their covenant," he replies, 
 " But the Syrians and Arabians, and the idol priests 
 
THE CHURCH. 61 
 
 generally, use circumcision. Are they, also, then 
 partakers of God's covenants ? " A writer who 
 would so little admit outward ceremonies as an 
 essential part of the Jewish religion, was not 
 likely to regard them as essential in Christianity. 
 There is, accordingly, not a single word about any 
 Christian ceremonial, whether of temj^le, priest- 
 hood, or offering ; he knows nothing of the Eu- 
 charist as the unbloody sacrifice of the new law, 
 to be offered only by the new priesthood ; he only 
 knows of the sacrifice once offered by Christ, of 
 the whole Church as the spiritual temple of God. 
 It is true he speaks of baptism under the name of 
 " water," and applies to it several passages in the 
 Old Testament, which speak of " streams of wa- 
 ter," " living springs," &c. And from these ex- 
 pressions, it might be supposed that he was laying 
 a stress on the outward act of baptism. For in- 
 stance, the following w^ords might be quoted as 
 identifying baptism with regeneration : — " We go 
 down to the water full of sins and filtbiness, and we 
 come up with our hearts bringing forth fruit ; hav- 
 ing fear and hope towards Jesus through the Spirit." 
 This, and other such passages serve admirably well, 
 when quoted separately, to make it appear that 
 Barnabas held the Judaizing notions of the mys- 
 tical virtue of the sacraments : but when we 
 compare his strong language, as to the utter 
 
62 THE CHURCH. 
 
 worthlessness of the outward act of circumcision, 
 and as to the circumcision of the heart being the 
 only thing intended by the commandment, it is 
 quite clear that, by parity of reasoning, the whole 
 importance of baptism in his eyes must have con- 
 sisted in the real change of heart which it implied, 
 and the change of life of which it was the begin- 
 ning ; and that the ceremony of baptizing with 
 water was merely a symbol of the great and im- 
 portant change which a man underwent in passing 
 from a state of heathenism to Christianity. In 
 this sense, baptism, as synonymous with an admis- 
 sion to the benefits and promises of the Christian 
 Church, could not be spoken of too highly ; it was 
 truly the turning point of a man's whole existence 
 from evil to good. And in the time of Barnabas, 
 when the real change involved in the act of bap- 
 tism was so striking, and the superstitions con- 
 nected with it had not as yet had full time to 
 grow up, any one might speak of it as Barnabas 
 has spoken, without suspecting that his words 
 could be misinterpreted. St. Peter himself says, 
 " Baptism does now save us ; " and it seems to me 
 rather an instance of God's abundant goodness, to 
 hinder the Scriptures from giving any counte- 
 nance to tlie Judaizing superstitions, than a ne- 
 cessary caution on the writer's part to save 
 himself from misinterpretation, when he adds 
 
THE CHURCH. 63 
 
 expressly, " not the putting away the filth of the 
 flesh, but the answer of a good conscience towards 
 God." 
 
 It should be always remembered, that the su- 
 perstition of the Judaizers consists not in their 
 reverence for the sacraments, which Christ ap- 
 pointed as great instruments of good to his Church ; 
 but in their having drawn off men's attention from 
 the important part both of Baptism and the Lord's 
 Supper to that which is external : to regard God's 
 grace not as conveyed by them morally, because 
 the joining Christ's Church in the first instance, 
 and the constantly refreshing our communion with 
 it afterwards, are actions highly beneficial to our 
 moral nature ; but as conveyed by them after the 
 manner of a charm, the virtue being communi- 
 cated by the water and the bread and wine, in 
 consequence of a virtue first communicated to 
 them by certain words of consecration pronounced 
 by a priest. It is the famous " accedit verbum ad 
 elementum et fit sacramentum," which contains 
 the essence of the unchristian and most mischiev- 
 ous view of the sacraments entertained by the 
 Romish and Anglican popery. And, in order to 
 show that the early Christian writers favour this no- 
 tion, it is not enough to show that they speak strong- 
 ly of the benefits of the sacraments ; for in this the 
 Scriptures and almost all true Christians would 
 agree with them : but it must farther be made 
 
64 THE CHURCH. 
 
 evident that they lay the stress on the virtue 
 communicated by the outward elements, after 
 those elements have been first consecrated by 
 certain formal words repeated by a priest. Un- 
 less they can be proved to hold this, we may in- 
 terpret their language rather as agreeing with 
 that of Christ and his apostles, than as counte- 
 nancing the superstition of the Judaizers. 
 
 From the epistle of Barnabas, I pass to that of 
 Clemens Romanus. 
 
 II. There is nothing in Clemens, either on the 
 subject of Baptism or of the Lord's Supper, or of a 
 priesthood. But there are one or two passages 
 which have been often quoted as asserting w^hat 
 is called apostolical succession ; and these, there- 
 fore, it will be proper to examine. As before, in 
 the case of the epistle of Barnabas, I am assum- 
 ing the genuineness of the epistle of Clemens, 
 and also its freedom from interpolation. 
 
 It is difficult, unfortunately, notwithstanding the 
 length of this work, to learn from it with any 
 clearness the exact nature of the circumstances 
 to which it refers. It complains, indeed, largely 
 of the mischiefs of quarrelling and pride ; but it 
 does not state what was the occasion of quar- 
 rel, nor what were the view^s and objects of the 
 l)arty which disturbed the peace of the church. 
 They are spoken of as " a few," oXlya irpoacoira ; 
 and they are blamed as " lifting themselves up 
 
THE CHURCH. 65 
 
 over Christ's flock," eiraipofievodv eiri to irolfiviov 
 rov XpL<TTov, at the same time that they were dis- 
 paraging the authority of the lawful elders of the 
 Church. Some of the elders had been actually 
 displaced, and for no fault of theirs; and those 
 through whom they had been expelled had gained 
 a great authority in their room. These last Cle- 
 ment exhorts to give up their power, to do the 
 bidding of the congregation, ra Trpoa-Taa-o-o/jueva viro 
 rod 7r\ridov9, and to imitate the example of many 
 worthy kings and rulers of the Gentiles, who had 
 left their own countries, rather than be the occa- 
 sion of contention or civil war. 
 
 All this is to us exceedingly vague ; it reminds 
 us something of the tyrants of the old Greek com- 
 monwealths, establishing themselves on the over- 
 throw of the old aristocracies. It bears some re- 
 semblance to the picture drawn by St. Paul of his 
 Judaizing opponents in this very church of Co- 
 rinth, who depreciated or denied his authority, 
 and trampled themselves upon the mass of the 
 congregation with the utmost insolence*. It would 
 perfectly suit an attempt made on the part of one 
 or two ambitious individuals to establish the des- 
 potism of a single bishop, instead of the mild 
 authority of the whole body of elders : for certain 
 it is that Clement, like St. Paul, recognises no one 
 bishop, in the later sense of the term, as ruling 
 » See II Corinth, xi. 20. 
 
GG THE CHURCH. 
 
 the church of Corinth ; the government is vested 
 in a certain number of bishops or elders, called in- 
 differently by either name, who, together with the 
 inferior ministers, Bccikovoi,, or in the language of 
 the Athenian constitution, virripeTai,, constitute all 
 the officers of the Christian society. 
 
 With this uncertainty as to the precise nature 
 of the disturbance in the Corinthian church, we 
 cannot tell with what extent or with what limits 
 to understand the particular passage of Clement's 
 epistle, which is supposed to uphold the doctrine 
 of the so-called apostolical succession. He refers 
 to the minute rules of the Jewish Church ; to its 
 division of offices, and its stated seasons and places 
 of worship ; and he infers from this, that each man 
 in the Christian Church should keep his own sta- 
 tion and order with equal strictness. The Apos- 
 tles, he says, appointed everywhere the first 
 bishops and deacons, eTna-KOTrovs koI BcaKovovs, in 
 the several churches which they founded. They 
 wished to obviate disputes about the government, 
 and therefore they not only appointed the first 
 bishops and deacons, but also appointed a succes- 
 sion, eTTLvofiriv, that when the first bishops were 
 dead, other tried men should succeed to their 
 office. " Those, then," proceeds Clement, " who 
 were appointed by the Apostles, or afterwards, 
 (fiera^v,) by other tried and aj^proved men, (e\Xo- 
 yifMcov,) with the consent of the whole church; 
 
THE CHURCH. 67 
 
 those wlio ministered unblamably to Christ's flock 
 with humility, gently, and in no spirit of sordid 
 gain, (d/Bavavacos,) and whose worth has many times 
 been attested by the whole Church, — these we think 
 are not justly expelled from their ministry ; for it 
 will be no small sin to us, if they who unblamably 
 and holily offered their gifts to God, be cast out 
 from their bishoprics." Such is the famous pas- 
 sage in which Clement is supposed to maintain 
 the indefeasible right of bishops appointed by 
 apostolical succession to exercise government over 
 the Church for ever. 
 
 It is manifest, in the first place, that Clement's 
 words are not general and prospective, but had re- 
 ference to a particular case actually before him. 
 He was thinking of something present and special, 
 and had evidently no thought of laying down a 
 general law for all times and places. Now, I am 
 very far from saying that the words of a wise man, 
 on a particular case, cannot contain any truth of 
 general application ; of course they can, and gene- 
 rally do : but as he did not utter them as general, 
 their bearing on any universal truth is indirect 
 rather than direct ; that is, we may conclude that 
 he would have applied them generally, so far as 
 the particular case before him was a faithful repre- 
 sentative of all future cases ; but if it differed in 
 any remarkable points from future cases, then we 
 
 F 2 
 
GS THE CHURCH. 
 
 have no right to make them general ; in other 
 words, we have no right to make him draw the 
 same conclusion, where the premises are mani- 
 festly different. 
 
 Now the premises in Clement's case lead justly 
 enough, assuming them for the present to be true 
 in fact, to his conclusion. Good elders, appointed 
 by worthy men, who had themselves been ap- 
 pointed by the Apostles, appointed with the con- 
 sent of the whole church, whose worth the whole 
 church had often attested, and who had discharged 
 their ministry unblamably, gently, and uncorruptly, 
 ought not to be deprived of their office. I am not 
 aware that the strongest opponent of priestly ty- 
 ranny would refuse his hearty assent to this propo- 
 sition of Clement. 
 
 But now, instead of Clement's own premises, 
 let us substitute others. " Bad and foolish elders, 
 appointed by others neither wiser nor better, which 
 others derived their own appointment from no 
 purer source, — proud and foolish elders, in whose 
 appointment the whole church had had no voice 
 at all, nor had ever attested their worth, but felt 
 their evil, — elders who had discharged their office 
 offensively, arrogantly, rapaciously," — shall there 
 be no power in the church to deprive such of their 
 office, and to commit the power which they abuse, 
 and have long abused, to other hands? Or, is 
 
THE CHURCH. 69 
 
 Clement's conclusion still to hold, altlioui>h of the 
 premises from which he derived it, there is not left 
 in this new case a single one remaining? 
 
 It must not be denied, however, that a com- 
 parison which Clement uses in this part of his 
 epistle, may seem to imply that he regarded the 
 government of the Church as a thing fixed once for 
 all, and not to be altered under any circumstances. 
 He refers to the selection of the family of Aaron 
 to hold the priest's office, as a parallel case to the 
 appointment of the first bishops by the Apostles ; 
 and as the priesthood remained in Aaron's family 
 to the end of the Jewish dispensation, without any 
 reference to the worthiness of the individuals of that 
 family in any one generation, so it might be argued 
 that, inClement's notions, the personal worthiness or 
 unworthiness of the individual bishops had nothing 
 to do with the question ; their right to govern the 
 Church was derived solely from their Apostolical 
 succession. 
 
 Now if Clement had been arguing in the abstract 
 against the right of deposing any bishop or elder, 
 and had then referred to the law of the Jewish 
 priesthood, there could have been no doubt as to 
 his meaning. But this is precisely one of those 
 points in which the particular occasion of his argu- 
 ment makes his meaning, as to the general applica- 
 bility of his comparison, doubtful. If he felt that 
 bishops or elders had been factiously and unjustly 
 
70 THE CHURCH. 
 
 deposed, when they had been appointed to their 
 office either immediately by the Apostles, or at only 
 one remove, by those who had themselves received 
 their office from the Apostles, the deposition of 
 such men so appointed could not but seem to him 
 an interference with a divine authority ; and he 
 would have looked upon their power, so unjustly 
 assailed, as resting on God's ordinance, as much as 
 the exclusive possession of the priesthood by the 
 family of Aaron. 
 
 But it is impossible to argue justly from this 
 passage, that if Clement had lived fifteen or sixteen 
 centuries later, and had seen the bishops of the 
 Church in a wholly different position from that of 
 the bishops of the church of Corinth, he would 
 have equally maintained their indefeasibility, and 
 considered the Levitical priesthood an exactly pa- 
 rallel case. For the continuance of the priesthood 
 in the same family was not a consequence simply of 
 the original divine appointment of Aaron, but fol- 
 lowed from the universal notion of the eastern 
 world, and of much of the w^estern, that priest- 
 hoods must be hereditary. God appointed Moses 
 to be the prophet and ruler of his people, and 
 Moses after him appointed Joshua ; but the divine 
 appointment went no farther, because the prophets' 
 and judges' offices w^ere not necessarily to depend 
 upon succession, and the Israelites w^ere not bound 
 to choose for their judges the posterity of either 
 
THE CHURCH. 71 
 
 Moses or Joshua. Now the Christian ministry 
 woukl undoubtedly resemble the judges and pro- 
 phets of the Israelites rather than their priests ; 
 and therefore an original divine appointment would 
 not imply the necessity of a perpetual succession. 
 The succession here would, as to its divine author- 
 ity, die out naturally in the course of time, just as 
 the Roman lawyers held that collateral consan- 
 guinity expired in the eighth generation ; it being 
 impossible to suppose that the virtue of the ori- 
 ginal descent from a common ancestor could exist 
 beyond that period. Thus, the elders appointed 
 immediately, or at one or two removes, by the 
 Apostles, might truly be said to hold their offices, 
 like Joshua, by divine appointment; and they 
 might as truly be said to have been chosen by God, 
 as Aaron was chosen to be the priest, rather than 
 a man of any other family or any other tribe. And 
 the reason why the succession was not to be per- 
 petual in the case of the judge of Israel and the 
 Christian bishops was this, that unless each gene- 
 ration was as highly gifted by God as Moses and 
 Joshua, or as the Christian Apostles, the wisdom 
 of their original choice of successors would be im- 
 paired continually by fresh mixtures of human 
 folly or passion ; so that, as in the case of collateral 
 consanguinity, all its virtue must necessarily be lost 
 after the lapse of a certain interval of time. This 
 is the plain analogy and reason which makes it 
 
72 THE CHURCH. 
 
 probable that Clement would not have considered 
 any bishops of the Church, after the lapse of a cen- 
 tury, to be the successors of the Apostles, except so 
 far as they resembled them in their lives and 
 doctrine. 
 
 Nothing is less satisfactory than an argumentum 
 adhominem; and therefore I have chosen to consider 
 this passage of Clement with a view simply to the 
 truth of the case, and not merely to the silencing 
 or embarrassing an adversary. Otherwise it is 
 most true that the actual episcopacy of the Chris- 
 tian Church, for many centuries, can derive no sup- 
 port from the epistle of Clement. An aristocracy 
 and a monarchy are not so precisely identical that 
 the government of a single bishop can claim to be 
 of divine authority, because the Apostles appointed 
 in each church a certain number of bishops or 
 elders. Nor can it be shown that if the ordination 
 by bishops, one or more, be necessary, the consent 
 of the whole church, which was no less a part of 
 the primitive appointments, may be laid aside as a 
 thing wholly indifferent. But it is a poor triumph 
 merely to expose an opponent's inconsistencies : it 
 is far better to show simply, that Clement's words 
 — 1st, grew out of a particular occasion ; 2nd, 
 that the bishops to whose deposition he objected 
 were good men, who had discharged their office 
 well, and who had been appointed with the consent 
 of the whole church ; 3rd, that they were really 
 
THE CHURCH. 73 
 
 and bona fide the Apostles* successors, being no 
 fartlier removed from them than the virtue of the 
 Apostles' original choice might fairly be supposed 
 to reach ; 4th, that, the virtue of that choice 
 necessarily dying out in time, it can never be proved 
 that he who upheld its authority v^hen it really 
 existed, would therefore imagine it to exist when 
 it was really lost ; and 5th, that the cases of 
 Moses and Joshua, and the essential difference be- 
 tween a priesthood and an office of prophet or 
 ruler, make it clear that indefeasible succession 
 does not flow from an original divine appointment 
 in the latter case, because it accompanied it in 
 the former. 
 
 Finally, it must be remembered that Clement 
 speaks of the Christian ministers as bishops and 
 elders, not as priests. It is not a little curious 
 that, just at that period when the notion of original 
 Apostolical appointment could no longer be applied 
 to make out a virtual succession for the Christian 
 ministers as prophets or rulers, their office began 
 to be represented as a priesthood ; that so the suc- 
 cession, which was inapplicable to them in their 
 real character, might be claimed for them under 
 this new and unchristian title. 
 
 III. The " Shepherd " of Hermas contains no 
 mention of the Lord's Supper, nor of a priesthood, 
 nor of a succession of ministers, nor of a mystical 
 virtue communicated to the elements in the sacra- 
 
74 THE CHURCH. 
 
 merits by a certain form of words. Baptism, as 
 the admission into the Christian Chm'ch, and as 
 equivalent to the obtaining a knowledge of Christ, 
 is indeed strongly insisted on in a remarkable pas- 
 sage, in which Hermas says that the Apostles after 
 their deaths went down into the place of the dead, 
 and preached there to the good men of former 
 ages, and taught them the name of the Lord Jesus, 
 and baptized them ; and that then, having received 
 the seal of the Son of God, they arose perfect and 
 fit for God's kingdom. " For," says Hermas, " they 
 had died full of righteousness, and in a state of 
 great purity, only they had not received this seal." 
 I am far from saying that there is not some su- 
 perstition involved in this ; but still the notion 
 is, that the knowledge of the name of Christ was 
 necessary, the seal of which is baptism: the stress 
 is laid on the knowing Christ, and belonging to his 
 Church, not on the mere outward rite of baptizing 
 by water. 
 
 IV. The pure and simple epistle of Polycarp is 
 as free from all taint of the corrupt doctrine of a 
 priesthood, and the mystical virtue of the sacra- 
 ments, as those of the Apostles themselves. He 
 dwells on the relative duties of the several mem- 
 bers of the Christian Church, and calls upon the 
 younger men to abstain from all evil lusts, and to 
 be subject to their elders and deacons as unto God 
 and Christ. So St. Paul had desired slaves to obey 
 
THE CHURCH. 75 
 
 their masters, and wives to be subject to their own 
 husbands, as unto the Lord. But this is very dif- 
 ferent from the exaggerated language of Ignatius, 
 and the pretended Apostolical constitutions ; and 
 the obedience to the elders and deacons is clearly 
 connected, in Polycarp's mind, with obedience to 
 the law of Christ which they taught, as opposed 
 to the evil lusts from which he wishes all Christian 
 people to turn aside. 
 
 V. The epistle of Ignatius to the Romans, as- 
 suming as before its genuineness, and not entering 
 into the question whether the longer or the shorter 
 version of it be the original, contains nothing that 
 bears directly on our present subject. One pas- 
 sage, however, may be noticed, as showing that 
 Ignatius understood aright the language of our 
 Lord recorded in St. John vi., respecting the eat- 
 ing his flesh, and the drinking his blood. " I 
 have no pleasure," says Ignatius, " in corruptible 
 food, nor in this life's pleasures : my wish is for 
 the bread of God, the bread of heaven, the bread 
 of life, that is, the flesh of Jesus Christ, the Son 
 of God, who became afterwards of the seed of 
 David and of Abraham. And the drink which I 
 desire is his blood ; which is love incorruptible 
 and life eternal." 
 
 Now it should be remembered that Ignatius, in 
 the whole of this epistle, is breathing an earnest 
 desire for martyrdom. He is impatient to arrive 
 
7G THE CHURCH. 
 
 at Rome, that he may be torn to pieces by the 
 wild beasts, and so may be for ever with Christ. 
 It is impossible, then, that he can have thought of 
 the communion of the Lord's Supper, when he 
 speaks of the body and blood of Christ : he speaks 
 rather of that perfect communion with Christ in 
 heaven, of which the Lord's Supper was intended, 
 amongst other things, to be the symbol. 
 
 It has been one of the most pernicious of all 
 corruptions of Scripture, to understand certain 
 l)assages as referring to the sacraments, which 
 refer really to those things of which the sacra- 
 ments are the signs. They are therefore coordi- 
 nate with the sacraments, pointing in word, as the 
 sacraments do in emblematic action, to the same 
 reality ; but not subordinate to the sacraments, nor 
 by any means pointing to them as to the reality, 
 which is something distinct from them and above 
 them. 
 
 When our Lord declares, " Whoso eateth my 
 flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life, and 
 I will raise him up at the last day ; for my flesh 
 is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed," it 
 is evident that here is the self-same truth con- 
 templated which our Lord had also in view when 
 he said, " Take, eat, this is my body :" and, "Drink 
 ye all of this, for this is my blood of the New 
 Testament, which is shed for many for the re- 
 mission of sins." There is the self-same truth 
 
THE CHURCH. 77 
 
 contemplatecl, namely, that the closest possible 
 communion of the soul with Christ, and the 
 making him, in all his various relations of Pro- 
 phet, King, Saviour, and Lord, the soul's daily food, 
 was essential to man's salvation. This great truth 
 our Lord expressed, according to his usual manner, 
 in figurative words ; he expressed it also in figu- 
 rative action. He not only said, " My flesh is 
 meat indeed, and my blood is drink mdeed;" but 
 he embodied the words in action ; he commanded 
 us to eat as it were his flesh, and to drink his 
 blood, in the bread and wine of the Lord's Supper. 
 But to suppose that the stress was laid on the 
 literal eating of the bread and drinking of the cup, 
 that by that figurative act the great moral reality 
 which it imaged forth symbolically would be ipso 
 facto attained, is a misrepresentation precisely of 
 the same kind as that which he so strongly con- 
 demns in bis disciples, when they understood his 
 words, to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, as 
 a charge to beware literally of a particular sort of 
 bread. 
 
 Thus again, the summary of the tenth chapter 
 of the first epistle to the Corinthians, as given iu 
 our English Bibles, runs thus : " The Jews' sacra- 
 ments types of ours." Here is the self-same error, 
 of making the outward rites or facts of the Jewish 
 religion subordinate to the outward rites of ours, 
 
78 THE CHURCH. "^ 
 
 instead of regarding them both as coordmate wit/i 
 one another, and subordinate to some spiritual 
 reality, of which both aUke are but signs. In the 
 passage referred to, St. Paul is showing that out- 
 w^ard rites are no security for the existence of the 
 real thing which they typify. Christians have 
 been baptized with water, as an introduction into 
 Christ's service ; the Israelites passed through 
 water also, as an introduction to their becoming 
 God's people and receiving his law. Christians 
 eat bread and drink wine, in token of their being 
 united to their Lord and Saviour ; and so the Is- 
 raelites ate manna and drank of the rock, that 
 manna and rock representing Christ their Lord, 
 who was with them on all their way, just as the 
 bread and the wine of the Lord's Supper re- 
 present him now. But Israel, notwithstanding 
 these outward tokens of their belonging to God 
 and depending on him, sinned and fell ; and not- 
 withstanding our outward tokens, the same may 
 be our case if we are not watchful. It is altering 
 the whole scope of the passage to say that it 
 represents the JewV sacraments as types of ours ; 
 as if our sacraments, any more than theirs, were 
 necessarily or in themselves a reality. The drift 
 of the passage is not to magnify the sacraments, 
 but to prevent us from superstitiously trusting to 
 them. The Jews had their sacraments, as we have 
 
THE CHURCH. 79 
 
 ours, and both are types of the same thing ; but 
 the type in their case did not prevent them from 
 forfeiting the substance, neither will it in ours. 
 
 So again, when St. John records so earnestly 
 bis beholding the blood and water flowing out 
 from Christ's side, and when in his epistle, in 
 manifest allusion to the same thing, he says, 
 " This is he who came by water and blood, even 
 Jesus Christ ; not by water only, but by water 
 and blood : " it makes the whole difference be- 
 tween Christianity and the great corruption of it, 
 whetlier we understand these words as coordinate 
 with Baptism and the Lord's Supper, or as sub- 
 ordinate to them ; whether we say that they refer 
 to the two sacraments, or that they refer to those 
 great truths which the two sacraments also were 
 designed to image forth in emblematic action ; 
 that repentance towards God, and faith in the 
 blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, are the sum and 
 substance of Christianity. 
 
 Finally, the memorable words of our Lord him- 
 self to Nicodemus, " Except a man be born of 
 water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of God," contain, perhaps, the same 
 figure in words that Baptism contains in action, 
 although even this is not certain, but are not 
 meant to refer to the outward rite of Baptism as 
 the thing indisi^ensable. They are coordinate with 
 Baptism, it may be, but not subordinate to it. 
 
80 THE CHURCH. 
 
 The same obvious reason which led the Jews, in 
 common with many other people, to adopt the 
 rite of washing the body as symbolical of the 
 washing or cleansing of the soul from sin, led our 
 Lord to express this cleansing of the soul by the 
 term " water." A man must repent of his past evil 
 life, and receive the grace of the Holy Spirit to 
 enable him for the future to lead a new life, 
 before he can enter into the kingdom of heaven. 
 And if I am asked why I do not take the word 
 " water " literally, according to Hooker's canon of 
 criticism, when he says that " in the interpretation 
 of Holy Scripture, that sense which is nearest the 
 letter is commonly the safest," I answer, that 
 such a canon, as applied to a collection of works, 
 so different in point of style as those of the 
 Scriptures, is at once ridiculous. In the simple 
 narratives of the historical books. Hooker's rule 
 will hold ; in the proj^hetical and poetical books, 
 it would be the very worst rule that we could 
 follow. Now, our Lord's discourses, as recorded 
 by St. John, are eminently parabolical ; his lan- 
 guage, both when speaking to the Jews and to his 
 own disciples, is continually figurative. Hence 
 the mingled surprise and pleasure of his disciples, 
 when, towards the close of his last conversation 
 with them, he dropped his usual style, and ex- 
 pressed himself without any figure. " Lo ! now 
 speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb." 
 
THE CHURCH. 81 
 
 He Spake of water to the woman of Samaria, and 
 she, adopting Hooker's rule, understood him liter- 
 ally : " Lord, give me this water, that I thirst 
 not, neither come hither to draw." Was this, in- 
 deed, the true sense of his words ; or was it so 
 utterly mistaken as to lead to the extreme of folly 
 and profaneness? And yet, some think, that to 
 interpret in a similar manner his words to Nico- 
 demus is neither foolish nor profane, but rather 
 that to interpret them otherwise is to explain 
 away the words of Scripture ! Explaining away 
 the words of Scripture! when we make them refer 
 to something spiritual and not bodily ; to a reality, 
 not to a symbol ; to a moral act, not to a cere- 
 mony ! 
 
 But why should we scruple to understand our 
 Lord's words of water, literally, when we know 
 that he did on one occasion tell a blind man to go 
 and wash in the pool of Siloam; and that the 
 man went, and washed, and came seeing? This, 
 too, is one of Hooker's comparisons, in that same 
 fifth book of his Ecclesiastical Polity from which 
 so many unwise and unfair arguments have been 
 quoted as the words of impartiality and wisdom. 
 Is it in the slightest degree a parallel case, that 
 because a bodily application was prescribed as a 
 cure for a bodily disease, it should therefore cure 
 a disease of the soul ? It is idle to say that we 
 do not understand the laws of body and spirit, and 
 
 G 
 
B2 THE CHURCH. 
 
 that God can affect both our bodies and spirits by- 
 whatever kind of instruments he chooses. The 
 argument from human ignorance, most just and 
 useful within certain hmits, is by fanatics often 
 used so awkwardly as to lead to the conclusions 
 of the wildest scepticism. It is true, that we un- 
 derstand very little of the laws of body and spirit, 
 still the very notions of body and spirit imply a 
 wide difference between them ; and so far as we 
 do know or understand of either, our knowledge 
 is derived from different sciences, and we find 
 them to be subjected to different laws. If there 
 is no truth in all this ; if we do not know enough 
 to warrant us in saying that wisdom is not to be 
 gained by bodily exercise, nor charity by eating any 
 particular kind of food, then we have no grounds 
 for knowing or believing any thing ; least of all can 
 we think that we are living in the world of the 
 God of truth and love, if we have no grasp upon 
 truth whatsoever, and have no means by which we 
 may reasonably assure ourselves even that God is. 
 But, not to wander into any more remote in- 
 quiry, it is sufficient for the present to say that 
 the Scriptures fully recognise the authority of 
 what may be called our common-sense notions of 
 good and evil, of reasonableness and absurdity. 
 And when fanaticism, striving to render all truth 
 uncertain, that so its own falsehoods may have 
 the better chance of being received, and pushing 
 
THE CHURCH. 83 
 
 to extravagance the famous sentiment of Pascal, 
 ** La raison confond les dogmatistes," would en- 
 deavour to persuade us, that we can have no sure 
 reliance either on the evidence of our senses or of 
 our reason, that we do not know what is or what 
 is not ; our answer will be, that our convictions 
 do not rest on any fond presumption as to our 
 own power of discerning truth, but on our faith 
 that God will not suffer us to be deceived by 
 trusting to his appointed witnesses. Truth in 
 itself we have, it may be, no power to grasp : it 
 may be possible, if you will, that in another state 
 of being, the surest conehisions of our senses and 
 of our reason may be found to have been ab- 
 stractedly erroneous. But in the meanwhile, in 
 this our present state of being, they are true to 
 us; they are the language to which God has 
 adapted our present nature. By distrusting it, we 
 shall disobey him and be lost in endless error ; by 
 believing it, we shall resign ourselves to his guid- 
 ance, and shall attain, if not truth in itself, yet 
 that only image of truth of which we are cajmble 
 here, and by which alone we can be made capable 
 of arriving at real truth hereafter. It is not 
 rationalism, then, but reason resting on faith, whicli 
 assures us of the utter incapability of any outward 
 bodily action to produce in us an inward spiritual 
 effect. 
 
 Sect. 1. Epistle of Ignatius to tlie Ephesians. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 THE CHURCH. 
 
 In this epistle, we find a marked distinction 
 
 between tlie bishop or superintendent, eirlo-Koiros, 
 and irpea^vTepiov, or the body of elders ; whereas in 
 Clement's epistle, as well as in those of St. Paul, 
 eirlo-KOTTos and TrpeajSvrepos are synonymous terms. 
 There are also several passages, enjoining obe- 
 dience to the bishop and to the body of elders ; and 
 in one place Ignatius says, " Ye should regard 
 your bishop as the Lord himself." ^ But our Lord 
 had said to his disciples, " He that receiveth you 
 receiveth me ;" and St. Paul had said, even with 
 reo'ard to the Heathen maoistracies, " Whosoever 
 resisteth the power resisteth the ordinance of 
 God." St. Paul also, as we have seen, enjoins 
 Christians no less earnestly to obey those who 
 were set over them ; and that Christianity recog- 
 nises a power of government in the Church, and 
 requires of all individual Christians that they 
 should be obedient to those invested with this 
 government, we have already shown at large. 
 But government is not priesthood, and neither 
 these passages of Ignatius, nor those quoted be- 
 fore from St. Paul, contain one word to show that 
 the bishops and elders of the Christian Church 
 were priests as well as rulers. 
 
