MAR 9 ^*^^ LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. Chap. ._ Copyright No.. Sheif.EX^.34 ^ N^ :^ i 1 ' I V UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. ai^^r^ A TREATISE UPON Baptist Church Jurisprudence; OR THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL, CRITICALLY AND SCIENTIFICALLY CONSIDERED; ILLUSTRATING THE WRITTEN AND UNWRITTEN LAWS OF TRUE APOSTOLIC CHURCH GOVERNMENT. BEING A DISCUSSION OF THE PRINCIPAL QUES- TIONS INCIDENT TO THE GOVERNMENT AND POLITY OF BAPTIST CHURCHES. BY / EDWARD P. 'MARSHALL, Attoeney-at-Law. WASHINGTON, D. C. : THE COLUMBIAN PUBLISHING COMPANY 1898. L TWO C^Pftt W«eiVEO 2764 Entered According to the Act of Congress, in the Year A.D. 1897, By EDWARD P. MAESHALL, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C. Of coNe»"»' THIS VOLUME RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED THE AUTHOR, BAPTIST MINISTRY THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. As to those whose feet are shod with the preparation of the Gospel of Peace, and who have been miraculously preserved and perpetuated in every age and century, since the commencennent of the Christian Era, keeping pure the doctrine and ordinances of the churches of Christ, as the most effective class of persons to aid in bringing back a large part of the- Christian world to the first principles of apostolic church g,overnment, and enlightening and preparing public opinion for such re- forms as the exigencies of Christianity demand, and to arrest the downward course of a well-meaning, though, neverthe- less, a priest-ridden people. FUNDAMENTAL BIBLE PRINCIPLES. For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto thennselves. Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bear- ing witness, and their thoughts the meanwhile accusing, or else excusing one another. Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world? and if the world shall be judged by you, are you unworthy to judge the snnallest matters? Know ye not that we shiall judge angels ? how much more, things that pertain to this life? Doth not nature itself teach you ? Yea, and why even of yourselves judge ye not what is right? All things are law unto me, but all things are not expedient. All things are lawful for me, but I will not be brought under the power of any. Thy law is in my heart, i will put my law in their mind. I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts. Give me understanding, and 1 shall keep thy law, yea 1 shall observe It with my whole heart. But even if any man seem con- tentious, we have no such custom, neither the churches of God. Thy word is law. THE BIBLE. PREFACE THE primary aim of the author in the present volume is not to attempt to unsettle any heretofore recognized principles of Baptist church polity, nor to supply any entirely new method of obtaining reasoned answers to ecclesiastical questions; but rather by careful reflection to introduce greater clearness and consistency into the kind of thought and reasoning with which every intelligent Baptist is more or less familiar. In order to arrive at sound and correct conclu- sions on practical questions much detailed knowledge is needed, which the general theory of ecclesiastical government professes to give ; it can only point out the nature of this further knowledge, and the sources from which it is to be obtained. The general theory of Baptist church jurisprudence ought to classify the con- siderations by which any given question should be decided, and indicate their general bearing on the question under consideration ; but the degree of weight to be attached to each species of consideration, in any particular case, has mostly to be learned from experience ; so that the main practical use of the theory of Baptist church government is to show how experience is to be acquired in this the most peculiar of all church polities. So wide, and so flagrant has been the departure from the true form of apostolic church government, by the various religious communities now extant in the world, that the author of the following work has undertaken to correct some of the errors which have led the Catholic and Protestant world astray. The subject of Baptist church government is a noble science, and one that has not hitherto been treated with all the care it deserves. The greater part of our own people have, therefore, only a vague and incomplete, and often a very false notion of it. When we reflect that there is no legislative body known among Baptists to enact ecclesiastical laws, and no high court of appeals to interpret those laws, we can readily see the necessity of supplying this want in Baptist literature. The subject has not been treated from the standpoint of theology, but is purely gov- ernmental in its nature. I have contented myself with simply laying down the general rules and principles, which the law of Baptist churches furnishes for the guidance of those who are charged with its execution. A particular detail of the doctrine and discipline of the churches belongs to history, and not to a systematic treatise upon ecclesiastical government proper. Our denominational literature is abundantly supplied with valuable works of this kind, by authors preeminently fitted in every respect for the task, to destroy which, would be like removing the ancient landmarks of landed property, or tearing down the beacon lights along the shores of our great commercial waterways. The author, in addressing himself to the task before him, has been constantly sensible of the fact that he is treading upon holy ground when he presumes to treat a subject so sacred as that of the government of the churches of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ ; but in a science like this, owing to the peculiar form of Baptist church polity, the only resort we have to find out what is true church law, is the 5 b PREFACE. Bible itself, — the great fountain of all law, — as it is interpreted by our eminent commentators and text-writers, which, to be binding, the law must have passed under the scrutiny of the churches, as well as those learned in such matters. In other systems, a work like this would be comparatively useless, because their books of discipline and digests are already loaded down with thousands of decisions and precedents, coming down from their various courts of appeal ; and he who would ignore these adjudications, and appeals to theory, or general principles laid down by text- writers, must not expect to receive any great attention. I have tried to not invade the domain of the ecclesiastical legislator, but to keep within the sphere of the true commentator, a thing hard to do, as every lawyer knows. Hence, the work is not what the author has himself made it, but is a faithful recital of what the law already is. These principles never could have been compiled before there was a consensus of usage respecting them. It is not a fruitless research after church law which does not yet exist, but a record of what has been evolved by the churches in the past. It is not binding upon the churches only in so far as it is intrinsically Scriptural and voluntarily accepted by the churches ; for he who would attempt to collect and record the customs and usages of Baptist churches, should be the apostle of the truth, and not the inventor of rules, or systems. For the past twenty years I have been reading, compiling, observing, thinking, reflecting, and, at intervals, writing upon this subject, especially in its bearing upon church government, without taking any notes of the sources from "whence the materials were derived. I have taken many things bodily from the labors of eminent writers, which have long since become, as it were, common property, and have used their thoughts, as far as I have judged them sound and Scriptural, and they came within the scope of this work. But from whence I have borrowed, my readers know as well as I. This work, now finished and offered to the public, is based upon scientific principles, but I am fully conscious that I have not, for the want of sufficient skill, succeeded in treating the subject scientifically. I have been compelled, in many cases, to depend upon my own judgment, and to draw conclusions as to what is true ecclesiastical law, not from actual custom and usage, but fi-om the deductions of common sense, and especially from the analogies of the civil law, as practiced in courts of justice, which I have found so useful to me in my work. It is not, therefore, surprising that in this want of light — this being the first attempt to reduce the principles of true apostolic church government, from a Bap- tist standpoint, to a systematic science — I should have fallen short, and sometimes doubtless erred in judgment. In fact the work can lay claim to very little artistic skill. It is full of repetitions, the same thought often recurring. But whatever it wants in skill and methodical arrangement, I try to make up in earnestness, and honesty of purpose. I write throughout as a Baptist, for the work is intensely denominational, but I must be permitted to say that I have not unnecessarily obtruded Baptist views upon the reading public, except in the light of what I conceive to be the true form of ecclesiastical polity. While I dedicate the work to the Baptist min- istry of America, and through them to the Baptist denomination, I hope that others will do me the honor to read it. Especially do I ask the ministry, should they deem the. book worthy, to assist in its circulation, for which I will feel grateful. Edwaed p. Marshall. Washington, D. C, December, a.d. 1897. TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE Of the Fundamental Elements and Functions of Ecclesiastical Polity. 9 CHAPTEE II. View of the Origin and Organization of the Churches, and the True Nature of Apostolic Church Government 42 CHAPTER III. The Local Church, a Divine Institution, and the only Depository of Ecclesiastical Power 74 CHAPTER IV. Baptist Church Customs and Usages ; or, The Common Law of the Gospel. 107 CHAPTER V. Baptist Church Jurisprudence ; Its Eelation to Church Government . . 133 CHAPTER YI. Baptist Church Jurisprudence ; How it Becomes Trustworthy in Church Government through the Medium of the Interpretation of the Scriptures 164 CHAPTER VII. Ecclesiastical Precedents and Traditions; Their Relation to Church Government 194 CHAPTER VIII. Baptist Church Ethics in General, and some Eules in Particular ... 218 CHAPTER IX. Ecclesiastical Councils; Their Powers and Duties 249 7 8 TABLE OF CONTENTS. CHAPTER X. PAGE The CnrECH Univeesal, not a Church Proper and Cannot be the Seat OF Instituted Church Government 278 CHAPTEE XI. Baptist Associations and Conventions ; Their Eelation to the Churches. 309 CHAPTER XTI. Ecclesiastical Creeds; How they are Generated, and their Use and Abuse in Church Government 340 CHAPTER XIII. Of the Nature of Ecclesiastical Heresy, and How it Should be Treated in Church Government 365 CHAPTER XIV. The Christian Ministry ; Their Call, Ordination, Powers and Duti-es . 390 CHAPTER XV. Equality of the Christian Ministry Asserted 419 CHAPTER XVI. Baptist Church Divisions ; or. The Separation of One Part of a Church FROM the Other : . . . 451 CHAPTER XVII. Property Eights of a Divided Baptist Church ; The Common Law Eules Governing Same 484 CHAPTER XVIII. Papal Church Government; In which the Office and Functions of a Pope is Challenged 512 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE CHAPTER I. OF THE FUNDAMENTAL ELEMENTS AND FUNCTIONS OF ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY. BA-PTIST church jurisprudence, as the term is here used, may be held to include the entire domain of the powers, rights and duties of Bap- tist churches which come within the province of ecclesiastical government, law, ethics and decorum. It is a legal term, but used in its broadest signifi- cation, is not improper to be employed in this connection, combining as it does, the principles of ecclesiastical polity with the infinite variety of ethical rules governing the churches of Christ. If dignity and importance can properly be attributed to a word, there are in our day few words more dignified and more important than Jurisprudence in the sense used herein. With this meaning, jurisprudence enters into a great deal of modern thought, whether applied to a legal system, governmental polity, or a system of modern phil- osophy. I wish it to be understood in the outset, however, that the term does not include so wide a circle as to embrace either the history or theology of Baptist churches, leaving those vast subjects to be treated by the church historian and the theologian. Church history rests upon facts, theology upon divine truth; while church jurisprudence is under the government of laws which spring from the positive institution of the churches of God. It illustrates the nature and mutability of what I am pleased here to call the Common law of the gospel, and the eternal obligation of the divine law of God, as applied to Baptist church government. As to the Common law of the gospel, it may be defined to be a collection of ethical rules of decorum recognized by the members of a church without any positive interference of ecclesiastical legislation. As there is no such thing in Baptist church jurisprudence as a legislative body, next to the written gospel itself, the common law springing out of the written word of God is the most plentiful source of rules governing the actual conduct of 9 10 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Baptist churclies. Let it be recalled that this peculiar kind of church law was expanded and developed in the beginning, not at all, by ecclesiastical legislation, but by a process which we see still in operation in the various Baptist churches of to-day — that is by the authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures by successive churches and the commentaries of men learned in those sacred writings. Whatever there is that is true in Baptist church jurisprudence, is an accretion of rules which have thus sprung up and clustered around the Holy Scriptures, and consists of them, and of accumulations formed upon them. And it is further certain that the process by which these accumulations were formed was by the authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures by the churches, and that none of the agencies by which church law is made in other systems came into play. Hence, Baptist church jurisprudence is not, in any sense, a legislative construction, and thus it is an authentic monument of Christ's government on earth ; but it is also a collection of rules which have gradually developed in a way highly favorable to the preservation of the ancient faith and practice of the gospel. Two causes have done much to obscure this apostolic form of government : one has been the formation of strong, centralized systems of polity, and concentrating in themselves all ecclesiastical power, giving to that form of government upon occasion a special form of legislative authority ; the other has been the in'fluence, direct and indirect, of ecclesiastical high -courts and other governing tribunals, drawing with them an activity in church legisla- tion unknown to the apostolic churches which were never subjected to it. Under these circumstances it is not wonderful that Baptist church jurispru- dence, without this agency, has grown up and become the wonder of all who take the pains to study its growth and development. Apostolic church government, after which Baptists have patterned, and to which they adhere with religious tenacity, may be described as the greatest achievement which has ever been made since the dawn of civilization. Its influence upon the religion, the laws, the customs and usages of the liberty- loving nations of t^e earth has really been immense, and is destined soon to penetrate every nation under the sun. It is natural, therefore, that it should afford matter for deep contemplation, and that it should excite intense interest wherever its genius and tendency is known. The study of the principles underlying this peculiar system of church government ought to attract the notice of every cultivated and reflecting Baptist, and should not be treated with coldness and the pedantry of antiquated research. The Baptists of the United States are a people who love the old paths ; we pride ourselves upon belonging to that succession of churches which had their beginning in the establishment of the first church at Jerusalem ; we are able to see the visible and unmistakable traces of the principles and doctrines of that first church in the Baptist churches of to-day ; we can look back througjh the centuries gone by, and rejoice at their growth and devel- opment; all of which make us proud that we are Baptists. And if this peculiar system of church government proves anything, in its comparison OR, THE COMMOif LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 11 with that set up by the apostles, it shows clearly that a people and a system of churches have existed since the days of the apostles holding the doctrines and principles now promulgated by the great Baptist family of the earth, while many other systems have arisen and passed away, notwithstanding thoy had every human stay and prop to carry them on to ultimate success. A denomination that loves this system can do nothing better to promote the object of its love than deeply to study it, and in order to be able to do this, it is necessary to analyze it, and to trace the threads which compose the valued texture. A church could not exist without government of some sort. As a church is necessary to receive and to preach the gospel and to keep it pure ; so gov- ernment is a necessity of the church to keep it within the bounds and limits marked out by Christ, its great founder and head. If it had no govern- ment it would fail for want of unity and continuity of faith and practice. The gospel could not be preached with efficacy and power ; Christians could not be indoctrinated, trained and educated without some degree of ecclesi- astical government— of some authority to direct, restrain and control. But its office is not purely repressive, to administer discipline and to rectify wrongs. It has something more to do than to restrict our liberty, to curb our passions and to settle differences between member and member. Church government would be necessary if none of these matters ever presented themselves for settlement ; it is needed for the good more than it is for the bad. Government is needed in Heaven as well as on earth. It is needed to combine and unite men in one living organic body, and to strengthen all with the strength of each, and each with the strength of all. Still more apparent is the necessity of church government when we consider it in rela- tion to the whole denomination, composed of many churches, all of which we hope fully to demonstrate before we shall have gone over the whole ground of this treatise. There are those who clamor that there is no such thing as Baptist church polity, because it could not be produced in full written form, emana- ting from some august ecclesiastical council, like that of the constitution of the United States, or, if you please, like that of the Episcopal, Methodist, or Presbyterian churches. And the same cavil is occasionally repeated by Baptists who have not taken the pains to study the true form of Bible church government. But an impartial and earnest investigator, seeking after truth, may soon satisfy himself that Baptists have a constitution and form of church government beautiful beyond description, and that there is ample cause why we should understand and cherish it. And by this it is meant that we will recognize and admire in the history, the laws, and the institutions of the Baptists, certain great leading principles which have existed from the earliest founding of the churches, by the apostles, down to the present time, expanding and adapting themselves to the spiritual pro- gress of the denomination, advancing and varying in development, but still essentially the same in substance and in spirit with the apostolic churches, as we see them reflected in the Bible. These great primeval and enduring 12 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDKN'CE ; principles are the basis of the churches to which we belong. And, indeed, we are not obliged to learn them from imperfect evidences or precarious speculations, for they are imperishably recorded in the New Testament Scriptures connected with and confirmatory of the Holy Record itself, at an epoch which we have a right to consider the very commencement of Baptist churches, and in this sacred record we can trace these great princi- ples, some in the germ, it is true, some more fully revealed. And thus, at the very dawn of the history of Baptist church government, we behold the foundations of our great ecclesiastical institutions imperishably laid, which it will be our pleasure here to trace. Every intelligent Baptist reader should be very charitable tov/ards him w^ho would attempt to evolve a system of government and ethical rules for the use of Baptist churches ; for to discern the common law of the gospel, and the law of reason deducible therefrom, is very hard. As to the cer- tainty of this science, it has been an established persuasion amongst the gen- erality of learned men that a treatise upon any kind of government is desti- tute of that certainty which is found especially in the science of mathe- matics. The foundation of this notion has been that they have taken government to be incapable of accurate demonstration, from whence only true science, free from the fear of error, can proceed ; and they imagine that all its evidence rises no higher than probable opinion, arising from the fact, doubtless, that all governments seem to be only instituted by law, and originally not decreed by nature. But this view of the subject puts Bap- tist church polity upon a high plane — almost as high as if it had been decreed by nature. Among those governments decreed by nature may be classed that of the family. God, in the garden of Eden, decreed the law of marriage, and from that law springs the family, and out of the family has developed all the ethical laws governing the family. So it is with the churches of Christ. He, by the fiat of his will, decreed the law, by and through which his churches exist, and out of that law has grown all the rules by which his churches are ruled to this day. He wills the existence of the churches through the laws of the gospel and through those planted in our enlightened reasou. Every wise and just rule of ethics is willed by Christ as much as if he had written it out in full — as much so as he willed the institution of the family —and approves every wholesome rule evolved for its government. The writings of Pedo-Baptists, commonly received and read by students of ecclesiastical polity, have done so much harm, not only to the study of church government, but to the study of church history, that an account of the true origin and growth of our peculiar system, is perhaps the most urgently needed of all additions to our Baptist literature. But next to a new history of Baptist church government, what we most require is a philo- sophy of true church jurisprudence. If our denomination ever gives birth to such a philosophy we shall probably owe it to two advantages. The first of them is our possession of an ecclesiastical system, which may be con- sidered as indigenous to Baptists alone. Our denominational watchfulness, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 13 which has confined us in the old paths, and which has heretofore had a ten- dency to retard or limit our advance in ecclesiastical inquiry, has kept our church jurisprudence singularly pure from mixture with the stream of writ- ten rules flowing from the great fountain of priestcraft ; and thus, when we place it in juxtaposition with any other ecclesiastical system, the results of the comparison are far more fruitful of instruction than those obtained by contrasting the various other systems with one another. The second advantage I believe to consist in the growing habit that Baptists have ever cultivated, of studying church government as it is revealed in the Scriptures and seen in the times of the apostles, and not what it ought to be. Baptists are chiefly concerned with ecclesiastical government as it is ; others, with what it ought to be. These inquiries may seem to some theoretical, but I trust the reader will perceive in the end that they have an interest and im- portance, and that they throw light on a subject of all others the most vital — that of the government of the churches of the living God. Baptist church government rests on facts, Scriptural facts. These facts are revealed in the actual workings of the primitive churches. This government, resting on these facts, cannot be changed or improved. The practice of its principles may be improved, and this every Baptist church in the land is endeavoring to do. Ecclesiastical government is obliged, do what it may, to adapt the immense mass of existing ethical relations and their corresponding laws which have been and are constantly being developed, to meet necessary emergencies. This government is natural, neces- sary and uninvented. It has grown up within the churches without any specific act of re-beginning. If the membership, or any part of them, were to rise against it, and to attempt to establish another and a difierent one, the question would arise, would that destroy the original form of apostolic church government? If it were a political form of government that was thus sought to be changed I would say, most emphatically, yes. For God has established no particular form of civil government, but has left those interested in the formation of them to choose whatever kind best pleases themselves. Destroy or overthrow one form of government and those who have the power and the right to destroy or overthrow may erect another government. But not so in church government, for Christ, the great founder of the churches, gave the form and furnished the constitution for them, which is immutable and unchangeable. This form descends from church to church of the same order and cannot and must not vary in pattern. They are hereditary governments, free and independent one of another, gradually and voluntarily organized by baptized believers in Christ, and rest on facts as revealed in the actual workings of the primitive churches. Once admit the fact that church polity is a matter that can be changed with impunity, ere long the habit of change comes to be established and there is no telling where it will end. Once destroy the independent apostolic churches, and unite them for government, you can never again cloth them with ecclesiastical power, or fence them in with the laws of the gospel ; their polity would forever be open to free choice, and exposed to 14 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE J profane innovations. Ages were spent in beginning and perfecting the order of Bible churcli polity ; the only sufficient and effectual agent in its formation, aside from the laws of the gospel, was consecrated custom and usage; but