 It may be worth our while, however, to see 
 what it was which induced Ignatius thus strongly 
 to urge the duty of obedience to the bishop and the 
 
 a [St. Ignat. ad Ephes. vi.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 85 
 
 elders ; because, if we understand this rightly, we 
 shall find much excuse, at any rate, for certain strong 
 expressions, which otherwise, taken apart from the 
 context, and as meant merely to convey a high 
 notion of the episcopal dignity, breathe a language 
 very different from that of St. Peter and St. Paul. 
 Every great reform which has taken place in human 
 society has contained, among its nominal advo- 
 cates, men who are morally the extreme opposites 
 of each other; some being the very best and 
 noblest of their kind, and others the vilest. And 
 it is these last who explain the otherwise monstrous 
 fact, that among the opponents of every reform, 
 there are to be found also, along with the lowest 
 and most wicked of mankind, some few of the 
 loftiest and the purest; men who look at the 
 evil supporters of the reform, and for their sakes 
 dread it and abhor it. Now even Christianity 
 itself shared this common lot of all great moral 
 changes; perfect as it was in itself, its nominal 
 adherents were often neither wise nor good, but 
 took part with it for its negative side, not for its 
 positive: advocating it, so far as it destroyed 
 what was already in existence, but having no 
 sympathy with that better state of things which it 
 proposed to set up in the room of the old. For 
 when the Church began to show its wide range of 
 action, and its singular efficacy, all who longed to 
 see the existing system overthrown, rallied them- 
 
86 THE CHURCH. 
 
 selves round its assailant. Here, they thought, was 
 a power which they could use for the accomplish- 
 ment of their purpose ; when this should have first 
 cleared the ground of the thickets which en- 
 cumbered it, it would be for them to sow in the 
 vacant soil their own favourite seed. 
 
 Now let any one, who knows what the Roman 
 empire was in the first century of the Christian 
 era, imagine to himself the monstrous forms of 
 opinion and practice which a state of society so 
 diseased could not fail to engender. All varieties 
 of ancient and foreign superstition existed, together 
 with the worst extremity of unprincipled scep- 
 ticism ; while in practice the unquelled barbarism 
 of the ruder provinces, and the selfish cruelty fos- 
 tered by long and bloody civil wars, had provided 
 a fearful mass of the fiercer passions ; and the 
 unrestrained dissoluteness of a thoroughly corrupt 
 society was a source no less abundant of every 
 thing most shameless in sensuality. These seem- 
 ingly incongruous evils, superstition and scep- 
 ticism, ferocity and sensual profligacy, when from 
 any particular circumstances they turned against 
 the monster society which had bred them, and be- 
 gan to seek its destruction, often sheltered them- 
 selves under the name of Christianity, and were 
 the heresies of the first age of the Christian 
 Church. 
 
 That this was so would be, I think, sufficiently 
 
THE CHURCH. 87 
 
 proved by that well-known passage of Tacitus in 
 which he describes the Christians as "per flagitia 
 invisos," and their system as one amongst things 
 " atrocia et pudenda." * We know full well that 
 Tacitus would not have applied such language to 
 true Christians, and to true Christianity. We 
 know that no wise and good heathen ever did ap- 
 ply such terms to either. But Tacitus's testimony, 
 and the very fact itself that the Christian name 
 was generally odious, as connected with all manner 
 of wickedness, are quite sufficient to prove that 
 there were nominal Christians, whose rites and 
 whose practices were at once licentious and dan- 
 gerous to public order; who formed a secret so- 
 ciety, fraught with mischief to the morals of indi- 
 viduals, no less than to the tranquillity of the state. 
 We are not left, however, to the mere testi- 
 mony of Tacitus ; the highest Christian authorities 
 confirm the same thing. These combined features, 
 sensual profligacy and lawless turbulence, appear 
 exactly in the portraits of the heretical Christians 
 drawn by St. Jude, and by St. Peter in his secon 
 epistle. Nor does the disputed genuineness of 
 these two writings affect the question, for whether 
 written by Apostles or no, it has never been doubted 
 that they are the works of Christians in the first 
 century ; and that is sufficient for our purpose. 
 The account given by Eusebius of the gross licen- 
 
 a [^Tac. Ann. xv. 44.] 
 
88 THE CHURCH. 
 
 tiousness of the Nicolaitans, agreeing with the 
 strong language used concerning them in the Re- 
 velation, is another evidence to the same effect. 
 I think also that the same thing is implied in the 
 first epistle of St. Peter. Twice in that epistle he 
 admits that the heathens spoke against Christians 
 as evil doers ; and he by no means denies alto- 
 gether the truth of the charge, but rather urges 
 those to whom he was writing to show that in 
 their case it was false. His question, " Who is he 
 that will harm you, if ye become {yevqaOe) followers 
 of that Avhich is good ?" and his saying, " Let none 
 of you suffer as a murderer, or thief, or evil doer," * 
 appear to show that a portion at least of the suf- 
 ferings of persons calling themselves Christians, 
 had been really the just consequence of their 
 crimes : and it is remarkable that here, too, the 
 command " to abstain from fleshly lusts," is fol- 
 lowed immediately by the command " to obey the 
 laws and government ;" ^ as if the Apostle was re- 
 garding the very same characters who are described 
 in his second epistle, — men at once licentious and 
 anarchical. 
 
 In St. Paul's epistles, we find no less fi-equent 
 indication that there existed many within the 
 Church, whose principles and lives were altogether 
 unchristian. The well-known pa-ssage in 2 Timothy 
 iii. 1 — 8, refers, indeed, rather to a time imme- 
 
 ' [1 St. Peter, iii. 13; iv. 15.] ^ [Ibid. ii. 11. 13.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 89 
 
 diately following than to one past or present ; still 
 it was verified before the close of the first century. 
 But the union of superstition and profligacy is de- 
 scribed as a thing actually existing in the Church 
 in the epistle to the Philippians, iii. 18, 19, and 
 again in the epistle to the Galatians, vi. 12, 13 ; 
 and it appears above all in the Judaizers, so often 
 referred to in the epistles to the Corinthians. It 
 is evident, too, from the peculiar language twice 
 used in declaring the sinfulness of licentious plea- 
 sure, " Be not deceived," — " He therefore that 
 despiseth, despiseth not man but God,"* that 
 there were some who would not listen to the 
 Apostle in this matter, and who tried to persuade 
 their fellow Christians that he was imposing on 
 them a yoke needlessly rigid. Finally, the cor- 
 rupters of true Christianity, whom Titus was sent 
 to Crete to check, were vain talkers and de- 
 ceivers, giving heed to Jewish fables and human 
 traditions, and at the same time denying God in 
 their lives, and being "abominable," (jSBeXvKTol,) 
 " and to every good work reprobate," {ahoKLfxoi,) — 
 " of no account and worthless." ^ 
 
 These passages might be greatly multiplied, but 
 what has already been quoted is sufficient for our 
 purpose. A great point is gained, when we under- 
 stand that the heresies condemned by the Apostles 
 
 a 1 Corinthians, vi. 9; 1 Thessalonians, iv. 8. 
 b [Titus, i. 10—16'.] 
 
9.0 THE CHURCH. 
 
 were not mere erroneous opinions on some theo- 
 retical truth, but absolute perversions of Christian 
 holiness; that they were not so much false as 
 wicked. And further, where there was a false 
 opinion in the heresy, it was of so monstrous a 
 character, and so directly connected with profli- 
 gacy of life, that it admits of no comparison with 
 the so-called heresies of later ages. What should 
 we think of men professing themselves to be 
 Christians, and yet maintaining, as did the Do- 
 cetse, that Christ never really died or really rose, 
 or asserting that the resurrection was past al- 
 ready ; that is, that in the sense of a rising from 
 the grave to eternal life there was no resurrec- 
 tion at all? 
 
 These opinions and principles, and this practice, 
 existed in the early Church, in open defiance of 
 the authority of the Apostles. In the Arian con- 
 troversy, and in all others which have since arisen 
 among Christians, the question has turned upon 
 the true interpretation of the Apostle's words ; but 
 both parties have alike acknowledged that what 
 the Apostles taught was to be received as the un- 
 doubted rule of faith and of action. Not so, how- 
 ever, the real heretics of the first century. St. Paul 
 is continually arguing against adversaries, with 
 whom his bare authority, it is evident, would have 
 weighed nothing. How strong is his expression to 
 Timothy, " All they that are in Asia are turned 
 
THE CHURCH. 91 
 
 away from me :'"' they have followed another view 
 of Christianity as better than mine. And again, 
 in matters of government, we see that Diotrephes, 
 a man evidently of no mean rank in the Chm-ch, 
 o2)enly set at nought the authority of St. John^. 
 Thus it appears that we were in danger, humanly 
 speaking, of having a Christian Church, a society 
 of men baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, 
 who yet did not acknowledge the authority of 
 Christ's Apostles, and who believed and practised 
 things most opposite to the principles and revela- 
 tions of true Christianity. 
 
 It was therefore no vain superstition, and no wish 
 to establish a priestly dominion, which led Ignatius 
 to insist strongly on agreement with and obedience 
 to the bishop, or which had induced Clement to 
 press the importance of not displacing those elders 
 who had been appointed directly or at one remove 
 by the Apostles themselves. And the view here 
 taken will also account for the otherwise irrelevant 
 language which accompanies such exhortations to 
 obedience. It explains why Polycarp should speak 
 of being subject to the elders and deacons in close 
 connexion with his charge to abstain from fleshly 
 lusts. KaXoj/ yap to avaKvirreaOac airo rwv ein- 
 OvjuLicov €v TcS Koa/jL(p, OTL TTCLGa ^iTiBvybia Kara tov 
 TrvevfJuaTOs aTpareverat .... Ato ^eov a'Tre')(€crdai 
 airo TravTcov tovtcov, vTroraaaofjuevovs rocs Trpecr^vre- 
 a [2 Tim. i. 15.] ^ [3 John, 9.] 
 
92 THE CHURCH. 
 
 pois Kol StaKovoiSf ws ©6c5 Kal l^pt(TT(p ^. Compare 
 our Lord's words with regard to the Scribes and 
 Pharisees : — " The Scribes and Pharisees sit in 
 Moses' seat : all therefore whatsoever they bid you 
 observe, that observe and do." ^ That is, " they 
 are teachers of a true revelation from God, and 
 whatever they bid you observe in their teaching, 
 that do, without regard to the bad characters of 
 those who so teach you." That our Lord directed 
 obedience to them only so far as they taught the 
 commandments of Moses, is clear from this, that 
 he did not obey them himself in those usages which 
 they had engrafted on the law of Moses by their 
 own sole authority. And so Polycarp's command 
 to the young Christians to be subject to their 
 elders and deacons, and to abstain from fleshly 
 lusts, has a direct reference to them as teachers of 
 genuine Christianity, which condemned such in- 
 dulgences, in opposition to many heretical teachers, 
 and to the general opinion of the heathen world, 
 which regarded them with indifference. 
 
 The same reason for enforcing obedience to the 
 bishop appears in the epistle of Ignatius to the 
 Ephesians. The bishop of that church, at the 
 time when this epistle was written, was Onesimus, 
 of whom, personally, Ignatius speaks in very high 
 terms. He commends also Burrhus, a deacon of 
 
 » QSt. Poly carp, ad Philipp. v.] 
 ^ [St. Matthew, xxiii. 2, 3.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 98 
 
 the same church, together with Crocus, Euplus, 
 and Fronto, all of them probably holding some 
 station in the government of it. Now, if Ignatius 
 remembered how Paul himself had complained 
 that all they who were in Asia (i. e., the Roman 
 province so called, of which Ephesus was one of 
 the principal cities) were turned away from him, 
 and how especially he had commissioned Timo- 
 theus to purify the government of the Ephesian 
 church, in order to stop the spreading of false and 
 mischievous principles ; what wonder is it that, 
 seeing now such a bishop and such a government 
 as he thoroughly approved of, he should urge the 
 church to the closest union with them, and the 
 strictest obedience to their instructions, as the 
 readiest way of abiding and advancing in the true 
 path of Christian holiness ? 
 
 Thus, when he speaks of Onesimus as praising 
 the orderliness of the Ephesians, — that they lived 
 according to truth, and that no sect following false- 
 hood dwelt among them, — he adds*, "For some are 
 wont to carry about their name" (scil., their name 
 of Christians) " falsely and deceitfully, doing deeds 
 unworthy of God : these ye should shun as wild 
 beasts ; for they are mad dogs, biting before men 
 are aware : and ye should beware of these, for 
 their madness is hard to cure."^ And again, " Even 
 your deeds of a fleshly sort are all spiritual, for ye 
 
 « [St. Ignat. ad Ephes. vi.] '^ [Ibid, vii.] 
 
94 THE CHURCH. 
 
 do all things in Jesus Clirist ; but I know that 
 some have gone aside from that right way, and 
 have an evil doctrine."^ 
 
 This also explains the earnest desire manifested 
 by Ignatius, that the Church should go on in unity. 
 Parties existed bearing the name of Christians, 
 but only serving by their monstrous principles and 
 evil lives to bring that name into dishonour. How 
 closely, then, ought all real Christians to hold toge- 
 ther, lest their whole society should fall to pieces. 
 But to the Church, or society of Christians, God's 
 promises were given; Christianity was not meant to 
 be held by a multitude of isolated individuals, but 
 where the lawful government and the majority of 
 a society are, there is the society itself Hence 
 the strong expression of Ignatius : " Let no man 
 be misled : if a man be not within the altar, he 
 fails of obtaining the bread of God. For if the 
 prayer of one or two be of such force, how much 
 more that of the bishop and of the whole church ? 
 He, then, who joins not with the rest of the church, 
 
 he, we may be sure, is proud ; for it is 
 
 written, ' God resisteth the proud.' Let us be 
 careful tlien not to resist our bishop, that we may 
 be subject to God." ^ We should particularly ob- 
 serve the stress here laid on the prayers of a great 
 number, which is just like the language of St. 
 
 a []St. Ignat. ad Ephes. viii. ix. J 
 b [Ibid, v.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 95 
 
 Paul*; but it it is quite inconsistent with a 
 system of priestcraft, where the numbers of the 
 people signify nothing, but the virtue is supposed 
 to reside in the prayers of the priest. And 
 although the language here used by Ignatius was 
 very liable to abuse, and although Cyprian, and 
 still more the Church writers of later times, have 
 abused it most palpably, yet still, as used by 
 Ignatius himself, it really contains nothing ob- 
 jectionable, if we only take the pains to understand 
 the circumstances of the case. He saw the Church 
 falling to pieces by the formation of various parties 
 whose principles and practice were alike unchris- 
 tian. The bishops appointed either immediately 
 or at one remove by the Apostles, were upholding 
 the authority of the Apostles' doctrine, and endea- 
 vouring to enforce it. Around them, therefore, 
 was the true Church gathered. Here was a genuine 
 apostolical succession ; and to this Church, go- 
 verned by these bishops, Ignatius earnestly exhorts 
 all Christians to adhere, as separation from it was 
 either abandoning Christianity altogether, and sub- 
 stituting in the place of it some monstrous system 
 of error and wickedness ; or else it was the indul- 
 gence of individual pride or unsocial temper, in 
 separating from the Christian society, and forming 
 a religion for themselves individually. And if the 
 bishops now had been virtually selected by the 
 a 2 Cor. i. 11 ; iv. 15. 
 
96 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Apostles, as men on whom they could depend ; or 
 if they were the only teachers who taught true 
 Christianity now, while other ministers, instead of 
 preaching the gospel, taught Manicheism or Mo- 
 hammedanism ; or, again, if the bishops and their 
 churches formed such a living Christian society, 
 that separation from them could only be the pride 
 or fantastic spirit of a few individuals ; then the 
 sentiments of Ignatius, although expressed, accord- 
 ing to the temper of the man, with too little quali- 
 fication, would yet in the main be just and appli- 
 cable now. 
 
 Sect. 2. Epistle to the Smyrnseans. — In this 
 epistle, Ignatius is earnestly writing against those 
 who have been called " Docetae ;" those who con- 
 tended that our Lord did not really die and rise 
 again, but only seemingly. {BokcIv avrbv ireTrovOevat.) 
 These persons also, he says, were unchristian in 
 their spirit and life : " They have no care for charity, 
 nor for widow nor for orphan, nor for the dis- 
 tressed, nor for the prisoner, nor for the hungry or 
 the thirsty. They abstain from the Eucharist, and 
 from public prayer, because they do not allow that 
 the Eucharist is the flesh of our Saviour Jesus 
 Christ, the flesh which suffered for our sins, which 
 in his goodness the Father raised up." ^ 
 
 Now, it is manifest that if this passage bears at 
 all upon the priestly notions of the communion, it 
 ^ [St. Ignat. ad Smyrn. vi.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 97 
 
 goes the whole length either of transubstantiation, 
 or at least of consubstantiation. If Ignatius meant 
 to condemn the Docetse for not thinking highly 
 enough of the elements, as they are called, used in the 
 communion; then undoubtedly his words were very 
 incautiously used, if he did not intend his readers 
 to believe that the bread and wine wei^e actually 
 the body and blood of Christ. In this case, his 
 authority may be of use to the members of the 
 Church of Rome, in their disputes with those of the 
 Church of England, but cannot be pleaded con- 
 sistently by us, so long as we profess to abide by 
 our present Articles and Liturgy. But in truth 
 Ignatius objects to the practice of the Docetse on 
 a very different ground. He complains of their 
 rejection of the symbol as showing that they re- 
 jected that reality which it signified. The Com- 
 munion was intended to keep in memory the death 
 of our Lord, and through our memory to strengthen 
 our faith, and so to make us actually and person- 
 ally partakers in the benefits of his death. But 
 the Docetse said that he had not really died, and 
 had made therefore no real sacrifice for us. Faith 
 in what had no real existence must be vain ; and 
 the memory of an unreal event must be vain also. 
 Therefore they rejected the Communion, and in so 
 doing they showed that their notions were not the 
 notions of Christ and his Apostles, and his Church. 
 For the Communion had been instituted by Christ 
 
 H 
 
98 THE CHURCH. 
 
 to keep alive for ever the remembrance of his 
 death ; and this showed that his death was a real- 
 ity. Now, as the rejection of the Communion 
 followed consistently from their principles, and 
 indeed was required by them ; and as they rejected 
 it for the very reason for which Christ had notoriously 
 instituted it, their rejection of it was an evidence 
 that their principles were not the principles of 
 Christianity. This is the drift of Ignatius's argu- 
 ment, and so understood, it is of validity: otherwise, 
 taken as a mere argument upon the nature and 
 inherent virtue of the Eucharistic symbols, it has 
 nothing to do with the opinions of the Docetse ; 
 for it is most certain that thousands of Christians 
 have held the most various notions as to this point, 
 and yet have steadily agreed in celebrating the 
 Communion, and have believed most firmly in the 
 reality and saving effects of that death of Christ 
 which it was appointed to commemorate. 
 
 A remarkable passage follows: — " Flee divisions, 
 as the beginning of evils. Follow all of you 
 the bishop, as Jesus Christ followeth his Father ; 
 and the estate of the elders as the Apostles ; and 
 reverence the deacons as God's ordinance. Let no 
 man do any thing of matters pertaining to the 
 church apart from (or separate from) his bishop. 
 Let that be counted a valid Eucharist, (^e/Sala,) 
 which is celebrated under the bishop, or under one 
 who shall have received his permission to celebrate 
 
THE CHURCH. 99 
 
 it. Wherever the bishop shall appear, there let 
 the people be ; in like manner as wheresoever 
 Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic Church. It 
 is not lawful without the bishop either to baptize, 
 or to celebrate the feast of love ; but whatsoever 
 the bishop shall have approved, this is well pleasing 
 to God, that whatever is done may be sure and 
 valid." ^ — d(T(l)ake9 Kcu fie/Satov. And then he goes 
 on : — " It is good to acknowledge God and the 
 bishop. He who honours the bishop is honoured 
 by God ; he who does any thing without the know- 
 ledge of the bishop, serves the Devil." ^ 
 
 The first sensation which we ought to have on 
 reading such a passage as this, is one of gratitude 
 to God, who has not permitted any such language 
 to appear in the writings of the Apostles. In fact, 
 the striking difference between the Scriptures and 
 the early Christian writers, is more observable in 
 what the Scriptures do not contain, than in what 
 they do ; for their divine truths are for the most 
 part faithfully copied by the writers who so care- 
 fully studied them ; but in their freedom from ail 
 foolishness and error, they stand altogether alone. 
 Doubtless God's Spirit would not have permitted 
 any Scriptural writer to cast such a snare upon 
 men's consciences as must have been cast by this 
 passage of Ignatius, if it came to us with divine 
 authority. Judged as a mere human writing, there 
 
 a [Ad Smyrn. viii.] ^ [Ibid, ix.] 
 
 H 2 
 
100 THE CHURCH. 
 
 is enough of truth in it, and enough of justification 
 in the circumstances under which it was written, 
 to prevent us from passing a harsh sentence on its 
 author ; but blessed be God a thousand times, that 
 no language so exaggerated, and so much more 
 vehement than wise, is to be found in that Word 
 which was designed to be our souls' guide. 
 
 I believe fully that Ignatius's horror of divisions 
 in the Christian Church originated in the odious 
 character which those divisions then wore ; inas- 
 much as the separating sects actually separated 
 themselves from the principles of Christianity. I 
 believe, also, that he exalted the authority of the 
 bishops, because he believed that they had been 
 wisely chosen, and that their influence was alone 
 capable of preserving the Church from the evils 
 w^liich surrounded it. It is true, farther, that he 
 was laying down no general and perpetual prin- 
 ciple, but speaking to the Christians of Smyrna of 
 his own time, with reference to their own parti- 
 cular bishop. But still the language is unguarded 
 and exaggerated ; it forgets that the bishop, like 
 his people, was fallible ; that man is not a suffi- 
 cient stay for other men to rest upon; that if 
 anarchy and faction be evils on the one hand, idol- 
 atry of human authority is no less an evil on the 
 other. Compare the tone of this passage with the 
 spirit in which St. Peter expresses himself on the 
 same subject : — " The elders who are among you I 
 
THE CHURCH. 101 
 
 exhort, to feed the flock of God, 
 
 taking the oversight thereof not by constraint, but 
 wilHngly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; 
 neither as being lords over God's heritage, but be- 
 ing ensamples to the flock Likewise, ye 
 
 younger, submit yourselves unto the elder. Yea, 
 all of you be subject one to another, and be clothed 
 with humility ; for God resisteth the proud, and 
 giveth grace to the humble." ^ No defence of a 
 priestly dominion could be extracted from this pas- 
 sage ; so perfectly has God's Spirit fenced it round 
 on every side, and tempered one view by its oppo- 
 site. But the words of Ignatius, taken as they 
 stand, have a tendency to establish in the Christian 
 Church tyranny in the rulers, and idolatry in the 
 people ; although I quite believe that if Ignatius 
 had been questioned as to his meaning, he would 
 earnestly have disclaimed the consequences of his 
 language, and would have expressed himself more 
 guardedly. 
 
 As to the general position, " that a fraction of 
 any society cannot perform such acts as belong to 
 the society itself," it is indisputably true. No 
 individual, or small party of individuals, could be 
 authorized to do any worldly act in the name of 
 their society, unless they were commissioned by 
 its acknowledged governors. A private man could 
 not sell the church's property, nor give it away in 
 
 « [1 St. Peter, v. 1—5.] 
 
102 THE CHURCH. 
 
 alms ; and so baptism, which is the admission of a 
 new member into the church, requires to be per- 
 formed by the church itself or with its sanction. 
 And if it be essential to the Communion that it 
 should be shared by all the members of the 
 church, then it too becomes a public act, and 
 requires of course the sanction of public authority. 
 All this is true if we regard the church as a mere 
 human society, and it leads to no tyranny, because 
 it wholly leaves untouched the great question, 
 ** What is to be done when the public authorities 
 do not speak the sense of their society, but act 
 wholly in opposition to it ?" and merely goes upon 
 the general and ordinary rule, " that the public 
 authorities do represent their society, and are 
 therefore justly considered to possess the exclusive 
 power of acting in its name." 
 
 Yet, when we consider the tendencies of power 
 to encroach more and more upon the rights of 
 others, and the immense mischief of draining off 
 as it were the whole vital activity of society into 
 that small portion of it which exercises the supreme 
 government, there is always a danger in making 
 the individual ruler or rulers so completely the 
 representatives of the body, as to sink the body 
 itself into complete insignificance. What the 
 fiction of the Lex Regia had made the emperors 
 of Rome, that the words of Ignatius would make 
 the bishops of the Christian Church; and when 
 
THE CHURCH. 103 
 
 we hear him say, " wherever the bishop shall 
 appear, there let the people be," we are reminded 
 of a later declaration of the most imperious des- 
 potism, " L'etat, c'est moi." But most especially 
 dangerous is such language in a religious society; 
 for there despotism is apt soon to become priest- 
 craft, and priestcraft is at once idolatry. And, 
 therefore, our Lord and his Apostles, although 
 they certainly did not wish to encourage turbu- 
 lence and disobedience to lawful authority amongst 
 Christians, yet have shown themselves no less 
 careful in shutting the door against an excessive 
 reverence for any human teacher or governor. 
 And nothing can be more opposite than the im- 
 pression likely to be produced by the words of 
 Ignatius, " Follow all of you the bishop, as Jesus 
 Christ folio weth his Father : wherever the bishop 
 shall appear, there let the people be ; as, where- 
 soever Christ is, there is the Catholic Church," 
 and especially that most rash expression, " He 
 who does any thing without the knowledge of the 
 bishop serves the Devil ;" and by the words of 
 Christ on the other side, — " Call no man your 
 father upon earth ; for one is your Father, who is 
 in heaven:" and, "Be not ye called rabbi, for 
 one is your master, even Christ, and all ye are 
 brethren." ^ 
 
 Still, unguarded as is the language of Ignatius, 
 
 « [St. Matthew, xxiii. 8, !). j 
 
104 THE CHURCH. 
 
 and though it had a direct tendency to bring in 
 priestcraft, and has been quoted repeatedly in 
 support of the notion of a priesthood ; yet it is 
 only just to confess, that Ignatius himself appears 
 to have had no such meaning. His words ex- 
 aggerate unwisely the power and importance of 
 Christian governors ; they make them too uni- 
 versally and without exception the representatives 
 of the church ; but they acknowledge in them 
 no priestly character. It is to avoid divisions that 
 Ignatius will have no separate worship and no 
 separate sacraments ; he invests the bishop with 
 the full character of the church, and so regards 
 him as the appointed channel of God's gifts to 
 the individual members of it ; but it is to the body 
 of the whole church, and not to an order of priests 
 distinct from it, that he believes Christ's promises 
 to have been given, and his authority conveyed. 
 And although the two systems but too often lead 
 practically to the same results, yet, in principle, 
 they are widely different. A priesthood supposed 
 to be of divine appointment is a hopeless evil ; 
 it requires nothing less than a new revelation to 
 remove it. But the degree to which the governors 
 of a society may be supposed to represent it, 
 naturally varies according to times and circum- 
 stances. There are seasons of peril when a 
 dictatorship affords the only means of safety ; that 
 is, when the rulers must wield the whole authority 
 
THE CHURCH. 105 
 
 of society, and the rights and powers of the 
 society must be merged in their persons altogether. 
 But, in quieter times, society deputes far less of 
 its authority, and it is most desirable that it 
 should retain in itself no small portion of life and 
 activity, lest it sink into utter helplessness. It 
 may be that, in the days of Ignatius, the Church 
 did wisely in committing to its rulers an almost 
 absolute authority ; it is most certain that it would 
 act most unwisely if it were to do the same thing 
 now. 
 
 Sect. 3. Epistle to the Magnesians. — In this 
 epistle there occurs again much of the same sort 
 of strong language which has been already no- 
 ticed, as to the necessity of being closely united 
 to the bishop and to the elders. But there is 
 nothing connected with our present subject which 
 seems to call for any separate notice. 
 
 Sect. 4. Epistle to the Trallians. — In this 
 epistle we find the following passage, which I 
 copy from the text of Mr. Jacobson's edition. 
 
 Aet Be KaL rovs BiaKovovs, ovras /juvarTjptcov Irjcrov 
 ^ptcTTOv Kara iravra rpoiTOV ttolo-lv apeaKeuv' ov yap 
 /3p(o/jLaT(ov Kau ttotcov 6L(tlv hiaKovoi, aW eKKXrjatas 
 ©eoO virripeTaL ^. " lUos enim," so Vossius inter- 
 prets, " non esse ministros esculentorum et pocu- 
 lentorum, sed ministros mysteriorum Dei, sice sa- 
 cramentorumr " The fiva-TTjpLa ^Itjctov Xpcarov are . 
 
 a [Ad Trail, ii.] 
 
106 THE CHURCH. 
 
 the sacraments." This is with some a favourite 
 doctrine, and we have seen alreadj^ that they have 
 not scrupled to ascribe it even to St. Paul, when 
 he calls himself a steward of the mysteries of 
 God. But here is the gradual growth of the 
 corruption of Christianity. In St. Paul's language, 
 " the mysteries of God " mean something quite 
 different from the sacraments ; in Ignatius, the 
 expression probably includes the sacraments, but 
 not as the principal part of the idea; in later 
 writers, it would mean the sacraments principally, 
 if not exclusively. 
 
 It may be observed, however, that the actual 
 reading in Ignatius is not ^varrjpmv but /juvarriptov : 
 the text runs thus in the single MS. now known 
 to be in existence, tov9 BtaKovov9, ovras juvaT^pcov 
 ^Irjaov XpKTTov. But the old Latin translation, 
 and the longer version of the epistles of Ignatius, 
 agree in reading fivart^plcov, and it is also plain, 
 from the corrupt state of the text in many places, 
 that our single MS. is a very bad one. Arndt, of 
 Ratzeburg, however, in an able paper on the 
 genuineness of the epistles of Ignatius, in the 1st 
 Number of the twelfth volume of the Theologische 
 Studien und Kritiken, defends the reading puvarri- 
 pLov, and interprets it in the sense of " likeness," 
 " copy," — referring to Poly carp's epistle to the 
 Philippians, chap, v., where Christ is said to have 
 been hiaKovos Trdvrwv. There seems therefore, on 
 
THE CHURCH. 107 
 
 the whole, no reason to interfere with the actual 
 reading of the MS. At any rate, if we adopt the 
 reading fivcTTrjpLcov, the passage is not to be read 
 as Mr. Jacobson has edited it, with a comma after 
 hiaKovovs, but, Tovs Slukovovs ovras fivcrrrjpccoVf 
 K. T. X. " It befits those who are ministers of 
 Christ's mysteries," &c. It now remains to be 
 seen what Ignatius meant by BtaKovovs fivaTrjpccov 
 
 l7]CrOV X.pL(7T0V, 
 
 Now it may be true that Ignatius amongst the 
 other fxvcTTripia of Christ would have included the 
 sacraments : but the question is, whether the term 
 express the sacraments either exclusively or prin- 
 cipally. It cannot be too often repeated, that 
 the whole question with which I am concerned 
 regards the 'prommence of the sacraments in the 
 scheme of Christianity, and by no means their 
 existence in that scheme, which I am as ready to 
 allow as any of those who esteem of them most 
 highly. But did Ignatius regard the ministration 
 of the sacraments as the principal part of the 
 deacon's office, or did he include it merely as one 
 out of many parts, and that not a prominent one ? 
 So that when he spoke of fivarripLa Xpia-rov, he 
 was thinking principally of other things than the 
 sacraments, although, if he had been asked w^hether 
 he meant the term to include the sacraments 
 also, he might probably have answered in the 
 affirmative ? 
 