then those customs and usages hovered over everything, arrested all outward disposition to change, and stayed the originality of mankind, and kept church polity as it was in the beginning. The various kind of churches we now see in the world may be divided into two classes : stable ones, and those which change their polity. The stable ones are modeled after the apostolic patterns. They are those which must ever be considered as the indispensable and first requisites of the immutable laws of the gospel with inherent powers to preserve themselves forever without change. Ecclesiastical polities having not these powers must vary accordingly. If its defective polity will allow it to change and become corrupt, and if its object is to reform and reorganize its own deformed government, its polity must essentially differ from that of the primitive churches. True church government is not a reformation. It is a divine institution in which there is no way provided for change, no more than the builder can change the foundations of a house after the superstructure has been reared. So that he who would build a church must take the founda- tion already prepared for him, yet he must not forget his materials "with which he must build, when he comes to the practical question of erecting a church of Christ. That there are immutable ecclesiastical principles in church polity, according to which we can at once pronounce some Scriptural and others heretical, is evident. That church government is most Scriptural and is the best which secures most effectually all the stable objects of the apostolic churches, and does not oblige the membership to sudden and violent actions in order to obtain what needs must be obtained by united action. I do not, indeed, mean to say, that the Baptist form of government cannot and does not develop, but I do say, and ecclesiastical history shows it, that it cannot leap ov^er into something else, nor ever become anything but what is conditioned by existing apostolic models. These views of ecclesiastical polity do not lead to mere expediency in the form of government, or to the conclusion that there are no stable principles to be obtained. It is our duty, as best we can, to ascertain those elementary principles which from the nature of the primitive churches and by ample experience show themselves to be essential to the obtaining of the highest ends of the churches of Christ ; that is the purity, the security, stability and the perpetuity of those churches of which Christ said, the gates of hell shall not 'prevail against them. The first inquiry, therefore, is whether the Baptist form of church government is Scriptural, is apostolic ; after that, it is for wisdom to judge how it is best to seek after and secure these inestimable blessings. That system of polity which seeks all good government in the personalities of a ruling priesthood, is nothing less than church polity Juda- ized ; while the very object of a good system of fundamental laws and insti- tutions is to do away with Judaism with its reign of priest-craft, and to force, as far as possible, the various personal peculiarities, which in church OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 15 government are purely adventitious cooperation in obtaining what is seen and recognized in the Bible form of polity. In the first place let us speak about the legitimacy of church governments, for it is a painful truth that we see many different kinds set up in the world. What then is a legitimate government, for which Baptists claim ecclesiasti- cal power ? We will divide them into governments de jure and de facto. The first is a government by law, that is instituted under and by virtue of the laws of the gospel. The latter is an uuscriptural form of church polity, because the membership do not actually establish and rule it and in which sovereign power is not lodged. A Baptist church, to define it, de jure is, according to the ancient con- ception, an assembly of baptized believers in Christ, instituted and pre- served upon the foundation of common love and brotherhood under the laws of the gospel alone ; or it is the empire of gospel laws and not of men. On the other hand to define a church de facto, according to the modern idea of some, it is an art whereby some man, or a few men, usurp a rule over a cen- tralized number of churches, in conformity to the notion and interests of a man, or class of men, and may be said to be the empire of men, and not of the law of the gospel. A church dejure is organized under the immutable laws of God, being those laid down by Christ and his apostles in founding the churches and is so Scriptural, so natural and so just, always and every- where, that no human authority can change or abolish it, and a de facto church being such an organization as is contrived by the ingenuity of men, and which any body of men may establish, change or abolish according to the will of those who instituted it. The one is human, the other divine. With all mere de facto systems of church polity the difficulty which lies in the way of the general acceptance of the legality of such forms, is the fact that we do not sufficiently distinguish between the church and the govern- ment which sets it in operation. Ecclesiastical power is mistaken for gov- ernment, and government for the church. Baptists see the danger to reli- gious liberty in recognizing an unlimited power in church government, which is permitted to grow and develop to the utter destruction of the local church. Those belonging to other systems are accustomed practically to no other organization of the church than by some outside influences, and depend upon some foreign power for governmental rule. With Baptists there is no de- pendence upon outside influences for the organization of the church. Back of all ecclesiastial government lies Christ's Eoyal Charter, so to speak, which was granted for its institution, and also back of this charter stands a body of baptized believers which organize the church and breathe into it the breath of ecclesiastical life. We have this royal grant of power from above already in objective reality. This is the point in which Baptists have reached a far higher development than any other religious people in the world. The church's polity is its very self, and the membership is there to preserve and protect it from change and abuse, all customs, laws, commands and injunctions from the outside, however old, or from whatever authority, to the contrary notwithstanding. It is founded upon those immutable laws 16 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; of the gospel whicli are essential to its preservation and which can be law- fully enforced. It is one of the principal elements of ecclesiastical government that the local church is itself alone sovereign. Nothing is practically superior to it. Nothing can, or does, compulsorily control it. Deciding for itself it may determine all questions coming before it either in harmony with Scripture, with reason, with truth, with right and with propriety, or it may determine all these, dictating all for itself, for impulse, for passion, being in many things fallible and unreasonable. Again, in Bible church government the local church is a free church. As sovereign, the independent church is necessarily free, not governed, not controlled by any force or power outside its own borders. It may be persuaded by reason, it may be influenced by impulse, it may be induced by desire, it may be afiected by circumstances, but it is itself to decide to yield, or not to yield to the influence. As sov- ereign it is the only dictating power in ecclesiastical government, free in its actions, going out through a whole system of control, but controlled itself by nothing except the law of God, interpreted by itself. The Bible is its only law book, the Holy Spirit is its chief minister, its constant companion, its faithful adviser, and its truest and only guide ; but itself is alone sov- ereign and free, the real source of efficiency, the ultimate authority in every case, determining the whole system of control affecting every member of the church. Everything exists for the benefit of this local church, and should exist wholly for the members comprehended in its government. To act for itself, unscripturally, or for others, outside its pale, to act for it, or in its place, is a perversion of apostolic church government. Any system founded upon any other basis is unscriptural in the highest degree. The local church, as a free sovereign body, is alone to dictate, order, control in view of securing the ends for which it exists. Ecclesiastical government, from the New Testament standj^oint, is that establishment which Christ and his apostles agreed upon in order to obtain the ends of the churches thus instituted. It is the machinery of the churches set in motion by the apostles nnder the instruction of our Saviour while on earth. Among Baptists it has always originated in one and the same way; that is, by institution under a covenant to take the laws of God alone for their rule of action, and by the development of ecclesiastical rela- tions among their members. The government when instituted remains stable and always the same, but these relations, however, develop themselves, out of an infinity of given circumstances and conditions. This system of church government, from the beginning to the present, in all its main out- lines down to its minutest details has become what it is, not simply without legislative guidance, but in spite of all extrinsic influences and hindrances. It has arisen under the pressure of necessary wants and activities. While each church has been pursuing its individual welfare this form of govern- ment has been ever becoming more complete. By steps so small and silent, by chano-es as insensible as those through which a seed passes into a tree. Bap- tist churches have become what we now see. All the various relations, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 17 especially those of a religious nature, wliich may subsist between men, make up that which induces them to unite into organic churches, and leads to ecclesiastical relations, or if pronounced by the laws of the gospel, to Scrip- tural relations ; the sum total of which is the church, with its polity and government. A system of church polity, especially that of the gospel churches, is something gradually grown and progressively developed, for a church, belonging to this system, can no more develop out of this form of polity, than a man can help being the offspring of his father. It can and will improve and develop, but in no instance and under no circumstance can it change itself and begin anew and remain a gospel church. Its life is its own ; its polity is peculiar to itself, and were its foundations torn up and an attempt made to build from the fragments of other systems its legality would no longer subsist, and the church become extinct. Since then Baptist church government is that institution set up by the apostles, by which the churches endeavor to obtain and secure the objects Christ had in view when he said. Upon this rock I build my church, the excel- lence of that government naturally depends upon what these objects are, and especially upon the membership for whom it exists, and through whom it operates. Membership, in this sense, does not mean the aggregation of all the members of a whole denomination of the same faith and order united into an universal church for government, but an organic membership living together in a local church considered in the various relations in which, according to the divine order of things, they must move. The object of a church is the aiding of local groups of Christians, such as can meet together in one assembly, in obtaining the highest degree of spiritual development, or the greatest possible politic growth of the local church, both by removing obstacles, or assisting directly, in all cases in which the individual member of the church ought not, cannot or will not act individually and upon his own responsibility. But apostolic local church government was not built in one day, one year or one century ; this polity resembles neither a mush- room nor a hot-house plant, but is like a well-ordered plantation, first to be local in its nature and then to be cultivated in wisdom, that is, patiently, perseveringly and judiciously, keeping steadily in view the main object for which the field may have been laid out by the Saviour, with constant refer- ence to the kind of plants he transplanted therein, but not such as may best answer our ends and views. This great achievement was not developed in one day, nor is it possible for changes in the ground work to take place, nor the landmarks to be removed ; as the moral growth of mankind from the first ages to the present was gradual and slow, so must the growth and development of Christ's churches be, each time and place affording new problems to solve. The legislation of Moses, whose object was to lead bondsmen into liberty, and to manifest belief in one God, cannot be set up as a model for this new creation. The numberless canons, decretals, books of discipline and digest of human laws we see enacted into written codes by pseudo-ecclesiastics of this day, do not give us a test by which to try the apostolic churches of Christ. 2 18 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; When individuals unite to form a cliurcli, each conveys to all. For how can the concurrence of all be ascertained but by taking the vote of each separately, upon the question whether they do concur ? No other device can be imagined by which this consent can be effected. Each member is a separate, free and independent unit, and the proposition is to ascertain whether they concur in lodging a vast mass of power in the joint association of tliem all and displacing it from the separate jurisdiction where it before existed. It is clear that every act done, up to the time when the new power is actually created, must be separate, otherwise the church or assem- bly would be a joint association, before the covenant creating them such would have been made. The consent of each is then necessary to create the church, and when this is effected a largo amount of power, which before resided in each member separately, is made to reside in them jointlj^, thus generating what is called ecclesiastical power. And it is very material whether the covenant was made before or after the organization of the church. When several act together to form a church, the consent of each, before the union is formed, is necessary ; for how could it become the act of all if it were not the act of each ? A covenant which is separately ratified by a number of ba^ptized believers, is the joint act of all, precisely because it is the act of each. But nevertheless that the covenant thus entered into would still be the fruit or result of a joint, not of a single, authority, is manifest ; for a consent of all the members or a majority of them, not the will of one, would be necessary to unmake it. After this union by covenant, every exercise of authority is, from the necessity of the case, joint, and not several ; all ecclesiastical power resides in the church, not in the agents or officers elected to administer it, but in the joint assembly to which the separate wills of individuals have given birth. When individuals thus enter into a solemn covenant, into an aggregate assembly — a church — no one member or a number of them have the right, they have not even the ability to secede or to withdraw from the church without the consent of the same. Such a government thus generated comprehends a defined and individual unity, and there is a plain inconsist- ency in supposing that some of the members may be ecclesiastically out of the government, while, by solemn covenant, they are within it. The church, and its government, where the membership is homogeneous in doctrine, are corresponding and convertible terms. If independent individuals enter into the same form of government, they will be subjected to the same disability. They will have united with an aggregate church and for the purposes of government have ceased to be separate individuals, and the power to go hence with impunity would be a solecism. Each separate member is a part of an aggregate assembly, he cannot therefore withdraw his allegiance from it, in any other way than by the consent of the church itself. If he should do so, in contempt of church authority, he would instantly place himself ecclesiastically without the pale of the Baptist denomination, upon being excommunicated for such disregard of the church and its rightful authority. Church sovereignty resides in the church, and this ecclesiastical power OR, THE COMJIOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 1,9 assumes jurisdiction over all its members. The right to withdraw from a church with impunity is not the exercise of an act of sovereignty, but the reverse. Between it and the objection of the church, there is a clear and broad distinction. Abrupt withdrawal is an unequivocal admission, that sovereignty does not reside in the faction withdrawing. An act of sover- eignty admits members and dismisses them, while secession admits the incom- petency of the seceding parties to do so, aud instead of bending the govern- ment to their wills, they are compelled to bend to the will of the govern- ment, and thus wdth impunity withdraw from the church. I speak of the abstract right to withdraw from a church. Under some circumstances it may be permissible, which will be treated of elsewhere. If, however, we imagine by a church covenant an actual agreement made at some definite period between a body of Christians, according to which the I'ules of the churches and the fundamental laws are otherwise designated, or by which the contracting parties subject themselves and all future mem- bers to this rule, then the idea of a covenant is radically wrong, and leads to damaging conclusions, favoring priest-craft and priestly domination. But ecclesiastical polity is not an imaginative thing, for we can find nowhere any such body of men organized into a church. He who founds the churches upon this idea confounds it with him who is set up to rule over it. Hence church polity appears as something separate from, and opposed, in a degree, to the membership, in short, they do not conceive a church as such, but the membership as the ruled part, and the government as the ruling part, both materially separate and distinct. All church government, according to this idea, descends from the priest, that is, the supposed authority of God pro- claimed by the priest, and that all ecclesiastical relations originate in some mysterious way from religion alone. This view, incredible as it may sound to a Baptist, has its advocates among all Catholics, Episcopalians and Pres- byterians. This is the link that binds the church to the state, and makes the priesthood a privileged class and gives them their right to dominate the churches. The fact that we find the character of the apostle blended with the ruler of the early churches, is no proof that the churches originated on these grounds. There can be no doubt but that these early founders of the churches of Christ were likewise the humble pastors of these humble local churches. ^Yould it be on that account philosophical to say that all church polity is of a mystical and theocratical character, and that they originated or constituted the churches without the consent of those to be ruled, exclud- ing therefrom the ecclesiastical principle? According to this the priest is before the membership, as the master is before the slave, not seeing that both can only co-exist. Though the government of the primitive churches, thus created, was weak in the extreme, yet it subsisted and progressed only because, on the whole, it was the embodiment of the new capacity and desires of the early disciples in carrying out the will of Christ in setting on foot His churches. In all afiairs, ecclesiastical as well as human, it is easiest to work in the direction of the least resistance. The resistance is least where the commou 20 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; api^etites and desires of mankind ratlier co-operate than oppose. Eccle- siastical government is found to have grown out of some preponderant impulse in favor of supporting existing teachings, facts and institutions. But these teachings, facts and institutions themselves were the only aggre- gate expression of customs and habits, operating through long periods of time and by means of the intensifying force of concert and of associations of all kinds, hardened into gospel grooves. At the time that true church government of a permanent kind has come into being, those composing the church are becoming self-assertive and self-reflective. It can be said that it is from the very first the expression of the best, wisest and most orderly dis- positions to be found in the church. If it were not so, it could only preserve itself for a time by virtue of extraneous forces, exercised either by priestly domination, or by the few over the many. Otherwise it could not live, and still less grow and develop. It will be a long time before the Baptists can 2,ppreciate the laws and government of these primitive churches which have come down to us with the stream of generations and are really made to our hands. We may have had a little share in making them what they are. But the materials and elements which are bound up in these w^onderful creations are none of our making, and while they will survive us, not the longest line of our successors will survive them. This rigid drill and discipline in the beginning of the churches was the peculiar work of the apostles, who had for three years received a like drill from the Saviour. They were the most visible part of this incipient polity, for they alone could have known the mind of the great founder of the churches, could know the fixed law, and could apply the fixed law of this wonderful creation, which was to be the greatest factor in the civilization of the coming ages, for they were recognized as the authorized custodians of those mysterious principles, and had the sole command as to how the churches should be founded. They alone knew the code of drill, the army regulations ; they alone were obeyed ; they alone could drill. There was no place here for a written constitution. They remembered the Saviour's oral instructions, and by oral instructions they were taught how to build churches, and how to develop them. In this, the very earliest times of the churches, the choice of the men, who made up those churches, as to how the churches should be constructed, did not determine their structure. They took it as it came from the hand of Christ. Every one who entered these organic units was born, as it vv^ere, to a specific status in the church, and in that place he had to stay. In that place he found certain duties, which he had to fulfill, and there were certain privileges which he might enjoy, and which were all he need to expect. The net of custom caught them as they entered the church, and kept each where he stood. The churches were simple, free, and independent one of another, having the apostles as their common, ordinary pastors, getting their membership to obey. When the church-makers of this day go about the business of church building, they see nothing in these simple structures to be praised, or admired, or to be imitated ; all seems a blunder — a complex error, to be got rid of as soon as OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 21 possible. Bat that error has made the Baptists what they are to-day. For this form of church polity is their inheritance; they have kept it pure. On the very physical organization of every Baptist church in the world, the hereditary marks of these apostolic churches are stamped. And the people all along the line of the ages, who have adhered to these ancient forms, became the Baptists of the day ; a people firmly set in the ancient land- marks — a peculiar people, indeed. There was a time in the history of every Baptist church, now extant in the world, or that ever did exist, when the individuals who instituted it existed before the church itself. It is an organic unit, and depends upon men to organize it. The foundations of the churches of Christ lie too deeply in the human soul, in man's whole Christianized nature, to be explained by saying that a man, or set of men, can found one great uni- versal church system, and all smaller organic units are to be merged in that imperial church for government and worship. To Baptists, the local organic church is all and everything, the individual member receiving his teaching and his ethical strength from his church alone. And this organic unit constitutes the ground on which is founded what is called church sov- ereignty, that is, self-sufficient ecclesiastical power, Avhich derives its vital energy from no other source but from itself, is founded by no superior authority, but imparts it under the laws of the gospel, and extends over everything that is requisite in order to obtain the object of the local church. This church has for its legitimate objects the preaching and spread of the gospel, and all those things that are necessarily incident thereto, and which he, nevertheless, cannot obtain singly, ought not to obtain singly, or will not do singly. Men may exist, and be Christians, without a church, but a church cannot exist without Christian men. It lives, and may die, but the royal charter, under and by which they may be instituted, still lives, and will live forever. I do not believe there ever was a time, since the establish- ment of the first church at Jerusalem, when these Baptist churches did not exist, but admit, for the sake of argument, that there was, Christ's charter still exists, by which they may be founded at any time. While the phenomenon of ecclesiastical jurisprudence is intimately bound up with that of government, yet a critical research into the nature of the apostolic churches shows conclusively a condition in which those churches may be said to have existed without w^ritten laws. Not that the Saviour had not already granted the charter, so to speak, by which they were authorized to be organized, yet nothing is more certain than that a settled government subsisted before the conscious manufacture of the ecclesiastical laws by which they were to be governed. It is also true that the apostles were present, and gave direction to the formation of the churches, yet there was a time in their history when they had not advanced to the law-making stage, for it was some time after that when the Scriptures were written and compiled. Hence it can be truthfully said that, barring the charter or con- stitution, which Christ granted for their organization, the apostolic churches existed before ecclesiastical laws proper came into existence. The establish- 22 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUSCH JURISPEUDENCE ; ment of the first churclies was the nucleus of all law and order. But it is likewise true that the customary rules and usages, necessarily arising out of those