108 THE CHURCH. 
 
 a. The word ^ivarripiov occurs several times in 
 the New Testament, but in no one place is there 
 the least pretence for supposing that it so much 
 as includes the sacraments, far less that it speaks 
 of them principally. I have already noticed the 
 palpable misinterpretation of St. Paul's words*, 
 where some have fancied that St. Paul meant to 
 call himself a " dispenser of the sacraments." 
 But with this exception, I do not know that any 
 one has ventured, even wrongly, to ascribe this 
 sense to the word. The confusion as to the mean- 
 ing of the Latin word " sacramentum," which is 
 the old translation of fjiva-rripiov, in Ephesians v. 32, 
 needs scarcely to be noticed ; because neither does 
 " sacramentum" in the language of the old Latin 
 Christians mean what has been since technically 
 called a " sacrament," nor is it applied to any rite 
 or institution in which men can partake on earth, 
 but to the wonderful incarnation of our Lord, in 
 that he left his Father to join himself to our na- 
 ture, and so to become one with us. 
 
 /3. Ignatius himself twice uses the word /zi^o-tt^/j toy 
 in the scriptural sense ; that is, " a truth or doc- 
 trine not discoverable by man but revealed to him 
 by God." Thus the three truths, that Christ should 
 have been born as a man, and born of a virgin, and 
 that he should have died for us, are called by Ig- 
 natius " three mysteries," Ephes. 19; and Christ's 
 
 * 1 Corinth, iv. 1. 
 
THE CHURCH. 109 
 
 life and death are again called " a mystery," Mag- 
 nesians, 9 ; and he adds, " through this mystery 
 we received our faith, and for the sake of this we 
 wait patiently, that we may be found Christ's dis- 
 ciples." The probability is, therefore, that if Ig- 
 natius called the deacons " ministers of Christ's 
 mysteries," he meant to call them " ministers of 
 the great truths of Christianity," and not merely 
 " ministers to distribute meat and drink to the 
 poor in alms." 
 
 7. Even in Cyprian's time the word " sacramen- 
 tum," which was from the earliest period of the 
 Church the corresponding Latin term to the Greek 
 fjLva-TTipLov, is applied generally to the solemn and 
 deep thing's of Christianity, without any especial 
 reference to what are now called " sacraments." 
 In Cyprian's 63rd letter, which contains a long ar- 
 gument on the necessity of using both water and 
 wine in the cup at the Communion, the term 
 " sacramentum" is applied, as we might expect, 
 several times to various points in the institution of 
 the Lord's Supper. So again, in the 72nd letter, 
 we find it applied both to baptism and to the lay- 
 ing on of hands, or confirmation. But, in like 
 manner, Cyprian speaks also of the many " sacra- 
 menta," " deep truths of God," which are con- 
 tained in the Lord's Prayer*. So he speaks also 
 of the " sacramentum Trinitatis," in his 73rd let- 
 
 * De Oratione Dominica, p. 142; ed. Amstelod. 1691. 
 
110 THE CHURCH. 
 
 ter ; of the " sacramentum vitse seternse," in his 
 Treatise on the Lord's Prayer, p. 151 ; of the " sa- 
 cramentum unitatis," or mystery of the unity of 
 the Church, and of the " sacramentum divinse tra- 
 ditionis," letter 74th, where it means little more 
 than " the sacredness of the lessons taught us by 
 Christ and his Apostles." Thus it appears that, in 
 the middle of the third century, and in the writings 
 of a man sufficiently inclined to exalt the ordi- 
 nances of the Church, the term sacramentum was 
 not even yet exclusively applied to what have been 
 since called sacraments. 
 
 Sect. 5. Epistle to the Philadelphians. — This 
 epistle, besides various other passages, insisting 
 on the necessity of uniting with the bishop, as in 
 the other epistles, contains also the following : 
 
 %7rovBa(TaT6 ovv jxia ev^apiCTTia '^prjcrOai' fila yap 
 aap^ Tov J^vpLov 7]fia}v Irjcrov 'KpLcrrov Koi \v ttott]- 
 piov €L9 evcaaiv tov ai/juaros avrov' ev OvaiaarripLov 
 0)9 els eTTCcTKOTTOs, afia tq) irpeajByrepiw Kai BcaKovoLS 
 Tols avv^ovXocs jnov, Lva o eav irpaacrrjTe Kara ®6ov 
 TTpdao-Tjre^, There is nothing here in what is said 
 of the Communion deserving of remark, except the 
 use of the word Ovacaarriptov, Did Ignatius mean 
 to call the Communion table an altar, and the 
 bishop who administered the Communion a priest 
 sacrificing at the altar ? 
 
 The answer is, that he did not : but that by the 
 ^ [Ad Philadelph. iv.] 
 
THE CHURCH. Ill 
 
 term Ovatao-Tripiov he meant the Church of Christ, 
 and the sacrifice to be offered on that altar was 
 the sacrifice of prayer and praise, and of the bodies 
 and souls of every Christian ; and by combining 
 together the words " one altar and one bishop," 
 he meant that there should be only one Church 
 and one government of it ; not a multitude of 
 separate bodies of Christians with their separate 
 rulers : for that then the sacrifice of the Christian 
 law would no longer be offered in unity. 
 
 That OvcnacTTripiov in the early Christian writers 
 signifies the Church of God, as St. Paul also calls 
 the Church the vaos, or temple of God, may be 
 shown from various instances. The earliest and 
 best example of this is to be found in the New 
 Testament itself, in the epistle to the Hebrews. 
 There, in the 13th chapter, v. 10 — 15, we have 
 the following remarkable words : ''E%oyt*ez^ Ovcnaa- 
 TrjpLov, e^ oif (f>ay6lv ovk 6'^ovcnv e^ovcrcav ol rff 
 crKr]vrj Xarpevovres. k. t. X. Where the argument 
 runs thus : our sacrifice, as an atoning sacrifice 
 must have been, was offered without the camp ; 
 that is, away from and out of the pale of the 
 earthly Israel. We follow him without the camp 
 also: our altar is no longer in the temple at 
 Jerusalem, but without its precincts ; it is where 
 Christ was offered ; that is virtually everywhere,, 
 where Christ's people are gathered together. There 
 is their altar in the midst of their own company,. 
 
112 THE CHURCH. 
 
 and on that altar they offer up their sacrifices, now 
 rendered acceptable through His atoning sacrifice, 
 their spiritual sacrifice of prayer and praise and 
 acts of charity. Of this altar the Jews have no 
 right to eat ; that is, as they would in the like 
 case have no right to eat of the actual sacrifices 
 offered on a literal altar which was quite distinct 
 from their own temple, so they have no right to 
 partake in the spiritual sacrifices of prayer and 
 praise offered on the Christian altar, or in the spi- 
 ritual bread of life, communion with Christ, which 
 is there for ever present. 
 
 Thus also Polycarp, in his epistle to the Philip- 
 pians, bids the widows of the Christian Church to 
 remember that they are God's altar*, and that every 
 offering offered upon that altar must be without 
 blemish^. That is, Christians themselves are God's 
 spiritual altar, and their prayers, praises, and holy 
 actions are the proper sacrifices to be offered 
 upon it. 
 
 Thus also Ignatius himself, in his epistle to the 
 Ephesians, says, "If a man be not within the altar, 
 he fails to obtain the bread of God;'"' and again, in 
 
 ^ So in the Apostol. Constitut. II. 26 ad fin., we find the 
 
 same notion, oCi ;!^>jpat y.a,i opipavo) si? rvrov rov dva-ioca-rvjeiov AeXo- 
 yicrvucrotv vtj,7v' ai t£ TrapSfvoi nq tvttov rov ^vixiocTyipiov T£~t|t>(,>3cr0a)<3-a.i', 
 xai rov Bvjxnx[xccToc. Is this upon the notion that offerings were 
 given for the widows, &c., and paid to them as on an altar? 
 ^ [Ad Phihp. iv.] c [Ad Ephes. v.] 
 
THE CHURCH. 113 
 
 the epistle to the Tralliaiis, " He that is within 
 the altar, he is clean." '^ In the latter passage there 
 follows immediately this explanation : " that is, he 
 who does any thing apart from the bishop, and the 
 company of elders, and the deacon, he is not clean 
 in his conscience." And after the former passage 
 the writer goes on, " For if the prayer of one or 
 two persons has so great force, how much more is 
 the force of the prayer of the bishop and of the 
 w^iole Church ?" It appears, therefore, from both 
 these passages, that the altar is the Church of 
 Christ, and that the sacrifices offered on it are 
 prayers. And as it is said in the epistle to the 
 Hebrews, that " the Jew^s have no right to eat of 
 our altar," so Ignatius says, " that he who is with- 
 out the Church cannot obtain the bread of God;" 
 that is, as the shewbread under the law might be 
 eaten only by the priests, so Christ, who is our 
 Bread of life, is only to be enjoyed by those who 
 are his priests, ministering at his altar, that is, by 
 his people, who on the altar of his Church offer to 
 him their prayers and themselves. 
 
 Sect. 6. Epistle to Polycarp. — In this epistle, I 
 may notice the passage in which Christians pro- 
 posing to marry are recommended to do it with 
 the sanction and approbation of the bishop, in 
 order that their marriage may be according to 
 God, and not according to mere passion. This 
 
 a [Ad Trail, vii.] 
 
 I 
 
114 THE CHURCH. 
 
 advice is remarkable, as it shows to what a length 
 Ignatius carried his notions of unity, and what a 
 Spartan discipline as to the merging the individual 
 wall in the will of the society, or of its repre- 
 sentative, he would fain have introduced into the 
 Christian Church. Regarding the bishops of the 
 several churches as men eminently fitted to bring 
 their people to the purest state of Christian per- 
 fection, and considering that amongst their people, 
 their subjects I might almost call them, there ex- 
 isted the greatest varieties of wild opinion and licen- 
 tious practice, he saw no other remedy than to in- 
 vest the rulers of the Church with absolute author- 
 ity. Hence, he not only wished to unite in their 
 persons every power of government, and to sub- 
 ject to their absolute control every thing that 
 might be called a public or social act of the 
 Church as a body; as when he would have no 
 Communion celebrated without the bishop's au- 
 thority ; but he would even give them dominion 
 over acts most strictly belonging to the individual 
 Christian ; even for marriage he would require 
 their sanction, as being the fathers of the Christ- 
 ian family : they were to judge whether the pro- 
 posed union was entered upon in a Christian spirit, 
 or whether it was desired from mere youthful pas- 
 sion. Now this subjection of the individual to 
 the society, even in the most private relations of 
 domestic life, was very agreeable to the spirit of 
 
THE CHURCH. 115 
 
 many of the ideal commonwealths of the Greek 
 philosophy ; and, in the famous constitution of 
 Sparta, it had been actually established in practice. 
 Much was to be said in its behalf, by those espe- 
 cially who were most aware of the evils of the op- 
 posite extreme, of leaving the individual will 
 wholly uncontrolled, except if it should attempt 
 to offer a direct injury to another. Nor can we 
 doubt that Ignatius recommended pure despotism 
 as sincerely and as conscientiously as ever men of 
 different views and under different circumstances 
 have protested against it. But instead of seeing 
 in the letters of Ignatius a strong display of views 
 which have been often entertained by wise and 
 good men, and which in this particular case were 
 more than ordinarily justified by the peculiar cir- 
 cumstances of the Church, men have soudit to 
 find in him a perpetual law of Church government, 
 and have taken his most vehement expressions as 
 an authoritative definition of the powers which 
 ought to be always exercised by the rulers of the 
 Christian society. Nor is this all ; but as persons 
 who have been capable of so misusing him were not 
 likely to have very clear notions of government 
 and the questions connected with it, so it has hap- 
 pened that confounding different times and usages, 
 and being the slaves of a name, they have trans- 
 ferred what Ignatius says of the necessity of an 
 absolute government in the hands of the bishop, 
 
 I 2 
 
116 THE CHURCH. 
 
 to the later system of the mystical power of the 
 priesthood ; and where he would acknowledge 
 nothing as an act of the church which was not 
 done by the authority of the bishop, they have 
 quoted him as sanctioning their doctrine of the 
 necessity of a priestly consecration of the elements 
 to the sacramental virtue of the Lord's Supper : 
 where he would have the bishop's consent ob- 
 tained for all marriages, that they might be such 
 as a Christian ought to contract, he has been 
 quoted as enforcing the necessity of the priestly 
 benediction to give to the rite of marriage any 
 validity *. 
 
 Here then we close our present inquiry : but one 
 or two points seem naturally to arise from it, and with 
 some notice of these I will conclude this chapter. 
 
 1st. We do not find in these early Christian 
 writers the doctrine of the priesthood and sa- 
 
 ^ " Hinc clare patet," says Smith, " nuptias non fuisse 
 habitas justas et legitimas absque sententia episcopi, et bene- 
 dictione sacerdotali, in primis Christianismi seculis." Smith 
 is confounding two ideas perfectly distinct, one of which Ig- 
 natius had, while of the other not the slightest trace is to be 
 found in him. He did wish that the bishop should have the 
 power of a father over the whole church, that his consent 
 should be obtained before any Christian could marry. This is 
 a power of government, and this he undoubtedly wished to 
 give to the bishop of every church. But to require a priestly 
 blessing in order to hallow the rite of marriage is a very dif- 
 ferent notion, and one of which Ignatius says nothing what- 
 ever. 
 
THE CHURCH. 117 
 
 cram en ts which was afterwards prevalent in the 
 Church ; but we find language which will suf- 
 ficiently account for the subsequent introduction 
 of that doctrine ; whereas the Scriptures not only 
 do not contain it, but absolutely repel it : be- 
 tween them and it there is a great gulf fixed, over 
 which no art of man can cast a bridge. 
 
 2nd. A full consideration of this language in 
 the early uncanonical writers, will lead to three 
 conclusions. While, in the first place, it marks 
 the wide distinction between them and the Scrip- 
 ture, and should lead us to thank God that the 
 scriptural writers were so secured by his Spirit, not 
 from error only, but from such unguarded and one- 
 sided language, if I may so speak, as might readily 
 become the occasion of error ; we shall, in the 
 second place, be spared the pain of believing that 
 Christianity was grossly corrupted in the very next 
 generation after the Apostles by the men who pro- 
 fessed themselves to be the Apostles' true fol- 
 lowers. We shall rather have reason to believe 
 that their language, taken in their own meaning, 
 and as applied to the circumstances of the Church 
 in their own times, was substantially true. We 
 shall be able to sympathize with Ignatius in his 
 earnest desire to keep the Church in unity with 
 its bishops, and with Clement in his sense of the 
 value of their Apostolical succession ; we shall 
 readily confess that to this unity, and this real 
 
118 THE CHURCH. 
 
 Apostolical succession of the early bishops, we owe 
 the general acknowledgment of the authority of 
 the Apostles and of their writings ; — we owe it, in 
 fact, that our Christianity at this day is that of St. 
 John, and not of Cerinthus ; of St. Paul, and not 
 of his Judaizing adversaries. And thirdly, com- 
 paring these early Christian writers with the Scrip- 
 tures on the one hand, and with the later Church 
 system on the other, as developed in the forged 
 Apostolical constitutions, we shall be able to trace 
 three stages through which Christianity passed, 
 and which, indeed, exhibit what may be called the 
 law of decay in all institutions, whether adminis- 
 tered by men only, or devised by them as well as 
 administered. The first and perfect state exhibits 
 the spirit of the institution not absolutely without 
 all forms, for that is impossible, but regarding 
 them as things wholly subordinate, indifferent in 
 themselves, and therefore deriving their value from 
 particular times and circumstances; and as such 
 particular times are not yet come, the spirit of the 
 institution is as yet wholly independent of them ; 
 it uses their ministry, but in no way depends upon 
 their aid. Then comes the second stage, when 
 from particular circumstances the existence of the 
 spirit of the institution depends on the adherence 
 to particular outward regulations. The men of 
 this generation insist, as well they may, on the 
 necessity of these forms, for without them the 
 
THE CHURCH. 119 
 
 spirit would be lost. And because others profess 
 to honour the spirit no less than they do, there- 
 fore they are oblio'ed to make the forms rather 
 than the spirit their peculiar rallying word. Around 
 and for these forms is the stress of battle : but their 
 defenders well know that they are but the husk 
 in which the seed of life is sheltered ; that they are 
 but precious for the sake of- the seed which they 
 contain, and to the future growth of which they, 
 under the inclemencies of the actual season, are an 
 indispensable condition. 
 
 Then the storm passes away, and the precious seed, 
 safely sheltered within its husk, has escaped de- 
 struction. The forms have done their appointed 
 work, and, like the best of mortal instruments 
 their end should be, that after having served their 
 own generation by the will of God, they should 
 fall asleep and see corruption. But in the third 
 stage men cannot understand this law. Their 
 fathers clung to certain forms to the death ; they 
 said — and said truly — that unless these were pre- 
 served, the spirit would perish. The sons repeat 
 their fathers' words, although in their mouths 
 they are become a lie. Their fathers insisted on 
 the forms even more earnestly than on the spirit, 
 because in their day the forms were peculiarly 
 threatened. But now the forms are securely esta- 
 blished, and the great enemy who strove to destroy 
 
120 THE CHURCH. 
 
 them whilst they protected the seed of life, is now 
 as ready to uphold them, because they may become 
 the means of stifling it. But the sons, unheeding 
 of this change, still insist mainly on the importance 
 of the forms, and seeing these triumphant, they 
 rejoice, and think that the victory is won, just at 
 the moment when a new battle is to be fought, 
 and the forms oppress the seed instead of protect- 
 ing it. Still they uphold the form, for that is a 
 visible object of worship, and they teach their 
 children to do the same. Age after age the same 
 language is repeated, whilst age after age its false- 
 hood is becoming more flagrant ; and still it is 
 said, " We are treading in the steps of our fathers 
 from the very beginning ; even at the very first 
 these forms were held to be essential." So when 
 the husk cracks, and would fain fall to pieces by 
 the natural swelling of the seed within, a foolish 
 zeal labours to hold it together : they who would 
 deliver the seed, are taxed with longing to destroy 
 it ; they who are smothering it, pretend that they 
 are treading in the good old ways, and that the 
 husk was, is, and ever will be essential. And this 
 hapjDens because men regard the form and not the 
 substance ; because they think that to echo the 
 language of their forefathers is to be the faithful 
 imitators of their spirit ; because they are blind 
 to the lessons which all nature teaches them, and 
 
THE CHURCH. 121 
 
 would for ever keep the egg-shell unbroken, and 
 the sheath of the leaf unburst, not seeing that the 
 wisdom of winter is the folly of spring. 
 
 So it has been with the unity of the Church 
 under its bishops, and with their apostolical suc- 
 cession. In the second stage of the Church, these 
 were really essential to the protection of Christian 
 truth : in its third stage, through many generations 
 they have been a mere empty name, powerless to 
 preserve or to increase the spirit of Christianity, 
 but often only too powerful in stifling and in cor- 
 rupting it. 
 
122 THE CHURCH. 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 In the inquiry which has been pursued through 
 the last two chapters, w^e have seen that the doc- 
 trine of the priesthood is repelled by the Scrip- 
 tures, and not acknowledged by the earliest unca- 
 nonical Christians. The first of these results ought 
 to be abundantly sufficient for our practice : the 
 doctrine which the Scripture not only does not 
 teach, but which it virtually condemns, must be 
 inconsistent with Christianity. The second result 
 although not needed practically, is yet on two ac- 
 counts interesting. It is satisfactory to find that 
 the Church in the very first century had not grossly 
 corrupted Christian truth. It is also satisfactory to 
 find in the peculiar circumstances and language of 
 these early writers, an explanation, and something of 
 a palliation for the grievous errors of the subsequent 
 age. Had any generation of Christians fallen at once 
 from the perfect spirit of Scriptural truth into the 
 doctrine of the priesthood, it would have seemed 
 hardly less than apostacy from the faith ; but Ig- 
 natius and his contemporaries exhibit the Church 
 in a sort of transition state, which, although not 
 one of error, yet rendered the actual errors of 
 the following period more excusable. We now 
 proceed to see how the errors themselves came in ; 
 
THE CHURCH. 123 
 
 how government was converted into priesthood, 
 and how Judaism, driven from its own ceremonies, 
 and obliged to abandon circumcision and the dis- 
 tinction of clean and unclean meats, took possession 
 of the Christian sacraments, and held wdth effect 
 under their names the very same mischievous doc- 
 trines which, when connected with the names of 
 Jewish ceremonies, the Church had been so earn- 
 estly warned to avoid. So what took place with 
 regard to the sacraments, was the exact converse 
 of what hajjpened with respect to Apostolical suc- 
 cession ; each instance equally confirming the truth, 
 that men are ruled by names and not by things. 
 On the one hand, the benefits of a real Apostolical 
 succession were supposed to be retained, because 
 there was still an Apostolical succession nominally: 
 on the other hand, men thought that they were 
 safe from Judaism, because they put the word 
 baptism in the place of circumcision, and talked 
 of the mystic virtue of the elements in the Com- 
 munion, instead of the purifying nature of clean 
 meats, and the defiling character of such as w^ere 
 unclean. 
 
 Let us now see in what respects the Church, 
 early in the second century, was ready to slide into 
 the doctrine of a priesthood, with all its accompa- 
 nying corruptions of Christian truth. 
 
 The beginning of the second century found the 
 Church under the government of bishops, many of 
 
124 THE CHURCH. 
 
 whom had derived their appointment from the 
 Apostles themselves, at only one or two removes ; 
 that is to say, they had been chosen by men who 
 had themselves been chosen by an Apostle, or by 
 persons such as Timotheus, in whom an Apostle 
 had entertained full confidence. They were en- 
 gaged in an arduous struggle not only against hea- 
 thenism, but against various monstrous forms of 
 error which claimed to themselves the name of 
 Christianity ; and, as happens naturally in such 
 times of danger, they drew to themselves more 
 and more, not through ambition, but by the neces- 
 sity of the case, the whole power of the Christian 
 society. They were the representatives of the 
 Church, and without them the Church had no ex- 
 istence ; those were not the prayers of the church, 
 that was not her Communion, which the bishop 
 did not either preside at or sanction. Here, then, 
 was a government of a religious society, whose 
 sanction was considered necessary to the religious 
 acts of that society, and which grounded its 
 claim to obedience mainly on the fact that 
 it derived its authority all but immediately 
 from the Apostles, and so might be supposed to 
 represent them faithfully. We see here at once 
 two facts, which, with a very little corruption, 
 might become two of the most essential elements 
 of a priesthood ; we see the germ of the neces- 
 sity of a priestly consecration of the elements in 
 
THE CHURCH. 125 
 
 the sacraments, and of the transmission of the 
 priestly character by a sort of elective succession. 
 
 Now, if it had pleased God that the Church at 
 this period should have become a sovereign so- 
 ciety, as it did two centuries later, it might have 
 been more easy to prevent the government of the 
 bishops from being confounded with the notion of 
 a priesthood. Had they been able, that is, to 
 exercise the full powers of government, to con- 
 trol society in the last resort, and to exercise 
 jurisdiction over life and property, the largeness 
 and outward greatness of their functions would 
 have so satisfied men's minds, that none would 
 have sought for them any higher or nobler office 
 than that which they were manifestly seen to 
 exercise. But government in a subordinate so- 
 ciety, and divested consequently of its sovereign 
 character, is of necessity far less imposing. As a 
 government, it is wholly eclipsed, to the vulgar 
 eye at any rate, by that greater government of 
 general or sovereign society, to which it must be 
 itself subject. Considered as a ruler, the bishop 
 of a Christian church appeared a far less import- 
 ant person than the Proconsul of a province ; the 
 most numerous synod was as nothing when com- 
 pared with the sovereign of the Empire. Yet 
 there was in the Church a greatness more than 
 the Empire could boast of; there was a sense in 
 which its bishops were greater than Caesar. For 
 
126 THE CHURCH. 
 
 a time this was even outward and tangible ; so 
 long as the Apostles possessed and conferred 
 those extraordinary gifts of the Holy Spirit, which 
 no wealth of man could purchase, nor power 
 compel. When these were withdrawn, the real 
 greatness still remained, but it was such as common 
 minds can with difficulty appreciate. The moral 
 elevation conferred by truth and holiness ; the 
 willing obedience of good men ; the task of guid- 
 ing a society whose members spiritually consi- 
 dered were privileged far above the rest of man- 
 kind, to be as it were the salt of the very salt of 
 the earth itself; these were points of greatness 
 most real and most exalted. But the mind of 
 man, disappointed of what is outward and sensible, 
 turns not to what is spiritual, but to what is 
 mystical ; unsatisfied with the real excellence of 
 the office of a Christian bishop, it coveted the 
 mystical and false dominion of a priest. 
 
 According to Christ's ordinance, the rulers of 
 the church were distinguished above their brethren 
 in all that may be called the human relations of 
 the Christian society ; they had authority both to 
 teach and to govern. The one only occasion on 
 which this distinction was to cease, was when the 
 church as a body came into direct relation with 
 God and Christ; that is to say, in its public 
 prayers, and in the Holy Communion. Rulers 
 and teachers cease to be distinguished from the 
 
THE CHURCH. 127 
 
 people, exactly in those acts in which the priest's 
 distinction is greatest. Others may teach, and 
 others may govern ; for these are human relations : 
 but in direct relation with God, the priest's me- 
 diation is wanted ; he must pray for the people, 
 and their communion with God can only be carried 
 on through him. But as prayer and the Holy 
 Communion were the church's most solemn acts, 
 as a body, if its rulers here were on a level with 
 other Christians, it seemed to lessen the dignity 
 of their office. It was not enough that the 
 presence or sanction of the bishop was required to 
 render the Christian supper a true Communion of 
 the church ; nor that, in the celebration of it, the 
 bread and wine were, to prevent confusion, dis- 
 tributed by the principal members of the society, 
 either by the bishop himself or by the elders. The 
 priestly mystical power, which seemed so much 
 greater than the mere government of a subordinate 
 or municipal society, w^as not here to be found. 
 Another step was to be taken, not only that the 
 bishop's authority as head of the church should be 
 required in order to invest any meeting of Christ- 
 ians with the public character of the church, but 
 that religiously the church itself could not com- 
 municate with Christ without the mediation, not 
 of the bishop alone, but of the bishop or some 
 one of his presbyters, all of w^hom were to 
 possess equally with him this mediatorial cha- 
 
128 THE CHURCH. 
 
 racter. Nor was it to be a mere matter" of order 
 that the bread and wine were distributed by those 
 who presided at the meeting to the several com- 
 municants, after the usual form of thanksgiving 
 before meat had been uttered ; but from this dis- 
 tribution and this form of thanksgiving they were 
 to derive their sacramental virtue, and having 
 been before mere common bread and wine, they 
 became immediately, through the virtue of the 
 words so uttered, and of the priestly character of 
 him who uttered them, changed into the body and 
 blood of Christ. It could not but follow from 
 this, that the Communion should be represented 
 as an actual, not a spiritual sacrifice, in which 
 there was a visible offering made, and which there- 
 fore required a priest. 
 
 But one of the oldest representations now ex- 
 tant, of the celebration of the Communion in the 
 ancient Church, seems in a remarkable manner to 
 avoid these corruptions. I allude to the famous 
 fragment of IrenjKus, first published by Pfaff, 
 from a MS. in the library of Turin, and given in 
 the Benedictine edition of the works of Irenasus, 
 Venice, 1734. In this famous passage, Irenseus 
 contrasts the spiritual sacrifices of Christianity 
 with the carnal sacrifices of the Jewish law. He 
 divides the Christian sacrifices into two kinds ; 
 those of prayer and thanksgiving, and those which 
 consist in the offering up of ourselves to God, to 
 
THE CHURCH. 129 
 
 do him sc^rvice. " Wherefore," says he, " the 
 offering also of the Eucharist is not carnal but 
 spiritual, and thereby it is clean (KaOapd). For 
 ^ye offer to God the bread, and the cup of bless- 
 ing, rendering thanks to him, for that he has 
 bidden the earth to bring forth these fruits for 
 our nourishment. And here, having completed 
 our offering, we call upon the Holy Spirit, that he 
 may render {d7ro(t>rjvrj) this sacrifice to be, both the 
 bread the body of Christ, and the cup the blood of 
 Christ, that they who have partaken of these 
 symbols {avrLTvircov) may obtain forgiveness of their 
 sins, and life eternal. They, then, who bring these 
 offerings in remembrance of the Lord, do not join 
 themselves to the ordinances of the Jews, but 
 worshipping (XecTovpyovvres) spiritually, shall be 
 called the children of wisdom." 
 
 Now this most remarkable passage exhibits in 
 a surprising completeness that notion of the Com- 
 munion which has been given in the first chapter 
 of this work. The sacrifices or offerings of Chris- 
 tians must be spiritual, for we must worship God 
 in spirit and in truth ; and the offering of the Eu- 
 charist is thei^efore a clean and accepted offering, 
 because it is spiritual. How then is the Eucharist 
 a spiritual sacrifice ? Not because of the offering 
 of bread and wine, but because of spiritual acts 
 accompanying or following that offering ; the acts, 
 namely, of tlianksgiving and prayer. Of thanks- 
 
 K 
 
130 THE CHURCH. 
 
 giving, when we thank God while offering the 
 bread and wine before Him, that He has given us 
 these things for our bodily sustenance : of prayer, 
 when, after having completed the offering, and 
 partaken of the bread and wine, we pray to God 
 the Holy Spirit, that He will make that temporal 
 food also a spiritual food ; and that as bread and 
 wine supjDort our bodies, so, whilst in eating that 
 bread and drinking that wine we remember 
 Christ's body and Christ's blood. His body and 
 blood may be the redemption and the strengthen- 
 ing of our souls to everlasting life. Thus, the 
 bread that perisheth is changed by the Holy Spirit 
 into the bread of life ; having eaten bodily for 
 our bodily good, the Holy Spirit guides us to eat 
 spiritually for our spiritual good. But the soul 
 feeds itself not with the mouth and teeth, but by 
 thoughts and love. To eat spiritually, is to assi- 
 milate an object to our spirits by drawing it to 
 them by thought, and embracing it by love. He, 
 therefore, who eateth Christ shall live by him; 
 because, by believing in Christ and loving him, 
 he takes Christ into his spirit, and his nature be- 
 comes assimilated to that of Christ, and so he 
 lives and must live for ever. Truly, therefore, 
 says Trenseus, that they w^ho offer the bread and 
 wine to God, in remembrance of the Lord Jesus, 
 that is, who, after having partaken of their bodily 
 food, and therefore, every day, do pray to the Holy 
 
THE CHURCH. 131 
 
 Spirit that their souls may feed upon Christ no 
 less as their spiritual food ; they by that prayer 
 convert what else would be a formal and Jewish 
 sacrifice into one that is Christian and spiritual. 
 Their service to God (AeLTovpyla) is a spiritual 
 service, and they who so serve Him have no fel- 
 lowship with the ordinances of the Jews, but shall 
 be called the children of wisdom. 
 