churches, contain the germ of all future ecclesiastical laws, and that it is error to confine the use of the term ecclesiastical law to those rules which attain commanding validity only when the churches can be looked upon as fully developed in all their essential departments. Before the epoch of the complete founding of the churches it is certainly true that many of the phenomena of ecclesiastical jurisprudence are present, as though by anticipation, in an unmistakable guise. Christ and His apostles in the beginning wisely refrained from formula- ting a written code of laws for the use of the churches, and imposing them on a people who were unprepared for them by previous habits of thought, or who might have been, on other grounds, persistently averse to them. Thus an enduring antagonism and opposition in the incipiency of church government might have been engendered, which is incompatible with all ecclesiastical and spiritual progress, and constantly threatens divisions and spasmodic changes in the polity of the churches in the very beginning. It was necessary in the very outset to employ custom and usage as the ally of church government rather than to challenge it as its foe. The large bulk of the church's rules of ethics has thus its origin in voluntary customs which, as it were, came spontaneously into existence and were maintained in force, partly by the mere facility of obeying the promptings of habit, partly by the influence of the membership exerted in favor of what is familiar and consecrated by long use, and partly by the felt convenience of having settled rules and practices, to which the mass of the membership may be expected at all times to conform. And we see there was no central authority, supreme over all those early churches, which may be said to have wielded the forces of all the then existing churches and to have represented their will. In other words there was no centralized government in an ecclesiastical sense, no universal church and no true law for the government of such a politic body. Ecclesiastical law was, in fact, the unwritten detailed expression of the will of a local church published through its originator, the government of the local church, which is the only supreme ecclesiastical authority on earth. Thus we see what evil consequences might follow, and do really follow, from attempting to impose a written system of laws upon a church out of harmony with the previous usages and the temperament of a religious people, through the influence of a priestly caste of functionaries. Ecclesiastical law in the true sense can only be found in a local church in its fully created and perfected sense, and where the law and the government do not imply the same thing. In such a system of church jurisprudence it were better that ecclesiastical law should remain like it was in the apostolic times, unwritten, so far as its essential nature is concerned. Fortunately for the Baptist form of church government, it necessarily happens that the spontaneous customs of which early ecclesiastical law consists, or out of which it is generated, do not admit of being written down even in an unsystematic form. In all the OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 23 New Testament Scriptures, besides some fragmentary rules of ethics and morals, there is no attempt to recast ecclesiastical laws into an exact and systematic form. And among Baptists, who alone have fallen heirs to this Bible form of church government, it is only within the past half century that any determined attempts have been made to compile and publish the customary laws of Baptist churches in a clearly intelligible form. This, however, has been done, not authoritatively by the churches, but by private men on their own account, who are esteemed, skilled and learned in ecclesi- astical law and government. These treatises are very highly prized by Bap- tists, and are useful in proportion to their intrinsic Scripturalness, and have tended greatly to keep the law stable, and rendered uniform in its applica- tion to individual cases coming before the churches for decision. Thus we see that these laws are not a legislative creation, but so far as they have ever been reduced to writing, they are the creation of the churches, first in the form of customs and usages, and afterwards collected and exhib- ited in written formulas by eminent writers whose learning and wisdom all defer to, who on that account are considered authoritative, as the writings of famous lawyers are received by the courts of justice. This well-known body of laws is based upon the Scriptural law, extended by so many of the usages and practices as the churches can be supposed to have created and adopted, enlarged by a superstructure of interpretation which ecclesiastical commen- tators have erected ; but of course it cannot have any such sacredness, and consequently any such authority, as the Scriptures have. Baptist church law has been greatly developed in this way; but we have always attributed but little real authority to commentaries of the most learned writers of text- books. We obtain our law, and adjust it to the needs of each succeeding generation, through the decisions of our churches on isolated groups of facts establisii-ed by the most careful methods. It cannot be supposed to have been produced by a process resembling written commentaries or ecclesias- tical legislation. It is the business of the whole denomination to see to ifc that this law does not clash with the word of God in the written law of the New Testament. Those who have studied this system of ecclesiastical juris- prudence know that legislation of any kind, whether in churches or a state, is associated with innovation. A lawyer will tell you that the legislator is always supposed to innovate; the judge never. It is the peculiar and only province of the judge to interpret, declare and pronounce what is pre-exist- ing law or custom; but it does not follow that this interpretation and decla- ration of the law has any affinity for legislation in the modern sense of that term. The theory of ecclesiastical legislation is of human origin, and is a trick and device of priest-craft, which has gone far to undermine and de- stroy the reverence of the world for the written word of God. Hence the Baptists of the earth, whose lessons to the world in the matter of the science of free government and religious liberty have been so valuab'e, have never had a written fundamental law in the true sense of that expres- sion. Our constitution being a sort of a denominational habit, a kind of ecclesiastical education by covenant, a collection of hereditary usages and 24 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPP.UDEXCE; customs, but nevertheless living ideas, so adjusted that errors drop out that truth may be grafted in their place. The history of ecclesiastical govern- ment, so called, shows that written church constitutions have never pre- vented church commotions, reformations and schisms. If there were any authority in Scripture for one, a good written constitution might be a help to a church that knows how to make and use it. But it is very evident that the best conceived one is no help to a church that is not otherwise capable of self-government. The equal facility with which the several church systems have made them and disregarded them, is nothing to the point either for or against such instruments, but only shows how little of real efficacy in the business of church government such societies have achieved. Such humanly devised written systems have nothing better than an arbitrary written rule to apply to the enormous range of objects that have to be brought into harmonious combination under tlie new system of ecclesiastical legislation. What can be looked for as likely to exercise a steady control over an unsymmetrical and unscientific jurisprudence which can only be constituted by arbitrary rules, inasmuch as, instead of reposing on the firm basis of the Scriptures they are made to rest on the intermediate principles of ecclesiastical legislation, on that which is merely arbitrary? To an incomplete system of legislation there is then added as a supplement a juris- prudence as full of defects as it is unscriptural. By the institution of the free and independent churches of Christ two great ends, the one of religious liberty, the other of the administration of church aifairs, have been united — namely, direct participation of the mem- bership of each local church in the government of the same, and the pre- venting it from falling entirely into the hands of a privileged class of the priesthood. Freedom of thought and action and liberty of conscience cannot subsist except in a free church under a free gospel. The high destiny of a baptized believer in Christ demands it ; the church acts through laws of its own generation ; they are the great organs of the churches of Christ, the organs of combined reason derived by individual interpretation from the word of God ; without them churches would not be churches, and churches could not fulfill that for which they were created. And, in the administration of church afiTairs, when the very moment ultimately arrives for which church law was made, when it is finally to be applied as a general rule to a practical case, and the practical principle is to be realized in church govern- ment, it is left to the membership of each church — to those who helped to generate the law and are responsible before God for its faithful execution. There is a deep meaning and much beauty in all this. Ecclesiastical law is the expression of the supposed will of God, and the membership represents the church, in judging whether, in the matter before them, the facts warrant the application of the law. Where a new law appears, it is the product of facts, not of theoretical legislation. The membership of every church repre- sents, or rather is, whenever they act in the fear of God, the living, operat- ing law of the gospel. The apostles might have chosen Matthias to be Judas' successor, but they relegated it to the church of which he was a OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 25 member and by lot he was chosen. Indeed it may be justly said the mem- bership of each local church in their sovereign capacity represents more fully and more Scripturally the will of God, than any other person or body of men on earth, not even excepting the apostles in the times when they lived upon the earth. True church independence and freedom consist in being free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of any man or body of men, but to have only the law of the gospel for a rule of action. The liberty of every Christian in a church of Christ is to be under no other w'ill but that established by consent in the church local of which one is a member ; nor under the dominion of any restraint, but what the church shall ordain according to the trnst put in it. Nevertheless, liberty is not a freedom for every one to do what he pleases, to live as he pleases, and not to be tried by any law, but true liberty of every church member under ecclesiastical government is to have a standing rule of ethics to live by, common to every one of the church made by the common consent of the whole church ; a liberty to follow one's own will in all things where it does not come in conflict with the laws of Christ ; and not to be subject to the inconsistent, uncertain, arbitrary will of another man, as the freedom of every Christian is to be under no other restraint but the laws of Clirist. Baptists belong to that system of church government which carries religious liberty over the globe, because wherever it is found, free institutions, a free church, a free gospel and free worship accompany it. We belong to that peculiar people whose obvious task it is, among other things, to plant the seeds of civil liberty over vast regions in every part of the earth, as well as that of religious liberty, for where the one is in all its perfection there the other most flourishes. We belong to that great denomination whose happy lot it is to be placed, with the full inheritance of both religious and political liberty, on the noblest soil in the noblest land upon God's footstool. And all Baptists will rejoice with me when I say, not with pride, but with joy, that we belong to that church which alone has religious freedom and self- government, in the true gospel meaning of these terms. The separation of ecclesiastical government into three branches — the exe- cutive, legislative and judicial, so to speak, — is not a necessary condition of free church government. In the nature of government, the will of the law- making power (which, in ecclesiastical jurisprudence, is the Scripture) must be superior, and the executive power subordinate. This necessarily must be so, because the will must first express itself before the act willed can be per- formed. In a highly-developed church system a law is first formulated, and then the designated functionary executes it. The whole circle of church government is comprised in commands and performances. That the same persons both will and command, through the law, and also execute the law, as in the apostolic times, in no wise affects the essential fact of the duality of the processes, and the further fact that the command must pre- cede the action which is commanded to be done. Hence that department of any system of church government which expresses the will of the church 26 A THEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; is the central and superior power in the church. This every Baptist under- stands, for he feels called upon to obey no law but that of the Bible — the law-book of the churches. Those who obey this sacred law are only the servants who carry it out. The separation and distribution of these various functions of government to different individuals in other church systems is only for the convenient, practical working of the government; and when the advocates of these systems insist that a division of church government into these three departments — the executive, legislative and judicial — is of the very essence of free ecclesiastical institutions, they put mere form for substance. It is by no means incompatible with the liberty of action and freedom of thought and conscience that the law-making body should be also the executive, and even the judicial, body, as it is in Baptist church govern- ment. Baptist church government is not one of checks and balances, as those terms are understood in political science. If by a balanced government we mean one in which the principal checks to power reside outside the churches, Baptist church government is not a balanced one. The materials are hap- pily wanting with which to construct an ecclesiastical system of that char- acter. There are no orders of the ministry, no bishop, no cardinal, no pope, no legislative assembly, no ecclesiastical establishment. These ^are not necessary elements in the composition of what is ordinarily understood by balanced church government. There are no such invidious distinctions to mar the equality of the system. The membership are not divided into active and passive members; every member enjoys a like freedom with every other member. The ecclesiastical institutions, though destined to per- form different functions, have one character and conspire to one common end. As they are not the accidental growth of circumstances, but have been formed with design, the power which created them continues afterward to uphold them, and to regulate their movements. So that Baptist church government, although not a balanced one in the Pedo-baptist sense of the term, is so in a still higher sense. Whatever division of powers there may be, none of the departments possess a self-existing authority, none exercise an independent will of their own ; for they are all controlled by the internal force which resides in each church. The idea of a division or distribution of the sovereign powers of a church for legislation and rule, could never have entered the minds of the apostles, because these ecclesiastical legisla- tors, being elective, are not co-eternal with the churches ; they, being tem- porary and artificial, so to speak, might demolish as well as build, there being danger that, had the churches created several orders and division of powers, these different orders and division would naturally swallow up the churches, as they have done in every other system. It is one of the fundamental elements of apostolic church government that the sovereign power of a church cannot be divided. And if there were a church wherein the rights of sovereignty were divided it cannot rightly be called a church, but the corruption of a church. The truth is, that the right of church sovereignty is such as they that have and exercise it cannot, OR, THE COMMOjS- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 27 though they would, give away any part thereof, and retain the rest, and still remain a church of Christ. As, for example, if we should suppose the mem- bers of the churches at the National Capital, and several others all closely combined, having in themselves absolute sovereignty, to have chosen a standing ecclesiastical council, and that to this council they had given the supreme power of making laws, reserving, nevertheless, to themselves, in direct and express terms, the right of a part of the sovereignty, this grant of the churches to the council would be of no effect without an express war- rant of Scriptural authority. No church of Christ can deprive itself of its own sovereignty so far as to subject itself to an arbitrary power, either in the church or out of it, which may treat it absolutely at its caprice ; this would be to renounce its own ecclesiastical life as a church of Christ, of which it is not the master — would be to renounce its duty, which is never permitted ; and if this be true of the church which would blot out its ecclesi- astical status, much less has an individual the power to surrender his liberty and individuality, with which each one composing the church is divinely endowed. A power given to a church by Christ for a certain purpose is limited by that purpose, and consists in the right to do or not to do that which the law of the gospel does or does not prohibit, and in the certainty that all exactly follow that rule. Thus we see that Baptist church government is the most wonderful pro- duct of ecclesiastical history. It comes nearer to solving all the problems of ecclesiastical organization than any system ever developed by human ingenuity. In the first place, it preserves the Christian world from the monstrous oppression of the universal church idea. This is an indispensable condition of ecclesiastical progress. The churches, thus instituted and organized, advance ecclesiastically, as well as individually, by coming in contact, competition and antagonism with all other systems. The universal or monarchical system of church polity suppresses all this in its universal reign over the churches, which means, in the long run, stagnation and despotism. At the same time. Baptist church government solves beautifully the relation between churches by the development of a system of inter- church law, which we will explain fully in another place. In the second place, Baptist church government solves the problem of the relation of church sovereignty to religious liberty and freedom of conscience ; so that while it is the most perfect as well as the most powerful ecclesiastical organi- zation that the world has ever produced, it is still the freest and most inde- pendent. This could not be otherwise, because it permits the participation of the governed in the government. The membership have a common faith, will and practice. This common understanding is the strongest moral basis which a church government can possibly have ; and, at the same time, it secures the development and administration of usages and customs whose righteousness must be acknowledged by all, and whose effect will be the realization of the truest religious liberty. In this beautiful system there can be no jealousy between sister churches; and the principle will be universally recognized that, where uniformity is necessary, it must exist; but when 28 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUSCH JURISPRUDENCE; uniformity is not necessary, variety is to reign in order that through it a deeper and truer harmony may be discovered. Heuce it must be insisted that this wonderful system of church polity is the greatest production of the Christian era ; and the fact that it is the creation of Christ and his apostles, and has been fostered and kept pure by the Baptists of the world, stamps them as indeed a peculiar people, and authorizes them, in the ecclesiastical economy of the world, to assume the leadership in the establishment and administration of Christ's kingdom on earth. We know nothing of the influences and the conditions under which the apostles and early Christians awakened to the consciousness of the organic local church, and felt the impulse to exert itself for the objective realization of that consciousness except through a close study of the churches them- selves. We are fully warranted, however, by the history of those early churches which the record presents to us, in concluding that this great light did not come to all at once. But these fundamental principles form the nucleus of ecclesiastical organization. They first establish an organic church, and from behind its power and influence they govern the member- ship. The religious sanction secures obedience to the laws of its organiza- tion. Religion and law doubtless at first were confused and mingled. They were joint forces in this early period when those early disciples- emerged from that chaotic state and entered upon a course of true development ; but the membership were enveloped by the churches, and existed only by their covenanted obligations and the moral support which they received from the church thus instituted. Under this form, the membership are disciplined and educated. It leaves a large sphere of individual activity unrestrained. In its incipiency it tended to prevent the respect and obedience for Jaw developed by a privileged priesthood from becoming too timorous and ser- vile. It opens the way for a more general exertion of human reason and education. At last, through the educating power of self-reliance and self-government, the whole membership are awakened to the consciousness of a complete organic church of Christ, and feel the impulse to participate in the work of its objective realization. Animated by loyalty to Christ, and loyalty to nothing else in church government, they gather about their church, as the best and only existing nucleus of ecclesiastical power on earth. They give the church the streugth to overcome both defiant officers and rebelUous members. They establish the organic unity of the church by a process pecu- liar to themselves. They bring the absolute sovereignty of the church to realization. They subject all individuals and. all associations of individuals within its jurisdiction to its sway. Apparently they make the government and the officers to be the church. But really they make them but the ser- vants of the church. The church is now its constituent membership in sov- ereign organization. This is an immense advance in the new kingdom of God on earth, in comparison to the old regime. It is the beginning of the modern apostolic ecclesiastical era. Under its divine and educating influ- ence the churches spread rapidly, as new converts are added to them, and on, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 29 the new idea becomes completely popularized. The doctrine that baptized believers in Christ in ultimate sovereign organization are the church, be- comes a formulated principle in ecclesiastical government. The sovereign membership of each church turn their attention to the perfecting of their own organization. They lay hands upon the royal priesthood, and strip it of its assumed and usurped powers and make it purely an office. If it ac- commodates itself to the position Christ assigned it, it is allowed to exist ; if not, it is cast aside. It derives its authority, with all its sacred immunities and rights, from the church, and the government of the church has only the duty and the power of observing and protecting those immunities and rights, in the sphere assigned to it by the church under the laws of the gospel of Christ. Ecclesiastical government, the rudiments of which are thus viewed, is stable and permanent. It does not lie within the power of men to create it to-day and destroy it to-morrow, as caprice may move them, or to change its funda- mental form from that which is laid down in Scripture. The law of the gospel sets exact limits to the lengths to which it permits individuals to go in this direction. It is ever present to prevent the violation of those limits by any church or association of churches or individuals to the injury of the rights and prerogatives of other churches or individual members thereof. It stands ever ready, if perchance the measures of prevention prove unsuccess- ful, to punish, by proper ecclesiastical censures, such violations. Really the church of Christ cannot be conceived without permanency and stability. The question is. Did Christ and his apostles give the churches a particular form of government, and is that form sufficiently definite to be imitated now ? If so that form is its very essence, and is presumed to contain the most truthful interpretations of this question, which a fallible and develop- ing humaii view can, at the given moment, discover. This is a truism which none can deny ; that the power that has the right to create can only change or amend. Christ the great head of the church formed and moulded it to suit his will. To say that man can change it at will, would be to de- throne Christ the sovereign by making the will of the subject superior to his own will. Thus must every healthy mind come to the conclusion that there is not only instability, but incompleteness and positive error, in such an or- ganization of the church. It does not require a great deal of scientific re- flection to detect the error. It lies in the doctrine of an amalgamated cen- tralized system of church government in which the local church is destroyed. I contend that there is no such a thing in ecclesiastical government as a centralized church polity; that this ecclesiastical adjective is applicable only to post-apostolic systems, and that the attempt to make a centralized system in which many churches are united for government, is caused by confound- ing the conceptions of a church and the government which sets it in mo- tion. This ecclesiastical phenomenon appeared in that period of the history of the churches when, through the expansion of the church, its organization suffered natural changes which did not express themselves immediately in the forms of the gospel. The dull mind of post-apostolic sects cannot at once so A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDEK-CE; be made conscious of such changes and the damaging effects upon true ecclesiastical