 But observe that here, in this description of the 
 Christian Communion, there is no mention of a 
 priest's words of consecration changing the bread 
 and wine beforehand into the body and blood of 
 Christ; and so giving occasion to all manner of 
 superstitions and profaneness. The bread and 
 wine are received with thanksgiving, as bread and 
 wine, as fruits of the earth, which God our Creator 
 has commanded the earth to yield for our bodily 
 support. Then, after they ham been received, comes, 
 not a form of consecration by an earthly priest, but 
 a prayer to God the Holy Spirit, to Him who 
 communes with us only as spirits, dealing not 
 with our natural life, but with our spiritual ; that 
 He may render to each of us the bodily and out- 
 ward offering a spiritual and inward offering ; 
 that by eating bread and drinking wine, not sim- 
 ply as fruits of the earth, but in remembrance of 
 Christ's death, our spirits may feed upon Christ 
 himself, in all his manifold relations to us, and so 
 be strengthened by him and become like to him 
 
 K 2 
 
132 THE CHURCH. 
 
 more and more. In other words, we pray to the 
 Holy Spirit to keep alive in us daily our spiritual 
 appetites and powers, that they may desire Christ 
 and receive him into themselves, as naturally — 
 naturally, I mean, according to our renewed na- 
 ture — as the healthy body according to its nature 
 desires and digests its bodily food. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 PLAN OF A WORK, " CHRISTIAN POLITICS," IN 1827. 
 
 Of the end of man's existence. 
 
 Of the end of poUtical society. 
 
 How far these ends have been hitherto answered. 
 
 Of Christianity as the means of effecting these ends, 
 and of the grounds of its authority. 
 
 Of the manner in which the end of individual exist- 
 ence modifies the end of pohtical existence. 
 
 How pohtical happiness is best promoted by not being 
 the principal end of man in society. 
 
 How political happiness is to be effected. 
 
 § 1. Of physical or external happiness. 
 § 2. Of Moral or internal happiness. 
 
 1. Physical happiness, affected by — 
 
 § 1. The state of personal liberty and safety. 
 § 2. The amount and distribution of national 
 wealth. 
 
 2. Moral happiness, affected by — 
 
 § 1. The state of political liberty. 
 
 § 2. The amount of intellectual improvement. 
 
 § 3. The amount of spiritual improvement. 
 
134 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Of education as the means of obtaining moral happi- 
 ness. 
 
 § 1. Of political education. 
 § 2. Of intellectual education. 
 § 3. Of spiritual education. 
 
 This was the sketch of a work alluded to in Ser- 
 mons, vol. i. p. 88, and in two letters in 1827 : 
 
 '' What say you to a work on vroxinhh, in the old 
 Greek sense of the word, in which I should try to apply 
 the principles of the Gospel to the legislation and ad- 
 ministration of a state. It would begin with a simple 
 statement of the rsxog of man according to Christianity, 
 and then would go on to show how the knowledge of this 
 TEKog would affect all our views of national wealth, and 
 the whole question of political economy ; and also our 
 practice with regard to wars, oaths, and various other 
 relics of the cnoix^^^ tou kot/xou.'*'' 
 
 " I have long had in my mind a work on Christian 
 Politics, or the application of the Gospel to the state 
 of man as a citizen, in which the whole question of a 
 religious establishment and of the education proper for 
 Christian members of a Christian commonwealth would 
 naturally find a place. It would embrace also an his- 
 torical sketch of the pretended conversion of the king- 
 doms of the world to the kingdom of Christ in the 
 fourth and fifth centuries, which I look upon as one of 
 the greatest tours d ''adresse that Satan ever played, ex- 
 cept his invention of Popery. I mean that by inducing 
 kings and nations to conform nominally to Christianity, 
 and thus to get into their hands the direction of Chris- 
 tian society, he has in a great measure succeeded in 
 keeping out the peculiar principles of that society from 
 any extended sphere of operation, and in ensuring the 
 
APPENDIX I. 135 
 
 ascendancy of his own. One real conversion there 
 seems to have been, that of the Anglo-Saxons ; but 
 that he soon succeeded in corrupting ; and at the Nor- 
 man Conquest we had little I suppose to lose even 
 from the more direct introduction of Popery and 
 worldly religion which came in with the Conqueror."^ 
 
 This work was never carried out, and would, in some 
 points, have differed from the later fragments on the 
 same subject. In illustration of the point of view from 
 which the question was here approached, is given the fol- 
 lowing extract from an unpublished Preface to a volume 
 of Sermons in 1829. 
 
 " Whether in any case the union, as it is called, of 
 Church and State was desirable is another question ; 
 but wherever that union does exist, then the Gospel is 
 directly brought into contact with political institutions 
 and measures, and is required to apply its purifying 
 influence to the conduct of governments no less than 
 to that of private individuals. Of direct precepts 
 indeed, addressed by Christ and His Apostles to kings 
 and statesmen, there must necessarily be none ; but of 
 principles eminently applicable to the government of 
 nations, of the spirit which should influence all public 
 measures, he must be greatly ignorant of the Gospel 
 who cannot find innumerable instances. Under other 
 circumstances, the Christian minister may perhaps be 
 allowed to confine himself to the care of the poor and 
 ignorant : but the clergy of a national chiu'ch are 
 directly called upon to Christianize the nation : not 
 only to inculcate the private virtues of the Gospel, — 
 but its pure and holy principles in their full extent ; 
 those divine laws, of which it may indeed be said, that 
 their ' voice is the harmony of the world.' And this 
 duty the Church of England has eminently neglected ; 
 
 * Life and Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 62, i3. 4th edit. 
 
13G APPENDIX I. 
 
 and to the servility of its political principles alone, the 
 neglect is chargeable. Did it become a Christian 
 Church to make no other official declaration of its sen- 
 timents concerning war, than by saying that Christian 
 men might lawfully engage in it ; to say nothing of 
 capital punishments with the bloody executions of 
 Henry the Eighth's reign, so fresh in memory, but that 
 they might be lawfully inflicted on Christian men for 
 heinous and grievous offences ? Or, because the Ana- 
 baptists, as the Waldenses had done before them, had 
 gone so far as to refuse to take an oath at all, did it 
 become a Christian Church to confine the principle of 
 our Lord's prohibition to * vain and rash swearing ' only, 
 and to leave the practice of legal oaths, not as a relic 
 of an unchristian state of society, which we to our 
 shame were not sufficiently advanced in the Gospel to 
 renounce, but as a thing absolutely good now, as 
 formerly under the dispensation of the Jews ? Will 
 it be asked what evil has arisen from this neglect 
 of duty ? I answer, that the evil is to be seen 
 in the unchristian principles and practice of our 
 rulers, and of all public men considered as such from 
 the Reformation down to this very hour. Or was it 
 vain to expect that any exertions of the Church could 
 have made this kingdom in reality, as well as in name, 
 a kingdom of Christ ? Vain, perhaps, it would be to 
 expect a result so glorious ; yet, surely much was prac- 
 ticable, and it has been noted as a mark of folly for 
 more than two thousand years, not to know *how much 
 the half is more valuable than the whole.' Nay expe- 
 rience itself has shown, what can be done even with 
 far inferior means, when there is an active and Christian 
 zeal at work. What is the present feeling in this 
 country with regard to the Slave Trade, and how far 
 must we look back to trace it to its origin } Its very 
 birth is almost within the recollection of men now 
 
APPENDIX L 137 
 
 living ; its strength and universality falls within my 
 own. And has the Church of England as a body been 
 forward in exciting this feeling ; most of all is to the 
 High Church divines that we are indebted for it ? The 
 moving spring must be sought elsewhere, and the com- 
 paratively powerless sect of the Quakers has done more 
 to imbue the nation with a Christian sense of the 
 wickedness of stealing men to sell them as slaves, than 
 was ever attempted by the vast influence of the Esta- 
 blished Church : — because the Church of England is 
 so dependent on the State, (more by the feelings of its 
 members than by its legal constitution,) that instead of 
 striving to grow up into a true branch of Christ's 
 glorious Church, perfect even after the infinite perfec- 
 tion of its Head, its notions of excellence have been 
 lowered by the actual constitution in Church and State, 
 by idle language about the doctrines of the Reformers, 
 and the excellence of the British constitution. As if 
 the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, scarcely waking 
 as they were from the accumulated moral ignorance 
 and insensibility of thirty generations, could offer any 
 thing to satisfy our aspirations after Christian excel- 
 lence ; as if the consummated work of the Spirit of God 
 were to be found in the dregs of the Papal and Feudal 
 institutions ! 
 
 " This great neglect of its highest duties is not 
 peculiar, certainly, to the Church of England ; it is 
 the besetting sin of every church establishment, from 
 the nominal conversion of the Roman emperors, down 
 to this very hour. No doubt the influence of Chris- 
 tianity has made itself felt in all those countries which 
 have professed it ; but ought not its effects to have 
 been far more perceptible than they are, now that 
 nearly eighteen hundred years have elapsed since the 
 kingdom of God was first proclaimed } Is it, in fact, 
 
138 APPENDIX I. 
 
 the kingdom of God in which we are living ? Are we 
 at this hour living under the law, or under grace ? I 
 may be told that it is chimerical to expect such a state 
 of things as the Apostles, in their earlier Epistles at 
 least, seem to have anticipated; that the splendid pic- 
 tures of older prophecy must not be interpreted too 
 literally ; that when the Angels welcomed the birth of 
 the Prince of Peace, with announcing peace on earth, 
 they but alluded to the fact of the comparative tran- 
 quillity of the Roman world at that time, and augured 
 nothing of the future state of the world. There are 
 some prophecies which fulfil themselves, and some 
 opinions, also, which insure their own perpetual truth ; 
 and amongst these, none is more memorable than that 
 favourite tenet of public and practical men, as they 
 call themselves, that mankind will always be much the 
 same as they now are, and that to hope for any great 
 improvement among them is visionary ; and, suiting 
 to these low and unbelieving principles a practice con- 
 sistently unworthy, they have kept the world in its 
 present state of badness. They talk of experience, 
 but it is all against them ; for all the good that has 
 been done in the world, has been done by acting in 
 direct opposition to their theory ; while all the evil that 
 exists is its proper and natural fruit. Superstition has 
 been called in to aid this corrupt doctrine ; and men 
 have been so blinded by their reverence for antiquity, 
 as to substitute the primitive Church, such as it actually 
 existed, in the place of that perfect Church which 
 never has yet existed, but which Christ designed a& 
 our standard of excellence, and the object of all our 
 endeavours to accomplish ; and, by a cunning mixture 
 of truth with falsehood, and assuming a language ap- 
 parently full of reverence for the Scriptures, and in- 
 dignant at what it calls a profane disrespect to them, 
 
APPENDIX I. 139 
 
 they have laboured to make us rest contented with our 
 present state, by saying that nothyig new can now be 
 discovered in Christianity, and that we have nothing to 
 do but to follow those primitive ages, which, as being 
 nearer in time to the Apostles, must have been better 
 acquainted with their doctrines than we can pretend to 
 be. There is enough of truth in this language, and 
 enough semblance of piety, to make it more extensively 
 mischievous. The tenets which it is designed to 
 combat have been canied, certainly, to a length no 
 less injurious ; and ordinary and unfair minds cannot 
 be expected, perhaps, to separate truth from error 
 when they are mixed together in the opinions of their 
 adversaries. What causes produced the unchristian 
 doctrines of many of the divines of modem Germany, 
 Mr. Pusey's excellent work on that subject has suffi- 
 ciently shown us ; and they are such as well deserve 
 the notice of our High Church divines. When the 
 orthodox theologians, as they were called, had lost 
 sight of the very purpose for which the Gospel was 
 given, — the restoration of our moral nature from its 
 state of corrupt principles and practice, and the raising 
 it into a capacity of enjoying everlasting communion 
 mth God, — they, of all men, ought to have judged 
 lightly of the error of the Rationalists in discarding 
 what their own representations had already deprived of all 
 its value. For so long as the great doctrines of Chris- 
 tianity are used as the Scripture uses them, — for the 
 purpose of giving us particular motives and particular 
 feelings, — so long they are, indeed, the very bread of 
 life, and he who eateth of that bread shall live for ever. 
 But when dissevered from their moral influence, when 
 represented as awful mysteries, as objects of knowledge 
 or of historical faith, they become like the manna of 
 
140 APPENDIX I. 
 
 old ; when no longer used as God designed them to be 
 used, they are of all things the most worthless. 
 
 "The error then of the German Rationalists was great, 
 but less mischievous than that of the orthodox divines 
 who had preceded them. I say less mischievous, — be- 
 cause their attack on the form of Christianity created at 
 once a general alarm, and is at this moment producing a 
 most beneficial reaction ; whereas the deadening of the 
 spirit of the Gospel was an evil which went on surely 
 and secretly, awakening no suspicion, and spreading 
 every year a more deep and deadly slumber. Our 
 divines are certainly far from meriting the censure 
 which must be passed on those of the orthodox school 
 in Germany : yet in their fondness for ecclesiastical 
 rather than scriptural terms ; in looking at the scripture 
 through the unworthy medium of the Fathers and the 
 Reformers, instead of applying the added experience 
 of each successive age to develope its riches in their 
 full perfection, they have helped to stunt the growth of 
 Christ's Church, and have caused Christians in general 
 still to linger round those elements of Gospel truth 
 which the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews expected 
 Christians even in this day to have left behind them in 
 their progress. For though it be most true, that there 
 is no new fact in Christianity to be learnt, and nothing 
 to be discovered which does not really follow from 
 those principles contained in the writings of the 
 Apostles ; yet it is not true that those principles have 
 been even yet fully developed, or made to yield all that 
 abundance of Divine wisdom which is actually to be 
 drawn from them. The promise of the Spirit of Truth 
 to abide for ever with his Church, implies surely that 
 clearer views of truth should be continually vouchsafed 
 to us ; and if the work were indeed fully complete when 
 
APPENDIX I. 141 
 
 the Apostles entered into their rest, what need was 
 there for the Spirit of Wisdom, as well as of Love, to be 
 ever present even unto the end of the world. They, 
 however, must think very strangely of this Eternal Com- 
 forter and Guide, who imagine His influence to be 
 communicated without any outward means, as an inspir- 
 ation vouchsafed to a passive and often a careless re- 
 cipient. " He shall glorify me," said Christ, "for He shall 
 take of mine and shall show it unto you." It is by the 
 study of the great principles of all goodness and all 
 wisdom contained in the Christian Scriptures, that we 
 are fashioned after our imperfect measure to goodness 
 and wisdom also. But for this study to be profitable 
 in the highest possible degree, we see in practice that 
 large experience, that a spirit rising above the influence 
 of its age, and a pure love of excellence, combined 
 with a clear and manly understanding, are all necessary. 
 How is it conceivable that the innocence of pious 
 frauds could have been so long maintained by sincere 
 Christians in the earliest ages, and the duty of reli- 
 gious persecution so strenuously insisted on at a later 
 period, if something more than the mere possession, or 
 even than the mere devout reading of the Scriptures 
 were not necessary in order to extract from them their 
 full virtue. It is not only for the critical knowledge of 
 the New Testament that study and some intellectual 
 exertion are requisite ; but much more must the under- 
 standing work vigorously and freely, and be unfettered 
 by the corrupt notions of the world, before it can 
 develope the moral excellence of the Gospel. We are 
 shocked at those persons who cannot perceive that the 
 whole spirit and principles of Christianity are a sufli- 
 cient condemnation of suicide, although there be no 
 express words which say, * Thou shall not kill thyself.' 
 Yet, it is something of the same blindness which has 
 
142 APPENDIX I. 
 
 made them declare that the New Testament does not 
 condemn the existing civil institutions of mankind, 
 when most of those institutions are founded on princi- 
 ples wholly inconsistent with Christian purity, and lead 
 in practice to various forms of corruption, error, and 
 injustice. It is the work of the Spirit of wisdom, 
 so to enlighten the sincere lover of goodness as to 
 enable him gradually to rise in his views of perfection : 
 to forget those things which are behind, and to press 
 foi-ward to those which are before : to follow up the 
 principles of the Scripture to all their conclusions, 
 which the ignorant or the dishonest reader has never 
 arrived at ; to strive for himself individually, and for 
 that Christian nation to which he belongs, that they 
 shall stir up the gift given unto them, abounding more 
 and more in knowledge and in all judgment ; till every 
 relic of our evil nature be destroyed in principle, at 
 least, if not in practice, and every thought and word be 
 brought into the obedience of Christ, even if our deeds 
 should still revolt from Him. 
 
 " The ordinary answer to all this, if answer it may 
 be called, consists in mere random charges of enthu- 
 siasm and impracticability ; — such doctrines sound well 
 in theory, but will not do, we are told, in practice. 
 But to what is it that all the improvements in the world 
 are to be ascribed, but to these high and aspiring prin- 
 ciples ; to what is every corruption, every folly, every 
 existing wickedness imputable, but to the low notions 
 of those who call themselves practical, and who, form- 
 ing their models from their own practice, and that of 
 others like them, ensure the perpetual grovelling of 
 themselves, and all who listen to them in the degrada- 
 tion of their actual vileness ? That blessed Gospel, 
 which these practical men pretend to reverence, is full 
 of what they must consider the wildest theories ; and 
 
APPENDIX I. 143 
 
 the heights to which it strives to raise us, and from 
 which we are ever shrinking backwards, from a love of 
 our native depths, are indeed unattainable to all who 
 resolve to think them so. But read the Prophets, read 
 the Apostles, read the words of the Lord of both Pro- 
 phets and Apostles, and say if there is any limit to that 
 perfection in virtue and in happiness which they call 
 upon the Church of God to thirst after. Let St. Paul 
 
 speak for all the rest." 
 
 [The MS. is here broken off. The passage on which 
 the author was about to dwell, seems to have been 
 Eph. iv. 11 — 13, to which, with that already quoted from 
 Heb. vi. 1, he used frequently to refer in illustration of 
 the views here set forth. " What is the progress spoken 
 of ?" he used to say. " It is in the application of Chris- 
 tianity to human things — the progress in this is as 
 endless as the progress from our imperfection to per- 
 fection can be."] 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 PLAN OF A WORK ON " CHRISTIAN POLITICS," DRAWN 
 UP IN OCTOBER, 1833. 
 
 Evils of Dissent: — 
 
 Politically, as dividing the people into parties. 
 Morally, as dividing and weakening the efforts of 
 good men, to improve the moral state of society. 
 Causes of Dissent : — 
 
 General Causes : The varieties of the human mind, 
 and the inveterate mistaking of the nature of 
 Christian union. 
 Particular causes in England : The imperfect con- 
 stitution of the Established Church, and political 
 differences. 
 Proposed Remedies: — 
 
 The abolition of a Church Establishment altogether. 
 The giving all civil rights to Dissenters, and con- 
 firming and increasing their separation from 
 the Establishment. 
 The true Remedy: — 
 
 An enlarged constitution of the Christian Church 
 of England, which is the State of England. 
 
APPENDIX II. 145 
 
 Objections to this Remedy: — 
 
 Popular and utilitarian : That the State as such 
 
 has nothing to do with religion. 
 Superstitious and fanatical : That the Church is 
 distinct from the State and independent of it, 
 having a divinely appointed government of its 
 own. 
 Objections Answered : — 
 
 The State in a Christian country is the Church, and 
 
 therefore has much to do with religion. 
 The Church, as such, has no divinely appointed 
 
 government. 
 The true view of Church and State obviates many 
 evils which have arisen from the confused no- 
 tion of them ; evils — on the one hand of laxity 
 and on the other of persecution. 
 Confused notions about excommunication and 
 
 spiritual power. 
 Confused notions of Christian unity and faith. 
 Practical Objections : — 
 
 The actual feelings of the Church party and of the 
 Dissenters. 
 General bearing of such a true Church of Eng- 
 land ON THE national WELFARE: — e. </., 
 
 On national education ; on the condition of the 
 poorer classes in manufacturing districts ; on 
 the morals and knowledge of all classes of the 
 community. 
 
 [The foregoing sketch was drawn up in the autumn of 1833 in pur- 
 suance of an intention then expressed of attempting a " Christian Aris- 
 totle's Politics," which should unfold at length his views on Church 
 and State. The two following fragments were in part executions of the 
 same design, though not exactly of the same plan.] 
 
146 APPENDIX IT. 
 
 (a.) on the ends of the church. 
 
 Written apparently in the Summer of 1833. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 No good man can doubt, when he looks at the 
 actual condition of this country, that the principal evils 
 which actually oppress it, and which threaten it for the 
 future in a still greater degree, are neither physical nor 
 political, in the common sense of the word, but moral 
 evils. Wide as may be the differences of opinion with 
 respect to the remedy for these evils, or even their 
 cause, yet their amount, and the probability of their 
 increase, will hardly be disputed. In fact, the physical 
 and political evils which exist are owing chiefly to the 
 moral evils ; and would be removed, not wholly, per- 
 haps, but in great part, if the state of the country were 
 improved morally. Those who fear the growing power 
 of the poorer classes, fear it because they think that 
 these classes are morally ignorant, and therefore are 
 not fit to exercise power; those who dread the ascend- 
 ancy of the aristocracy, and the consequent mainten- 
 ance of all abuses, believe that the richer classes are 
 morally ignorant also, and disposed to turn their ad- 
 vantages to their own benefit, and not to that of the 
 whole community. The very distress of the poor is 
 attributed by some to their own improvidence and care- 
 lessness ; by others, to the neglect and selfishness of 
 the rich In short, whatever evil is most apprehended 
 by any party, is generally ascribed to some moral de- 
 fect in the opposite party; and if this defect could be 
 abated, the danger, to say the least, would be felt to be 
 greatly diminished. 
 
 But the benefits which might arise from the general 
 acknowledgment of the real evil of our condition are 
 generally frustrated by the belief that the evil is in- 
 
APPENDIX II. 147 
 
 curable. For physical and political evils men are 
 prompt enough in devising remedies : they understand, 
 also, that where individual efforts would be powerless 
 to remove them, combination and the mechanism of 
 society may undertake the task with success. But 
 moral evil is left hopelessly to itself, or, at most, to the 
 attacks of individual zeal. And yet there is no doubt 
 that here, even more than with political grievances, the 
 combined exertions of many would do far more than 
 the utmost energy of isolated virtue. Nor is such an 
 association merely visionary ; on the contrary, there 
 has existed one for eighteen hundred years ; it has 
 spread itself over all the countries of Europe ; England, 
 amongst the rest, is well acquainted v/ith its name : 
 almost every Englishman within the four seas professes 
 to belong to it. This great society, for the putting 
 down of moral evil, is no other than the Church of 
 Christ. 
 
 Now I would wish every reader to ask himself whe- 
 ther this idea of the Church of Christ appears strange 
 to him or natural } If the former, then let him con- 
 sider whether it ought to seem strange to him; — whe- 
 ther, if he consults the Scriptures, he will not find this 
 notion of Christianity everywhere prominent ; whether 
 the most peculiar ordinances of the Christian religion 
 are not grounded upon it and imply it. And let him 
 think again, whether it is not likely, if the true nature 
 of the Church be so different from what he has ima- 
 gined it to be, that its practical results may possibly be 
 of a kind which he has never as yet anticipated ; may 
 he not suspect, in short, that all his views of what is 
 called religion have been injured by this original mis- 
 apprehension ? Or again, if the reader is prepared to 
 admit that Christ's Church is a society for the putting 
 down of moral evil, let him ask himself whether he has 
 
 ■ L 2 
 
148 APPENDIX II. 
 
 well considered the legitimate consequences of such a 
 definition of it ; whether, in fact, it is not practically 
 forgotten ; and whether that comparative failure of 
 Christianity as to its eifects upon the world, which all 
 Christians acknowledge and lament, may not possibly 
 be owing to this constant practical misunderstanding 
 of its true character ? 
 
 It will be found, I think, that neither in their use of 
 the word " Religion," nor in speaking of " the Church," 
 do men in general form any idea of the social character 
 of Christianity. With "Religion" this is manifest; 
 for, indeed, the term properly expresses nothing more 
 than certain relations of man towards God, without in- 
 timating that these are necessarily involved with a pe- 
 culiar relation of men to each other. " The Church " 
 is spoken of in various senses, and with great vague- 
 ness ; still it may be safely affirmed that it is not com- 
 monly understood to mean " the Society of Christians," 
 but rather a distinct institution for the benefit of that 
 society in one particular way, namely, their religious 
 benefit : so that it is either taken as synonymous with 
 " the Clergy," or with " a provision for the religious in- 
 struction of a people by public teaching and cere- 
 monies." Both these meanings, it will be seen, are 
 very different from that of " a Society for the putting 
 down of moral evil," and the points of difference are 
 the exact measure of the inferiority of these false no- 
 tions of "the Church of Christ" to the true one. 
 
 For if •" the Church " be " the society of Christians," 
 then every Christian is a member of the Church, a 
 member of a society, whose objects are his objects, its 
 interests are his interests, and in whose concerns he is 
 therefore called upon to take an active part, and not 
 merely a passive one. And, again, if the object of the 
 Church be called " religious instruction," then a great 
 
APPENDIX II. 149 
 
 portion of human life is taken away from its regard : 
 its business is made particular, and not general ; it is 
 one amongst many of the institutions which society 
 needs, instead of being society itself, in its most 
 exalted relation, engaged in the perfecting of our 
 moral nature. It is, therefore, of some importance, 
 to ascertain whether these great weakenings of the 
 efficacy and limitations of the range of the Church of 
 Christ be according to the purpose for which it was 
 founded. 
 
 That the Church of Christ was intended to be a 
 society of which all Christians were to be members, 
 and all active and useful towards the great object of 
 the society, appears, to quote one passage out of a 
 great number, from the twelfth chapter of St. Paul's 
 Epistle to the Corinthians. The Church is there com- 
 pared to the human body, which consists indeed of 
 various members, but all active : if any were merely 
 passive, and acted upon by other parts of the body, the 
 healthy constitution of the whole would be impaired. 
 The members indeed have different offices, but none 
 may despise the rest, or can do without them. And 
 lest this comparison might, in one respect, lead to 
 error, because, in the human body, according to popu- 
 lar notions, there resides such a sovereignty and 
 superiority in the brain or head, that in respect of its 
 great activity, some of the other members may be called 
 passive ; therefore, the functions of the head in the 
 Christian Church are assigned exclusively* to Christ 
 
 * " It is this point — that Christ is the Head of the Church — which will 
 greatly help us to understand what is meant b} the Church. For as Christ 
 is not upon earth, nor exercises any visible government, nor is present in 
 one place more than another, and yet is truly the Head and Governor of 
 His Church, so we see at once that His Church is not to be thought of as a 
 society or government in the common meaning of the words ; but in that 
 other sense in which we speak of civil society and of God's moral govern- 
 ment, to the tirst of which all men who are not savages belong, while tu 
 
150 APPENDIX II. 
 
 himself, and all Christians are said to be members one 
 of another, forming jointly that body, of which as at 
 
 the other all men whatsoever are subject. And as all civilized men 
 belono- to civilized society, and acknowledge in many respects a common 
 law — although, in another sense, they belong to a great many different so- 
 cieties, and have very different laws — so it is with Christian men and with 
 religious society. In that sense in which the Church has Christ for its 
 Head, and is the Temple of the Holy Ghost, all Christians belong to it and 
 all acknowledge one common law ; while in another sense Christians be- 
 long to a great many different churches, and those churches have a great 
 many different laws. 
 
 " But it is in its first and highest sense that the Church of Christ is the 
 Communion of all living Christians — that it is Christ's mystical body, holy 
 3.nd beloved — the Heir of the promises, the Israel of God, against which 
 the gates of hell shall not prevail. To the end of the world as there will 
 be civilized society on earth, so will there be Christian society. Men will 
 not all be savages, nor all strangers to God ; there will be those who shall 
 love one another for Christ's sake, who shall own one Spirit and one Lord 
 and one God ; who shall be striving against one and the same spiritual 
 enemy, and walking together in one and the same hope of life eternal." 
 , Extract from a MS. Sermon on All Saints' Day, 1835. 
 
 To the same effect are some remarks in a letter to Dr. Hawkins, No- 
 vember, 1830. " Have you ever clearly defined to yourself what you 
 mean by ' one society,' as applied to the whole Christian Church upon 
 earth ? It seems to me that most of what I consider the errors about ' the 
 Church,' turn upon an imperfect understanding of this point. In one 
 sense, and that a very important one, all Christians belong to one society ; 
 but then it is more like Cicero's sense of ' societas,' than what we mean by 
 a society. There is a ' societas generis humani,' and a ' societas hominum 
 Christianorum ;' but there is not one 'respublica' or 'civitas' of either, 
 but a great many. The Roman Catholics say there is but one ' respublica,' 
 and therefore, with perfect consistency, they say that there must be one 
 central government : our Article, if I mistake not its sense, says, and with 
 great truth, that the Christian Respublica depends on the political Respub- 
 lica ; that is, that there may be at least as many Christian societies as 
 there are political societies, and that there may be, and in our own king- 
 dom are, even more. If there be one Christian society, in the common 
 sense of the word, there must be one government; whereas, in point of 
 fact, the Scotch Church, the English Church, and the French Church, 
 have all separate and perfectly independent governments ; and conse- 
 quently can only be in an unusual and peculiar sense ' one society' : that is, 
 spiritually one, as having the same objects, and the same principles, and the 
 same supports, and the same enemies." — Life and Correspotidence, vol. i. 
 pp. 277, 78, 4th edition. 
 
APPENDIX II. 151 
 
 once connected with it, yet essentially superior and 
 sovereign over it, Christ alone is fitted to be the Head. 
 
 Christ's Church, then, was to be a society, all whose 
 members were to be active in promoting the society's 
 objects. And this object was to be the putting down 
 of moral evil, both within the Church and without 
 it. It was to be the leaven to leaven the world, clearly 
 that is, to change its moral character ; and, with 
 respect to its operations upon itself, how magnificently 
 is it described as working by the grace of its divine 
 Head through the instrumentality of every joint and 
 member performing its own portion of the work, to its 
 own growth in truth and in love, in intellectual and 
 moral perfection, according to no less a standard than 
 the perfection of nature of Christ Himself, the All-wise 
 and the Most Holy. For this, the members each sepa- 
 rately, and the body all together, are to labour together 
 with their Lord, that the Church, this great society, 
 may become fully glorious ; " not having spot or wrinkle 
 or any such thing, but holy and without blemish." 
 
 There is, then, a society in existence, for the 
 putting down of all moral evil, by the combined exer- 
 tions of all its members. This saciety is the Church 
 of Christ, and every Christian in England is a member 
 of it. How is it that we have not rightly appreciated 
 our relations and duties as such ? How is it that the 
 Church amongst us retains so faint a resemblance to a 
 society, and works with such insufficient efficacy, nay, 
 apparently with so inadequate a conception of its true 
 object .? The explanation of the fact is humiliating 
 indeed, but it ought to be most instructive. 
 
152 APPENDIX II. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Before, however, we proceed to the explanation of 
 the fact, it will be proper to develope and expose more 
 fully to the observation of the reader the actual fea- 
 tures of the fact itself. That is, having seen what is 
 the true notion of the Church of Christ, " a society for 
 the putting down of moral evil," or " for the moral 
 improvement of mankind," let us examine how far the 
 existing state of the Church amongst us is agreeable to 
 this definition of it. 
 
 First of all, instead of one Church or society of 
 Christians, we find a multitude. I do not mean that 
 there are a number of particular congregations locally 
 distinct, and therefore distinct also in their administra- 
 tion and municipal government. This might be the 
 case without the slightest breach of Christian unity; 
 and all these, in one sense, distinct societies would yet, 
 in the true Christian sense, belong to one and the 
 same. But we find not only distinction and municipal 
 independence, but moral alienation. The different 
 Christian societies amongst us are not distinct for the 
 sake of local convenience, or a more satisfactory admi- 
 nistration of their respective concerns ; but because they 
 disapprove ofeach other religiously; because each thinks 
 that the others have injured the perfection of Chris- 
 tianity by some improper addition or omission ; that, 
 in short, they could not satisfactorily worship God * 
 together: and therefore there is something in their 
 mutual feelings which goes beyond distinctness ; there 
 exists, to say the very least, something of alienation ; 
 they feel in some degree opposed to one another. The 
 prosperity of any one of them is not a matter of un- 
 mixed rejoicing to the rest, nor its decline a matter of 
 unmixed regret. 
 
APPENDIX II. 153 
 
 Now it is manifest that such feehngs existing be- 
 tween several societies must so far hinder them from 
 acting in common ; so far as men disapprove of one 
 another rehgiously, they will be backward in acting 
 together in religious matters. So that here we have 
 the Church of Christ truly divided, because it is di- 
 vided morally ; because men are less inclined to work 
 together for the objects of that Church. And as divi- 
 sion in the sense of disagreement is weakness, even to 
 a proverb, so the Church of Christ is weakened in its 
 actual existence amongst us, because it has ceased 
 morally to be one society. 
 
 Again, take the several societies of Christians 
 amongst us, and consider how far their avowed object 
 seems to be the putting down of moral evil. Are they 
 not rather societies formed for what is called religious 
 edification .? i. e. for instructing their members in reli- 
 gious trirth .? or for the joint indulgence and expression 
 of their devotional feelings ? or for supplying their 
 members with the comforts and consolations of religion 
 as purely as possible .? Doubtless these are amongst 
 the objects for which the Church was formed ; or, to 
 speak more properly, these are the necessary means for 
 the accomplishing of its object. Rehgious instruction, 
 the exercises of prayer and j)raise, the participation in 
 the sacraments, are amongst the prescribed and most 
 necessary means for our growth in goodness. Still it 
 is most essential that they should always be clearly 
 seen to be means, and not in themselves an end ; that 
 their bearing is upon human life and character ; that 
 they belong to the Church of Christ as its instruments, 
 and that the Church was founded, not merely for the 
 perfecting these instruments, but for their application 
 after being perfected ; that its members should worship 
 together, in order to live together ; and that their com- 
 
154 APPENDIX II. 
 
 bined efforts are wanted, not only for sowing the seed, 
 but for cherishing the plant and reaping the harvest ; 
 that the Church, in short, is more for the week-days 
 than for the Sunday ; more for the house, the street, or 
 the field, than for that particular building which, by 
 an unfortunate ambiguity of language, has appropriated 
 to itself its name. 
 
 Further, not only is the object of the Christian 
 Chm'ch unduly narrowed, but its character has been 
 almost forgotten. When we speak of the actual 
 Church, at least of the Established Church, as a so- 
 ciety, we give it a title which the reality will scarcely 
 warrant. The social character has been lost sight of, 
 because the ministry has been corrupted into a priest- 
 hood, and has thus almost monopolized the active func- 
 tions of the whole body. The term " society " is inappli- 
 cable to a despotism, or to an anarchy ; it matters not 
 whether those in authority have a tyrannical power, or an 
 inefficient one, if they alone are active, and no regular 
 means are provided by which the other members of the 
 body may support them, encourage them, direct them, 
 or control them ; if, in short, the whole business of the 
 body, be it much or little, is delegated to them ex- 
 clusively, then the excellences and uses of a society 
 are forfeited ; we lose not only its freedom, but its 
 energy ; we have no longer the combined action of 
 many, contributing their varied powers and their joint 
 interest to the promotion of the common good, — but 
 the isolated power of a few, acting sometimes violently, 
 but always imperfectly, upon a mass in itself inert and 
 neutral. 
 
 The existing Church, then, falls short of the defi- 
 nition of the pure Christian Church, that it is " a so- 
 ciety for the putting down of moral evil," from two 
 causes : first, because it has substituted for its true 
 
APPENDIX II. 155 
 
 object another, less extensive, and much more liable to 
 be perverted ; and secondly, because it has in a great 
 measure abandoned its social character, and become 
 an order rather than a society. In other words, it has 
 unduly limited, and otherwise unduly corrupted its no- 
 tions of Christian doctrine, and has well nigh destroyed 
 the efficacy of its Church government ; and therefore, 
 as a means of acting upon mankind in the mass, it has 
 greatly failed ; failed not absolutely, but in comparison 
 with what it might have effected had it properly availed 
 itself of its divine powers. It has not put down evil, 
 for evil in the course of this world is still predominant; 
 it has but softened some of its worst features, so far as 
 regards mankind as a whole ; while the fulness of its 
 blessings has been tasted only by individuals : that is 
 to say, that the good done has been wrought by Chris- 
 tianity; the good not done has been lost by the im- 
 perfections of the Christian Church. 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 In saying that " the Church has unduly limited and 
 unduly extended its notions of Christian doctrine," 
 the general misunderstanding to which this statement 
 would be liable, is in itself, the best confirmation of 
 its truth. We commonly mean by " doctrine," some- 
 thing different from the proper Christian meaning of 
 the word, and therefore, the charge of unduly limiting 
 or extending it, would be also interpreted erroneously, 
 and when so misinteii^reted, would be easily refuted. 
 " An undue limitation, and an undue extension of 
 Christian doctrine," would be commonly understood to 
 mean, " that certain doctrines necessary to salvation 
 were not taught, and that others not necessary to salvation 
 were taught as necessary ;" but then by the term " doc- 
 
156 APPENDIX II. 
 
 trines " would be understood, " truths revealed in Scrip- 
 ture relating to the nature of God or to his dealings 
 with mankind," as distinct from " truths relating to 
 man's principles and duties." Now, from this erroneous 
 idea of Christian doctrine, there have flowed the very 
 evils of which I have spoken : it has been limited and 
 extended unduly, because its nature has been mistaken, 
 because its predominant character has been supposed 
 to be "truth," whereas it is in fact, " efficacy as a means 
 of moral good." 
 
 The object of Christianity is to save men's souls ; 
 and as this can only be done by changing them from 
 evil to good ; by altering their hopes, and fears, and 
 affections ; so, the immediate object of Christianity is, 
 to produce in men a moral and spiritual improvement, 
 in scriptural language, to create them after a new and 
 better nature. Now, when this improvement is sought 
 to be effected by direct precepts, Christian doctrine is 
 no more than a law of duties, a statement of what we 
 ought to do, and what we ought not to do. When it is 
 to be effected by an appeal to our hopes and fears. 
 Christian doctrine must be a statement of certain facts, 
 tending to excite hope and fear ; a declaration of some 
 good to be gained, of some evil to be avoided. Further, 
 when the improvement is to be effected by strengthen- 
 ing our moral powers, or by purifying and increasing 
 our affections. Christian doctrine must teach us the 
 way by which this moral strength may be gained, and 
 present to our minds certain facts and objects fitted to 
 be the perfect food of our best affections, to nourish 
 them, to give them intensity, and to mingle in them no 
 element of evil. Thus, while Christian doctrine will 
 not be one in substance nor in kind, it will be one in 
 object : its instruments will, in themselves, be varied, 
 but, as regards the use which it makes of them, they 
 
APPENDIX II. 157 
 
 will be similar; they belong to Christian doctrine only, 
 so far as they all alike minister to the moral and 
 spiritual improvement of man. 
 
 This scriptural view of Christian doctrine exhibits 
 it as no less admirable in its proportions than in the 
 matter which it inculcates. The mixture of direct 
 precept with the revelation of facts or characters cal- 
 culated to produce a certain moral effect, seems to 
 meet exactly all the wants of our nature ; enlightening 
 us, strengthening us, and enkindling us, all at once. 
 But, instead of this view, another has been too gene- 
 rally adopted. First, all the direct precepts have been 
 struck off from Christian doctrine, and put under 
 another head, that of practical instruction ; implying, 
 that Christian doctrine had some other end than that 
 of practical improvement. Secondly, doctrine thus 
 reduced to the revelation of certain facts, was further 
 corrupted by being made to declare these facts as 
 simple truths, apart from the impression which they 
 were meant to produce on men ; and being thus 
 brought to deliver theorems, instead of motives and 
 principles of life, was again corrupted still more by 
 being loaded with new truths, supposed to be deduced 
 by a fair process of reasoning from certain expressions 
 in the Scriptm'e, but which being incapable of a moral 
 bearing upon the heart and character, were no part of 
 the real Christian doctrine, and therefore cannot be 
 proved from Scripture with such clearness, as to prevent 
 great doubts and exceptions from being made against 
 them. And so it is, that Christian doctrine has been 
 unduly limited and unduly extended ; unduly limited, 
 in having all the direct commands of the Scripture 
 struck off from it, and classed under another head : and 
 unduly extended, in being made to contain certain 
 
158 APPENDIX II. 
 
 truths, which, as having no practical tendency, were 
 never designed by Christ to constitute any part of it. 
 
 Now that Christian doctrine does properly include 
 the direct practical precepts of our Lord and His Apos- 
 tles may be shown without difficulty. As far as any 
 stress may be laid on the use of a word, " doctrine," 
 ^i^ccxyi, in the great majority of passages in which it 
 occurs in the New Testament, signifies practical teach- 
 ing, such as that of our Lord's parables, or His sermon 
 on the Mount. And without referring to the word, it 
 is clear that the substance of our Lord's teaching dur- 
 ing His ministry, as well as that of His Apostles' teaching 
 after His ascension, was of a practical character. Again 
 in that invaluable picture of the proceedings of the 
 early Christians, which is given in Pliny's famous letter 
 to Trajan, it appears that a principal object of their 
 assemblies amongst themselves was, to pledge them- 
 selves to one another to abstain from everything evil, 
 and to live soberly, honestly, and godly. It must needs 
 have formed no small part of their doctrine to explain 
 and impress upon the new converts the nature and im- 
 portance of the things which they thus pledged them- 
 selves to abstain from, or to do. 
 
 Again, there is an important benefit obtained by 
 making the precepts of the Gospel a main part of Chris- 
 tian doctrine, that it shows how large a portion of this 
 doctrine is received by all Christians with perfect 
 unanimity. The differences of opinion as to the mean- 
 ing and force of the moral precepts of Scripture are so 
 trifling as hardly to deserve notice ; and thus George 
 Herbert says truly : 
 
 " All the doctrine, which Christ taught and gave, 
 Was clear as Heav'n from whence it came ; 
 At least those beams of truth, which only save, 
 Surpass in brightness any flame. 
 
APPENDIX II. 159 
 
 " * Love God and love your neighbour. Watch and pray. 
 Do as you would be done unto. ' 
 Oh ! dark instructions, even as dark as day ! 
 Who can these Gordian knots undo ?" 
 
 But George Herbert should have remembered that 
 these " bright and saving beams of truth," as he well 
 calls them, were excluded from the common meaning 
 of the term " Christian doctrine" in its technical and 
 corru]>t sense ; and that that doctrine was made to con- 
 sist of many points far less bright and less saving ; 
 points which alone could offer any ground for the un- 
 believer's taunt, that Christians could not agree as to 
 the tenets of their own religion. 
 
 [Here the IMS. breaks off. — But the subject of the concluding chapter 
 of it may receive some further illustration from the following portion of a 
 pamphlet, which, in 1835, he wrote but never published, " On the Admis- 
 sion of Dissenteis to the Universities," in the form of a letter to the Rev. 
 W. K. Hamilton, and which, though written with reference to the particu- 
 lar question of academical instruction, is evidently a developement of the 
 same thoughts which have been expressed in the foregoing fragment^.] 
 
 Now it is this habit of completing Scripture, of alter- 
 ing the order and the proportions of its doctrines, 
 which has led to the apparent differences in men's in- 
 terpretations of it. There has constantly been a tacit 
 reference to some other standard, to which some have 
 laboured to make the Scripture conform, while others 
 have striven to make it as different from it as possible. 
 Thus men have come to regard it as impossible to in- 
 terpret the Scriptures to persons of different religious 
 opinions ; and so it is impossible, as long as a foreign 
 standard of interpretation is constantly before the eyes 
 
 ^ See also Letters to Rev. J. Hearn and Rev. A. Hare, May and Au- 
 gust, 1833. {Life and Correspondence, 4th edition, vol. i. pp. 361, 368.) 
 and Sermon on '* Christian Prophesying." (Sermons, vol. vi. p. 289. 
 
160 APPENDIX II. 
 
 of all, and exciting in them the most opposite feelings. 
 If you were to lectm'e on the first chapter of St. John 
 to a class partly consisting of Unitarians, and were to 
 dwell on it as proving the truth of the Nicene Creed, 
 the party feelings of the Unitarians would be directly 
 excited; th y would take refuge in Lardner's interpre- 
 tation of the passage, and would be perfectly insensible 
 to its real and simple meaning. But dropping all 
 thoughts of Trinitarianism and Unitarianism, — looking 
 upon all around you as Christians, engaged with you in 
 receiving the instruction of Christ's beloved disciple, — 
 and considering no further deductions from the Apos- 
 tle's words than he himself intended to follow from 
 them, would not the words in their own simple force 
 convey all that you wish, and if you forbore from mak- 
 ing them controversial, would they not make their own 
 way into a Unitarian's mind, and show him that he 
 does not at present regard his Master with the same 
 reverence that St. John regarded Him ? 
 
 Suppose this to be carried on further ; that the 
 greatest part of the New Testament were thus simply 
 interpreted, with no other end in view than that of im- 
 pressing to the utmost on your pupils the particular 
 view or feeling which each portion successively was de- 
 signed to convey : at the same time that in all your lec- 
 tures sound rules and habits of criticism are communi- 
 cated, while Christian hopes and principles are continu- 
 ally brought forward, as naturally suggested by the study 
 of the human mind under different influences and guid- 
 ance : would your Unitarian pupils at the end of their 
 three years be as much Unitarian as they were at the 
 beginning ? Would they not at any rate be perfectly 
 ashamed of the ignorance and unfairness of their own pre- 
 tended "improved" version of the New Testament, — 
 would they not feel that Christ was not in their system what 
 
APPENDIX II. 161 
 
 He was in the minds of the Apostles, that if the lan- 
 guage of St. Paul and St. John be not the wildest ex- 
 aggeration, that of their own sect must be cold even to 
 irreverence ? I do not say that they would subscribe to 
 the Articles of the Church of England — that they might 
 feel to be going over to an opposite party — but their 
 religion would be far more Scriptural and entirely 
 Christian than it had been at their first coming to the 
 University, and their influence in life, be it more or less, 
 would soften and improve the character of their sect, 
 or, at least, would act beneficially on their own 
 children. They would have reason to look back upon 
 Oxford with gratitude, and their teachers might thank 
 God to the latest hour of their lives that they had been 
 enabled to communicate truth and charity to minds, 
 which, irritated by a system of exclusion, and trained 
 up in sectarian naiTowness, would have drunk deeper 
 and deeper of error and of bitterness. 
 
 Or again, for the members of our own Church ; — 
 would they be injured by a similar system of instruc- 
 tion, — would they be worse Christians, or worse mem- 
 bers of the Church of England than they are likely to 
 become under the influence of that spirit which is now 
 but too prevalent among you ? Worse Christians they 
 could not be, if the Scriptures are indeed our standard 
 of Christianity ; nor would they be worse churchmen, 
 unless a narrow spirit of religious and political party, 
 perpetuating divisions, and thus hindering the Church 
 fi-om becoming national and effective, be a true zeal for 
 the welfare of Christ's Church established in this 
 kingdom. Their admiration of the Liturgy and 
 Articles of our present constitution would be — I 
 had almost said less idolatrous, — than it seems to 
 be now ; but it would be more sincere and abundantly 
 better grounded. True it is, that knowing that botli 
 
 M 
 
162 APPENDIX II. 
 
 additions and omissions were made in the original Ay- 
 tides of the Chiu'ch of England within ten years of 
 their first publication, they would probably judge that 
 the lapse of two hundred and seventy years must have 
 made other additions and omissions expedient now ; 
 remembering that the Liturgy was altered several times 
 in a Christian spirit, that the last nominal revision in 
 1661-2 was the mere mockery of a triumphant party, 
 and that the revision attempted in 1689 by some of the 
 best men in our church was frustrated by the influence 
 of the same party, they would probably desire another 
 revision in the spirit of 1689 to be carried into effect 
 now. But they would preserve the substance both of 
 the Liturgy and Articles as earnestly as they would re- 
 vise and endeavour to improve them : they would feel 
 deeply and thankfully the positive truth contained in 
 the one, and the piety and wisdom and eloquence of the 
 other ; they would admire that rejection of errors on 
 the right hand and on the left, in which the English 
 Reformers so eminently displayed their fairness and 
 their judgment. 
 
 Taking, however, a simpler view of the case, I be- 
 lieve that the religious instruction of every individual 
 under-graduate would be far purer and more effectual 
 than it now is, if the thirty -nine Articles were never 
 presented to them as a subject of study, but the Scrip- 
 tures were made the only text-book in what are called 
 Divinity Lectures, whilst the Catechism furnished the 
 outline for any more private and personal instruction 
 that was given to individuals. There can be no more 
 fatal error, none certainly more entirely at variance 
 with the Scripture model, than to acquaint the mind 
 with the truths of religion in a theoretical form, leaving 
 the application of them to be made afterwards. On the 
 contrary, the practical form is not only that in which 
 
APPENDIX II. 163 
 
 they should be first communicated, but in many in- 
 stances they should never be put into the abstract form 
 at all, and if they are so iput, they become misleading. 
 An a priori religion is a very different thing from 
 Christianity; the Gospel is founded on man's wants 
 and weaknesses, and the revelations of God are ex- 
 actly commensurate with these wants, and go no far- 
 ther. Look at the first of our Articles, and compare it 
 with the Scriptural way of putting before us the very 
 same truths. Every thing in the Article is abstract, it 
 contains a series of propositions precisely of that sort 
 which the devils may believe and yet still be devils ; 
 the assent given to them need not have any thing of 
 the character of Christian faith. Now if we turn to 
 those passages of Scripture which would be referred to 
 as authorities for the truth of the Article, the difference 
 in the manner of putting the several propositions is re- 
 markable. The unity of God which is so often insisted 
 on, is taught as a corrective of Polytheism ; we are 
 not to worship a variety of superior beings with a di- 
 vided worship ; it is not that there is one God in Israel 
 and another in Syria, that one Being made the world 
 and another governs it ; but all our religious feelings of 
 hope and fear, of love and of honour, should be di- 
 rected to One alone, the Lord of life and death alike, — 
 the God of our first fathers no less than our own. 
 Thus with regard to Christians, the unity of God should 
 be taught as condemning all superstitious worship of 
 saints or angels, and as a call to missionary labours : 
 for God being the God of all the earth, all should be 
 taught to know Him ; but when put as a metaphysical 
 fact with regard to the Divine nature, we have seen it 
 actually lead to error, as in the case of the Unitarians. 
 Again, " God is without body, parts, or passions." 
 Most true certainly; yet even this is put differently in 
 
 M 2 
 
164 APPENDIX II. 
 
 the Scripture, — not as a truth, but as a lesson : " God is 
 a Spirit, and they that worship Him must worship Him 
 in spirit and in truth." Yet more with the conclusion 
 of the Article : does the Scripture ever speak of the 
 Trinity as of a fact, so to speak, in the Divine exist- 
 ence ? Does not its language always refer to the various 
 relations of God with ourselves ? In this respect the 
 language of the Catechism is exactly Scriptural. " I 
 learn to believe in God the Father who hath made me, 
 in God the Son who hath redeemed me, in God the 
 Holy Ghost who hath sanctified me ;" that is to say, 
 our notions of God should never for an instant be sepa- 
 rated from our own personal relations to Him. And if 
 the external evidence were less decisive against it, the 
 internal would of itself be sufficient in my judgment to 
 throw strong suspicion on the famous verse of the Three 
 Heavenly Witnesses ; the abstract declaration of the re- 
 lations of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit to one 
 another, (for their unity does not bear'^ upon their wit- 
 ness, but is mentioned as a thing by itself,) appearing 
 to me to be at variance with the character of the reve- 
 lations of Scripture. 
 
 I am led to think that this distinction, between the 
 putting of the doctrines of Christianity in the shape of 
 abstract truths and conveying them as lessons, is one of 
 no small importance, because I observe that the Scrip- 
 ture constantly adopts the latter mode, while the great 
 
 * For when, on another occasion, the Father and the Son are spoken 
 of as witnesses, they are purposely represented as two and not as one, in 
 accommodation to our notion that the number of witnesses increases the 
 credibihty of the thing attested. " It is written in your law that the testi- 
 mony of two men is true. I am one that bear witness of myself, and the 
 Father that sent me beareth witness of me." But when the point aimed at 
 is to produce entire trust in Christ's power, then His unity with the Father 
 is declared, not as an abstract truth, but as a practical one. " I and my 
 Father are one." [I John v. 7. John viii. 17, 18; x. 30.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 1G5 
 
 disputes amongst Christians have manifestly arisen out 
 of the prevalence of the former. For one of the most 
 fruitful sources of dispute has been the habit of making 
 deductions from Scripture ; a practice which is reason- 
 able or unreasonable, according to the nature and ob- 
 ject of the Gospel revelations. If they are meant to 
 declare the absolute existence of certain truths, then we 
 may properly make deductions from these truths, ex- 
 actly as we do in human philosophy. But if the truths 
 declared are wholly relative and practical, then we may 
 not make abstract deductions from them, because ab- 
 stractedly nothing has been revealed about them, and 
 we may only use them for the purpose for which they 
 are used in Scripture, that is, as producing a certain 
 particular moral impression on our minds, — not as de- 
 claring some positive truth in the nature of things. 
 This is understood clearly with regard to parables, 
 where we see at once that they convey a lesson and 
 not a fact, and that beyond the special lesson intended 
 to be communicated we can draw no deductions from 
 them. But I think, that in proportion to our increased 
 knowledge and study of the Scriptures, will be our con- 
 viction that something of this sort applies, and must 
 apply, to all revelations concerning God and heavenly 
 things ; and that it is by so reading the Scripture that 
 we derive the entire impression of the mind of the 
 Spirit : not finding embarrassment, but rather great in- 
 struction and benefit in those passages, which, taken as 
 declaring abstract truths, appear so opposite as to bo 
 almost irreconcileable, and which, therefore, have given 
 support to the most opposite theories, when in reality 
 none of them warrant our forming any general theory 
 at all.a 
 
 Again the study of articles of religion is injurious in 
 
 ^ [See Sermons, vol. iii. p. 395 ; vol. iv. pp. 290, 377.] 
 
1G6 APPENDIX II. 
 
 this respect, that it confirms that narrow and unscrip- 
 tural use of the term " doctrine " which has been too 
 long adopted in common language. To speak of the 
 doctrines of the Gospel, as opposed to its precepts, is 
 unscriptural and mischievous. If you take the trouble 
 to observe the signification of the words, ^i^a%^, 
 ^i^aa-HOiT^ioc^ ^i^a(THco^ &c., in the various passages of the 
 New Testament in which they are to be found, you will 
 see that in the very great majority of instances they are 
 applied particularly to what we call the precepts of the 
 Gospel ; in others they embrace the whole mass of 
 Christian instruction, — i.e.^ Christian practice and feel- 
 ings enforced on Christian principles ; but that most 
 rarely, (I believe T might say " never," were I not al- 
 ways unwilling to assert a negative universally,) most 
 rarely do they signify what we technically call doc- 
 trines, — L e., general truths of religion. The Articles 
 may contain a full view of Christian doctrine in this 
 technical sense of the word, but in the Scriptural sense 
 they contain a most meagre and imperfect view of it. 
 Indeed it is to be observed that the only notice which 
 they take of the great moral peculiarities of Christian 
 doctrine, is to notice certain exceptions to Christ's 
 general rules ; so that in studying the Articles we do 
 not find the Christian doctrine enforced, but only a 
 protest entered against certain exaggerated views of it. 
 But is it no mischief that a young man's attention 
 should be only directed to the Christian doctrine con- 
 cerning oaths, in order to teach him that some oaths 
 may lawfully be taken ; whereas no man can doubt that 
 the exception had far better be neglected than the rule; 
 and f the Christian doctrine against the princi^^lo of 
 oaths in general, and therefore against the imposition 
 of them by Christian governments, had been enforced 
 as it should have been. Christian reform in these mat- 
 ters, which the Bishop of London is now so nobly ad- 
 
APPENDIX II. 167 
 
 vocating, would not have been delayed till the nine- 
 teenth century ? The same may be said with respect 
 to the Christian doctrine relating to war and capital 
 punishments. The exceptions made in the Articles are 
 true as exceptions, but by dwelling on them we have 
 lost the benefit of the rule ; and it surely better becomes 
 the Christian Church to enforce with all its power the 
 principle of its Lord's doctrine, — a doctrine so unwel- 
 come to our natural evil, and so greatly needed, — 
 rather than to content itself with a caution against 
 pushing this doctrine into extravagance. If the Scrip- 
 ture itself be our text-book, we find all this given in its 
 proper proportions ; but on the present system it is per- 
 fectly possible for a man to study carefully what we call 
 Christian doctrines, and yet to have a most inadequate 
 notion of Christian doctrine in the Scriptural sense of 
 the term, — the doctrine of Christian feelings and Chris- 
 tian principles and practice." .... 
 
 (b.) the state and the church. 
 
 Written in 1833, 34. See Letters to Archbishop Whately and Mr. Hull, 
 in April and July, 1834. (Life and Correspondence, vol. i. pp. 385, 
 391. 4th edit. ) 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The relations of what are called the State and the 
 Church to each other, have been more or less matter 
 of dispute in every period of modern history. At this 
 moment nothing is so vague as the opinions generally 
 entertained respecting them: and such as are not vague 
 appear to me to be only definitely erroneous. It may 
 be very true abstractedly that the importance of the 
 subject requires to be discussed at length ; but a long 
 work upon it would find but few readers. Now the er- 
 
168 APPENDIX II. 
 
 roneous views entertained upon it are conveyed, not in 
 long and detailed arguments, but in short addresses, 
 which may be read through in half an hour. When 
 error dogmatizes, truth maybe allowed to do the same. 
 If ever the propagators of error will venture to expound 
 at length the grounds of their system, it will then be 
 time enough for the grounds on which the truth rests to 
 be stated at length in answer. 
 
 The great errors which I here purpose to combat are 
 two : one relating to the State, and the other to the 
 Church. 
 
 The first, as entertained by a far more numerous and 
 powerful body than the other, is by much the most 
 dangerous ; in fact, the great danger of the other error 
 consists in its tendency to lead practically to the esta- 
 blishment of this. Now this first error consists in 
 lowering and limiting the duty and business of the 
 State ; it teaches " that the State, as such, is of no re- 
 ligion ;" " that its business is simply to look after the 
 bodies of men ; to provide for the security of their per- 
 sons and property ; and that, therefore, it may and 
 ought to leave the concerns of religion to individuals, 
 and to make no public provision for its maintenance." 
 I do not mean to say that all who have held the pre- 
 mises here mentioned have also held the conclusion ; 
 on the contrary, Warburton held them, and contended 
 strongly at the same time for the expediency of having 
 an established religion ; nor have there been wanting 
 others who have taken a similar course. But the gene- 
 ral tendency has been and is to hold the premises and 
 conclusion together, nay, to value the premises chiefly 
 for the very reason because they seem to authorize such 
 a conclusion. 
 
 Now in determining what are the objects and busi- 
 ness of a State in the abstract, history gives us little 
 
APPENDIX II. 169 
 
 direct assistance. The actual origin of civilized society 
 in every country, so far as we can trace it, belongs to 
 circumstances much more tlian to design. And de- 
 scending to later times, the objects of different govern- 
 ments have been so various, and pursued so inconsist- 
 ently by the same government at different periods, that 
 we know not where to look for our standard. But 
 there is one attribute which seems essential to a State, 
 — namely, sovereignty. A State has no earthly su- 
 perior ; the law, which is the State's voice, is supreme 
 over all the members of the State, and its sentence can 
 take from them both their property and their lives. A 
 power so extensive must necessarily reach to every part 
 of human life ; all oiu* actions in every period of our 
 existence must be done either by its command or with 
 its permission. 
 
 When, therefore, Warburton speaks of civil policy 
 requiring the aid of religion and entering into alliance 
 with it because of its own necessary imperfections, such 
 for instance, as its inability to reward virtue, or to 
 punish every kind of moral evil, he might just as rea- 
 sonably talk of its entering into alliance with medicine, 
 or with agriculture, or with political economy, because 
 human society requires the benefits of these and of all 
 other arts and sciences. If we must speak in meta- 
 phors, the State does not ally itself with them, but em- 
 l^loys their services : fixes their respective places, and 
 when their counsels are at variance with each other, 
 determines of its sovereign pleasure which it shall 
 follow. The essence of a State is power ; what is no 
 more than advice when spoken by philosophy and reli- 
 gion, binding, so far as this world is concerned, only 
 on those who choose to follow it, — that, when adopted 
 by the State, becomes law, and so far as this world is 
 concerned, no man can disobey it with impunity. 
 
 An authority, then, so essentially sovereign over hu- 
 
170 APPENDIX II. 
 
 man life, controlling every thing, and itself subject to 
 no earthly control, must naturally have a proportion- 
 ate responsibility. Standing as it were in the place of 
 God, it should imitate God's government wherever the 
 imperfections of humanity do not render such imitation 
 impossible. Tt seems then an uncalled for assertion, to 
 maintain that it should regard the bodies of men only, 
 — that it should limit the exercise of its power to the 
 prevention of attacks upon persons and property, — that 
 its highest functions should be those of a minister of 
 police. The doctrine of the old philosophers is surely 
 better in accordance with its sovereignty. They taught 
 that as its power extended over the whole of human 
 life, so human happiness, in the largest sense of the 
 word, was its proper object; not physical happiness 
 only, and much less the prevention of outward violence, 
 but that compound happiness which belongs to man as 
 a compound being, — the happiness conferred by wis- 
 dom and virtue, no less than the comfort which is de- 
 rived from food and clothing. 
 
 Warburton speaks as if civil society had been for- 
 mally instituted with the avowed object of procuring 
 some one definite end ; which end, he tells us, was 
 " security to the temporal liberty and property of man."* 
 Now to speak of any such formal institution of society 
 as a matter of fact, is as far from the truth as to speak 
 of " an original compact between the magistrate and 
 the people," as if such a compact had literally been 
 signed and sealed between them. The actual begin- 
 nings of society neither conceived of its object that it 
 was merely " security to temporal liberty and property," 
 nor that it was " the highest happiness attainable by 
 man." If political society ever grew directly out of 
 patriarchal, the predominant notion attached to the 
 
 " [Warburton's Alliance of Church and State, book i. chap. 4.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 171 
 
 office of king would be that undefined one of general 
 dignity and dominion which nature attaches to the 
 character of a father. If, as is more probable, it grew 
 out of conquest, the notion again was likely to be that 
 of dominion, without any distinct conception of the 
 ends for which that dominion was to be exercised ; the 
 conquerors desired power, and the conquered to escape 
 worse evils submitted to it. Afterwards, when sove- 
 reignty had thus arisen, its capabilities, whether for 
 good or for evil, were gradually developed : good men 
 found that it enabled them to promote the happiness of 
 mankind by improving their condition physically and 
 morally; bad men found it convenient for the purposes 
 of their own rapacity or ambition, and converted it 
 into a tyranny. But because some degree of security 
 for liberty and property is the minimum of good which 
 sovereignty can confer without being guilty of self- 
 destruction, — for tyranny undoes itself if it opens to 
 every one its monopoly of oppression, — therefore 
 governments which have cared for no higher object have 
 yet necessarily repressed indiscriminate violence 
 amongst their people ; and the lowest good attainable 
 by society has, as was natural, been more frequently 
 pursued by States actually than the higher good which 
 it may and ought to attain, but which implies that its 
 rulers should be, what too often they have not been, 
 men sensible of the excellence of wisdom and virtue. 
 