government. It takes them in only piecemeal, and formulates them piecemeal, and is always deceived by the tempting conceit that our Saviour and his apostles established no particular form of church govern- ment, and that the whole thing is a matter for the ecclesiastical legislator to shape at his will. When this lax view is taken of church polity, no wonder that we see in the Christian world so many systems different the one from the other. No wonder that we see the autonomy of what ought to be free and independent churches utterly destroyed and an unwieldly overgrown system of church government erected over their ruins with proud and haughty ecclesiastics ruling them with rods of iron. No wonder we see the simple form of church polity of the Scriptures widened and expanded until it reaches the uttermost limits of the earth with one man standing at its head claiming with blasphemous affrontery to be the supreme ruler of not only the Christian world, but of the temporal world, ready with a temporal sword in hand to destroy all who will not bow down and worship at the shrine of his power. Other sects have not gone to such lengths, but they belong to that system which makes these things possible. If they would only study this subject in the light of God's word, this source of confusion would not exist. f seudo-ecclesiastics who would build a new church as a mechanic would build a house, or the machinist a new machine, forget, in their fervor after completeness, the real functions of the institution they seek to found, will fail in its object about in proportion as it is denied elasticity, adaptability, room for growth and the faculty of casting off worn-out parts and obsolete functions which are only found in the apostolic polity. A written church constitution which deals in certain preconceived general principles, and seeks to mould the affairs of the churches into conformity with them, is very different from primitive church government which in its genius undertakes to arrive at the knowledge of fundamental maxims, by availing itself of a vast fund of experience and observation existing among the membership themselves. Hence Baptist church polity in imitation cf the divine models is, for this reason, really a difficult and arduous achievement. The difficulty does not consist in the degree, but in the extent of intellect necessary for the occasion. A plan of government in which the popular will has a direct agency, presupposes a very wide diffusion of intelligence, and this at once stamps upon the undertaking both a practical and a comprehensive charac- ter. By this means, the experience, the teaching and acts of one generation of Baptists are made to live where the persons composing it are physically dead. Without it all this would have died v/ith the body as with other animals. In church jurisprudence, historical knowledge is not only accumu- lated capital, but productive capital. By its help each succeeding age can begin where the last expired. Without it each age and each man must commence in ignorance and infancy. By its help a church, or the whole denomination, may become as one vast living, never dying man. In this modern age men have learned how to make new societies and to establish new forms of government for them. But, after all, few men have OR, THE COMMOI^ LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 31 been equal to the stupid and mistaken labor of making a new cliurch of Chricit. Every one knows how natural it is for Baptists to resort to the apostolic form of church government and how tenaciously they cling to it. They delight to copy it ; they would be unnatural if they did not adopt it. And not only do they, without thinking, choose the apostolic form of polity which was in vogue in the primitive times, but they know not how to invent another. How distasteful are these old forms to the new church builder whom it happens not to suit ! Baptists like and venerate that form of church government which they ever see before them recorded in the Scrip- tures ; and if they are too odd and old-fashioned to see any beauty in the many new-fangled systems, they might be pitied, but ought not to be con- demned. One of their mottoes is : AVhat the apostles set up and used strengthens; what is disused weakens. Christ gave them the charter to erect the churches, and they made a model. Then the necessity which rules all to imitate what is before their eyes, and to be what they are expected to be, moulded the early disciples to adhere to that model. This is the very pro- cess by which the churches of Christ are being made in our own time by the Baptists of the world. This model has given its shape to Baptist churches because this body of Christians has unconsciously imitated it. None but Baptists have had any share in either their origin or in their propagation. The accident of a departure from this system early in the Christian era led some astray, but the Baptists, under whatever name they may have hereto- fore existed, have preserved the original forms by customary copying and stand ready to hand them down unimpaired to future generations. Christ, instead of perpetually creating different models for different kinds of church governments, created a distinct model for every church alike. From this model all other churches of the apostolic form are to be made. Thus Christ formed the model of the first church at Jerusalem ; according to this model any body of baptized believers may make and fashion as many churches as they like, in the same way as an artist may imitate in his paintings the types already created, but cannot himself create anything new. They do not create a new model, for these models have existed from the founding of the first church at Jerusalem, and Baptists in fashioning churches fashion them after the model furnished by Christ himself. The best reason why Baptist church government is the one suited for the great mass of mankind is, that it is an intelligent government. The mass of mankind understand it, and they hardly understand any other system. Ask an ordinary Methodist, Presbyterian, Episcopalian or Catholic to give you a succinct account of the detailed workings of their respective systems and he would be at a loss to do so. It is often said that church people are ruled by their imaginations ; but it would be truer to say that they are governed by the weakness of their imaginations. The nature of a complex, written church constitution, the various church judicatories, high and low, the functions of the various orders of the ministry, the play of the various classes, the pas- Biveness of the masses, the unseen formation of a guiding opinion, are com- plex facts, difficult to know, and easy to mistake. But the action of a single 32 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Baptist cliurch, tlie fact of an assembled body of men and women deliber- ating upon a practical question of fact to be then and there decided, are easy ideas ; anybody can make them out, and no one can ever forget them. Here we discern a government in which there is no complexity; and little or no preconceived system, still less any idea of outside domination, but in which the main-spring of obedience on the part of the membership consists in their personal feeling and reverence towards a government ruled by themselves, for themselves. Baptists are as an intelligent body of people aa live in the world, but we have whole classes, with their plain sense and slow imaginations, unable to comprehend the idea of a written church constitu- tion, a written system of church laws — unable to feel the least attachment or reverence to impersonal laws, except such as God has made and delivered to man. In laying the foundations of the churches of Christ the apostles had their own work assigned them by Christ. That work was the fashioning of a yoke to be laid upon all who came under the law of the gospel of Christ — a yoke, however, easy to be borne. We as His disciples have only to take upon ourselves that yoke and be content to wear it. Baptists imitate what is before their eyes. They do not go about seeking which is the best form of government. They do not imitate the apostolic form because it is only one among many they see laid down in the Scriptures — one form among others, all of which are equally divine and one of which seems better than the rest. Be it remembered that the old adage says : " Whoever speaks two languages is a rascal," and it rightly represents the feeling of Baptists about church polity. Different forms of church government have no place in the law of the gospel. The early disciples had no conception of that kind of development which in the end would overthrow those original types and upon the ruins thereof others would be set up. They did not so much as reject the idea; they did not even entertain the idea. Those original churches are just the same to-day. Since ecclesiastical history began they have always been what they are now. The models in this form of polity do not improve ; there is no basis upon which to build a new form of govern- ment, and much less the materials to put up anything new. Only post- apostolic forms of church government advance, are reformed and are *' evolved." They have made their little progress in a hundred different ways ; they have framed different churches with infinite worldly assiduity ; they have, so to speak, built their churches with human hands, and stand off and point to them and say. Behold ! see what we have wrought ! The thing to acquire was, a polity first — what sort of polity was immaterial ; a written law first — what sort of law was secondary ; a person or set of persons to pay obedience to — though who he is, or they are, by comparison it does not matter. By a law, of which we know no reason, but which is among the first by which God guides and governs His churches, there is a tendency in succeed- ing Baptist churches to be like the first models, and yet a tendency also in the later churches to differ from the former. In certain respects each gen- OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 33 eration of churclies is not like the last generation ; and in certain other re- spects they are like the last. In point of polity they are alike ; in point of ethical development they are different. The peculiarity of politic develop- ment is to kill out changes and varieties at the birth of them, and before they can develop. But the fixed customary rules of ethics which the churches encourage and which they tolerate are imposed on all the member- ship, whether it suits them or not. In other words, Baptists never change the government of the churches, while the practices, the manners and cus- toms change, but they change with remarkable slowness and with studied caution. In this direction alone are progress and development possible. Gov- ernment is the fixed and unchangeable part of church polity, which we look at as so ancient, which has descended to us from the apostles unaltered and unalterable. Baptists in their simplicity and in their humility are too fond of the ancient form of church polity, too credulous of its completeness and perfection, too angry and impatient at the pain of new thoughts, to be able to bear easily with the idea of changes. Baptists and Baptist churches are the custodians of the models which Christ left by which to shape his churches throughout all time. These churches erected after these models present themselves to our minds as something venerable and unchangeable, something delivered by Christ himself. Naturally, therefore, Baptists hate new ideas of church polity, and are disposed more or less to ill-treat the man who suggests or brings it about. The monarchical idea of church polity, is that institution peculiar to Koman Catholics, from which all others have copied, including Episcopa- lians, Methodists, and Presbyterians. It would include the whole Christian world in its organization. It also solves the question of the relation of the local churches within its jurisdiction; in fact, in the complete develop- ment of its principle there can be no local church, except in the form of a subservient agency. In the first place, it must sacrifice the liberty of the individual, as v/ell as of the individual church. Uniformity is its deepest law ; and, therefore, its rule of individual conduct must be, that what is not expressly permitted by the church, is forbidden. In the second place, it cannot popularize its government. Unity and fixedness of purpose, in the place of liberty and variety, must reign always, and everywhere. In the long run, as history has fully demonstrated, this will stifle and destroy the capacity of the individual Christian. His education and development must not only be neglected, but hindered and prevented, in order that his unquestioned obedience may be secured and preserved. In the third place, the universal church must suppress all local ecclesiastical autonomy. Their written law must be one and the same in every place, and for every part of the denomination. In the fourth place, it must ignore and destroy all religious liberty and individual differences, for that, above all things, is its mission, its effect, and its significance. They, with all their genius and aptitude for devising schemes of church polity, never in practice have found the remedy for these failings, and been able to reconcile uniformity with variety, church sovereignty with religious liberty. Ecclesiastical government has always 3 34 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; been to them, especially the Catholics, a personal affair, and they have never appeared to be conscious of committing any ecclesiastical wrong in using its powers — even in the use of the temporal sword—for the personal interests of the church. We conclude then that this ecclesiastical freedom from absolute arbitrary power is so necessary to, and closely joined with, a church's preservation, that it cannot part with it, except it forfeits its preser- vation and church state and life altogether ; for a church of Christ, having the power of its own life in its own hands, cannot by compact, or its own consent, subject itself to any one, nor put itself under the absolute arbitrary power of another, to take away its autonomy when he pleases. A church cannot give more power than it has itself, and he that cannot take away his own life, cannot give another power over it. If this form of church government is a mere perversion of the apostolic polity, being a usurpation of more power than is consistent with the early churches, they gave it to themselves, and God renounces the institution of it as he renounced the government of the tribe of Judah, who chose a king contrary to that form of government which he delivered to them. Ye have chosen kings, but not by me ; and princes, but I know them not. He gave them a law of liberty, and if they fell into shame and miser}^ that accom- pany slavery, it was their own work. Those who have adopted these forms were not obliged to have priests and popes to rule over them. As God announced to Israel the misery they would bring upon themselves by departing from the law of Moses, so has he demonstrated to these people the unwisdom and folly in overthrowing the governments of his free churches, and uniting them in a consolidated form, for rule and government. This ecclesiastical monarchy, which our brethren think to be so majestic, is not only displeasing to God, and so inconsistent with his reign over them, but it has aggravated all the religious intolerance and crimes which the world has ever seen. One of the objects of the establishment of free and independ- ent churches was that there should not be massed into the hands of one man, or a few, that power which, once consolidated, has never yet failed to vent its fury upon the world, and has shed more Christian blood than all the pagans that were ever in the world besides. For the pope says there are two swords, the one temporal and the other spiritual, and both of them were given to Peter, and to his successors. If it be good for a church to live under such a power, why did not Christ of his own goodness institute it ? Did his wisdom and love to his people fail ? If it was from the Lord, was it not good ? If good, why was it not in the beginning ? On the other hand, if Christ established his churches upon the free and independent basis, in the beginning, was it not good then, and if so, is it not so forever ? Did good proceed from one root then, and from another now ? No trace of the church universal, for government, can be found in the New Testament. No candid man will deny but that Baptist churches conform in every essential respect to those in the times of the apostles. If they do not, we stand ready to reform them, and make them exact models of those churches. Wherefore, is it possible that these churches which are from OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 35 Christ, can be contrary to his will, and can he be offended with those who desire to live in a conformity to his will? But if Christ did neither, by a general and perpetual ordiuance of the gospel, establish over all the churches an ecclesiastical monarchy, nor prescribed it to his people by a particular command, it was purely man's creature, the production of his own fancy, contrived in wickedness and brought forth in iniquit}^; an idol, a golden calf, set up by themselves to their own destruction, in imitation of the priest- craft of the Jewish regime. If it was set up by the apostles, it is nowhere to be seen, either in the examples, or teachings of the apostles, or the churches. If a covenant or command be pretended, the nature and extent of the obligation can only be known by the contents expressed, or the true intention of it. If there be a general command given, or agreed upon, given by Christ to his apostles, to which all churches must submit, it were good to know where it may be found in the Scriptures, and by whose authority it was established, and then we can examine the sense of it. If no such appear, we may rationally look upon those as usurpers who go about from thence to derive a right. And as that which does not appear is as if it were not, v/e may justly conclude there was no such government set up by the apostles. Where then does supreme ecclesiastical power rest? Where then does church sovereignty reside? Where else can it be but in the local church? The churches of Christ never can delegate or pledge away their sovereign- ties, and of course, never have done so. It cannot do so by a forced union of a thousand little church sovereignties ; nor is each local church possessed of a fragment of sovereignty. Church sovereignty has nothing to do with the union of many churches for government, nor anything whatever to do with the individual member be he layman or minister. Catholics, Episcopalians, jNIethodists and Presbyterians form a joint stock sovereignty company and delegate this sovereignty to a single man or body of men for both legislation and government. It appears that church sovereignty is a power and energy naturally and necessarily inherent in the local church ; it only exists in and with a church, it cannot pass from it, it is the vital principle of the church. The assertion that a church of Christ can divest itself of its sovereign power, and delegate it to some other body of men, is as absurd and contradictory in itself, and can be as little imagined, as to suppose that it is possible for a human being to divest him- self of his own being and merge it into that of some one else. It is equally absurd to suppose r human individual, as a pope or bishop, can be a sovereign over a church of Christ. Since the churches are constantly receiving accretions they never cease, and since Avith them their necessity of existence never ceases, for Christ has said that the gates of hell shall not prevail against them, so is the sovereign power never exhausted or becomes extinct, it being the never-ceasing fountain and last resort of all ecclesias- tioal power on earth. This is the true source of Baptist church succession — that principle so near and dear to every Baptist heart. The principle that our system of church government is hereditary, or that 86 there lias been a regular succession of Baptist churches coming down in a line from the apostolic churches, has a strong hold upon the Baptists of America, and while it is impossible, owing to the missing links in ecclesi- astical history, to prove this position, yet there is every cause to believe it is true. This we do know that Christ graciously delivered to his apostles the great Magna Charter for the establishment of his churches, and that same Charter is with us to-day, and we have kept it unaltered and unimpaired to this blessed day of his grace. We do not have to apply to popes nor bishops, nor to churches, nor to synods, nor to councils for the privilege of using this charter to build churches, but it is ever present to be used for the building of a house for the Lord. It was framed not for a single day nor a single generation, but it is the fruit of Christ's own divine wisdom, and is the result of the experience of many ages, yea of all the ages since it came from his plastic hands, and is designed for the duration and permanence of all time, till he comes again. Some have laid violent hands upon it and with sacrilegious audacity have altered and perverted it, but Baptists have ever held it inviolate. Such institutions as these churches having so lengthy a line of succession cannot be radically altered by any process short of insig- nificant schisms which leave the original body in possession of the original char- ter and government, however persuasive the voice may be in favor of change. So vast is the number of individuals and churches interested in keeping these sacred charters inviolate, so well habituated are they, and consequently so deeply attached to these recognized ancient forms and usages customarily in use, that any vital alteration or reconstruction of them seems little short of treason and sacrilege, and the most conclusive reasons urged in favor of it are scarcely comprehensible. Doubtless there has always been a never-inter- rupted succession of men from the apostles' times, believing, professing and practicing such doctrines as the Baptists now teach ; and it is not incredible to believe, though it may not be easy of proof, that there has been extant in the world, likewise, a never-interrupted system of churches which has been the custodian of that doctrine. By this divine testimony Baptists are infalli- bly assured that Christ's words have been verified that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. In this sublime assurance of our Saviour is the infallible testimony of that supreme verity which neither can deceive nor be deceived. This is the only divine system of ecclesiastical government upon earth. It has a long chain of history which anchors in the laws of the gospel. His- torians will tell you that it is a universal law of moral and intellectual creation with no exception, that the higher and nobler the form of govern- ment, whether human or divine, to be produced or obtained, the longer and more varied is the chain of processes, and the more organic are these pro- cesses by which they are matured. Can any man who is at all acquainted with ecclesiastical history deny that there has been extant in the world a peculiar people holding to our system of church government coming down from the apostles ? Man-made systems of church polity start into existence seemingly perfect, all at once, so soon as the necessary agents from without OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 37 exist, but even in a system like this it takes a long time, and requires a variety of processes, one connected with the other, before it can become developed and matured. The same principle obtains in the political world. The English cystem of government, for instance, was planted a thousand years, or more, ago, and has been maturing and developing ever since. This system of political government, strange to say, had its commencement in very much the same way that our Baptist churches took their start — that is without a written constitution to fetter its growth and development. It is without doubt the most conservative and at the same time the most stable government in the world. Nothing short of a veritable revolution could change one important feature in it, not even to remove any abuse of power there may be in the system. It is founded upon actual experience and con- fidence. All power, whether political or ecclesiastical, must repose in confidence in those who are to carry out that power — the confidence of common sense and moral sense. Confidence, not indeed an unlimited confi- dence, must be the last vital spark which makes a prescribed action in government a living thing. It should be stated here, in laying down these rudimentary principles, that, as the churches were gradually being formed out of individual Chris- tians which constituted the primitive churches, the claims of the individual being towards an independent existence became progressively manifested in a variety of ways. These claims were enforced, partly by the growing moral sentiments of the bulk of the church, as these spontaneously developed themselves under the fostering influences of ecclesiastical life, and partly by the organized force of the whole church, expressed in ethical rules for its government. At first the personal claims of each member of the church were the mere outward form in which the tendency to individualistic, as contrasted with amalgamated, existence, clothes itself. So far as their free- dom of thought and action were restricted, so far were the possibilities of their individual existence reduced ; and when these principles were fettered on every side, these possibilities became annihilated. In other words, the life of the Christian being loses his essential characteristics, and it becomes accustomed to a mere phase of physical life. At the first birth of the church, however, the growth of the liberty of the individual is the only test of the possibility of the spiritual life. Yet afterwards, when the conception of individual liberty has been definitely framed, and the enjoyment of it in the church has been once so largely diffused as to secure the permanency of the church upon a Scriptural basis, the curtailment of individual liberty is not only compatible with the highest moral attainment in them, but may prove the condition for their loftiest development. Even here, however, the loss of Christian liberty, to the extent to which it exists, implies a degrada- tion of the church, and, if persisted in to its fullest extent, can only lead to its extinction as a church of Christ. Are these theories concerning ecclesiastical government, these maxims, substantial truths? that is, truths on which we can further build, or from which we can deduce further truths as binding as a system of church gov- 38 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUP.ISPEUDENCE ; eminent founded upon a written constitution ? or are they rather theoretical technicalities, framed and worded