 Warburton allows, indeed, that the State is concerned 
 with morals, so far as they affect men's outward inter- 
 ests ; nay, even with^ "the three fundamental princi- 
 ples of natural religion, namely, the being of a God, 
 His providence over human affairs, and the natural es- 
 sential difference between moral good and evil." 
 " These doctrines," he goes on to say, " it is directly of 
 the magistrate's office to cherish, protect, iuidpropaf/afc; 
 
 ^ [Warbur(on'$ Alliance of Church and State, book i, chap. 4. J 
 
172 APPENDIX II. 
 
 .... Nor doth this at all contradict our general posi* 
 - tion, that the sole end of civil society is the cotiservation 
 of body and goods. For the magistrate concerns him- 
 self with the maintenance of these three fundamental 
 articles, not as they promote our future happiness, but 
 our present, as they are the very foundation and bond 
 of civil policy." So then the State may and ought to 
 employ the services of philosophy and religion ; but it 
 must do so only to prostitute them both : it must up- 
 hold the essential difference of moral good and evil, so 
 far only as it is morally evil to assault our neighbour's 
 person or to rob him of his property, and morally good 
 to abstain from doing so : it must teach that God is, 
 and that He is a rewarder of them who diligently seek 
 Him, only to show its people that they cannot with 
 impunity swear a false oath on a trial or at the custom- 
 house [ 
 
 There are three points which seem particularly to 
 have misled Warburton's mind into such conclusions as 
 these. First, the confusion of the term "temporal" or 
 " present happiness," with " security to temporal liberty 
 and property ;" secondly, " the inability of the State 
 to reward virtue ;" and, thirdly, " its punishing evil or 
 other principles than those of pure morality and religion." 
 
 I. The confusion in his use of the term " temporal or 
 present happiness," is apparent in the passage which I 
 have quoted above. " Present happiness"is surely not sy- 
 nonymous with " the conservation of body and goods," 
 nor is it necessarily opposed to "future happiness." 
 The immediate object of every earthly society must be 
 "present good," because "future good" can thus only 
 be obtained. But man's highest^ present good is the 
 same in kind with his future good, — being the perfec- 
 tion of his intellectual and moral nature. This, how- 
 ever, is very far from synonymous with the " conserva- 
 
 * [See Lectures on Mod. Hist. 3rd edit. p. 55.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 173 
 
 tion of his body and goods," and although we may rea- 
 dily grant that the immediate object of a State is man's 
 present happiness, yet it would by no means follow 
 from this that it was limited to the secuiity of his body 
 and goods from external violence. 
 
 II. The State cannot reward virtue, it must " borrow 
 the sanction of rewards from religion." Now it is un- 
 doubtedly impossible for society to apportion happiness 
 and misery to its members exactly according to their 
 moral deservings. There are many things good and 
 evil of which God keeps the distribution wholly to him- 
 self. I said above, therefore, that " the State should 
 imitate God's government so far as the imperfections of 
 humanity permitted." But it may be doubted whether 
 Warburton is correct in understanding by " reward," 
 " such as is conferred on every one for observing the 
 laws of his country ;" as distinguished from " such as 
 is bestowed on particulars for any eminent service." 
 For " laws," in the common sense of the term, pro- 
 hibiting evil rather than enjoining good, the observance 
 of them is no more than the bare abstaining from evil ; 
 and abstaining from evil has its fit return, not in 
 "reward," but in "not being subject to punishment." 
 Now if exemption from punishment be reward, then 
 the State can and does reward those who observe its 
 laws : but if reward mean, as it does naturally, " the 
 bestowing of some positive good," then it is no imputa- 
 tion upon the State that it does not confer such posi- 
 tive good on the negative merit of not doing evil. 
 
 But if we choose to take the term "laws"* in the 
 wider sense of the old philosophers, and understand by 
 it, not such as are written only, but also the unwritten, 
 — not such as merely forbid evil, but such as enjoin all 
 
 ^ [See Inaugural Lecture in the " Lectures on Mod. Hist." p. 14. 3rd edit.] 
 
174 APPENDIX II. 
 
 good, then the State is capable of rewarding in some 
 degree the observance of its laws ; negatively, by re- 
 pressing those wrongs and violences which obstruct the 
 natural tendency of virtue to confer happiness ; and, 
 positively, by creating such a state of public opinion as 
 shall ensure to every man in proportion to his good- 
 ness an adequate share of a great external comfort, — 
 namely, the esteem, and regard, and reverence of his 
 fellows. 
 
 Again, supposing that the State could in no sense 
 reward virtue, it avails Warburton's argument nothing 
 to say, that it must " borrow the sanction of rewards 
 from religion." For in order to serve his purpose, 
 "religion" must be synonymous with "religious so- 
 ciety," /. e., with the Church. But the Church is as 
 destitute of the sanction of rewards as the State, since 
 it has lost the miraculous gift of healing. All that it can 
 give is that which does not belong to it in virtue of its 
 being a society ; not the sanction of rewards as confer- 
 red by itself now, but the belief in vSuch a sanction as 
 to be manifested by God hereafter to all who have loved 
 Him and worked righteousness. This " boiTowing 
 from religion" is of the same sort with the " borrowings 
 from philosophy," " political economy," &c., which the 
 State may have occasion for, without our confounding 
 the nature of its sovereignty, or supposing that it must 
 or can contract an alliance with a society of philoso- 
 phers or economists. 
 
 III. "The State punishes evil on other principles 
 than those of morality and religion." This, I think, is 
 the main difficulty which has induced many persons to 
 agree with Warburton in his low estimate of the objects 
 of civil society. But the point to be considered is 
 whether this imputation is one which peculiarly touches 
 the State, or whether it does not arise from those im- 
 
APPENDIX II. 175 
 
 perfections of humanity which are incident to every 
 society composed of hmnan beings. For instance, 
 when it is said that the State does not punish some 
 kinds of sensual indulgences, it is merely saying that 
 public opinion has never yet been sufficiently pure in 
 such matters as to allow of their punishment. It is a 
 fault incident alike to civil and to religious society when 
 existing on a large scale, in other words when they do 
 not consist merely of a small number of picked indi- 
 viduals. The reason which Warburton alleges, that by 
 checking severely one class of offences of this descrip- 
 tion others of a worse character may be encouraged, 
 applies exactly as much to the Church as to the State, 
 if it be valid in either case. But the purity of morals 
 actually obtained in one sex under present circum- 
 stances by the decided demand of public opinion, and 
 the legal punishments actually inflicted on some par- 
 ticular sensualities, sufficiently show that there is no 
 peculiar incapacity in civil society to enforce purity of 
 morals,— but that men, and even Christians, have never 
 yet generally estimated all offences against this purity 
 after the measure prescribed alike by reason and reve- 
 lation. 
 
 Again, generally, the State, it is said, punishes evil 
 actions only in proportion to their malignant influence 
 on civil society. The truth is, that the rule followed in 
 practice has mostly been very capricious, as if govern- 
 ments had not been able to satisfy themselves respect- 
 ing it. They have looked partly at the moral enonnity 
 of a crime, partly at its mischievous tendency ; and 
 thus the penal legislation of most countries exhibits an 
 inconsistency in its several enactments. Again, it 
 should be recollected that civil society has its indirect 
 inflictions for the breach of its unwritten laws, no less 
 real than the direct penalties by which it secures 
 
176 - APPENDIX II. 
 
 obedience to its written laws. There are some offences 
 for which loss of character and a tacit exclusion from 
 society are the fittest punishment; and the public 
 opinion which inflicts this is one of society's proper 
 instruments, inasmuch as it is capable of being formed 
 by the institutions and habits which society either 
 enacts or adopts in its practice^. 
 
 But the t"e i^eason of such differences as have 
 really existed between human laws and the language of 
 philosophy and religion, is to be found in the fact, that 
 philosophy and religion have exercised so feeble an 
 influence over the bulk of mankind, and that actual 
 governments have, therefore, as I said before, neglected 
 very frequently the higher good which they might have 
 effected, and have confined themselves to that lower 
 sort which was much more generally appreciated. But 
 in so far as they have sometimes, though irregularly and 
 inconsistently, endeavoured after that higher good, they 
 have left as it were on record their acknowledgment of 
 that principle from which their practice, after the usual 
 course of human infirmity, was too often deviating. 
 
 Supposing, however, that the influential majority in 
 any State were good and wise men, desirous of promot- 
 ing the moral and intellectual no less than the physical 
 well-being of their community, their political wisdom, 
 which is the sovereign of all sciences, would undoubt- 
 edly avail itself of religion and philosophy to promote 
 the first of these ends, as it would employ political 
 economy, military and naval knowledge, and the various 
 branches of physical science to promote the last. For 
 the sovereign science of human life is that science 
 which is the proper accompaniment of sovereign power; 
 
 ^ [This argument is more fully developed in " Leot. on Mod. Hist." 
 p. 55. 3rd edit.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 177 
 
 and its business is so to eni])loy the services of all other 
 sciences, that, without interfering with one another, or 
 trying one to exclude the other, they may by their 
 combined efforts, mingled together in just proportions, 
 raise the perfect fabiic of human happiness. And 
 therefore the State's sovereign power combined, in 
 the case I am supposing, with the peculiar wisdom 
 which belongs to it, chooses for itself th-^^ true religion, 
 as it would choose also the truest system of political 
 science in the lower sense of the term ; and in adopting 
 this religion, it declares its belief in its promises and its 
 adherence to its precepts, — in other words it declares 
 itself Christian. But by so doing, it becomes a part of 
 Christ's Holy Catholic Church : not allied with it, which 
 imj)lies distinctness from it, but transfonned into it. 
 But as for the particular portion of this Church which 
 may have existed before within the limits of the State's 
 sovereignty, — the actual society of Christian men there 
 subsisting, — the State does not ally itself with such a 
 society, — for alliance supposes two parties equally 
 sovereign, — nor yet does it become the Church as to 
 its outward form and organization ; neither does the 
 Church on the other hand become so lost in the State 
 as to become, in the offensive sense of the terra, secu- 
 larized. The spirit of the Church is transfused into a 
 more perfect body, and its former external organiza- 
 tion dies away. The form is that of the State, the 
 spirit is that of the Church ; what was a kingdom of ; 
 the world is become a kingdom of Christ, a portion of 
 the Church in the high and spiritual sense of the term ; ; 
 but in that sense in which " Church" denotes the out- I 
 ward and social organization of Christians in any one ; 
 particular place, it is no longer a Christian Church, ; 
 but what is far higher and better, a Christian Kingdom. 
 It remains as before, — a sovereign society seeking after 
 
 N 
 
178 APPENDIX ii. 
 
 its liigliest happiness ; but it has now discovered the 
 true path, and its conceptions as to the nature of its 
 liappiness are corrected and exalted. It is changed 
 into a better and a purer self, like ^ Kailyal when she 
 had tasted the Amreeta cup of immortality. 
 
 To the view here taken, several objections are or 
 may be made : 
 
 First, That it interferes with the political rights of 
 men, by making them to depend on their religious 
 opinions ; for if the State, as such, be essentially Chris- 
 tian, those who are not Christians cannot be members 
 of it. 
 
 Second, That men being sure to differ in their re- 
 ligious opinions, the State must either become Chris- 
 tian in so vague and general a sense as hardly to de- 
 serve the name ; or if it adopts the creed of any one 
 particular sect, or frames one distinct and definite for 
 itself, the existence of dissenters will soon embarrass 
 the question, and it will be necessary either to exclude 
 dissenters from their political rights, or to admit the 
 solecism of their legislating for the concerns of the 
 
 [ " She said and drank. The eye of mercy beam'd 
 Upon the raaid : a cloud of fragrance stream'd 
 Like incense smoke, as all her mortal frame 
 Dissolved beneath the potent agency 
 Of that mysterious draught ; such quality 
 From her pure touch the fated cup partook. 
 
 Like one entranced she knelt, 
 Feeling her body melt 
 Till all but what was heaveftly past away : 
 
 Yet still she felt 
 Her spirit strong within her — the same heart, 
 With the same loves, and all her heavenly part 
 Unchanged and ripened to such perfect state, 
 In this miraculous birth, as here on earth 
 Dimly our holiest hopes anticipate." 
 
 (Southey's Curse of Kehama, Book xxiv. )] 
 
APPENDIX II. 179 
 
 established religion while they do not hold communion 
 with it. 
 
 Third, The Church being essentially distinct from 
 the State ought not to be confounded with it ; it may 
 be allied with it, or employed by it, but can never be 
 identified with it. 
 
 I. The first objection stirs one of the greatest ques- 
 tions in politics : namely, what is the true bond of po- 
 litical society ? or, in other words, what are the quali- 
 fications required in a citizen ? It also involves 
 another great question — what are the political rights of 
 individuals } To both these questions there is a grow- 
 ing tendency to give an answer, which, as being anarch- 
 ical and leading to the moral degradation of the human 
 race, may be fitly called Jacobinical. 
 
 I need not say how various the qualifications for 
 citizenship have been in different ages and different 
 countries. But was it ever held in the ancient world 
 that a man gained a title to become a citizen by living 
 in a country, acquiring a fortune in it, and paying 
 taxes for the public service } His paying taxes was 
 thought to be no more than a just return for the pro- 
 tection afforded him in a country on which he had no 
 natural claim ; nor would any length of time alter the 
 condition of his posterity, unless by a special act of 
 favour on the part of the government. Their services 
 to the State, in bearing a share of the public burdens, 
 could no more remove the natural diversity of their 
 condition than a beast's usefulness to his master could 
 give him a right to be regarded as a man. 
 
 Citizenship, in the common course of things, was a 
 matter of race ; he was a citizen who was lineally de- 
 scended from a citizen, and had not forfeited his right by 
 some crime. This was not a mere narrow-minded spirit 
 of familv pride. Particular races of men have their ovrn 
 
 N 2 
 
180 APPENDIX II. 
 
 peculiar physical and moral character. They pre- 
 served also, in the ancient world, their particular cus- 
 toms, particular moral principles on various important 
 points, and also their particular religion. The mix- 
 ture of races was accounted a monstrous confusion, 
 introducing a discordance in the habits and principles 
 of a people subversive of political union. 
 
 Individuals who obtained the rights of citizenship 
 conformed immediately to the laws, civil and religious, 
 of the country which had adopted them. Individuals 
 might be thus admitted without danger ; but the ad- 
 mission of masses of new citizens was considered 
 highly mischievous, as it was likely to shake the exist- 
 ing institutions of the country*. 
 
 This showed a general feeling that the ends of civil 
 society were something higher than mere security to 
 life and property, or facilitating the multiplication of 
 capital. Citizenship implied much more than local 
 neighbourhood, or an intercourse of buying and selling; 
 it was an agreement in the highest feelings and prin- 
 ciples of our nature ; and certainly Christianity forms 
 so broad a line morally between those who embrace it 
 and other men, that a man who is not a Christian is 
 most justly excluded from citizenship in a Christian 
 state, not merely on grounds furnished by Revelation, 
 but according to the highest and noblest views of the 
 nature of political society. 
 
 Again, we hear a great deal too much in the present 
 day of the political rights of individuals ^ ; this ten- 
 dency, which is not essentially anarchical, is one of 
 the most distinguishing features of modern civiliza- 
 
 * [See Preface to the third volume of the edition of Thucjdides, pp. 
 15-18. Hist, of Rome, vol. ii. pp. 48-36.] 
 
 »> [See Hist, of Rome, vol. i. p. 265, vol. iii. p. 426.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 181 
 
 tion as distinguished from that of the ancient world ". 
 That age of chivahy, whose departure Burke so much 
 regretted, was in one respect the natural parent of that 
 age of Jacobinism which he so much abhorred. Both 
 breathe the spirit of lawlessness, encouraging men to 
 look upon themselves as independent of their fellows ; 
 cultivating a proud and selfish idolatry of what belongs 
 to them individually, whether it be personal honour, and 
 personal glory, as in the earlier form of the disease, or 
 personal political liberty and equality as in the later. 
 Both lead to what Bacon calls honimi suitatis, to the 
 neglect of the good of the whole body of which we are 
 members. Individuals, in a political sense, are neces- 
 sarily members ; as distinct from the body, they are 
 nothing. Against society, they have no political rights 
 M'hatever, and their belonging to society or not is a 
 matter not of their own choice, but deteiTnined for 
 them by their being born and bred members of it. 
 
 II. I approach the second objection with reluctance 
 and shame ; for is it not most humiliating that any cir- 
 cumstances should ever have given the slightest colour 
 to the assertion that the term Christian must be vague 
 and of little value, unless some sectarian peculiarities 
 be added to complete the definition } — that to be of 
 Christ is nothing, unless we further declare whether we 
 are of Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas } But so it is ; 
 ignorant or dishonest zeal has ever slighted the sub- 
 stance, and idolized the shadow ; it is called heresy or 
 indifference to care little for this or that sect's inter- 
 pretation of the Scriptures ; but it is orthodoxy to say 
 that unless some one or other of these interpretations 
 be implicitly adopted, the Scriptures themselves will 
 profit us nothing. 
 
 I call a State " Christian" when it declares its belief in 
 
 * [For his later feeling on this point, see cha|». x. of Life and Corre- 
 spondence, vol. ii. p. 278. 4th edition.] 
 
182 APPENDIX II. 
 
 the divine origin and supreme authority of the Chris- 
 tian Revelation as contained in the Scriptures ; I call 
 this United Kingdom, as yet, a Christian nation, al- 
 though it be neither Episcopal nor Presbyterian, but 
 establishes the one form in England, and the other in 
 Scotland. I call Prussia a Christian nation, although 
 it be neither Roman Catholic nor Protestant, but 
 establishes the one form of Christianity in Westphalia, 
 and the other in Brandenburg. In such cases there is 
 no difficulty ; the nation belongs to the Church of 
 Christ ; one part of it under one form, and another 
 under another; and where the followers of these se- 
 veral forms are locally distinct from each other, the 
 State may conveniently allow to each the manage- 
 ment of their own concerns in all subordinate matters, 
 only taking care that neither party encroaches upon 
 the other, and neither presumes to excite ill-will against 
 the other. But if either complain that the State is not 
 fit to legislate for them because its supreme govern- 
 ment consists indifferently of men of both parties, this 
 supposes so strong a sense of the differences between 
 them, as to render it proper that they should rather 
 form a confederacy than a State. Neighbourhood and 
 mutual interest may fit them for such a relation ; but 
 they differ too widel}' to be united together in so close 
 a connexion as that of fellow-citizens. 
 
 Suppose, however, a far more complicated case : — 
 that one particular form of Christianity is established 
 over a whole country, and that this at first is the form 
 adopted by a very great majority of the inhabitants ; 
 suppose that afterwards, from various causes, a large 
 proportion of the people object to this form, and set 
 up for themselves others of which they approve more 
 fully; supposing that none of these different forms are 
 locally distinct from one another, but that all exist 
 
APPENDIX ir. 183 
 
 side by side in the same district, and parish, and town, 
 and street. What is to be done under these circum- 
 stances ? Are the dissenters from the establishment to be 
 excluded from the legislature, or are they to legislate 
 for a communion to which they themselves do not 
 belong? or, thirdly, may the concerns of the establish- 
 ment be now safely left to the care of those alone who 
 happen to be members of it ? 
 
 1. Dissenters need not be excluded from the legis- 
 lature ; for, to speak generally, the differences between 
 Christians are not on such great points of principle or 
 practice as to hinder them from taking the same esti- 
 mate of the great business of human life, and so to 
 unfit them from walking through it as companions to 
 each other. Their paths are one in the main, both for 
 time and eternity ; so that they may well be united 
 with each other in political society. Yet still, if the 
 dissenters be a small minority, and the members of 
 the establishment conscientiously believe that the full 
 rights of citizenship cannot be granted to them ; al- 
 though their exclusion may be unwise, and betray a 
 narrow and unsocial spirit, yet it may not be called 
 unjust. The right of society to judge for itself in such 
 a case cannot be questioned; and individuals can plead 
 no political rights in opposition to society. But the 
 case is wholly altered when, instead of a small minority, 
 they become a substantive part of the whole nation, in 
 numbers, in wealth, and in intelligence and moral quali- 
 fications, — it is then no longer society on one side and 
 a few individuals on the other, but society divided 
 against itself, neither part may deny to the other its 
 portion in their common country. The political im- 
 portance of dissenters, then, under these circum- 
 stances, makes it unjust, as well as inexpedient, to 
 exclude them from the legislature. 
 
184 APPENDIX II. 
 
 •2. The concerns ol" the estabhshment may not safely 
 be left to the exclusive care of its own members. Points 
 of detail may indeed be left to them ; nor can any one 
 exactly define how far their own municipal government 
 may be allowed to carry its powers. But the religious 
 establishment being a national concern, the sovereign 
 power can never be justified in abandoning it entirely 
 to private management. Dissent is an evil, and the 
 condition of dissenters is one of disadvantage. The 
 sovereign power, then, as watching over the good of 
 the whole society, should never lose sight of the de- 
 sirableness of lessening the amount of dissent, if it 
 cannot hope altogether to extinguish it. While fully 
 aware that the separation may prove to be quite as 
 much owing to the dissenters as to the establishment, 
 the government will yet recollect that it becomes the 
 establishment, as holding the vantage ground, to make 
 the first overtures ; it is bound to see, not only that no 
 new tests of doctrine or discipline be introduced, which 
 might well be, if the members of the establishment 
 were left sole managers of its affairs, — but also that 
 the existing tests be removed from time to time, so far 
 as may seem expedient, in order to try whether the 
 dissenters would meet such advances in a friendly 
 spirit or no. In short, being trustee, for the nation's 
 benefit, of the immense advantages of a national esta- 
 blishment, it may not make over its trust to other hands 
 v.'ho cannot be equally responsible for the due admi- 
 nistration of it. 
 
 3. Dissenters^may legislate for a communion to which 
 they themselves do not belong. They may do so on the 
 groundfalready assumed, that there is nothing to hinder 
 them from being fellow-citizens with the members of 
 the establishment in the same Christian kingdom. If 
 it be objected that members of the establishment do 
 
ArrENDix II. 185 
 
 not legislate upon the concerns of dissenters, it 
 should be remembered that the cases are not parallel; 
 that the dissenting societies are of a private nature, and 
 therefore are naturally not so subject to the State's 
 control as a society essentially public and national. 
 Private houses are not subject to the same superin- 
 tendence of the magistrates as those which are open to 
 the public. A man may load his own carriage as he 
 will, but let him set up a conveyance for passengers in 
 general, and the law immediately interferes with his 
 arrangements, and prescribes minutely what number 
 he may cany, and how they are to be distributed. 
 
 III. " But the Church is essentially distinct from the 
 State, and ought not to be confounded with it. It may 
 be correct to say that they are allied together, but not 
 that the State is actually the Church." This objection 
 has been brought forward against a former statement of 
 mine by Mr. Dickenson % and it is urged with an 
 ability, a fairness, and a courtesy, which cannot but 
 deprive controversy of all its unkindness. I may be 
 allowed to notice his arguments in detail. 
 
 The difference between us seems to consist in this ; 
 that Mr. Dickenson conceives of the ideas of State 
 and Church as expressing societies whose objects are 
 essentially distinct, while I regard the distinction as 
 only accidental. No doubt a man who thinks with 
 Warburton, that the sole object of political society is 
 ** the conservation of body and goods," must regard 
 the distinction between Church and State as necessary 
 and perpetual ; so must those also who think that the 
 proper object of the Church is to keep up in their 
 purity the ritual ordinances of religion, (S^n^^c/a,) 
 such as public prayer, sacrifices, and the like. Now 
 
 "^ [The lato Bishop of .Meath. ] 
 
186 APPENDIX II. 
 
 as we have seen above, that States, in practice, have 
 very often confined their attention to the physical 
 welfare of society ; and as the greater number of reli- 
 gious societies or institutions have really been ap- 
 pointed for ritual services, it is not surprising that the 
 objects of each should have been very often estimated 
 unworthily. But define the object of the Church to be 
 what Warburton calls it, " the advancement and im- 
 provement of our intellectual nature,"^ and it becomes 
 as nearly as possible identical with what Aristotle de- 
 clares to be the object of the State, namely, the hap- 
 piness of society ; happiness, as he expressly insists, 
 consisting both in physical and moral good, but much 
 more in the latter than in the former ^. Now every State 
 not being Christian seeks man's highest happiness with 
 mistaken views ; its pursuit of the true object is not 
 according to knowledge ; and every Church, before the 
 State becomes Christian, seeks man's highest happiness, 
 since the cessation of miraculous gifts, with deficient 
 power. It is constantly thwarted by not possessing the 
 sovereign control over human life, the power of out- 
 ward dominion. But the State is capable of receiving 
 the knowledge of the Church, whereas it cannot part 
 with its essential attribute of sovereignty, nor is the 
 Church fitted to exercise it. Thus the State <' having 
 been enlightened by the knowledge of the Church, 
 1 becomes a society seeking the same end which the 
 j Church sought, and with the same knowledge, but with 
 
 I =» The first object of religion, he observes, is to procure the favour of 
 God; but for this object man had no occasion to constitute a society. 
 The second object oi reliyion is the first ohiect oi religious society, namely, 
 the advancement and improvement of our intellectual nature. ( Warbur- 
 ton, Alliance of Church and Sfate, book i. chap. 5.) 
 ^ Aristotle, Politics, i. 1, vii. 1, 2, 3. 13. 
 " [See Postscript to Principles of Church Reform.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 187 
 
 more extensive outward means of attaining it, because 
 its inherent sovereignty gives it a greater power over 
 outward things. And this was my meaning when I 
 said that, in a country where the nation and government 
 are avowedly and essentially Christian, the State or 
 nation was virtually the Church. 
 
 I am not quite sure that the expression " national 
 universities" is generally applied to Oxford and Cam- 
 bridge. But suppose that the whole education of the 
 country were conducted by law upon one system ; that 
 the smaller schools were placed under the control of 
 the larger, and these again under the government of 
 the Universities, this grand society for the purposes of 
 education might certainly be called " national," or be- 
 longing to the nation, but it could not be identified 
 with the nation, for this reason, that the object of such 
 a society would be suborcUnate to that of the nation or 
 State, and distinct from it, being limited to " the good 
 education of the young." And further % all the mem- 
 bers of the State would not be members of this parti- 
 cular society, but only those who were either educating 
 others, or being educated themselves. And so of all 
 other societies or institutions employed by the State, 
 whose ends or objects are conducive to the object of 
 the state, but subordinate to it, and only fulhlling a 
 certain part of it. 
 
 So far my statement as to the identity of the State 
 and Church under certain circumstances may be intel- 
 ligible, perhaps, whatever opinion be entertained of 
 its truth and falsehood. But what becomes of this 
 view where there exist within the same State different 
 forms of Christianity, and still more when two forms 
 are actually established at the same time in cUfferent 
 
 a I Sec Sermons, vol. iv. p. 413.] 
 
188 APPENDIX II. 
 
 parts of the same kingdom, as in England and Scot- 
 land ? How can the State be at the same time iden- 
 tical with two different Churches, with the Kirk of 
 Scotland, and with the Church of England ? 
 
 This will be a formidable objection to those who 
 think that the essential character of Christ's Church is 
 to be found in the peculiarities of any one particular 
 denomination of Christians. But if these peculiarities 
 are not essential, and if both the Church of England 
 and the Kirk of Scotland are equally members of 
 Christ's Church, then it is very possible for the State 
 to be virtually the Church of Christ in those countries 
 subject to its dominion, but yet to allow its members 
 to adopt such particular rites and such a peculiar 
 municipal government in different places as they may 
 respectively judge convenient. And this is no more 
 than exists continually in civil matters ; different pro- 
 vinces and towns of the same State having frequently 
 different customs and different municipal privileges, all 
 of which the State acknowledges and authorizes, without 
 feeling its own essential unity impaired by such va- 
 rieties. 
 
 This also is agreeable to the notion implied in that 
 expression at which some are so fond of cavilling ; 
 " that Christianity is part and parcel of the law of the 
 land." It is not pretended that " Christianity" means 
 here " any particular form of Christianity," and, there- 
 fore attacks on the peculiar doctrines and discipline of 
 the Church of England are not illegal ; but attacks on 
 the truth of Christianity in general are. I am not im- 
 pugning or defending the propriety of the laws against 
 blasphemy ; I am merely noticing the distinction made 
 between Christianity and anyone particular form of it; 
 and showing that the State may be Christian, and yet 
 may sanction or even establish within its dominions 
 
APPENDIX II. 189 
 
 many particular societies of Christians, that is, in 
 another and subordinate sense many different Churches 
 — though all in the higher sense to the term belong to 
 one and the same Church, — that Church with which I 
 have said that eveiy Christian State is within its own 
 dominions virtually identical. 
 
 And now I am come to consider that other great 
 error with respect to the Church, which has so eternally 
 embroiled the whole question ; which has led men to 
 talk of the alliance between Church and State in some 
 instances, and absolutely to deny the sovereignty of 
 the State in others ; an error, however, which has pro- 
 duced far more and worse effects than these, having 
 done more lasting injury to Christianity than any other 
 perhaps which can be named. For, by a happy fertility 
 in evil, it has suited the bad tendencies of two opposite 
 descriptions of characters,— encouraging on the one 
 hand superstition, fraud, uncharitableness and tyranny, 
 and on the other hand leading to a general careless- 
 ness of principle, to profaneness and all licentiousness. 
 This error is the confounding the Christian clergy with, 
 the hereditary priesthoods of Judaism and Heathenism ; 
 and thus conceiving of the clergy as of an order pre- 
 serving its identity by pei-petual succession, and being 
 invested with certain indefeasible powers, which were 
 neither derived from human authority, and which no 
 human law can modify or take away. And the con- 
 sideration of this grand error shall form the second 
 part of the present discussion. 
 
190 APPENDIX II. 
 
 CHAPTER IL 
 
 When Cyrus seated himself on the throne of the kings 
 of Media, the Magians, who composed the Median 
 priesthood, were left in undistm'bed possession of their 
 sacred dignity. The king was from henceforth a Per- 
 sian, and Persians naturally filled the principal military 
 offices of the empire ; but the priesthood was still con- 
 fined to the Modes, and in religious matters their con- 
 querors submitted to their discipline. Now this ar- 
 rangement may be called with very little impropriety a 
 real alliance between the State and the Church. The 
 parties were in the outset independent of one another, 
 the Magians not being the natural subjects of Cyrus ; 
 they were distinguished from one another by difference 
 of race, and each stood in need of the other's co-opera- 
 tion ; the Magians could not have resisted the sword of 
 the conqueror, while he on his side found his Persian 
 countrymen too ignorant to form a priesthood them- 
 selves, and hoped, besides, to conciliate his new subjects 
 by preserving the sacred character of that order whom 
 they had been so long accustomed to venerate. 
 