ingeniously, perhaps, to complete and round out a system, to give it that logical symmetry which gives, at least, an apparent finish to a system, and for the sake of which we find that, in all the theoretic systems which human reason has reared, men have resorted to many fictions. If the position herein taken be tenable, and is true, we may draw legitimate consequences from it; if it be a myth, a summing up of what has been stated by way of a simile, then we must stop with its state- ment, or we shall expose ourselves to the ridicule of all intelligent Baptists. But we must remember that the apostles left no written constitution for the formation of the churches, and hence Baptists have never felt at liberty to formulate one ; they left no written code of laws, except a few very meagre ones, specifically setting forth how they should be governed, hence Baptists have never felt at liberty to prescribe one. It is not enough to say that we are to go to the Scriptures for all the laws now in force, for we find them not, neither did Christ ever intend that the apostles should prescribe them. A specific form of government was given to us, but the rules of ethics, by which it was to be run and kept in motion, were left to the common sense of the membership of the churches. This being true, there is but one legiti- mate source from which ecclesiastical laws can spring— that is, custom and usage, which is nothing more or less than the unwritten expression of the denominational will, and especially that of the churches. The fundamental features of these churches may be summarized in the following propositions : I. Each church is a community of baptized believers, living at a certain locality, under a constituted government on the basis of perfect equality, and each church remaining independent of all others in all matters pertaining to local self-government. II. Each church may consist of not less than two persons, nor more than can conveniently assemble at one place, to worship together and hear the preaching of the gospel by one pastor. III. Each church acting through its members, is a moral person, having rights and duties. IV. A general conference, assembly or conven- tion, formed for any purpose whatever, is not a church and has no ecclesi- astical functions or status. V. Each church is sovereign as soon as it is reg- ularly constituted, which consists in its right of independent action, without reference to the will of any other church. VI. Each church may lose its sovereignty by being dissolved, or united with another church of the same faith and order, in which latter case the church receiving the dissolved church will become entitled to all the rights and bound to all the obligations of the church thus annexed or united. VII. Each church is free to grant or refuse recognition to a newly constituted church. VIII. Each church is a quasi incorporation, although not formally incorporated, may sue and be sued at law, and may acquire property by purchase, gift, devise or descent. IX. Each church elects its own pastor and deacons, and calls and ordains its own min- isters, who are equal in rank and authority ; with power to fill vacancies, as often as they occur, by election from among their respective members, and . with the further power to depose from office for cause. X. To each chiirch OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 39 13 committed the duty of administering tlie ordinances, of preaching the gos- pel through its ministers, and sending the same to the uttermost parts of the world. XL To maintain order and decorum within its own body, to the end that the doctrines may be kept pure. XII. Unanimity in the church is made essential to every public act, which said unanimity is made manifest by the rule of the majority of each church, the minority acquiescing therein. XIII. Each church has power to appoint and convene all subordinate coun- cils and committees for special purposes, but no such subordinate bodies have any authority over the church. XIV. Each church, when convened in regular conference, is open to the free discussion of all lawful questions, but the church alone decides them. XV. In each church is vested supreme ecclesiastical authority under the laws of the gospel, and has no power to delegate that authority, or any part of it. XVI. Experiencing the neces- sity of inter-church dependence for a general co-operation in the spread of the gospel, each church stands ready to join in voluntary associations and general conventions for that purpose alone. These several propositions will be considered in this treatise, but without following the precise order in which they are here stated. These rudimentary tenets of Baptist church polity are here brought for- ward and emphasized as essential for the fixing of the corner-stone of the churches of Christ. I maintain that these principles underlying Baptist church government have been in existence ever since the apostolic churches were first established. This is to be proved not merely by showing the re- semblance between the apostolic churches and our Baptist churches of to-day, but by making good the assertion that the epoch when those first churches were founded is the epoch when our Baptist churches commenced. For this purpose it is absolutely necessary to analyze the elementary principles of our churches, to trace the separate current of each to its primary sources, and to watch the processes of their intermingling. If our Baptist churches of to- day did not have their commencement with the apostles, when did they commence, and by whom were they founded ? Our eminent ecclesiastical historians can with unerring certainty put their fingers upon the man who originated all post-apostolic churches and point out the places and the times where all such organizations had their births and the peculiar circumstances under which they sprang up. Baptist churches have no Constantine, no Henry VIIL, no Wesley, no Calvin, no Luther and no Campbell. No, not even a John the Baptist have they as the founder of their churches, and if they have not Christ and his apostles as the originators of their system it is beyond the ken of the keenest ecclesiastical historian to tell when they com- menced and who gave these mysterious churches a being. He who has the knowledge of certain great leading ecclesiastical principles firmly fixed in his mind, has a basis between and around which he can naturally fix and group all the ecclesiastical principles and historical facts necessary to a proper treatment of the subject. Not only am I conscientious in the treatment of this subject from this standpoint, but I verily believe that the hand of God can be traced in it. 40 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Baptist church government, having its counterpart in the apostolic churches, is the longest line of consecutive government now extant in the world. For, not only do custom and usage, which is the basis of our Baptist institutions, enable us to work in long-established grooves, with the smallest amount of friction and obstruction ; but the mere fact of the long existence of a famil- iar usage so far fashioned in its own image in the denominational mind, and in the conscience of a people, that often our churches have a hard and unpopular task to perform in assaulting heresies and other indefensible abuses. The large mass of Baptists, being so unused to ecclesiastical change, except such as are the most cautious, slow and tentative kind, have their sentiments of loyality to, and reverence of, apostolic forms and doc- trines outraged by the sudden introduction of what is new and unfamiliar. Our minds have been trained and pruned in the school of experience in such a way as to be unable to conceive, as a mere intellectual people, a better ordered system of church government than that in which the apostles lived, and in which we have, under the blessing of God, ever kept ourselves. How far these fundamental elements of ecclesiastical polity, ascertained in the preceding pages, may practically expand in the future progress of the churches, no human mind can say, but they are elements towards a greater and fuller acknowledgment of which each step in the progress of ecclesiastical polity tends, and, therefore, belong to the very nature of the churches of Christ. Under this divine system, our cherished Baptist institutions have never suffered radical changes in any part of the globe by any process short of schismatic revolution, however persuasive the voice in favor of change. So vast is the countless number of Baptists interested in this beautiful form of polity, so well habituated are they, so well indoctrinated are they, and, consequently, so deeply attached to the recognized forms, customs, and usages, customarily in vogue — all of which have been so long established and acquiesced in — that any vital reconstruction of them, any innovating processes set on foot to overturn them, would seem little short of sacrilege and treason against God, and the most conclusive reasons in favor of change are scarcely comprehensible. These, then, are some of the fundamental elements of ecclesiastical polity^ which I have undertaken to open up and unfold from the standpoint of a Baptist. Every government, whether secular or divine, has to start from some axioms that are founded upon truths, which must be self-evident in their nature. The very meaning of proof involves its starting from, and relying on, previously acknowledged truths. Especially is this the case with Baptist church polity, being alone rooted, grounded, and nurtured in the laws of the gospel. Be not surprised when I tell you that it has required over eighteen hundred years before so simple an institution as that of Baptist church government could be clearly developed to its present degree of perfection. Until this development and perfection, its difficult nature was such that it could not be expected to be much cultivated. Besides the writings of Pedo-Baptist authors, combined with the erroneous idea that there is neither sense nor science in Baptist church polity, very OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 41 naturally stood in the way of free inquiry into the elements of ecclesiastical jurisprudence. But now, since Baptists have become the foremost cham- pions of popular education in the world, they are no longer willing to resort to Pedo-Baptist writers for a knowledge of these important things, but feel constrained to follow their own teachings upon the subject, and are able to lay down principles and precepts in accordance with the laws of the gospel of Christ, not only for their own edification, but for the information of others, who may wish to know the truth as it is taught in the Scriptures. Especially am I anxious that the young Baptists of the present day may become inter- ested in this beautiful study, for in it they will find much food for reflection. Thus we have come to the conclusion of this our introductory chapter. If the reader will have the patience to follow me over the whole field of this vast subject, I will be pleased, though he may not in all things agree with me in its treatment. I will try to carry light and order into a subject which heretofore has been shrouded to some extent in confusion, and will endeavor to bring a line of argument which reaches moral certainty into a region which before was given over to random guess-work. With many misgivings as to my own ability to treat Baptist church government scientifically, yet I think I may demonstrate the fact that it may be treated as a science, and may be placed on a firm basis, from which it is impossible to believe that it can be dislodged. This feeble attempt to treat Baptist church government as a science may, indeed, reveal to us several stages of the development and growth of our churches for which we have no recorded historic evidence, but which it makes far more certain than much which professes to rest on recorded evidence. It will teach us facts and principles about which no external proof can be had, but for which the internal proof, when once stated, is absolutely irresistible. For my own part, as a Baptist who has studied this deep subject from every possible standpoint, I firmly believe that this manner of its treatment has brought to light a vast common stock of fundamental principles, the ground- work of which is to be found in the law of God alone. It is by this method that true apostolic church government must be tested, and is the safeguard against all unscientific trea.tment of the subject — against running, for instance, to written books of discipline cunningly devised by human wisdom. The scientific method is first to go back to the Scriptures for a starting-point, and find out what there is in this sacred text which can be fairly set down as springing from that common stock. When this is clearly made out, we are then in a position to determine what part of ecclesiastical government is due to independent invention, since the days of the apostles, and what part, if any, is due to importation from other systems. Up to this time in the his- tory of Baptist churches the task of reducing these fundamental principles to systematic shape without injuriously innovating on Bible law and institu- tions has been so difficult that it is no wonder that it has, in fact, never been proceeded with except under great embarrassments. But now since these delightful studies have become the order of the day the task is not so hazard- ous and not so difficult of performance. 42 A TBEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; CHAPTER II. VIEW OF THE ORIGIN AND ORGANIZATION OF THE CHURCHES OF CHRIST; THE TRUE NATURE OF APOSTOLIC CHURCH GOVERNMENT. "l^FOTHING can be more interesting to a Baptist than to study the JLM fundamental principles underlying the primitive form of church government. It is of great importance to know what kind of laws are used in the churches and the process in which the laws are generated ; but the machinery by which the laws are put in operation is equally important. Let us call the latter the government of the churches. Baptist church gov- ernment is that state in which ecclesiastical power wholly and entirely rests in a local organic church. It is that kind of government which has a separate organism, an organic life, in which the separate functions of gov- ernment have their independent action, yet are by the general organism united into one living system. Churches, without ecclesiastical power, without a governmental polity, are already on the road to anarchy. A sincere reverence for our churches demands imperatively that we should understand the principles upon which our polity rests, and our ecclesiastical obligations, both that we may preserve forever our form of government, and that we may be able to prize, cherish and defend this God- given boon, lest we lose it for want of a true knowl- edge of the nature of it. It is a matter of regret that so few distinguished men of our denomination have written exclusively on the principles of Baptist church polity or the first elements of the churches. The attention of our authors has been directed, almost wholly, to the investigation of those subjects which are more or less closely connected with the history and theology of the churches, to the exclusion of those principles of government which have exercised such a powerful influence upon, not only the churches of Christ, but upon the nations of the earth. We believe, indeed we know, that no church can endure, if it has not a divine origin and a religious basis, and besides if it bears not a name taken from the natural language, originating itself, without any anterior and public deliberation. Hence the word Baptist is most appropriate as showing one of the characteristic practices of this great people. Sometimes God alone assumes the right of conferring a name. Indeed he has named all things, since he has created all things of a divine nature. Those personages whom God has thought proper to name, the name always relates to the functions they perform. He has said that in his future kingdom he would give them a ne^v name expressive of their exploits. This is seen in baptism ; the name expresses what it is, and in this matter there is nothing arbitrary. It OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 43 is witli churches as with individuals ; there are some churches which have no name, or at least a meaningless name, and there are others which have many. The name never bears any proportion to the thing; the thing always dignifies the name. It is necessary that the name germinate, so to speak; otherwise the name is false. There are two infallible rules for judging all human creations of whatever kind they may be, the basis and the name. If the basis is purely human, the edifice cannot stand, and the more men there be who engage in building upon this foundation, the more deliberation, the more frail will the institution be. How much soever of pains we take, we cannot build a divine house upon a human foundation. Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. The most central idea in ecclesiastical polity is that of the church, and if it were once clearly ascertained what is and what is not comprehended under this term, many of the most harassing misunderstandings appertaining to the subject would be avoided. It will not do to deal with the problem of church government as if it were a blank sheet of paper to be written upon and filled out to suit the whims of every body of men who may choose to call themselves a church of Christ, having as many kinds of churches as there are whims of the whimsical. They write and speak as if Christ and his apostles established no certain form of polity, and that it only needed a con- scious efibrt on the part of any given set of men to establish a church of their own faith and order, or to change at will all the formulas and condi- tions in which the churches of Christ primitively subsisted. The notion of the church as a distinct independent unit is, in fact, a product of purely Bible development, and on this ground it is seriously doubted whether any- thing else is a valid church of Christ. It is the inherent peculiarity of eccle- siastical phenomena that the experience on which a knowledge of them rests has to be gathered from a very circumscribed field, and that the mere exist- ence of any such field at all is a special attainment of advancing civilization. Thus the church in the stricter modern signification of the term as an eccle- siastical unit, independent in itself, differs at once from the Pedo-Baptist idea which attempts to build up a hierarchy of churches, all united under one common head for government. The primitive notion of a church can never be brought into clear consciousness till a number of sister churches present themselves side by side, and each of them, by enforcing its own rules and regulations, manifested to itself and to the world its own independence, per- sonality and integral unity. The church, in the Bible sense of the term, carries with it the idea of complete autonomy, and of organization for pur- poses of government. Thus a series of aflEiliated ideas and terms at once came to the surface such as ecclesiastical laws, rights, privileges and duties. It is not too much to say that the influence of speculative writers upon ecclesiastical jurisprudence in the Methodist and Presbyterian churches is at this time corapn.ratively small. In the days of Wesley and Calvin, when their works and a few other treatises in the infancy of those churches were almost the only source from which anything on the subject of church law could be derived, they had the greatest reverence paid their opinions. But 44 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; now in those systems when their books of discipline and digests are loaded down with thousands of decisions and precedents coming from their courts of appeal, a man who ignores them, and appeals to theory or to general principles laid down by text writers instead of facts, must not expect to re- ceive any great attention. Under the system practiced by Baptists the only resort we have to find out what is true church law, is the Bible itself as the great fountain of all law, and interpreted by our eminent text-writers, which to be binding, the law must have passed under the scrutiny of those learned in such matters, and have received the assent of all the churches, which are to be bound by it. This assent may be expressed, as by the ac- knowledged concurrence of the churches, or may be implied from estab- lished custom and usage. The inquiry must then be, what are the princi- ples which ought to, and not what shall regulate the mutual relations of the churches ? The Bible alone furnishes that immutable law which mud be recognized by the churches as binding at all times and under all circum- stances. Those principles laid down by commentators upon ecclesiastical law are only good laws for which we can give good reasons, and those bad which cannot be deduced from the sacred text of the Scrij)tures. The Scriptures, the usages and customary laws of the churches, the opinions of Baptists learned in ecclesiastical law, as well as the observations of common sense and reason, are in truth the only materials out of which the science of true church jurisprudence is formed ; and those vv^ho neglect them are justly chargeable with a vain attempt to philosophize without regard to facts and experience, which is the sole basis of all true philosophy. No Baptist author has heretofore attempted to contribute to the body of our literature a work upon the elementary and scientific principles of Baptist church government. The subject has not been treated of with that care which it demands, and I am quite sure that the theoretical view of the science has been quite neglected, not so much from a want of ability on the part of our Baptist authors to expound it, as to a misunderstanding of its importanco in its bearings upon true church polity. Therefore in that which follows it will be our object to divest true church government of its outward apparel, so as to view the wonderful creation with all its nerves, bones, muscles, and, above all, so to speak, its thoughts and feelings. Certainly nothing can be more instructive than to search out the first obscure and scanty fountain of those ecclesiastical principles which now water and enrich the great Baptist denomination of the world, v/hich has, under the peculiar blessing of God, spread itself, and is spreading itself, wherever the gospel of the Prince of Peace has found its way, softened and mellowed by peace and religion, and good will to mankind, and improved and exalted by the love of the truth, as it is in the great Head of the church. The triumph of the science of all true church government is but to verify the facts found in the Scriptures, and to draw from their connection the inductions that reveal the laws to be obeyed by church members under pain of being the more miserable the less they shall know or obey them. The man who takes up his pen to delineate these laws has before him the his- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 45 torical experience of eighteen Christian centuries, since these churches were founded. From that time Baptists have been laboring in the pulpit, the pew and in the studio to solve the great question of true church government, and how, under this gospel reign, souls may be saved. The triumphs of this sect, everywhere spoken against, under what name soever they may have lived and struggled, all supply us with a larger induction than John the Baptist ever dreamed of. A great and free church like that of the Baptists is the work of many ages, of stupendous characters, of faithful ministers who have had enough of grace in their hearts to resist the blandishments of priestly preferment and power. To form, support, and bring such to maturity, the developing influences must have stretched over many laborious years. We reap the fruits of all the ecclesiastical experience which has cost to our Baptist fathers time, care and much anxiety. The fundamental principles which underlie this peculiar kind of church polity is unlike that of all others in that it is entirely unwritten. In the infancy of the churches it was practiced something like twelve years before any book of the New Testament was written, and about sixty before the whole was written, and long before many of the books of the New Testament were agreed on as being canonical. Hence we are drawn to the conclusion that the fundamental principles of ecclesiastical government existed before all written law; that these principles are, and can only be, the develop- ment of an unwritten pre-existing charter and oral instructions given by Christ to his apostles to found this church, and to erect therein a govern- ment suitable to the end for which it was designed. That which in true church government is most essential, most intrinsically institutional and fundamental, was not at first, nor is it now written, and could not be without endangering the church itself, that the weakness and fragility of the con- stitutions of the various post-apostolical churches we see now set up in the world are actually in proportion to the multiplicity of their written laws and constitutional articles. It is about as reasonable to believe and expect that letters, thrown into the air, would, on falling to the ground, arrange themselves in such a manner as to form a true system of church government, as to suppose that a man, or set of men, a church or a set of churches could formulate a system that in any respect would conform to that Divine system established by our Saviour and his apostles. Man may plant an acorn, cul- tivate and water it, but he does not make the acorn, nor does he make the oaks from which they grow because he witnesses their growth and perfection. This is, in a sense, as if the trowel should believe itself tlie architect, but man is no less an instrument in the hands of God to plant his churches after the patterns we see in the Bible where it may be said with equal truth that man does everything, and yet does nothing, if you will allow the paradox. No error has done more to injure the cause of Christianity than that fundamental error of all errors to the effect that an ecclesiastical constitu- tion could be written, whilst reason and experience, as well as the Scriptures all unite in establishing the fact, that the constitution of Christ's churches is a Divine work, and that that which is most fundamental in the laws of 46 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; a true cliurcli is peculiarly what cannot be written. When it is asked in what book the laws of Christ's churches are written ? let it be answered truthfully, that they are written in the hearts of the Baptists of the world. Those belonging to other systems of church government suppose, in effect, that the multitudinous laws humanly made, upon which rests their polity, exist only because they are written; if this be true then any authority whatever which may have written it, has the right to annul it, and such a law will not have any of that character of sacredness and immutability which distinguishes it from ordinary human laws. The essence of Baptist church jurisprudence is, that no one has the right to abolish it ; how can such a law be considered immutable and above all, if any one has made it ? The universal argument of all Baptists is, that it is impossible, owing to the independent nature of the churches, for any one of them, or several, to make a v/ritten law that would bind them all ; and even if it should be otherwise, a covenant is not a law and binds no body, unless there is a superior authority by which it is guaranteed. Covenants can be enforced in local churches, for then we find the characteristic feature of a law in the expression of united wills. Even then united wills form the regulation, and not the law itself, which manifestly and necessarily supposes a superior will that makes it to be obeyed. At no time in the history of the world have Baptists ever assembled together in a body, large or small, and said : Come let us lay down the laws for the establishment and governr,%cnt of Baptist churches. No one of them ever thought of such a thing. The establishment of these peculiar institu- tions was the work of the apostles under the unwritten instruction of Christ himself. All the elements of Christian civilization, acting together and forming together, by their admixture and reciprocal action and combina- tion, have produced at length, after many centuries, the most complex unity and happy equilibrium of ecclesiastical government that the world has ever seen. Christianity itself, the greatest creation of all the ages, made for all men and every age, is conformed to the general principles of this same kind of unwritten law. Its Divine Author was certainly able to write himself, or to cause his doctrines to be written ; yet he did neither write it himself nor cause them to be written in a legislative form, as by a church, a synod or a conference. The New Testament, after the death of its writers, and even the establishment of the Christian religion, exhibits only a narration of admonitions, moral precepts, exhortations and censures, but in no wise a collection of dogmas expressed in legislative, imperative form. Why then did not the apostles convene a church, a synod or a conference and set them to work to form a written constitution, a book of discipline, or some other written form of words which would have rendered it unnecessary for others to do so afterwards ? Whatever was done afterwards in the form of govern- ment, polity or doctrine, are only professions of faith for its own recognition, as for contradicting the errors of the moment. In such as were formulated we only read we believe; and never, you shall believe, you shall do. Hence if a people should so far forget themselves as to formulate one of these OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 47 humanly devised codes of belief, or books of canonical overtures, we may be sure that the religion of this people is just as apt to be false as true, for it is of human origin. That it has written its religious code in a paradoxysm of fever and impulse, and that it will be the means of ecclesiastical rot and decay rather than spiritual life and true development, and that it will be ridiculed in a little while by those for whom it was made, as possessing neither power nor durability and wanting in divine efficacy. The origin and true nature of ecclesiastical government has been, and still is, a greatly mooted question. Baptists and Pedo-Baptists differ widely in regard to it. In what respects, then, does Baptist church government have a distinctive character, as to its formation, when compared with other sys- tems ? In the first place it is entirely unwritten ; in the second place what is written in connection with it is found in the Scriptures alone ; and in the third place it is not nor can it become the legitimate subject matter of eccle- siastical legislation. It is the original form of church government and differs from the others in not being a schismatic product. In all post- apostolic forms of church government historical and schismatic forces are the more prominent and important factors in the work of their origin. They are all without one exception capital examples of factional schisms and divi- sions, and have not their origin in the original forms of the laws of the gos- pel. Ail of them came out of, and have sprung from the catholic form of church government, which in the course of this treatise will be shown to be an ecclesiastical usurpation — one vestige of which cannot be found in the New Testament Scriptures. It is no longer proper to call them gospel churches at all. It is, in fact, only a title of honor, without any corres- ponding substance. AYhen new things proceed out of old ones, it is a long time before we invent the new names rightly describing the new pro- duct. The reason why they are mistakenly called churches is a total mis- conception -of the true origin and nature of the churches of Christ from which all ecclesiastical powers originate. Of all the religionists in the world the Baptists have realized the church of Christ in its approximately pure and original character. From them the true teaching has gone out, until the whole world shall know the truth, and see it in the light of the Scriptures, and shall subject itself to the laws of the gospel. After much reflection upon this subject I conclude that the true theory respecting the origin of the polity of a gospel church, is that which starts from a covenant. There is no other way to explain the right which ecclesi- astical government has over the governed. It is founded upon a covenant, under the laws of the gospel, entered into between those willing to enter the organization for mutual worship and assistance, for which each one is willing to give up his own pre-conceived notions, a state in which each was supposed to depend upon his own will alone, and subordinate his will to that of the church. I believe not only in the theory of an implied or tacit covenant, but that all ecclesiastical law has grown out of the germ to be found in the covenant of a certain number of baptized believers in Christ our Saviour. All ecclesiastical power or polity (if indeed a distinction can be made 48 A TREATISE UPOl^ BAPTIST CHTJUCH JURISPRUDENCE; between the two terms) has been founded by the will of the membership of a local church. From an ecclesiastical point of view, there is but one prin- ciple, the sovereignty of every member over himself. This sovereignty is called religious liberty, and where two or more baptized believers are asso- ciated together under a covenant to obey God's law the church begins. But in this association there is no abdication of individuality, but each member concedes a certain amount of his individuality to form the common stock or authority of the church. This quality is the same for all the members, and this identity of concession which each makes to all is called equality. The common stock or authority of the church is nothing but the power radiating over the whole church to protect it and the doctrine from attacks from within and from without. Hence comes what is called ecclesiastical uniou^ or, more properly speaking, a church covenant,., which is very much the same thing. A true church of Christ is that institution only which has originated out of the free will of the membership of those entering the organization, and which subsists more by covenant and acknowledgment than by priestly domination. If we understand, by the theory of an ecclesi- astical covenant, that view of a church according to which it is an ecclesiastically organized body of men, each of whom stands in ecclesiastical relation to every other member, then the theory of a church covenant is correct, and the only one which gives to the church its true Scriptural existence and continuation. Hence I take it that covenant is the only legitimate basis upon which ecclesiastical government can stand. And if any one will turn his attention to the formation of the apostolic churches, he will find that the idea is car- ried into actual practice. With examples so complete and decisive, it would be a very lame answer to say that churches were formed by the decree of some bishop or pope, or that they were the creatures of circumstances. Ecclesiastical government would remain forever in the mystified mystery of metaphysics, if we hesitated to adopt the principle of a covenant as the basis of church polity. Combining this doctrine with the theory, that the churches consist in the continuation of efforts and the distribution of func- tions among the membership of a local church, we get at the axioms of a sound Scriptural polity. Thus, in those primitive churches which existed at a period anterior to written history, although we cannot find anything like a formal covenant, such as we have in these days, to have been entered into, we can very readily suppose, that the minds of all entering into church relations, spontaneously, and without any set purpose, conspired to that end. That those assemblies and gatherings were organized churches, that is, col- lections of members in the aggregate, is abundantly sufficient to authorize the supposition. Certain it is we can discern far more evidences of the prevalence of a common will, as actuating the assemblies, than of the pre- valence of a common will of an individual assuming to erect them into churches. Every lawyer knows of tacit or implied agreements even in jurisprudence, and courts give the same force and authority to them which they do to express ones. For, although, we might not be able to find any OR, THE C0MM02T LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 49 trace in those primitive churches of an express covenant, we can discover far more evidences of that form of organization which results from one, than we can of the self-government of individuals and for individuals. These primitive apostolic churches must have been constituted first by covenant of a number of believers, each with each, to form a church, and to be bound by the laws of the gospel under the rule of the majority of the church — in which primary covenant they must have been unanimous, that is, every one dissenting would acquiesce in the rule of the majority, under a further implied covenant that the ruling majority would take care of the church's weal, and the minority to obey all the lawful commands in further- ance of the good of the church. This church sovereignty is founded on actual covenants under the law of the gospel, and is not conferred by any other power. This union, so made, is what we call a church, which, in brief, may be defined to be two or more men, professing the true faith of the gospel, united as one person by a common power for the preaching and spread of the gospel, and is instituted with common power over all the par- ticular members thereof, to the common good of them all. The idea of a church, therefore, implies necessarily that of government, and the idea of government contains in it two others, the idea of an assembly of individ- uals, and that of a rule which is applicable to them — a rule which the individ- uals who submit to it have not themselves created, and to which they are morally bound to submit. Ino system of church government of a divine origin can disregard this supreme rule, otherwise they proclaim force or caprice as the only law of the churches. In seeking the true principle of church polity, we find this principle of a higher law coupled with a cove- nant to be the primary source of all legitimate church sovereignty and gov- ernment. In every church thus organized resides what is known as the sovereign power, which is lodged in the majority of the membership, and consists in the right to rule the church, that every member has transferred to the majority from themselves by covenant. And this majority, that is to rule the whole church, may in this way be able to frame the united will of them all to unity and concord amongst themselves. The sovereign power, therefore, in every church is that determinate aggregate majority of a church combined in the determination of any question, whom the whole church habitually obey ; hence, it is implied, the church only that has a sovereign or ruling power in itself, strictly speaking, is, or can be, inde- pendent. There are three prevalent opinions in the Christian world as to the origin of the churches, and I think that these divergences of opinion may be so classified as to reduce the apparently numerous shades of differences to three propositions. The first is the theological theory, the second is the social theory, and the third is the historical theory. The first claims that the churches are founded by Christ alone, the second that they are founded by human covenant under the laws of the gospel, and the third is that they are the product of an historical development. When we come to study the true nature of these wonderful creations we cannot escape the conclusion that 4 60 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDEN^CE ; they are the product of all three equally combined. To say that the churches were founded by Christ alone, without the help of human agency, would be to imply that he conceived and planned them in form, and left a divine char- ter by which they should be shaped and moulded by his apostles ; for so far as the record discloses he departed this life before the first organic church was instituted at Jerusalem. To say that the earliest disciples founded them by covenant alone would be to put the churches upon a human plane with, no divine efficacy in them. And it would be equally erroneous to contend that they sprang up as an historical development, without any design as to the form or mould they were to take — a mere chance development. It is true that when we take into consideration the meagerness of the rules laid down in the Scriptures as to how they were instituted v/e must conclude that their historical development had a great deal to do with their imperfect be- ginning through crude but improving forms of manifestation, towards a per- fect organization as we see them to-day. The unbiased ecclesiastical his- torian will not only not dispute this proposition, but he will teach that the churches were brought through the earliest and most difficult periods of their development by the power of religion, and in the forms of religion, out of reverence and obedience to Christ their founder. The origin of ecclesiastical government has been traced by other writers to two sources : divine right, and covenant or election. To say that a system of church government has its source alone in a divine right, would be the same as to say that those who exercise that government must prove their title by some miracle, or other incontestable evidence, or it must commence with the first ministers of Christianity, and beginning with them they are thus invested with the right to rule the churches, and the membership thereof be subject to all the views applicable to that title. So absurd is this pretension that I should not even notice it, if it had not been given such weight as to form an important feature in the works of writers uj)on ecclesiastical government. As before stated, the true theory is, to attribute the divine right to the charter which Christ gave to his disciples, by and upon which he authorized his churches to be instituted, blending the human right \9ith it, which consists in the power he gave his followers to organize the churches whenever and wherever they please, under a covenant to keep and obey the laws of the gospel. This right has descended to all Christians of like faith and order, from generation to generation, and still exists wherever two or more of them may be, without let or hindrance. From this blended source — the divine and the human — is all ecclesiastical power derived, for there is none other. Besides, ecclesiastical government is not a self-acting machine, which will go on and perform its work without human agency ; it cannot be separated from the human beings who fill its places, set it in motion, and regulate and direct its operations. So long as these are liable to err in judgment, or to fail in virtue, so long will church government remain largely human, and be liable to run into abuses, notwithstanding the divine Providence that watches over it. And until all men shall become so perfect as not to require to be OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 51 restrained, all church governments professing to be free will require to be watched, guarded and controlled. To do this effectually requires more than we generally find in public virtue and public intelligence. A great majority of Christians are more sensible of their spiritual interests than their ecclesi- astical rights. Whenever the people composing our churches can be persuaded that it is their greatest interests to not only further their spiritual well-being, but to maintain their church rights, then, and then only, will free ecclesiastical government be safe from abuses. Human beings thus united in a church can only exist in human relations. They exist under law and government partly human and partly divine. They are bounded, limited and conditioned on every side by these environments. Complete independence is impossible for them. Absolute freedom, therefore, from ecclesiastical restraint, cannot consist in complete independence. By uniting himself to the rest he has, in advance, agreed to be obedient to the voice of the whole ; thus he ecclesiastically obeys himself, as a part of the whole, and is morally bound to obey the voice of the whole, though against his individual voice, so that herein a man is not as fully at liberty in a church as before. It must consist in the loving recognition of the limits and condi- tions which surround them on every side. Hence the angry chafing against this lawful authority must be bondage and imprisonment. One law pervades and animates the whole church, and becomes no longer an external restraint, but only a rule of free activity, unwritten except in the heart. It is the organization of a church on the law of human duty and love, and not the law of human force. A revolt against this benign authority is discord and anarchy ; is an ecclesiastical disease ; it is confusion and death— bondage by the operation of a violated law. This beauty and symmetry can be destroyed either by abuse of authority on the one hand, or by resisting rightful authority on the other. Either of these instantly brings discord between the interior and the exterior law, and discord becomes slavery — a destruction of the law of love, or an obedience to the law of self-ism. Although the exact origin of ecclesiastical government is somewhat shrouded in mystery, we are upon the terra firma of actual records when the apostles and evangelists begin to write to and about the churches. It must have taken much care on the part of the apostles to have kept the early disciples in order and due decorum, so unique was this new creation. We know this, that in the early times of the churches the quantity of gov- ernment was much more important than its quality. What was wanted was comprehensive general rules binding the early Christians together, making them do much the same things, having them to believe the same things, telling them what to believe and to expect of each other, and fashioning them alike, and keeping them so. As to government proper what the rule is does not matter so much. A good rule is better than a bad one, but any rule in the beginning is better than none ; while, for reasons which the apos- tles well appreciated, none was very good. But to gain that rule was incom- parably more important to the apostles doubtless tlian its useful elements. In the incipiency of any new government how to get the obedience of men 62 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; is the hard problem ; what to do with that obedience was less troublesome doubtless in the eyes of the apostles. To gain that obedience, the primary condition was to establish a oneness of will, faith and practice — not so much the union, but the sameness of the faith and practice. The object of such organizations was to create what may be called the habit of thinking alike and acting alike. All the actions of those early disciples were to be sub- mitted to a single rule for a single object ; that gradually created that disci- pline which science teaches to be essential, and which the apostles saw to be essential too. That this early discipline, however, forbids free thought was not an evil ; or rather through an evil, it was the necessary basis of the greatest good ; it was necessary for the making of the great mould of the apostolic churches, and hardening the soft fibre of the early disciples. These churches of the living God, and their form of polity, are all insti- tuted in subjection to the immutable and predestined law of the gospel, prior to all the devices of man, and prior to all human contrivances, prior to all new-fangled ideas as to what a church ought to be, antecedent to our very existence, by which they are knit and connected with the eternal pattern of Christ's own moulding, out of which they cannot develop. Under this immutable law they are led to act, and are restrained from acting, and any church departing from it under any circumstances, lies under the grave susj^icion of being no church at all. This law must be studied before it can be known and understood. Reason, or the wit of man, does not invent this law, but only discovers it, and though it be prin- cipally discovered by reason, yet there is also a secondary and additional way which contributes no little to the manifestation of it. This is the harmony and joint consent of the churches, which, though there be no formal covenant between them, yet they all do tacitly and spontaneously conspire in a dutiful observation of these immutable laws of the gospel relating to ecclesiastical government. Wherefore, although every Baptist church be in itself perfect and complete, nevertheless, each of them is also a member of the great family of churches of the same faith and order. For these bodies are never so self-consistent in themselves as not to stand in need of mutual aid and communication, sometimes for their amelioration, but always for the spread of the gospel. Wherefore, they need in some manner to be rightly directed in this species of church inter-dependency. And although this may be done in a great measure by natural reason, still not sufficiently for all the churches ; and hence special laws have been introduced among them by the practice of the churches themselves. This form of polity was specifically planned and contrived by Christ and his apostles, and set up in pursuance of some regular plan and design, from which there can be no departure. But with all other post-apostolic sects, this appears to be an erroneous conception of the subject. With them no Buch plan was ever formed, consequently no such first principles, original model, or standard exist. With them the constitution of a system of church polity has grown out of occasion and emergency; from the fluctuating policy of diflerent ages; from the contentions, successes, interests, and OR, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 53 opportunities of different orders and factions of men in the community. The religious house they erect resembles one of those old mansions which, instead of being built all at once, after a regular plan, and according to the rules of architecture, has been reared in different ages without design and without beauty and symmetry, but has been altered from time to time, and has been continually receiving additions and repairs, suited to the taste, whims and caprices of its successive proprietors. In such a building we look in vain for the elegance and proportion, for the just order and corre- spondence of parts which we see in the divine models — the free and inde- pendent churches of the Bible. It was a new form of polity, able to carry Christianity out of bondage into Christian civilization. It holds a position on the great chart of human progress second to none in its influence, in its achievements and in its history. From this precious germ has developed the principal governmental institutions of the modern civilized state. Reli- gious freedom, a free gospel and a free church were all wrapped up in this form of church polity, and handed down by Christ and his apostles. It is not every institution that is a church. Moreover, there are many institutions purporting to be churches which have never been instituted ; they have grown, and are nothing more than developments. They have an unseen, yet an increasing and growing faculty, with neither law nor gospel to limit a still further increase of their power. For instance, the universal church, as we see it united for the purpose of government, was never organ- ized by the apostles, nor by any one else by them authorized so to do. They have been organized without authority of gospel law, and have grown and developed without law; whereas, Baptist church government is an insti- tuted, or enacted, institution after the exact models of the apostolic churches, which act and have their being under a charter, as it were, from our Saviour, whose institutors are the particular membership of each local church, organizing the same for government and the worship of God. Baptist church government, so closely connected with what we love and admire in political liberty, as well as progress and security, themselves ingredients of religious liberty, stands in need of stability and continuity, and these cannot be secured without an organic institution, such as begins with the very beginning of every Baptist church. Hollow, indeed, must be every ecclesiastical institution that is suffered to spring up without a war- rant of the law of the gospel, the counterpart of which is not found in the primitive times of the churches. They are like an empty out-house on the premises, and are sure to be filled with litter and rubbish, and to become nuisances. Among such organizations may be included the Catholic, Epis- copalian, Methodist, and Presbyterian churches, and all other systems whose churches are linked together for governmental purposes, under what is known as the Universal Church. The system to which Baptists belong may be designated as the institutional system, and the others to what might properly be called the crescive system, or the system of growth and develop- ment. A Baptist church thus organized is emphatically an Institution. And in 54 A TREATISE UPOK BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE ; order to appreciate this subject let us inquire into the nature of institutions in general and those of Baptist churches in particular. According to the highest meaning which the term has gradually acquired, especially from the standpoint of a Baptist church, an institution is a system or body of eccle- siastical jurisprudence, or Scriptural laws, customs and usages of extensive and recurring operation, containing within itself an organism by which it effects its own development. Its object is to