 Now when the German chiefs established themselves 
 and their followers in the various provinces of the Ro- 
 man empire, they treated the Christian clergy in many 
 instances just as Cyrus had treated the Magians. Their 
 own countrymen were visibly inferior in knowledge, 
 whilst the Roman clergy had long been respected and 
 loved by their people, and this influence might be made 
 useful to the authority of the new sovereign. It may 
 be said that here also there was an alliance between 
 Church and State, which has subsisted ever since in 
 virtue of this beginning. 
 
APPENDIX II. 191 
 
 Let us now observe the essential differences between 
 these two transactions, apparently so similar. In the 
 case of the Magians, as of the other priesthoods of an- 
 tiquity, they constituted by themselves the whole of the 
 religious society with which the conqueror allied him- 
 self; the people were never supposed to constitute a 
 part of it. Again, the chief religious office was sacri- 
 fice, which could not be performed acceptably to the 
 gods, unless by a priest ; and, therefore, as the priest- 
 hood was hereditary, there was an essential act of reli- 
 gion inseparably connected with the Magians, which 
 could be performed by none but themselves and their 
 posterity. They thus possessed an unalienable pro- 
 perty, so that it was worth the State's while to enter 
 into a perpetual alliance with them, because the bene- 
 fits derived from them were such as could at no future 
 time be enjoyed unless through their instrumentality. 
 
 But in the case of the Roman clergy, they were not 
 the Church, nor was any bargain formed with them for 
 their advancement in wealth or dignity entitled to be 
 called a covenant made with the Church. Nor, again, 
 did they possess any unalienable and peculiar power, 
 essential to the perfection of Christianity, so that their 
 services would at all future times be indispensable to 
 the State, and could be supplied from no other quarter. 
 Their knowledge, when once communicated, passed to 
 the disciple in all the perfection in which it was en- 
 joyed by the teacher, and the disciple could in the 
 same way impart it to others. In such cases the original 
 communicator of any knowledge may be remunerated 
 by a certain definite reward, or may be invested with 
 certain privileges for a limited term of years ; but the 
 State encroaches on the just sovereignty of future gene- 
 rations, if it confers a perpetual monopoly of any im- 
 portant office, which, after a lapse of years, may be 
 
192 APPENDIX 71. 
 
 filled as well b>' other citizens as by those who are thus 
 put in exclusive possession of it. 
 
 It will not be improper to observe that the clergy, as 
 if aware of this, laboured actually to represent them- 
 selves as standing in a position different from this real 
 one. Language was so far abused, that " the Church," 
 in common speech, was generally understood to mean 
 "the clergy;" the " honour and welfare of the Church" 
 meant no more than the " advancement and enrich- 
 ment of the clergy." They also called themselves 
 " piiests," and, consistently with the name, professed 
 that they were empowered and exclusively commis- 
 sioned to offer sacrifice for the people, and to forgive 
 their sins. And thus they tried to put themselves in 
 the place of the ancient hereditary priesthoods, and to 
 make iheir order, as distinguished from their know- 
 ledge, essential in all times alike to the perfect deve- 
 lopement of Christianity. 
 
 In short, all the arguments about the alliance of the 
 Church with the State, its inherent independence, &c., 
 &c., rest upon this supposition, — that the Church has 
 certain governors mialterably defined by God himself, 
 and that these governors possess certain inherent and 
 essential powers which can only be communicated 
 through their medium ; in short, that Christianity has 
 its priesthood, like other religions, invested with an in- 
 defeasible personal sacredness and authority. 
 
 The institutions, the writings, the practice, and the 
 language of Christian Europe, for several centuries, 
 have assumed this supposition to be true ; not that in 
 all cases it has been distinctly avowed, or even per- 
 ceived, for then its falsehood would long ago have been 
 detected ; but it has been implied, and tacitly taken for 
 granted. And yet never was there a notion more un- 
 supported by any shadow of reason or of authority ; 
 
APPENDIX IT. 193 
 
 never was there an error more deeply mischiev- 
 ous. 
 
 But here, as in other matters, this justice must be 
 done to the Roman CathoHcs, that they have at least 
 been consistent in their error. Their system is intelli- 
 gible and harmonious ; its symmetry is perfect, and its 
 reasonableness would be unanswerable, if it were based 
 upon a true foundation. It was reserved, not certainly 
 for the Church of England in its official acts, but for a 
 powerful party of its individual members, to exhibit a 
 far more melancholy proof of the perversity of the 
 human mind. For these persons, while maintaining 
 the erroneous conclusions of the Roman Catholics, 
 have at the same time denied the foundation from 
 which alone they could be legitimately derived ; be- 
 traying a mind not only unstartled by a false opinion, 
 but incapable of examining the reasons on which it 
 might claim to be received ; not only maintaining an 
 absurdity, but maintaining it in contradiction to prin- 
 ciples which itself avowed. 
 
 Before 1 enter, however, upon the question itself, 
 there is one distinction most important to a right un- 
 derstanding of ray argument, which I am anxious to 
 impress deeply on my readers' minds : I am con- 
 tending not against any office or institution in itself, 
 but against a foolish, presumptuous, and schismatical 
 claim set up by some of its weak or furious admirers. 
 I am very far from arguing against episcopal govern- 
 ment ; on the contrary, I have recorded my earnest 
 wish that it may ^ become more generally received, and 
 more effectually enforced. But 1 am arguing against 
 its being made an essential point in Christianity; — 
 against the manifold confusions and superstitions, and 
 
 ^ [ Principles of Church Reform. ] 
 
194 APPENDIX II. 
 
 insolent uncharitablenesses with which its cause has 
 been embarrassed ; against the mischiefs which threaten 
 the Church of England from the outcry set up about 
 the profanation of secular interference with sacred 
 things. I am maintaining the self-same argument 
 against the High Church superstition of the present 
 day, which Hooker upheld, in his time, against the 
 superstition of the Puritans, namely, the sovereignty of 
 the Christian State over all its subordinate offices, 
 whether ecclesiastical or civil. Or to appeal to a still 
 higher authority, the argument here insisted on, and 
 the calumnies to which it subjects its advocates, are 
 precisely similar to the course followed by St. Paul 
 with respect to the Jewish Law, and to the slanders 
 and malignity with which the Judaizing Christians, the 
 High Churchmen of those days, assailed him in conse- 
 quence of it. For while he himself " walked orderly 
 and kept the Law," while he even circumcised Timothy 
 in order to conciliate, as far as he honestly could, the 
 prejudices of the Jews, he was accused by the zealots 
 of " teaching all the Jews to forsake Moses, saying that 
 they ought not to circumcise their children, nor to keep 
 their customs." But the falsehood had this foundation 
 in truth, that St. Paul had struggled most earnestly 
 against the unchristian pretension, " that the Law of 
 Moses was an essential part of Christ's Gospel." It 
 was not only harmless, but becoming to the Jewish 
 Christians, so long as they observed it as a venerable 
 institution handed down to them from their forefathers ; 
 and formerly, under different circumstances, com- 
 manded by God himself. But it became injurious, 
 nay, subversive of the souls of men, when it was put 
 forward as necessary to salvation, and attempted, in the 
 spirit of fanaticism or worldly ambition, to be forced 
 upon the acceptance of all Christians. Nor could St. 
 
APPENDIX IT. 195 
 
 Paul forbear the language of the strongest condemna- 
 tion when these Judaizers attempted to shake the 
 lawful government of the Christian Church, because it 
 had interfered with their selfishness and superstition. 
 They disputed St. Paul's Apostleship as irregular, be- 
 cause he had not, like Matthias, received his appoint- 
 ment through the medium of the original Apostles of 
 Christ ; because, in defence of the essential liberty of 
 Christ's Gospel, he had resisted the highest human 
 authority, and reproved even Peter himself. Such is 
 ever the nature of superstition, — anarchical at once 
 and tyrannical ; virulent in proportion to its ignorance, 
 and lax in matters of principle consistently with its in- 
 tolerant strictness on points of form. Such is that 
 spirit which, incapable of comprehending the pure and 
 loving bond of Christian union, spares no pains and 
 scruples at no means to make proselytes to its own 
 paltry party ; and on which our Lord Himself, — who, in 
 true zeal for God's service, as in every thing else, is 
 alone our perfect pattern, — has pronounced one of His 
 heaviest sentences of condemnation. 
 
 First, then, let us see how much is implied in the 
 undeniable truth, that Christianity acknowledges no 
 earthly priesthood. People have no objection, at 
 least in Protestant countries, to allow this as a fact, 
 because they think that it means no more than that the 
 practice of offering sacrifices is done away. But the 
 particular rite of sacrifice seems to have been only an 
 accident of the priestly character, although it is the 
 best example of what was conceived essential to it. 
 The proper notion of a priest is of a mediator between 
 God and man, of one who, being purer and nearer to 
 the object of his worship than other men, is the only 
 medium through whom other men may communicate 
 with their God. The notion of " teaching religion" is 
 
 O 2 
 
196 APPENDIX II. 
 
 by no means a part of the priestly office, except so far as 
 regards the enforcing of an exact observance of external 
 rites. For he who teaches another religion in the higher 
 sense, teaches him how he may please God by himself; 
 whereas a priesthood supposes that a man cannot 
 please God by himself, but requires another man to 
 I3resent his prayers and his worship for him, because 
 he is himself unclean. Thus a priesthood implies an 
 abiding superiority of one man or set of men over 
 another in their relations to God ; such a superiority, 
 in fact, as argues a distinction of race ; and therefore 
 it was natural that no person of another race should be 
 thought capable of holding it without pollution. This 
 was the reason why it was so generally hereditary, and 
 a similar reason led to the establishment of the prin- 
 ciple of hereditary succession in the monarchies of anti- 
 quity ; the kings being supposed to belong to a nobler 
 and higher race than those over whom they ruled. 
 But where the monarchy was the creation of a later 
 age, and was connected with no heroic or divine 
 founder, as in the case of the Roman imperial govern- 
 ment, there the throne was not necessarily hereditary, 
 and could never be claimed simply by right of de- 
 scent^. 
 
 The priesthood amongst the Israelites, being there 
 
 " The monarchies of modern Europe became hereditary, not as offices, 
 but as property : the king's son succeeded to his father's kingdom as to an 
 estate, the possession of which involved, no doubt, certain duties towards 
 the tenants or vassals who lived on it, but was obtained by no rule of po- 
 litical fitness, simply on the notion of inheritance. This is particularly 
 shown in those countries where females are capable of succeeding to the 
 crown ; an exception to the universal rule in all other cases, if the royalty 
 had been looked upon as the highest magistracy in the State, but regular 
 and natural if it were regarded as an inheritance of property, which, like 
 other properties naturally invested its owner with jurisdiction over those 
 who lived on it. 
 
APPENDIX II. 197 
 
 ingrafted upon the true religion, presented undoubtedly 
 some peculiar features. There the priests were known 
 to be of the same origin with the rest of the people, 
 nor were they supposed to be morally superior to 
 them. But the Israelitish Rehgion required sacrifices, 
 and a priesthood, as typical of the great sacrifice to be 
 made by the true High Priest hereafter. Such pecu- 
 liarities, therefore, of the priestly character were to be 
 retained as should show that there was a real priest- 
 hood, according to the common notions entertained of 
 the term, and yet should not interfere with the moral 
 improvement of the people. A sort of ceremonial 
 purity was attached to the priest, and his sacrifices 
 were to procure an outward and ceremonial atone- 
 ment. Thus far the race of Aaron were set apart from 
 their brethren ; thus far they were more holy than other 
 men, and accordingly the priesthood was confined to 
 them exclusively. It may be observed, also, that the 
 constant succession of prophets, chosen from any tribe 
 or family without distinction, from the lowest classes, 
 as in the case of Amos, no less than the highest, and 
 invested with a power over the concerns of life far 
 greater * than that of the priests, was a continual inti- 
 mation that the instruction and improvement of the 
 people in the great end of religion, holiness of heart, 
 has no necessary connexion with an hereditary priest- 
 hood. 
 
 To return, however, to general history : as expe- 
 rience disproves the perpetual moral superiority of one 
 family or race over others ; nay, as it is found that a 
 race which carefully avoids all mixture with others, is, 
 from that very cause, apt to degenerate, so an order of 
 priests at first strictly hereditary might be inclined to 
 
 * [See Sermons, vol. vi. ; "The Disobedient Prophet."] 
 
198 APPENDIX 11. 
 
 rest their power, in the course of time, on a more real 
 superiority, by retaining to themselves the possession 
 of superior knowledge. For this end it would be de- 
 sirable to strengthen their body by the accession of 
 individuals of other races whose talents or dispositions 
 might make them useful auxiliaries, and who, being 
 trained in their discipline, became, in fact, the adopted 
 children of their race. Such was the system pursued 
 by the Druids; their order was frequently swelled by 
 the accession of young men who were not Druids by 
 birth, but who were brought up in their schools, and 
 admitted by them afterwards to shai*e their power and 
 privileges. But this was only a more effectual means 
 of securing the essence of a priesthood, a superiority 
 over the rest of the people. The Druids were very 
 careful in teaching those who were to become Druids 
 themselves, but they were as careful that the superior 
 knowledge of their order should not be communicated 
 to any who were without their pale ; and with this view 
 they made their instruction wholly verbal, no part 
 of their knowledge was committed to writing. There 
 was a reason, then, why they should constitute a dis- 
 tinct order, and why they alone should have the power 
 of appointing those who were to be admitted to it, 
 because by keeping their knowledge within their own 
 custody they insured to themselves a perpetual supe- 
 riority. 
 
 Thus there appears a perpetual connexion between 
 the notion of a priesthood and that of an order either 
 absolutely hereditary, or possessing the exclusive right 
 of appointing its own members. And this is further 
 confirmed by the fact, that the Christian clergy, while 
 they claimed the privileges of a priesthood, did, in fact, 
 endeavour to show that they possessed also the inhe- 
 rent superiority of a priesthood. They made their 
 
APPENDIX II. 199 
 
 order synonymous "" with the whole Church, as if, after 
 the example of the heathen priesthoods, none but them- 
 selves were fit members of a religious society ; they 
 pretended that Christianity still retained the rite 
 of sacrifice, which implied of necessity a priest to offer 
 it ; and in order to make their superiority real, they re- 
 cruited themselves from all races and ranks of men in- 
 discriminately, but were careful that the knowledge of 
 religion should be as much as possible confined to 
 themselves : and whereas this had been committed to 
 writing already, and the written document might not be 
 destroyed, still they trod in the steps of the Druids as 
 nearly as they could, by preventing the people from 
 getting access to it, and by setting up a vast mass of 
 oral traditions, said to have been handed down amongst 
 themselves, which they pretended were of equal au- 
 thority. 
 
 What has been thus far said will excite a strong pre- 
 sumption that the claims of the Christian clergy to exist 
 as a distinct order, with the exclusive right of admitting 
 new members to their own body, and with powers and 
 privileges not derived from any human law, have been 
 grounded on the mistaken notion of their being a priest- 
 hood ; because such claims do flow naturally from the 
 essential notion of a priesthood, and have not been com- 
 monly made or allowed in other cases where no such 
 notion has existed. It is very true that those Protest- 
 ants of the Church of England, who, whilst allowing 
 that they ai'e not priests, wish to claim the privileges of 
 a priesthood, are obliged to rest their claim upon a dif- 
 ferent ground ; but assertions made and admitted in 
 the first instance upon grounds which will not bear in- 
 quiry, are often defended afterwards upon other princi- 
 
 a [See Appendix I. to Sermons, vol. iii. ] 
 
200 APPENDIX II. 
 
 pies ; principles too inconclusive to have ever established 
 the conclusion originally, but which are fitted for the 
 far easier office of inducing men to remain in that con- 
 clusion, when their habits and institutions have already 
 been foraied upon it. These afterthoughts, it must be 
 confessed, are very apt to betray the urgent necessity 
 which drove men to have recourse to them ; they are 
 arguments which none would ever have employed if 
 they could have helped it. The ground then assumed 
 by these Protestants who wish to keep the conclusions 
 of the Roman Catholics after they have denied their 
 premises, seems to be this, so far as it is possible to un- 
 derstand it — that the clergy derive their power by suc- 
 cession from the Apostles, and that they havmg the ex- 
 clusive right of administering the Sacraments, and the 
 Sacraments being essential to Christianity, so a clergy, 
 as it is called, of pure apostolical descent, can never be 
 dispensed with in the Christian Church, and that where 
 there is no such clergy, then there is no part of 
 Christ's Church. 
 
 I must again remind the reader that the question in no 
 degree turns upon the propriety or impropriety of the 
 clergy possessing such and such powers, but simply 
 upon the tenure by which they hold them. Nothing 
 can be more proper than that the Sacraments should 
 be administered by a regularly appointed ministry ; no- 
 thing less to be desired than any alteration of the or- 
 dinances of the Church of England in these points. 
 But are these ministers the officers of the Church, and 
 appointed by its supreme government, or are they not 
 its officers but its priests, and deriving their appoint- 
 ment, not from it nor its sanction, but from the purity 
 of their spiritual descent } The question is evidently 
 most important, inasmuch as it touches the question, 
 whether the Church is or is not sovereign over all its 
 
APPENDIX II. 201 
 
 members, or whether there are some who are not its 
 members, but its hereditary masters. 
 
 When it is said that the clergy " derive their au- 
 thority from their apostoUcal descent," I should like to 
 know what is meant by the words. Is it meant that 
 this apostolical descent conveys to them any real in- 
 trinsic gift, moral or intellectual, so that they may claim 
 the power of priests, because they possess a real supe- 
 riority over other men, or a higher degree of know- 
 ledge ? Or is it meant that they are not a priesthood 
 but an oligarchy, and that the Apostles fixed invariably 
 the form of the government of the Church throughout 
 all ages, without giving it withal any portion of that 
 real virtue, which can alone render forms other than 
 essentially^ indifferent and changeable ? Was the ob- 
 ject, in short, of this supposed apostolical institution 
 spu'itual or political ? 
 
 Again, when " the authority of the clergy " is spoken 
 of, is it meant that this authority is absolute, or where 
 is the power of limiting it ? It is intelligible enough 
 certainly, if the position maintained is this, — that the 
 bishops as supreme, and the other clergy as their su- 
 bordinate officers, have sovereign power over the Chris- 
 tian Church in all ages, independent of any human law : 
 that they may alone fill up the vacancies in their own 
 body, or may increase and diminish its numbers at 
 their pleasure ; that they may legislate for the Church 
 as to doctrine, morals, and ritual, and punish disobe- 
 dience to their laws by excommunication ; that as no 
 society can exist without something of a public purse 
 or revenue, they may determine the amount of this 
 revenue and the manner of its application : and, finally, 
 that if they abuse their power the Church is without 
 
 ^ [See "The Christian Duty of Conceding the Roman Catholic 
 Claims."] 
 
202 APPENDIX II. 
 
 remedy, as they are araenable to none but God for its 
 exercise. This is intelligible, but I much doubt whether 
 any one will be found hardy enough to assert it. But 
 if the authority of the bishops and clergy be limited, 
 where are we to fmd its limits : are they fixed or vari- 
 able ? and who has the power of enforcing them ? If 
 the Church has a constitution, where are we to look 
 for its provisions } Was it given complete at once by 
 Divine authority, or has it been the gradual work of 
 the Church itself in different ages, and therefore alter- 
 able by the same authority which enacted it ? Or if 
 partly divine and partly human, how are we to distin- 
 guish exactly between the one and the other ? Above 
 all, where is the sovereignty of the Church vested ? 
 that supreme power which must exist somewhere in 
 every society, and by which all the concerns of the so- 
 ciety are in the last resort regulated } 
 
 It would be well if those persons who venture to talic 
 of the legislature committing "a dangerous infringe- 
 ment on the rights of the Church by remodelling the 
 dioceses of Ireland" would attempt to answer these 
 questions, and to show that they have some little un- 
 derstanding of matters of law and government, before 
 they allow themselves to use language which is little 
 less than seditious. Is it Christian conduct to endea- 
 vour to excite weak though well-meaning persons 
 against the supreme government of their country, by 
 repeating to them a string of idle phrases about aposto- 
 lical succession, without any definite notion of the 
 meaning of the very words which they are echoing } 
 One writer % who, it seems, is very anxious to circulate 
 
 * [This and much of the argument in connexion with it, has reference 
 to the temporary controversy with the Oxford Tracts for the Times, espe- 
 cially No. 7 of Ihe series, published October 29, 1833. See Introd. to 
 Serm. vol. iv. p. 19.] 
 
APPENDIX II. 203 
 
 his instructions as widely as possible, talks of our pre- 
 sent bishops being "the heirs and representatives of 
 the Apostles," and of having " the gifts of ruling and 
 ordaining, of teaching, of binding and loosing." It is 
 the most painful circumstance attending such foolish 
 writing' about the most sacred subjects, that, whilst put- 
 ting it down as it deserves, we may be exposed to the 
 charge of irreverence towards the high and holy things 
 themselves which it has dared to profane. But is it 
 the way to give any definite notion of the extent and 
 dignity of the episcopal office in the Church of Eng- 
 land, to say that the bishops are " the heirs and repre- 
 sentatives of the Apostles .'*" Heirs and representa- 
 tives to what, and in what ? Does it mean heirs of 
 their power, — so that the bishops may and can do all 
 that the Apostles did ? Or if it means " heirs of a 
 portion of their power," — will the writer tell us of what 
 and of how large a portion, and by what authority it 
 was or is defined ? Again, *' representatives of the 
 Apostles " in what ? Does he mean in all points } or if 
 not, will he specify in what } The bishops have " the 
 gifts of ruling and ordaining, of teaching, of binding, and 
 loosing." Does he mean that they are authorized to 
 exercise these functions, or qualified to exercise them 
 well ? The gifts of the Holy Spirit, spoken of in the 
 Scripture, are certain enlargements of men's natural 
 powers in order to enable them to do their several 
 works in the Church more effectually : thus, the " gift 
 of teaching" would signify "the gift of such knowledge 
 and such powers of communicating it, as would make a 
 man a good teacher." Does he mean that all our 
 clergy possess such a gift of teaching ? or, if by " the 
 gift of ruling" he means only "authority to rule," then 
 what is meant by the term " ruling" ? Is it absolute 
 rule, or limited } and if limited, how far and by what 
 
204 APPENDIX II. 
 
 authority ? Again, with respect to " the gift of binding 
 and loosing." Does he mean that the bishops can for- 
 give sins or refuse forgiveness ? that they can declare 
 with God's authority what things are lawful to be done 
 by Christians, and what are unlawful } These are the 
 two senses in which the terms " binding and loosing" are 
 to be understood, where they occur in the Scriptures ; 
 and in both of these the Apostles had power to bind and 
 to loose. Is it in these senses, or in either of them, 
 that the terms are to be understood when applied to 
 our present bishops ? 
 
 I have said that superstition is anarchical ; and the 
 language of the writer whom I have been quoting is a 
 good example of this. He seems to think that if it 
 were not for what he calls their apostolical succession, 
 the clergy would have no authority to speak to the 
 people in the name of Christ. Has the king no au- 
 thority to rule ; nay, does he not most truly rule by a 
 divine right, because he derives his power from the 
 law ? So every man appointed by the law to minister 
 in the Church, ministers by divine authority ; the voice 
 of the law is as the voice of God. Not that the law 
 could make a man a. priest, that is, it could neither give 
 him superior purity nor superior knowledge, it could 
 communicate no inherent personal virtue. But the law 
 can make a ?mnister, that is, can qualify a man legally 
 to exercise those functions which naturally and per- 
 sonally any other member of the Church may be equally 
 fitted to discharge ; for it should be always remembered 
 that the knowledge required for the ministerial office 
 has been entrusted not to any one peculiar order of 
 men, but to the whole Church ; the minister takes of 
 the knowledge thus committed to the society of be- 
 lievers, and communicates it to such individual be- 
 lievers as may stand in need of it ; but with respect to 
 
APPENDIX II. 205 
 
 the Church at large he is not a teacher, but a minister — 
 he can tell the church nothing more than it knows 
 already — he is in possession of no mystery or secret of 
 godliness which has not been imparted long .since to all 
 believers ; and, therefore, the law of the Church may 
 fiily appoint him to his ministerial office, and remove 
 him from it ; just as the law of the state in any heathen 
 country may appoint its magistrates, its generals, or its 
 professors of science and philosophy, because all these, 
 though by possibility superior in the knowledge of their 
 respective callings to every other individual in the state, 
 have 3'et only availed themselves of that which lay 
 equally open to other men, and which the state, there- 
 fore, considered in the abstract, may be considered to 
 possess as well as they. 
 
 Let us here observe again the consistency and sagacity 
 of the Roman Catholics in adapting their several doc- 
 trines to one another. Their notion of apostolical suc- 
 cession is accompanied by their belief in apostolical 
 tradition. Thus according to them there is a know- 
 ledge entrusted to the successors of the apostles, which 
 is not accessible but through their medium ; the written 
 word of God is not complete without the addition of 
 the unwritten. The Roman Catholics then may call 
 their ministry a priesthood without inconsistency, be- 
 cause they maintain that it was made the exclusive 
 depository of a part of the knowledge of God's will. 
 
 But the fundamental truth of Protestantism, that 
 God's revealed will is known to us only through the 
 Scriptures, deprives the Protestant supporters of apos- 
 tolical succession of the best justification of their be- 
 lief. Shut out then from this reasonable argument, 
 their resource, like that of some pretended philosophers 
 of old, is in obscurity, and in assertions which relating 
 to matters without the range of human knowledge, can 
 
20G APPENDIX IT. 
 
 neither be proved nor disproved. For when ihey say- 
 that the efficacy of the sacraments depends on the 
 apostolical descent of those who administer them, the 
 subject being altogether beyond our understanding, we 
 cannot positively say that the assertion is false, but we 
 are sure that it is most presumptuous, inasmuch as 
 there are no grounds whatever for believing it to be 
 true. It is just such another assertion as the Romish 
 doctrine of Transubstantiation ; which is not, as many 
 suppose, a mere absurdity, but a statement about 
 matters wholly incomprehensible ; for when it is said 
 that all which we know of bread is still left in the con- 
 secrated wafer, that is, its appearance, taste, smell, &c., 
 but that the substance of bread is gone, and is succeeded 
 by another substance, of which no faculty either of our 
 body or mind can take cognizance ; such a doctrine is 
 not so certainly false in itself, as it implies the fondest 
 presumption and folly in those who gratuitously main- 
 tain it. So with regard to the virtue of Christ's ordin- 
 ance depending on the apostolical descent of its minis- 
 ters, we can certainly say that such a doctrine has 
 not been taught us by Christ or His Apostles ; that it is 
 inconsistent with the character of Christ's gospel, and 
 gives occasion to many superstitions ; and that as we 
 have no reason whatever for believing it to be true, so 
 its practical evil tendency justifies us in acting with re- 
 gard to it as if it were certainly false. 
 
 Let not this fantastical and superstitious notion be 
 confounded with the reasonable and reverent ordinance 
 of the Church of England, that the sacraments should 
 be generally administered by none but her appointed 
 ministers. As a matter of order, propriety, and so- 
 lemnity, nothing can be determined more wisely ; but 
 the whole question at issue is, whether these ministers 
 have any authority or any inherent qualification for the 
 
APPENDIX II. 207 
 
 administration of the sacraments independently of her 
 appointment. In other words, whether the nonjuring 
 clergy after their deprivation had any spiritual qualifi- 
 cation to act as ministers ; whether they did not be- 
 come laymen by divine law as well as by the law of the 
 land, until some particular Church or congregation of 
 Christians should have again called them to the minis- 
 try. And, on the other hand, supposing the story of 
 the Nag's Head Consecration of Archbishop Parker to 
 have been true, whether he would not have been as 
 truly an archbishop by divine right, and a genuine suc- 
 cessor of the apostles, so far as any Christian minister 
 can now be so, by virtue of his appointment from the 
 supreme government of this Church of England. 
 
 Hitherto I have treated the question on general 
 grounds. 1 have shown that as the Christian ministry 
 are not a priesthood, as they neither possess nor can 
 transmit any personal superiority, whether of holiness 
 or of knowledge, there can be conceived no reason why 
 they should constitute an exception to the general rule 
 of all society ; that the form of its government is fixed 
 by law, a law in its origin framed by man, but becom- 
 ing in its power of requiring obedience the law of 
 God, because God in such matters, having given no 
 express ordinance of his own by revelation, has 
 vouchsafed his sanction to the ordinances of society, 
 to prevent the mischiefs of individual lawlessness. 
 Now the weakness of superstition has in this matter 
 always served the cause of licentious wickedness. For 
 it being its nature always to " desire a sign," to look 
 for God in the whirlwind or in the earthquake or in the 
 fire, it is slow to recognise the still small voice of His 
 providence or of His Spirit ; it complains, therefore, of 
 the insufficient authority of law, and refuses its obedience 
 to it, professing to follow an immediate direction from 
 
208 APPENDIX II. 
 
 heaven. And wickedness, seeing it thus busied in un- 
 dermining what is really of Divine authority, cares 
 little for the phantom which it would introduce in its 
 room ; well knowing that such phantoms never hinder 
 its own success, but most times greatly further it, by 
 furnishing the better part of human nature with that 
 which cannot nourish or strengthen it, yet by its fair 
 show prevents it from seeking the true bread of life 
 elsewhere, and so leaving the evil unchecked to take its 
 own course, and to work greedily all manner of iniquity, 
 and of uncleanness, and of uncharitableness, and of un- 
 godliness. 
 
 This general view of the nature of law and govern- 
 ment is also essential towards a right understanding of 
 those particular texts of Scripture to which an appeal 
 has so often been made by the disputants on both sides 
 of the question. And the High Churchmen of the 
 present day, like the Puritan antagonists of Hooker, 
 disregarding such general views altogether, are not 
 aw^are of the difficulties, inconsistencies, and extrava- 
 gances into which their interpretation of these texts in- 
 volves them ; nor are they less misled by their ignorance 
 of the true way of applying the lessons of history. They 
 appeal to the practice of the early Christian Churches as 
 confirming their view of the divine authority of Episco- 
 pacy ; whereas, even admitting the decisions of the early 
 Christians to be our standard, their practice could but 
 show the lawfulness of Episcopacy, not its indis- 
 pensable necessity. Till the growth of the Italian re- 
 publics, in the middle ages. Christians had, with hardly 
 a single exception, lived from the beginning of the 
 Gospel under monarchical governments. Is this an 
 argument that no other form is consistent with Christi- 
 anity? And it is worth observing, that the zealots for 
 monarchy in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 
 
APPENDIX II. 209 
 
 did plead its great antiquity and its universality in the 
 earliest period of history, as reasons for preferring it to 
 all other forms. History, according to the well-known 
 saying, is philosophy teaching by examples ; but the 
 apparent easiness of such a manner of teaching has 
 hindered men from profiting by it. They appeal to 
 examples before they understand on what the force of 
 an example depends. Now as much of the most im- 
 portant part of history has been neglected by common 
 historians, the knowledge of the accompanying circum- 
 stances under which any institution existed is not to 
 be obtained without some research, and some power of 
 historical divination ; that is, a power of fdling up the 
 fragments of direct information, which are often all that 
 we can obtain ; just as Cuvier's profound knowledge of 
 comparative anatomy enabled him to divine the whole 
 structure and habits of an extinct species of animals 
 from the study of a single bone of any individual of it. 
 Thus the simple fact of the existence of Episcopacy 
 amongst the early Christians is pleaded as an example 
 for Christians now, whereas it is, in fact, no example 
 at all ; first, because it remains to be proved whether 
 so much of the institution as it is proposed to perpe- 
 tuate was its essence, or only an accidental adjunct; 
 secondly, because the circumstances of the two cases 
 are different, and there are reasons why Episcopacy 
 should have been universally adopted, de facto, then, 
 which by no means prove that it must be adopted, de 
 jare^ now and for ever. 
 
 I now propose to examine what support or coun- 
 tenance is given by the Scriptures to the positions of 
 the English High Churchmen, namely, that the Church 
 ought always, and in all countries, to be governed by 
 bishops, priests, and deacons ; that these ministers 
 derive their authority from their apostolical descent; 
 
 P 
 
210 APPENDIX II. 
 
 that of these, bishops only may ordain otlier ministers', 
 and bishops and priests may alone administer both the 
 Sacraments ; that where this succession is duly kept 
 up, there the Church retains its identity, and is a true 
 Church ; where it is interrupted or neglected, there the 
 Church loses its title to the name ; and that without 
 the concurrence of the successors of the Apostles, or 
 the majority of them, no alteration can lawfully be 
 made, either in Church discipline or doctrine. Let it 
 be once again repeated, that the question is not about 
 the lawfulness or expediency in any particular case of 
 a system such as is here supposed, but about its neces- 
 sity ; not whether Episcoj^acy be the best form of 
 government which any Church can establish, but 
 whether it be unlawful to establish any other ; and 
 whether its powers have been so clearly defined by 
 Christ and his Apostles as to leave the Church no 
 right of interference to modify or to limit them. 
 
 First, it is, I think, undeniable, that the general 
 tone of the New Testament strongly discountenances 
 the notion of an inherent purity, or knowledge, or au- 
 thority, existing in any one order of the Christian 
 Church, as distinguished from the rest. Nothing can 
 be more adverse to the claims of a priesthood than our 
 Lord's charge to His disciples, — " Be not ye called 
 Rabbi, for one is your master, even Christ ; and all ye 
 are brethren." (Matt, xxiii. 8.) The obvious meaning 
 of these words, especially when taken with the context, 
 is to condemn the pretension of any Christian to teach 
 his brethren with authority. He might teach them so 
 far as his understanding or knowledge were superior to 
 theirs, but no further. And to the same purpose are 
 the words of Jeremiah, especially quoted in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, (viii. 11,) as characterizing the Chris- 
 tian dispensation, — " And they shall not teach every 
 
APPENDIX II. 211 
 
 man h\s iieii»]ibour aiul every man liis brother, saving-, 
 Know the Lord : for all shall know me from the 
 least to the greatest." it seems to me that this jjassage 
 shows that an order of men set apart to teacli their 
 brethren is no essential and eternal ]5art of the plan 
 of Christianity'. A ministry varying in its consti- 
 tution and powers according to the wants of the 
 Church, at various periods, is only a help towards the 
 attainment of this perfect state; but a priesthood trans- 
 mitted by succession, and endowed with powers inde- 
 feasible, would imply that no such state was to be 
 aimed at; that it was a part of the original design 
 of the Christian Religion, no less than that of Moses, 
 that man should never draw near to God but through 
 the mediation or assistance of another man. Again, 
 the story of the man (Mark ix. 38, Luke ix. 49.) 
 who cast out devils in Christ's name, but was not 
 one of His company, speaks as strongly as any thing 
 can speak, against insisting on the necessity of any 
 point of outward form. The language of the disciples, 
 " Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name, 
 and we forbade him, because he followeth not wilh us," 
 has been repeated over and over again in later times, by 
 Christians of various denominations, all alike insisting on 
 their neighbour's agreeing with them, not only in spirit, 
 but in form ; whereas Christ's answer blames them for in- 
 sisting on such matters, as being in their nature wholly 
 indifferent: and if He did not require that all should 
 follow even Himself in outward society ,which of His dis- 
 ciples shall dare to say that conformity with them in 
 pointsof external arrangement is a thing indisjiensable ? 
 These passages, I allow, show merely the general 
 spirit of Christianity, and of course it would be absurd 
 to argue from them that no individual should submit 
 to another's teaching, or that individuals may despise 
 
 P 2 
 
212 APPENDIX II. 
 
 and disobey all the regulations of the society to which 
 they belong, if they relate only to points of form. But 
 spealiing in the mass, tliey do seem to prove that the 
 Church of Christ is not to be subjected to the authori- 
 tative teaching of any of its members, nor to be tied to 
 one model of outward organization. To the same pur- 
 j)ose also may be quoted our Lord's directions, as to 
 the course which His disciples were to follow in the 
 case of their private quarrels. The command in the 
 last resort is, " Tell it to the Church, and if he neglect 
 to hear the Church, let him be unto thee as an heathen 
 man and a publican." The Roman Catholics have cut 
 the knot boldly, and say, that " tell it to the Church " 
 means " tell it to the Clergy." It may mean the clergy, 
 wherever the Church has conferred on them the su- 
 preme government ; but the very use of the general 
 word " Church " seems to show that the society of 
 Christians at large, and not any one order of men 
 amongst them, has the power of determining in every 
 particular age and country whom in practice it is to 
 mean, that is to say, what is to constitute the supreme 
 power in the Church, so that disobedience to it is 
 disobedience to the Church itself, and justly involves 
 exclusion from its communion. 
 
 It would have been impossible to suppose, had not 
 experience proved it, that any one could have drawn 
 an argument for the divine right of Episcopacy from 
 our Lord's last charge to His disciples, as recorded by 
 St. Matthew. " And Jesus came and spake unto them, 
 saying, All power is given unto me in heaven and in 
 earth, go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptiz- 
 ing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, 
 and of the Holy Ghost, teaching them to observe all 
 things whatsoever I have commanded you ; and lo, I 
 am with you always, even unto the end of the world." 
 
APPENDIX II. 213 
 
 One would have thought that a charge so solemn and 
 a promise so comforting might have escaped the pro- 
 fanation of sectarian folly. " In one sense," says the 
 writer, whose comment I allude to, " the Apostles 
 were to be alive till He came again ; but they all 
 died at the natural time. Does it not follow that 
 there are those now alive who represent them .? Now 
 who were the most probable representatives of them in 
 the generation next their death ? They surely whom 
 they have ordained to succeed them in the ministerial 
 work. If any persons could be said to have Christ's 
 power and presence, and the gifts of ruling and ordain- 
 ing, of teaching, of binding and loosing, (and, com- 
 paring together the various Scriptures on the subject, 
 all these seem included in his promise to be with the 
 Church always,) surely those on whom the apostles 
 laid their hands were they. And so in the next age, 
 if any were representatives of the first representatives, 
 they must be the next generation of bishops, and so on. 
 Nor does it materially alter the argument, though we 
 suppose the blessing upon ministerial offices made, not 
 to the Apostles, but to the whole body of disciples, i. e. 
 the Church. For even if it be the Church that has the 
 power of ordination committed to it, still it exercises it 
 through the bishops as its organs ; and the question 
 recurs, how has the presbytery in this or that country 
 obtained the power." I quote the passage at length 
 to show the sort of interpretation and of argument to 
 which those are driven who cling to the conclusions of 
 the Roman Catholics, without retaining the arguments 
 by which the Roman Catholics consistently maintain 
 them. A part of this passage I have already noticed 
 before ; now let us consider the general drift of it. 
 The words " I am with you always," refer to the 
 Apostles. For a moment admit that they do, and what 
 
214 APPENDIX IL 
 
 follows ? " There are some now alive who represent 
 ibem/' Certainly, so far as to be able to apply to 
 themselves in some substantial sense the promise origi- 
 nally made to the Apostles. "And these in the next ge- 
 neration were the persons whom the Apostles ordained." 
 Undoubtedly they might have their interest in Christ's 
 promise, but already in a difi'erent sense of the words ; 
 for although in many instances, perhaps in all, they 
 had received from the Apostles the " gifts of the Holy 
 Ghost" themselves, i. e. the gift of tongues, or of pro- 
 phesying and preaching, or of healing, or of working 
 miracles generally, or of knowledge, or of discerning 
 of spirits, (See 1 Corinth, xii. 8-10, '29-SO,) yet they 
 had not the power of transmitting these gifts, (Acts 
 viii. 14-17, compare Romans, i. 11,) and therefore the 
 power of Christ was already with them in less measure. 
 *^ And so in the next age, the representatives must be 
 the next generation of bishops, and so on." In the 
 next age the bishops would not only have lost the 
 power of transmitting the gifts of the Holy Ghost, 
 but they would be without them in their own persons : 
 that extraordinary power of Christ's Spirit, which had 
 been the fit warrant for the extraordinary authority 
 enjoyed by the Apostles, and in a less degree by those 
 on whom they had laid their hands, was now with- 
 drawn, and the claim to extraordinary authority in- 
 evitably died with it. From that moment the ordinary 
 principles of all government resumed their exercise; 
 and there being no individuals in the Church whom 
 Christ by His Spirit had Himself in a manner marked 
 out for the ministry, giving them gifts which man could 
 not give, the Church, as a matter of course, became 
 entitled to appoint them herself, because the promises 
 of Christ had now all centered in her, and her gifts 
 were greater than those of her individual members. 
 
APPENDIX II. 215 
 
 Thus the bishops in the third generation from the 
 Apostles were in one sense their successors, as being 
 the chief persons in the Church now, as the Apostles 
 had been in their time ; but their power was infinitely 
 diminished, and the tenure by which they held it was 
 necessarily different. *' Christ was with them " still, 
 but no longer in the same manner. He was with them 
 as members of His body, He was with them as labouring 
 in His service, and doing His work. And the more so- 
 lemn and important the work to which they had been 
 appointed, so might they hope for a larger portion of 
 His Spirit if they duly prayed for it, and were watchful. 
 The power which remained with them was of two kinds, 
 legal and moral ; as ministers they might exercise such 
 outward power as the law of Christ's Church gave them ; 
 and both as ministers and as men, their work would be 
 blessed to God's glory and the salvation of their brethren 
 in proportion to the measure vouchsafed them of the 
 spirit of holiness or the spirit of wisdom. And so we 
 doubt not that all faithful ministers of Christ's Church 
 lawfully appointed to their ministry by those who have 
 authority given them in their several congregations, 
 will have "Christ" truly "with them, even unto the 
 end of the world." 
 
 It shows how little the writer whom I am noticing is 
 qualified to write upon such matters, when he says that 
 *' it would not materially alter the argument," though 
 we suppose Christ's words to have been spoken not to 
 the Apostles, but to the Church in general. According 
 to his notion of the sense of the words as spoken to the 
 Apostles, it would make the whole difference between a 
 superstitious error and an important truth. For the ques- 
 tion is, whether the Church has the power of ordination 
 committed to it, to be vested in what hands she pleases, 
 or whether one particular set of men hold it independ- 
 ent of the Church. Bishops ordaining as " the organs 
 
216 APPENDIX II. 
 
 of the Church" constitute, as I believe, a Church Go- 
 vernment most true in theory and most excellent in 
 practice. Bishops ordaining in right of their apostolical 
 descent, without reference to the authority of the Church, 
 constitute a lame and inconsistent Popery, false in 
 theory, and in practice inefficient. 
 
 In truth, however, it seems a narrow interpretation of 
 Christ''s promise either to understand it as addressed 
 especially to the Apostles, or as having reference to the 
 authority of Church government. It appears to be the 
 general blessing given to that Universal Church, which, 
 in the words immediately preceding, our Lord had con- 
 templated as the fruit of His Apostles' labours. It was 
 surely that great multitude whom no man could num- 
 ber, brought into the kingdom of God out of every race 
 and language, baptized into the name and service of 
 God, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, and 
 walking in the ordinances of Christ their risen Lord, 
 with whom Christ promised by His Spirit eternally to 
 abide. And to limit this promise to the right of ordain- 
 ing or ministering in the congregation, or to talk of it 
 as addressed " to the episcopal body thus created, which 
 is to last for ever," is like the profaneness which under- 
 stood by the Church *' against which the gates of hell 
 should not prevail," '' the Church acknowledging the 
 authority of the successor of St. Peter," or which limits 
 its meaning now, to " the Church which preserves the 
 true apostolical succession of episcopacy." 
 
 Great stress has been laid on the following words 
 from St. Paul in his second epistle to Timothy, ii. 2. 
 " The things that thou hast heard of me among many wit- 
 nesses, the same commit thou to faithful men who shall 
 be able to teach others also." Let us consider the cir- 
 cumstances under which these words were written. In 
 Ephesus and its neighbourhood, as in other places, there 
 were growing up the most fearful corruptions of Christ- 
 
APPENDIX II. 217 
 
 ianity, partly in the form of superstition, partly in that 
 of licentiousness, and partly of the two combined. The 
 consequence was that, as St. Paul declares, " all those 
 who were in Asia" (the Roman province so called) " were 
 turned away from him." He therefore urges Timothy 
 not only to exert himself vigorously to check all this 
 evil, but to provide others, on whom he could depend, 
 to assist him in the work. The teachers of error were 
 busy ; it became Timothy to oppose them by appointing 
 teachers who would love and enforce the truth. This 
 was the more necessary, inasmuch as it is probable that 
 some of the elders of the Church of Ephesus^ were 
 themselves amongst the teachers of error, which would 
 of itself be a reason why vSt. Paul should address him- 
 self particularly to Timothy and invest him with espe- 
 cial authority. We are not to suppose that in the first 
 century of the Christian era all Christians acknowledged 
 the authority of the Apostles, as it is universally recog- 
 nised now. Humanly speaking, it was a struggle 
 whether we should have Christianity, or whether Pa- 
 ganism was only to be supplanted by systems equally 
 false and mischievous. How naturally in such a con- 
 test would the Apostles be anxious that those whom 
 they ordained should themselves ordain others, to secure 
 if possible, a succession of ministers who should retain 
 the truth of the Gospel amidst the monstrous heresies 
 which threatened to overwhelm it. And to any one who 
 reads Clement's Epistle to the Corinthians attentively, it 
 is evident that this is the cause of his insisting so earn- 
 estly on the apostolical succession of the Bishop of 
 Corinth. It was to secure true and apostolical Christ- 
 ianity, by putting in the supreme government of the 
 Church such men only as could be fully depended on 
 
 • [Acts XX. 30.] 
 
218 APPENDIX II. 
 
 for their attachmeDt to the apostolical doctrine, and 
 their knowledge of what that doctrine was. But this, 
 which for one generation was a wise and most useful 
 expedient, lost in the course of years both its necessity 
 and its efficacy. Those who had lived with the Apostles 
 might represent their principles faithfully in the main, 
 however mixed with some errors of their own ; but the 
 disciples of these disciples of the Apostles retained the 
 impression much more faintly and incorrectly, and in 
 every succeeding age the security would be less and 
 less, till at length it would vanish altogether. On the 
 other hand, it was mercifully ordered by God's provi- 
 dence, that as the personal and traditionary memory of 
 the apostolical doctrine wore out or became corrupted, 
 so all who called themselves Christians came to acknow- 
 ledge the authority of the Apostles, and to refer to their 
 written memorials as to a certain standard of divine 
 truth. Thus on the one side the Scriptures became 
 universally allowed as an authority, while on the other 
 the possibility of preserving Christian doctrine uncor- 
 rupted by mere personal recollection or tradition be- 
 came continually more hopeless. The apostolical suc- 
 cession, most essential so long as it was confined to the 
 period when the Apostles were personally remembered, 
 and when another ministry not acknowledging the apos- 
 tolical authority was striving for ascendancy in the 
 Church of Christ, became an unmeaning name, so soon 
 as they who called themselves the Apostles' successors 
 had no better means of knowing their intentions and 
 principles, and no greater inclination to follow them 
 when known, than the general body of Christian be- 
 lievers. The paramount and exclusive authority of the 
 New Testament, which would endure throughout all 
 ages, came happily in the place of an authority of tra- 
 dition, whose nature was essentially perishable. So that 
 
APPENDIX II. 219 
 
 here, as in so many other instances, what was begun in 
 most needful wisdom was continued out of habit, and 
 perpetuated out of folly or fraud. The apostolical suc- 
 cession, which in the days of Clement of Rome was a 
 most beneficial reality, was in the time of Cyprian be- 
 come a phantom, and from that time onwards sunk more 
 and more into a fond and pernicious superstition. 
 
 Be it again remembered, that the superstition consists 
 not in giving the preference to an episcopal govern- 
 ment, nor in feeling delight in the associations of anti- 
 quity with which it is connected; — but in insisting 
 upon it as necessary', and in supposing that what is 
 called apostolical succession is a transmission of any of 
 the extraordinary gifts enjoyed by the Apostles. I'his 
 is a superstition, and has the true character of all su- 
 perstition, presumption, uncharitableness, and practical 
 uselessness. Nothing is more ennobling, when rightly 
 taken, than to be descended from an illustrious ancestry ; 
 but when men consider their nobiUty to be in itself a 
 virtue, and that they inherit the merits of their fore- 
 fathers by the mere circumstance of being born of their 
 race, then what was elevating and improving becomes 
 at once foolish and mischievous. 
 
 ****** 
 
APPENDIX III. 
 
 LETTER I. 
 
 TO CHEVALIEE BUNSEN. 
 
 [This is tbe first and only letter of a series, commenced apparently in 
 1839-40, about the same time as the Fragment at the beginning of this 
 volume. See Letters to Mr. Marshall and Archdeacon Hare, January 
 and October, 1840. (Life and Correspondence, 4th Ed. vol. ii. pp. 190. 
 233. ) Although in substance the same as the preceding Fragments, yet 
 it seemed not out of place here, as containing a brief summary of the 
 Author's whole view of the subject.] 
 
 MY DEAR FRIEND, 
 
 I ADDRESS these letters to you, not only because the 
 subject of them is one in which we both feel so deep 
 an interest, and which we have so often discussed to- 
 gether both in conversation and in our letters, but also 
 because your name will serve as an assurance to many 
 that they need not fear to read what I have written ; — 
 and still more, because the thought of addressing you 
 will at once animate me and make me careful whilst I 
 am pursuing my work ; — it will animate me, because I 
 know that there will be much in it in which you will 
 heartily sympathize ; — it will make me careful, because 
 there are some points on which we differ, and wherever 
 this is the case, I well know that nothing but the full- 
 
APPENDIX III. 221 
 
 est inquiry and most earnest thought would justify me 
 in maintaining an opinion in opposition to yours. 
 
 Let me say at once, that in the ibllowing letters my 
 endeavour will be to arrive at the perfect theory or idea 
 of Church and State, such as they may one day be 
 actually, and such as we should earnestly desire to see 
 them. But it may be that they never can be such uni- 
 versally, and that within no definite period will they be 
 perfectly such anywhere. Still if we have got the 
 true and perfect model, our attempts to copy it may 
 approach at last infinitely near to it ; and even now, in 
 our own lifetime, some results may be obtained, if 
 men begin to work steadily in the right direction, in- 
 stead of doing nothing, or moving at hap-hazard, or 
 going deliberately wrong. 
 
 The philosophers of the ancient world, seeing the 
 perverse state of things around them, delighted in con- 
 ceiving the theory of a perfect commonwealth, — not in 
 the fond hope of seeing it at once or entirely reduced 
 to practice ; but because .they knew that law and go- 
 vernment were according to their nature the mightiest 
 instruments for the improvement of mankind ; and yet, 
 according to their actual state, were most opposed to it. 
 The power by which alone the wall could be built was 
 actually employed in raising it ; — it was most to be de- 
 sired, then, if they could stay it from doing mischief, 
 and convert its influence into good : — it might not and 
 w^ould not work for good with the whole force which it 
 possessed, or in the best direction ; yet still it might be 
 brought to work for the attainment of its proper object, 
 instead of neglecting it, or even opposing it. 
 
 But we see two powers, each capable of doing great 
 good separately, but when combined, fitted to do the 
 greatest good which we can either conceive or desire. 
 Both have done good separately, that is, when each 
 
222 APPENDIX III. 
 
 was working with out any consciousness, so to speak, of 
 the existence of tlie otlier. But when made aware of 
 each other's presence, and each coming within the 
 sphere of the other's influence, then, unless their nm- 
 tual relations be properly adjusted, they embarrass and 
 injure each other's efficacy. Then, if they are not 
 combined, they run counter to one another, and each 
 becomes corrupted. It is of the greatest importance, 
 therefore, to discover the true theory of their uuion, 
 even though we may never be able to effect it perfectly 
 in practice. We may prevent much mischief and do 
 much good, even though after all there should be some 
 mischief left which practically we cannot hinder, and 
 Some good which we find it impossible to attain. 
 \l The State and the Church were reared apart from 
 r each other, but each was fitted to receive its utmost 
 perfection only in union with the other. After a time 
 they met, but there were obstacles to their being pro- 
 perly united. Still, as if feeling that they were framed 
 for each other, they have gone on restlessly working, 
 always attempting to fulfil their destiny, but always 
 finding that their neighbourhood to each other led to 
 collision rather than union. And now, tired of their 
 unsuccessful attempts, each in despair would abandon 
 the other altogether, and try to seek its own happiness 
 alone. Yet it was a true instinct which brought them 
 together; — they are designed by God to be one. And 
 if we can clearly point out the misunderstandings that 
 have perplexed them, and the treachery which under a 
 show of friendship has beguiled them, may we not hope 
 that even yet they will reject the thought of utter se- 
 paration, that even in their age they may at last find 
 that appointed end of their being, which they should 
 have attained in their early youth, had not their misfor- 
 tune and their fault together so long delayed it ? 
 
APPENDIX III. 223 
 
 The confusion and perversion of their relations ap- 
 pears to me to be clearly traceable to the one or the 
 other of the two following propositions, or to the influ- 
 ence of both of them together. 
 
 1st. That the true Church of God is a society go- 
 verned by bishops appointed in an unbroken succession 
 from the Apostles: that these bishops hold their power j 
 by Divine right, and that none but they, and subordi- 
 nately the priests or presbyters appointed by them, have 
 a right to rule in the Church ; — and that farther, in 
 these bishops and presbyters so appointed, and by vir- '■ 
 tue of their lineal succession from the Apostles, there 
 resides a spiritual and priestly power; — that they may 
 absolve Christians from their sins or refuse them abso- 
 lution ; —and that their ministry is essential in order to 
 give to the sacraments their efficacy ; — that where they 
 do not minister, no spiritual benefit is imparted either 
 by Baptism or the Lord's Supper;— and that where 
 they minister, and through a certain virtue attached by 
 God to their ministry, the water in Baptism and the 
 bread and wine in the Communion acquire a super- 
 human efficacy, so as to convey spiritual blessings to 
 those who receive them, unless there is any positive 
 and wilful sin in the recipient which destroys in his 
 particular case, at least to a certain degree, the virtue of 
 the sacrament. 
 
 2nd. That the State or civil society has for its prin- 
 cipal, if not for its only object, the providing for the 
 security of men's bodies and goods: — that therefore 
 religion as such is out of its province, — and that it has 
 no right to interfere with only spiritual matters. This 
 doctrine, in order to be consistent, should maintain far- 
 ther that the State has nothing to do with any moral mat- 
 ters, except so far as they may affect the bodies and 
 goods of its people ; — but its advocates shrink generally 
 
224 APPENDIX III. 
 
 from avowing this conclusion, — and thereby they cut 
 away the ground from under their feet, and can only 
 justify their exclusion of religion from the care of the 
 State on the supposition that religion is not moral, but 
 merely ritual and mystic, or theoretical ; — a supposition 
 wdiich has in fact been greatly countenanced by the 
 language and practice of those who have held the first 
 mentioned doctrines with regard to the Church. 
 
 Thus, while the first doctrine demoralizes the idea of 
 the Church by making it a system ritual rather than 
 moral, and mystic rather than spiritual, so the second 
 doctrine demoralizes the idea of the State, by making it 
 a contrivance for man's physical welfare only. And 
 thus the Church and State, which if the true moral 
 character of each be upheld are perfectly identical, are 
 necessarily separated when each is made to assume a 
 false and unworthy character, of superstition on the one 
 hand, and of the lowest worldliness on the other. Nor 
 is it necessary that both these doctrines should be held 
 at once in order to destroy the true relations of Church 
 and State ; for the prevalence of either one of them is 
 sufficient to effect it. Where the most just and elevated 
 notions of the purposes and duties of civil society are 
 entertained, the false doctrines with respect to the 
 Church are a bar to the identification of the two socie- 
 ties in one, because they involve a system of priestcraft, 
 which is incompatible with all good government, and 
 with the moral and spiritual improvement of mankind. 
 And where the character and duties of the Church are 
 most truly apprehended, still if men conceive of the 
 State as of a contrivance only for the security of body 
 and goods, the Church could not identify itself with 
 such a society without apostacy. 
 
 Thus Mr. Gladstone, in his recent work on " The State 
 in its Relations with the Church," while he entertains 
 
APPENDIX III. 225 
 
 llie most just and comprehensive notions of the end and 
 duties of civil society, yet appears to regard the Church 
 as a society with a divinely appointed government of 
 its own, deriving its powers from a source higher than 
 human law, and therefore not amenable to any govern- 
 ment founded merely upon law, but capable of forming 
 an alliance with the State, as one sovereign power with 
 another. " The Church," says he, " professes to be an 
 institution not deduced by human reason from any gene- 
 ral declaration of God's will, but actually and (so to 
 speak) bodily given by God, founded through His 
 direct inspiration, and regularly transmitted in a di- 
 vinely appointed, though human line ;" p. 66. " It is 
 a system," he goes on, " to which the State has itself 
 yielded faith and homage, as of divine authority." 
 Clearly then the divine must not yield to the human, 
 and either the Church and the State must remain per- 
 petually distinct, or else the forms of the latter, which 
 are confessedly human and changeable, must give place 
 to those of the former, claiming as they do the sanction 
 of divine right, and Christians must be governed either 
 by a Pope, or by a council or synod of Bishops. 
 
 On the other side there are many, the able reviewer 
 of Mr. Gladstone's work in the Edinburgh Review 
 being of the number, who see that the divine right of 
 bishops is precisely on a level with that of kings, or 
 parliaments, or the popular assemblies of a pure demo- 
 cracy : — that the notion of an indefeasible succession 
 of ministers, deriving their power from their succession, 
 is wholly unfounded and mischievous, even if these 
 ministers are considered merely in the light of govern- 
 ors : — but that in fact the doctrine of succession is 
 based upon the supposition that these ministers are 
 priests, and possess certain mystical powers as such; — 
 and that so regarded it is not simply mischievous, but 
 
 Q 
 
226 APPENDIX III. 
 
 is eminently false and even contradictory to Christi- 
 anity, forming a system wholly at variance with and 
 essentially destructive of Christ's religion and Church. 
 But unhappily these same persons hold the doctrine 
 that the State has only to provide for men's bodies and 
 goods ; — and thus they also render the identification of 
 Church and State impossible; they assign to the greatest 
 power upon earth objects so secondary, that when raised 
 to this disproportionate eminence, they are actually 
 evil; — for he who gives to the sovereign power of law 
 no better purpose than the checking wrong offered to 
 body and goods, encourages the opinion that body and 
 goods are the most precious things in the w'orld, since 
 they are the exclusive object of what is confessedly the 
 most comprehensive of human societies, — and the first 
 in rank and in power. 
 
 By God's blessing we in England have recognised, 
 although rather by a providential overruling of our 
 purposes than from a consciousness on our part of its 
 full value, that great doctrine which is at once negative 
 and positive ; which, not content with denying and ex- 
 posing falsehood, offers to us in the place of the false- 
 hood so destroyed that divine truth in which is con- 
 tained all goodness. This doctrine is that of the King's 
 Supremacy ; — which while it puts downs the false claims 
 of the pretended apostolical succession on the one hand, 
 denies no less firmly on the other hand the notion that 
 the State has only to look after men's bodies and goods. 
 It declares the identity of the Church and State, when 
 each has attained to its perfection ; both desire to 
 effect man's greatest good ; but the Church during her 
 imperfect state is deficient in power ; — the State in the 
 like condition is deficient in knowledge : — one judges 
 amiss of man's highest happiness ; the other discerns 
 it truly, but has not the power on a large scale to 
 
APPENDIX III. 227 
 
 attain it. But when blended into one, the power and 
 knowledge become happily united; the Church is 
 become sovereign, and the State has become Christian. 
 
 Historically, as you well know, the second of the 
 two false principles mentioned above is but a recent 
 reaction against the evil consequences of the first. It 
 is so recent, that hazardous as it may be to assert a ne- 
 gative, we might, I believe, safely challenge any one to 
 show" that it existed in its complete and developed form 
 before the eighteenth century. The germ of it, no 
 doubt, existed much earlier, and is contained in fact in 
 the assumptions of the first false principle. But that 
 first false principle is all but coeval with the origin of 
 Christianity ; it has obtained such a hold on men's 
 minds and on their language, that even in later days, 
 when its practical results excited the liveliest opposi- 
 tion, men have rather tried to neutralize its evil by set- 
 ting up that contrary and no less mischievous error 
 about the exclusively physical objects of political so- 
 ciety, than they have laid the axe to the root, and hewn 
 down the poison tree which has not only cumbered but 
 has tainted as with an influence of death the ground of 
 Christ's vineyard. Yet once remove this first error, and 
 all temptation to maintain the second vanishes; — once 
 connect the Church with notions of free and just go- 
 vernment, and no one w^ould ever dream of restricting 
 the care of such a government to the lowest part of our 
 compound nature, our bodies, and our external wel- 
 fare. 
 
 It is more satisfactory in all things to be constructive 
 rather than destructive. Instead, therefore, of attacking 
 in the first instance the two errors which have been 
 noticed as interfering with the perfect developement of 
 Christ's Church, we will rather sujipose them to have 
 no existence, and exhibit the Church as it would or 
 
228 APPENDIX III. 
 
 might be, if neither of these errors interfered with it. 
 In other words, we will suppose the doctrine of the 
 King's Supremacy to be w^orked out to its proper con- 
 clusions, unembarrassed by the doctrines of Laud and 
 his party on the one hand, or by those of Warburton 
 and some modern writers who hold similar sentiments 
 on the other. " Formam quidem ipsam et tanquam fa- 
 ciem honesti videbis, quae si oculis cerneretur, mirabiles 
 amores excitaret sui." 
 
 [It may here be well to refer finally to the other parts of the Author's 
 published works in which the subject of the preceding Fragments is 
 treated. The theory of the identity of Church and State is set forth in 
 the Postscript to the " Principles of Church Reform," and the " Letters on 
 Church and State " in the " Herts Reformer," ( Miscellaneous Works. ) 
 That part of it which more especially relates to the State, is treated more at 
 length in the " Christian Duty of conceding the Roman Catholic Claims," 
 the Preface to the third volume of the Edition of Thucydides, and in the 
 " Inaugui-al Lecture," and the Sixth of the " Lectures on Modern His- 
 tory ;" Sermons, vol. ii. (the 29th to the 33rd) ; vol. iv. (the 39th and 
 40th); vol. vi. (the 7th in Appendix I.) That which i-elates to the 
 Church, in Sermons, vol. iii. (the 11th and 20th, and Appendix I.); vol, 
 iv. (the Introduction, with the 24th, 28th, 29th, 30th, and 38th.] 
 
 THE END. 
 
 G. Woodfall and Son, Printers, Angel Couit, Skinner Street, London. 
 
Date Due 
 
 Z.-i^-t i'^