generate, effect, regulate or sanc- tion a succession of acts all in conformity with the law of its organization. The idea of an institution implies a degree of independence and self-govern- ment. The law which authorizes its organization acts through human agents, and these are in case of Baptist churches, their officers and members. We are likewise in the habit of calling single laws, usages and customs in- stitutions, if their operation is of vital importance and vast scope, and if their continuance is in a high degree independent of auy interfering power. Thus we call the Lord's Supper and Baptism institutions in consideration of their pervading importance, their universal observance, their extensive operation, and the security which their continuance enjoys in the conviction of all Christians against any attempt to abolish them. It always forms a promi- nent element in the idea of an institution, whether the term be taken in the strictest sense or not, that it is a group of Scripture laws, together with usages and customs standing in close relation to one another, and forming an independent whole with a united and distinguishing character of its own. Christ never instituted any system of church polity that can be bettered by the ingenuity of man. By institutional Baptist church government is meant that popular sys- tem which we see in full and beautiful operation during the lives and labors of the apostles, which consists in a great organism of free and independent churches, instinct with self government, and is the ecclesiastical embodi- ment of self-reliance and mutual acknowledgment of self-rule. It is grounded, rooled and nurtured in and by the Scriptures. On the other hand, the uni- versal church system has the serious inconvenience of changing the proper venure, as lawyers would express it. They are like a ship at sea without chart or compass, without anchor or rudder, to be driven about by every wind and doctrine, but having originated in various ways, and at various periods of remote antiquity or of more recent date, they can set up no claim to being Scripture churches. These universal churches, so called, meet periodically by representatives to legislate for the churches ; what unites these individual officers and representatives into an institution? or how can the institution outlast the individual officers existing at any given period ? How could a Methodist Conference or a Presbyterian Synod be an institu- tion, when their members cease to be such after a few days' labor ? They are but temporary members of a temporary organization. Such is not the case with an instituted Baptist church. The institution itself is the organic law of the Scriptures which provides for the organization and the continu- ous and perpetual existence of the church. Its members come and go, are born anew and are baptized into it, but the church is a continuation, and is OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 55 a living reality. It spreads the framework of the same system of gospel laws over every church of the same faith and order and similarly instituted, prescribing their line of action, so that it becomes a consistent continuation of that which their predecessors have done, or, in other words, it breathes the same leading principles into different aggregates and assemblies of men, and different generations, as the same principles produce and reproduce the same seasons. An instituted Baptist church thus insures stability and perpetuity and renders true development possible, while without it there is little more than subjective impulsiveness, which may be good and noble, or ruinous and purely passionate, but always lacks stability and continuity, and conse- quently true development and safe assimilating growth. A conference or a general assembly, convened at stated intervals, without Scripture authority and institution, can produce little more than a succession of instinctive ac- tions, according to the whims of the body assembled, because they are unguided, un moulded and unrestrained by permanent Scripture laws and usages and without a maturing organism — a divine institution. Further illustrating institutional church government and its superiority over all other systems, it is necessary to present to our minds clearly, as we study its history, what effects it produces on the individual and on the churches. This instituted self-government trains the mind and nourishes the character for a dependence upon the Scriptures as the only law-book of the churches, as well as of a law-abiding acknowledgment of its binding authority. It educates and builds up a membership accustomed to a reign of law and order, and not a rule of a priesthood. It cultivates church dignity in all the governed, and teaches respect for the rights of others. It brings home religious liberty and freedom of conscience, equality of all under the law of the gospel, and corresponding obligations such as no other system does. It is Christ's system instituted by his apostles, and is the only ecclesiastical self-government which is a real organic government of self, by self, as well as for self, and, indeed, is the only real self-government, of which all other governments assuming the name of self-government are but semblances, because they are at best the unrestrained rule of accidentally dominating, self-appointed priests and bishops, who use pomp and splendor, surpliced gowns and other insignia of a royal priesthood, as a means of stifling liberty of thought and action in the church. They demand obedience on the ground of authority. They contend that this authority comes from a source not within the circle of the governed. Whereas, the obedience of a Baptist to church authority has its very source within the circle of the governed. Such is the source of obedience due to authority in that church, the component members of which live in covenanted relations — in other words, in an instituted church. Baptists obey, not because the church government exists before the constituent members and makes them, but because Christ has given them authority to institute the church, and because they must have a government and laws to regulate it. Such remarkable institutions as these churches of the living God would not be expected to spring into existence complete, or to grow out of nothing, 56 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; that is, without a foundation previously formed by a supernatural power. Their birth must be sought in the mind and purpose of God before the foundation of the world, and their maturity would be expected long after their origination. The creation of these wonderful churches was a necessity lying at the very threshold of Christianity. Under the old Jewish dispensa- tion religious institutions were breaking down. Under the new order of things, doubtless, disorders existed, both from the conflict of authority and from the abuse of powers not as yet well understood and defined. A new creation had sprung up. Instead of the concentration of ecclesiastical powers into one organic whole, they were scattered and lodged in inde- pendent local sovereign churches. A wider distribution of the powers of church government, a clearer definition of them, and a stricter account- ability of the ofiicers of the churches were needed for the welfare, as well as the safety of the churches. It was under the immediate eyes of the apostles, and through the experimental knowledge gained under them, that the idea of ecclesiastical polity, or a church, was gradually formed in the religious mind. Their growth was a development running through centuries of time, from the first appearance of a necessity for a change in the plan of God's government on earth, before the entire result was realized. The union of baptized believers into an organic local church is later in time than the Jewish system, and prior in time to the Catholic system— neither of which bears &uj resemblance to Christ's conception of a church. His w^as a higher organic process, and enjoys the distinction of having divinity stamped upon it. The principles of apostolic church government would have been settled in every minutia by writing, had they not pre-existed in their original state, which is the oral and unwritten, nor if Christianity had never been attacked, there never would have been, perhaps, any writings by the evan- gelists to settle the doctrines promulgated by Christ. Had there been no heresies about circumcision, the council never would have assembled at Antioch to settle that vexed question. After these greatest of all men had, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, written in defence of these truths, the work was finished. So-called ecclesiastical bodies have, since those days without authority, and rash through weakness, attempted to improve that code of laws, which Baptists conceive to be the greatest acts of folly and foolishness which have ever been committed in the world. They have raised these trashy ramparts around the truth In their own eyes they think they protect her, but, at the same time, they conceal her. From the standpoint of their own litfe^e sect they have rendered her unassailable, but by that means less accessible. What the truth wants and needs is to be left in the open field, where she can embrace the whole world, and the whole world can embrace her, without stumbling over man-made creeds in order to get to her embraces. That people who undertake to coin books of doctrine and discipline, and who fancy that, because they have written them, they are able to give them adequate evidence and stability, whoever they may be, do a great injury to the cause of truth, for they have proved thereby OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 57 that they are ignorant of the true nature of that jurisprudence which under- lies the polity of Christ's churches. God never revealed anything in writing to the elect of the Old Testament before Moses' time, but spoke to them directly. Christ wrote not anything that is now extant in the world. The precepts and teachings which he left were written only in the hearts of those who heard him, by grace, as they are written with ink in our books. Instead of books, He promised to them the Holy Spirit. It is He wJio shall teach you what to speak. It is said that Lycurgus would never reduce his laws to writing, for he thought the most material points, and such as most directly tended to the public welfare, by being imprinted on the hearts of their youth, by good education and by constant and habitual observance of them, becoming a second nature, would supply the place of the law and a lawgiver to them the rest of their lives. Every imperfect and false institution, whether secular or divine, writes much, because it feels its weakness, and thereby seeks support. Hence, fol- lows the unalterable consequence, that no ecclesiastical institution, truly divine, could be founded on written law, since those who found it know not what it will become, and since insensible growth is a true sign of durability in every possible order of things. Any kind of a church whatever, adult, and of full growth at birth, is the greatest of absurdities, a logical contra- diction. The ingenuity of man is altogether too frail to perceive and ferret out the true jurisdiction of ecclesiastical government. One of its follies is that of believing that an assembly of men can constitute a church by for- mulating a code of law^s for its government ; that a constitution, the collec- tion of the fundamental laws which are suited for a church, and which give to it some definite form of government, is a performance which requires intelligence, knowledge and practice, as if a man may learn his trade by constituting ; as if men, met together for the first time to organize a new church, can say to one man, or to a few, make us a government, as one would say to a mechanic, make me a machine, leaving it to his fancy what kind of a thing he should make. They forget that no ecclesiastical government, purporting to be of divine origin, results from deliberation and design, but that it was planted by Christ himself, and has been constantly developing ever since, under the influence of the Holy Spirit. In the very nature of things, it is absolutely necessary that the origin of the true church should manifest itself from beyond the sphere of human power, so that man, who may appear to have a direct hand in it, may be, nevertheless, only the cir- cumstance and the instrument in the hands of God. He cannot create a church by formulas of written words. The collection of the fundamental laws, which must essentially constitute a true church of Christ, never has been written, and never will be. It is only when a body of baptized believers find themselves already constituted, without being able hardly to say how, for it is the love of God that inclines them to it, that it is possible to make known, or explain, the special features of that union ; but even then, in almost every case, the attempt to explain true Baptist church juris- prudence is the cause and efiTect of very great evil, and sometimes is mis- 68 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; leading and injurious. Not only does it not belong to man to create a church, but it does not appear that his power, without divine authority, extends even to change for the better a church already divinely established. There is nothing good, that evil does not seek to sully, or alter ; there is no evil that goodness does not repress and attack, by making it better and more perfect. It is impossible to alter divine things for the better, and it is certain that nothing real can be changed for the better, especially in a matter of so great importance as that of church government, without the help of God. Hence, that instinctive aversion among Baptists to innovations. Cicero, in his treatise upon the Commonwealth and Laws, had a most sublime conception of those innate principles which underlie tiie substratum of all law and government, and are peculiarly applicable here. He says : " There is but one essential justice which cements society, and one law which establishes this justice. This law is right reason, which is the true rule of all commandments and prohibitions. Whoever neglects this law, whether written or unwritten, is necessarily unjust and wicked. This, then, as it appears to me, has been the decision of the wisest philosophers — that law was neither a thing contrived by the genius of man, nor established by any decree of the people, but a certain eternal principle, which governs the entire universe, wisely commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong. Therefore they call that aboriginal and supreme law the m{7id of God, enjoining or forbidding each separate thing in accordance with enlight- ened reason. True law is right reason conformably to nature, universal, unchangeable, eternal, whose commands urge to duty, and whose prohibi- tions restrain us from evil. Whether it enjoins, or forbids, the good accept its injunctions, and the wicked treat them with indifference. This law can- not be contradicted by any other law, and is not liable either to derogation or abrogation. ISTeither the senate nor the people can give any dispensation for not obeying this universal law of justice. It needs no other interpreter and expositor than our own conscience. It is not one thing at Rome, and another at Athens, one thing to-day and another to-morrow; but at all times and in all nations, this universal law must forever reign eternal and imperishable. It is the sovereign master and emperor of all things. God himself is its author, its formulator, its enforcer. And he who does not obey it flies from himself, and does violence to the very nature of man. And by so doing he will endure the severest penalties even if he avoid the other evils which are usually accounted punishments." How true are these sublime words, and how applicable to that peculiar kind of law that underlies Baptist church government and jurisprudence I Akin to these ideas are those of Paul, when he says : The Gentiles show the work of the law written in their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts the meamuhile accusing, or else excusing one another. The earliest rudimentary principles concerning apostolic church government, now so fully developed, are those contained in the sentiment that the Works of the law were written in their hearts, which was discover- able by enlightened reason under the guidance of the apostles and after OR, THE COMMON LAW OP THE GOSPEL. 59 them the Holy Spirit. Besides it is said : Thy law is in my heart. I will put my law in their mind. I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts. Doth not even nature itself teach you^ Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world, and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters f For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these having not the law, are a law unto themselves, which show the work of the law written in their hearts. Now the only churches extant in the world that have generated and developed this kind of law are those of the Baptist denomi- nation. These churches are of ancient as well as of divine origin, and may be referred to the earliest collection of disciples of Christ into an organic unit for the purpose of the propagation of the gospel, and for the object of church government may be regarded as a temporal as well as a spiritual body, having an understanding and will peculiar to themselves, and are susceptible of obligations and duties, which can act and be seen only in the acts of those who compose the body. Though men differ in their opinions about its nature and constitution, yet in this all agree ; that Christ while on earth established a church after a certain model, having a certain specific form of government, and not two different ones, absolutely incompatible and diametrically antagonistic the one to the other in polity as well as in doctrinal tenets. In this the Papal agrees with the Episcopal, the Presbyterian with the Baptist, the wise with the unwise. But the foundations and sources from which powers ecclesiasti- cal are drawn are questions upon which there is a wide difference of opinion. In order to get a proper conception of the framework of these churches it would seem antecedently that we ought to commence with the simplest eccle- siastical principles in the early churches, as near as possible to their rudi- mental condition. In other words, if we would follow the course usual in such inquiries, we would penetrate as far as possible into the history and nature of the primitive churches. Since there is nothing more necessary in treating a subject than to possess the first principles of it, and that every subject should begin with establishing its own principles, and setting them forth in such a light as may best discover their truth and certainty, that they may serve for a foundation for all the particulars which are to depend upon them. In giving the individual and internal condition of Baptist churches at any given period, we must have an accurate idea of the highest point of develop- ment to which they have yet attained, as well as the lowest from which they sprung. But this presupposes a general acquaintance with the theory of this peculiar kind of government, as well as a knowledge of the practical workings of the same at this the day of their full development. If it be true, as is contended by many able writers, that the history of the constitution and laws of a country is, in many respects, a complete history of the coun- try itself, it can then be no longer disputed that the church historian who neglects to examine the rise and progress of the framework and jurispru- dence of the churches whose history he is recounting, neglects one of the 60 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; most important and accurate sources of information, without the aid of which he must fail in his attempt of faithfully transmitting history. If then a knowledge of the history of the laws of a country be of such im- portance to the professed historian, its relative importance is still greater to every member of a church, who is but a quasi-judge, and, as such, is often called to pass upon, and to administer, the intricate affairs of church gov- ernment, and to vindicate the rights of his church, and often the character of his brethren, in the administration of their disciplinary affairs. Nothing ought to be better known by those who profess Christianity than the first principles of those ecclesiastical laws which regulate both the conduct of every one in particular, and the order of the churches in general which they compose together. Notwithstanding, we see that many of the most learned of those not of our communion seem to be ignorant of what the Scriptures teach us concerning true church polity, who know so little of these princi- ples that they have established rules which violate and destroy them. To stop to inquire into the causes of this strange contrariety of opinion in men would be a needless consumption of time. It is only necessary to say that the first elements of ecclesiastical government when properly under- stood explain this difference of opinion ; and what the Scriptures teach us concerning Christ's churches discovers to us the causes of this blindness, and informs us, at the same time what are the first principles which Christ has established as the foundations of the order of his churches, and the sources of all the laws for their government. "What, then, is ecclesiastical power ? what are its sources ? and in whom does it reside ? By what authority doest thou these things f and who gavest thee this authority ^ This was a very pertinent question asked our Saviour. In order, therefore, to know where this power resides, and from whence it springs, it is necessary to know what is the design and pattern of Christ's churches, and to know this is only to know why they are made. And we know why a thing is made, if, by observing how it is made, we discover what its structure may have relation to. Because it is certain that Christ has pro- portioned the nature of his churches to the end for which he has designed them. Of one thing we are certain : that in all believers in our Lord Jesus Christ — the materials of which his churches are composed — they have souls which animate their bodies, and that in these redeemed souls there are two powers and faculties ; that is, understandings which are capable of knowing, and wills capable of loving. Thus we see that it is to know and to love, that God has made man, and sent his Son into the world to redeem him, and, consequently, that it is to unite his loving subjects into some organic unit, a church, for his worship and the spread of his Son's gospel, and in the knowledge and love of which his peace and quiet consist ; and it is towards this object and end the lovers of Christ ought to direct all their steps. From which it follows, that the first law of Christ's disciples is their destination to the knowledge and love of his church, which ought to be their end, and in which they are to find their happiness ; and that it is this law, which, being the rule of all their actions, ought to be the principle of all their desires. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 61 There is no principle in the disciples of Christ so dominant as the dispo- sition to unite one with another for mutual worship and edification. For in themselves they will be so far from finding their happiness outside of this union that they will see nothing there but the seeds of discontent and unrest. For all that is attainable or enjoyable in religion outside of the church of Christ is only a temporary provision made of things necessary for all our selfish wants, which will perish when they cease, as being unworthy of our minds and hearts. We must learn from Christ who has redeemed his people that it is he alone who is able to fill the vacuum in that mind and in that heart which he has redeemed for himself. Although the disciples of Christ were imbued with a natural desire for that union for which they were so fitted, yet while on earth Christ did not organize his churches and put them immediately in possession of them, but under the direction and preaching of his apostles they set about the consti- tution of those ecclesiastical judicatories on earth which were to receive the gospel and to hand it down to future generations. Now, in every organic union, whether divine or profane, there must be a oneness of will, faith and practice, and in order to produce this unity the wills of many must concur to one and the same act and effect. This oneness of will is called consent, by which we must not understand one will of many men, as Pedo-Baptists have it in the erection of their ecclesiastical power, but many wills to the producing of one effect. There is involved in this consent the idea of a church covenant wherein it is agreed what shall be believed and practiced by and between the members thus entering the organization. Hence an apostolic church is said to be constituted when every one desir- ing to enter the organization have agreed upon a covenant, and all being of a oneness of faith, do further agree among themselves, that whatever may be lawfully done by the whole number, every individual, as well he who assented to it as he that voted against it, shall be considered as having authorized all the actions of the majority of them, in the same manner as if they w^ere his own, to the end that they may live harmoniously together in a manner consonant to their spiritual natures, and conformable to the laws of their common Saviour as revealed in the Scriptures. Before this expressed agreement that the majority shall rule, or that the sovereign ecclesiastical power shall reside in the majority, the members are many, and as yet not one in the sense of a oneness of will and faith ; nor can any action taken in a disorganized concourse of believers met together be attributed to the whole number, or can it be truly said to be the action of the whole number, unless every one present, not so much as one excepted, have con- curred therein. In such a disorganized concourse of people, whenever it is said that they have agreed to anything, it is to be understood that every particular individual in the whole number has consented thereto, and not the majority only. Hence w^e see that the principle of the majority rule is entirely foreign to the original institution of a Baptist church. It only begins to play a part, after it is S3t in motion. It is an instrument, and a very important one, in the administration of the government, but not in 62 laying its foundation. This unity is formed not by the act of the majority of the members, but by the members unanimously ; for the consent of each would be necessary to make the act of the majority binding. The united and unanimous wills of individuals make the covenant, and the vote and unanimous consent of each must be taken. If there should be a dissenting voice such an one cannot be of the organization, but remains without the pale of the church, and the right to deny to such an one church privileges could not be disputed, and no church could think of coercing him into an adherence to it. By this they consent and covenant, one with another, that the will, or vote of the majority of them, shall involve and be taken for the will or vote of every member of the church, thereby reducing their wills to a majority of voices, into one will, otherwise no powers ecclesiastical could be exercised and nothing ordered without the presence and consent of every member, not so much as one excepted. When there is no such covenants agreed upon, and no such body erected having vested in it the authority to accomplish this end, it is to be under- stood that there is no church at all established. For covenants agreed upon by every believer assembled for the purpose of constituting a church, and even put in writing, without at the same time erecting a power to enforce an observance of them, are not to be called covenants, but every one is yet in a state of disunion, and must needs dissolve by the difference of their interests and opinions. If the majority of the whole number thus entering the organization be taken to include the will of every member, and they be agreed as to the true faith of the gospel, then they can be said to be a church of Christ, having lawful authority to exercise ecclesiastical powers, wherein the whole number, or so many of them as please, being assembled together, are a church, and each particular individual thus entering the covenant a member thereof. Thus we see that in this way ecclesiastical powers are generated and Baptist churches set up in the world. It is more than consent — it is real unity, and from this institution of a church are derived all the rights and privileges of those who undertake to keep house for the Lord. The use of this unity is the natural consequence of the order of all ecclesiastical gov- ernment, and of the ties which our Saviour forms among men, thus blend- ing the human and the divine. They are assemblies of many persons united into one body — that is, formed after the strict examples of the New Testament churches, without which they would be extra ecclesiastical bodies. One of the principal characteristic prerogatives of every apostolic church is that all ecclesiastical power on earth is lodged in the local church. The purpose for which a number of men unite in the organization of a church is to act in concert, and to do so it is necessary that there should be erected somewhere a sovereign authority to order and direct what is to be done by each member in relation to the end of the organization. By the very act of the organization each member, by his covenant, subjects himself to the authority of the entire body in everything that may be lawfully done. This sovereign authority of all, over each member, therefore, essentially belongs to the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 63 church. But as the exercise of sovereign authority by the "whole church, not SO much as one excepted, having a right to a voice, would be incon- venient and often impossible ; besides, there might be some dissenting opinions as to the propriety of the matter proposed ; it is therefore absolutely necessary that the sovereign authority of the church be placed in a less number than the whole, according as it was first ordained in the apostolic churches, the models of which we find in the Scriptures. If it were left undecided as to where this supreme authority was lodged by the founders of the churches, we might place it in any number of men less than the majority. But there is scarcely any feature of apostolic church polity so plainly set forth in the Scriptures as that the ruling or sovereign power was conferred upon the majority of the church. It is one of the fun- damental principles of apostolic church jurisprudence that the opinion of the majority must pass without dispute, in all matters lawful to be done, for that of the whole church. This is the rule of rules, and without it church government is destroyed. While the majority is not the whole church, yet for all purposes of practice and discipline it is the church. Christ has no other or better way of making clear and stable that which is doubtful and unsettled. It is the only standard of right, not an infallible one every time, but nevertheless the only one given. In all cases where the act of the majority of a church is valid, it is highly desirable that the decision, when come to, should be considered as the act of the entire body ; that the com.parative numbers of the majority and minority should not be adverted to as a ground for impugning the decision ; and that the act of the church should be obeyed without any question of its validity, on the ground of the smallness of the majority by which it may have been carried. Decision by a majority is a mode of cutting a knot which cannot be untied ; it is, therefore, on every account expedient that the knot should be cut effectually. For a similar reason, it is fitting that any minority who may be unable to induce the majority to adopt their propositions, should acquiesce in its decisions, and should continue to attend its meetings, without seceding or withdrawing, on the ground that their advice is disregarded. In every church there is a minority which is unable to carry its views; and if such minorities were to be discouraged by the rejection of their motions, and to withdraw from their duties, the ultimate success of their opinions could never take place, at least not in consequence of their exertions. Unless a defeated minority is willing to act upon this principle, the unity of the body is weakened and impaired and a disruption is sure to take place, similar to that which took place in the denomination many years ago when our anti-missionary brethren separated themselves from the rest of the churches, and set up a people of their own. Unanimity, in a body which may consist of many hundreds, is plainly impossible; decision by the majority is therefore necessary. It is likewise necessary that, when the decision has once been made, no steps should be taken for weaken- ing its effects, and that it be considered as the decision of the whole, and not merely a part of the church. 64 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JUEISPRTJDENCE ; If the government of the churches be kept in the hands of the member- ship it is Baptistic, or, more properly speaking, Apostolical ; if it had been intrusted to a certain select number of men it would have been an episcopacy or a presbytery ; and if confided to a single man it would have become a papacy. We shall not stop to examine which of these three forms of church government is the best. If we were called upon to select a secular form of government we would feel at liberty to make a choice, and then go about persuading men that it was the best. But it is sufficient for us to inquire which form was established by the apostles, and then keep that model ever before our eyes. Every local church that governs itself without dependence upon another power is a sovereign church, the rights of which are naturally the same as those of every other church of the same model, of the same faith and order, governing itself by its own authority under the laws of the gospel of Christ. This sovereign authority is the life of the church, w^hich being departed from the body, the members no more receive their motion from it, and whatever else it is it certainly ceases to be a church of Christ. Besides it can be demonstrated that the form of government that underlies the apostolic churches is the first and only kind of government by institu- tion that can be generated among a multitude of free people. It i>3 the first in order of time, and must be so of necessity. Even those who adhere to the Episcopal, the Presbyterian and the papal form of government require that there shall be an agreement as to who should govern them, whether it be one man or a select number less than a majority, which agreement in a multitude of men, must consist in the consent of the majority of them, otherwise there can be nothing agreed upon ; and where the votes, or wills, of the majority include the votes of the minority there is primarily such agreement as we have described as being at the basis of apostolic church polity. In organizing a Scriptural church there can be no covenant or agreement between the sovereign church as a whole and the individual member. For while the church is being instituted, and the covenants are being agreed upon, there is no sovereign church yet in existence with which to covenant. It would not be reasonable to say that a disorganized multi- tude, met together to organize a church, should contract with itself, or with any one man, or number of men, parts and parcels of itself, to make itself sovereign ; nor that any number, great or small, considered as one aggregate whole can give itself anything which before it had not. And yet this is exactly what our Episcopal, Presbyterian and papal friends did when they first met together to form their ecclesiastical polities. The sovereign ecclesiastical power in an apostolic church is not composed by the covenant of any multitude with individual members. To say that this can be done would be to suppose that the organization has already taken place ; whereas, in fact, the same is conferred by the individual covenants of every separate man with the other. That is to say, every man entering the organization must for himself enter into this agreement with every other separate man to stand to and obey whatsoever the majority shall lawfully OR, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 65 command ; so that it be done with the consent of every one of the church in particular. For it is the unity of the majority, and not the unity of the whole church, that makes the church one for the purpose of government. Hence it is plain to see that there passes no power or special privileges from the many or majority to any private man, whether he be a minister or other- wise, to govern the church. The question as to who is the better man, or the one who has the most rights or privileges, has no place in the New Testament system of church government, where all men are equal. The inequality that we see practiced in some systems of church polity has been introduced at a later date than the apostles' times, and was never introduced by the consent of men, but by an usurpation, and is not only against reason, but contrary to Scripture. For there are very few so foolish as that they had not rather govern them- selves, than to be governed by others. If that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, has also made us equal, that equality is to be acknowledged in church government as well as in nature. And that by the entrance into the conditions of a church government, no man can reserve to himself, or assume, any right or privilege, which he is not willing should be reserved to, and enjoyed by, every one of the rest of the church. And any system of government, whether divine or secular, that will allow any man, or set of men, to require for themselves, that which they would not have granted to others, they do contrary to both the letter and spirit of the free gospel of Christ, that everywhere commands the acknowledgment of the natural freedom and equality of all men. The observers of this great law are those we call meek and lowly in spirit, and are modest ; and the breakers of it, haughty and proud, and are arrogant. Now the difference between the apostolic form of church government and that of an episcopacy or a papacy is that the latter do not consider that all ecclesiastical power resides in the local church, but that the church proper consists in the whole universal body of Christians of their own faith and order ; that the power to govern may be placed in one man, or a few par- ticular men; that in such a great multitude, in which every man is included, there are no means or ways to deliberate or to give counsel what to do with- out great inconvenience. In such an unwieldly body politic (for it is noth- ing more or less) having, as they consider, no Scriptural barriers in the way, they feel at liberty to cast about for a man, or set of men, that may be agreed upon to govern the whole ; and in this way may put the names of such man, or set of men, before the whole Christian world to be voted upon, and by plurality of votes to transfer that supreme power, which they them- selves never had, to the number of men so named and chosen to govern. This plan of church government is visionary, irrational, illogical and clearly unscriptural. Because there never has been a time since the first church was instituted at Jerusalem, when the whole body of Christian men and women ever met together in one assembly and organized a church upon such a basis. And certainly the first apostolic church never ordered that any such ecclesiastical power should be erected. And if there never has 6 66 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; been such an assembly met together for such a purpose, any system gotten up upon that plan is but an usurpation and therefore unscriptural. For church government is no less rational than any other form of government and polity. As to the pretense that Christ gave any one man, or any priv- ileged class of men, a divine right to rule over his people will be considered further on in its proper place. There is no doubt but that the apostles being in absolute liberty might, if they pleased, have so organized the churches as to have vested the ruling authority in the pastor, or any other number of men less than the majority, to represent the whole church, and have subjected the churches as abso- lutely to them as to any other representative. But even then elective pas- tors could not be sovereign, but only ministers of the sovereign churches. For where the sovereign power has already been lodged in the ruling major- ity, there can be no other sovereignty established. That would be to erect two sovereigns, which would be to have the churches represented by two actors, that by opposing one another must of necessity divide that power that is indivisible, which is contrary to all instituted sovereignty. The church cannot forfeit its sovereignty and cannot without express Scriptural authority and precedent transfer it to another. Though every Baptist church is sovereign, yet it must not be' considered that its power is absolute and has no limit. There are many things which it may and must do, and no unlawful thing which it can do if it strikes at the life of the apostolic churches ; for the bounds of that power which regulates its action is marked by the Scriptures, beyond which it is unlawful to go. Whatever the church shall decree, not warranted by the Scriptures, is the act only of every member by whose vote the decree was made, but not the act of any member that being present voted against it, nor of any member absent. It is manifest from this that it is sometimes not only lawful, but expedient, for members to make open protestation against the ruling major- ity, and cause their dissent to be registered, to the end that they may pre- serve themselves as Baptists, and set themselves right in the sight of God, and thereby do nothing in contempt of the sovereign authority, nor in vio- lation of their covenant relations. But on the contrarj^, in all rulings in mat- ters not involving fundamental principles, whether he be present or absent he that dissents must consent with the rest. It may therefore be safely concluded that inasmuch as this ecclesiastical institution has been established for the spread and perpetuity of the gospel, and with an intent that it should last always, it is forbidden to change its form of government, and no church can do any act which tends in its na- ture to undermine and overthrow these fundamental principles, and any act tending thereto is utterly void. In human governments the laws are to be favorably interpreted and liberally construed in as large an extent as the nature of the case, joined with equity, will admit, provided they are not ex- tended in such a manner as to cause prejudice or injury to others; but the laws which relate to the fundamental principles of church government, such as those that concern the sovereignty, independence and equality of the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 67 churches, and those which relate to doctrine and discipline are to be inter- preted strictly, and not extended, beyond what is clearly expressed in tlie law, to any consequences to which the laws do not extend. It is quite needless to say that upon the establishment of the first church at Jerusalem is the earliest period at which we take up the history of church jurisprudence. For the history of the way this church was instituted is but the history of how all Baptist churches are formed. Of course at the pres- ent time the formality of planting a church is somewhat different only in details; but the fundamental principles are the same. The institution of a church of Christ could not then, as it cannot now, be effected but through the medium of a covenant or agreement by and between the members desir- ing to enter the organization. As it could only be done by the means of a covenant, the knowledge of what covenants it is necessary to make depends upon the knowledge of Christ's designs and purposes in the institution of the church. There are two principal laws controlling and underlying the every im- pulse of God's people — love to God and love to man. These two laws, which command men to search after and to love both God and man, implies a third law, which obliges them to unity among themselves and to fellow- ship ; because, being destined to be united into a church of Christ, which is to make their common happiness, and to be united in a bond of union, it is meet and proper that they be of one mind ; they cannot be worthy of that union in the possession of their common end if they do not begin their union by linking themselves together by the ties of mutual love and fellov/ship. It is in order to unite his people into a cliurch that Christ has made it essential to their natures, and as we see in their natures this disposition, we shall discover in this union the foundation of the particular rules of all their duties, and the foundation of all the laws governing the churches. In order, therefore, to judge of the true spirit and use of the laws which cement Bap- tist churches in the condition in which we find them at present, it is neces- sary to draw a plan of this species of church government on the foundation of the law of love, to the intent that we may see what method Christ has taken to make the churches subsist, and to note the stability and certainty of the principles of apostolic church government. Now the Scriptures nowhere prescribe any formal covenant into which those desiring to unite into a church shall enter ; and until this day there is no uniformity, either as to the use of written covenants, or as to their phrasing, and they are in no sense authoritative. They may at any time be modified or written ones discarded altogether; but this we do know, that in union and concert of action there is strength, and that every Christian neces- sarily stands in need of the intercourse and assistance of his bretliren, whether for his immediate benefit, or for perfecting the spiritual growth in grace of others, even though there be no external force or law by the letter of which they may be actually tied together. The first thing necessary to do in the institution of a church is for those desiring to enter the organization to ascertain what they may undertake to 68 do, and more especially wliat they must refrain from doing. The first churches doubtless followed the instructions and advice of the apostles and evangelists ; but they followed them as freemen, for it must be understood that a church covenant is founded on the free consent and union of minds in regard to that which is to be done in the organization of a church. It is of the very essence of every covenant that the members to be bound thereby consent to whatever is stipulated therein ; for otherwise no obligation, nor reciprocal rights or duties can be created between them. Consent obviously implies acquiescence of the mind in something proposed, or afiirmed. The term involves, in contemplation of ecclesiastical law, the existence of a moral power of assenting, as well as a deliberate and free exercise of such power. This covenant founded upon the voluntary consent of the parties can be nothing else but entering into an agreement, either express or implied, to obey the laws of Christ's kingdom according to the word of God revealed in the Scriptures. In all undertakings between man and man, as likewise between God and man, where there is a irust, the promise of him that is trusted, is called a covenant. This word sometimes signifies in the Scriptures, an agreement which is mutual. By and through the medium of covenants God has ever manifested himself to his people, and thereby acquired authority and reign over them. Thus was Adam reigned over, and after this it pleased God to speak to Abraham and to make a solemn covenant with him. Gen. 27: 8, 9. In this covenant Abraham in substance promised for himself, and his posterity to serve and obey God. And God on his part promised to Abra- ham the land of Canaan for an everlasting possession. This same covenant was renewed at the foot of Mount Sinai by and between God and Moses. Exod. 19 : 5. Thus acquiring a double authority over them, for they were already his by reason of his power, and now they became the peculiar and special. people of the Lord by their covenant and consent. This same conception of a covenant, or mutual promise, enters into the idea of the constitution of a Baptist church. God no longer having, as in olden times, a representative on earth, as in Abraham and Moses, who had authority to consent for themselves and their people, each individual Chris- tian, when brought to a saving knowledge of the truth as it is in our blessed Lord, enters into this covenant relation for himself; that is to say, he is willing to subject himself to the will and authority of Christ upon his entry into the church. They are engagements made by mutual consent of mem- bers who thus make a law among themselves to perform what they promise to one another. Whenever this is efiected, whatever has been agreed upon stands in the place of laws to those who made them, which, being express covenants, are fundamental in their nature and cannot be abrogated. They are binding as to what is expressed in them, but likewise to everything legitimately growing out of them. The word covenant in the Scriptures is often used to signify law. In Deut. 4 : 13, the Ten Commandments are expressly called God's covenant. And he declared to you his covenant to perform, even the ten commandments. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 69 a7id he wrote them upon two tables of stone. The ark, because it contained these two tables of the law, was called, the ark of the covenant. The word lawy it is true, is sometimes used in a larger sense, as intending to include the whole of the Pentateuch and the covenants wrought into the dispensation of Moses. But we see from its frequent use in the Scriptures that the word covenant is used to signify the law in its strictest and broadest sense as a rule of obedience. The subject matter of church covenants is the laws of Christ, as revealed in the Scriptures, as also the infinite diversity of matters by which mem- bers regulate among themselves the intercourse among themselves according to the Scriptures which is the basis thereof. In all these covenants the undertaking of one of the parties being the foundation of the engagement of the other, the first effect is that every one who has entered the church may oblige the other to execute his part according as the other is obliged by the covenant. It is by this mutual undertaking that Christ engages mem- bers to do all the duties incumbent upon them, and that he has put into each engagement the foundation of the laws which depend upon it. They mean more than we at first are wont to suppose, for in them is the commencement of all the ecclesiastical power on earth. This organic union, under a covenant, into a regularly constituted church, was required not merely to determine the details for which the Scriptures give a clear guidance, but also to supply the governmental force necessary for practically securing among imperfect men the observance of the most necessary rules of mutual behavior. The rules, by which this primitive church was thus required to conduct itself, was found in the moral precepts of the Scriptures. They need not be formally agreed upon, or reduced to writing, or even promulgated. Whenever this collective body of men organized into a church, that fact alone brought into existence certain unwritten laws by which they must live, and establishes the authority ot those laws, and subjects all members to their dominion. These rules of conduct, which are coeval with the founding of the church of Christ, are composed of the principles of common sense and reason, which have never been superseded by any law, whether biblical or otherwise, which are left in the midst of every Scripture rule, and are in general those fundamental precepts which are necessarily presupposed by every kind of law and polity, whether secular or divine. Baptist church covenants do not pretend to go into the details of church government, neither do the Scriptures. The great body of the law was left to be supplied by usage and custom, wrought out by those charged with the duty of putting this church in motion. Such a church has her own affairs and interests; she deliberates and takes resolutions in common, thus becom- ing a moral person, who possesses an understanding and will peculiar to herself, and is susceptible of obligations and rights. Indeed, when a church assumes ecclesiastical functions, they invest themselves with an understand- ing and will, so far as relates to the administration of church affairs and the exercise of authority. The church thus becomes the depository of obliga- 70 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; tioDs and duties, and becomes bound by its covenant to hunt for such laws as will clothe it with an intelligent individuality. This express covenant obliges all consenting thereto to observe the laws and teachings of the Scriptures, and hence, by covenant, the Scriptures become the law of both faith and practice of the churches. If a man, there- fore, should ask a Baptist church in the administration of ecclesiastical affairs, as was asked our Saviour, By what authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this authority f the church can make no other true answer, but that they do it by the authority of the institution of the church, under a covenant to obey the law given them by Christ. The precepts of the Scriptures, before the institution of a church, are not, properly speaking, ecclesiastical canons or rules, but wholesome admonitions, sufficient to point out the way, even to the salvation of the soul, if properly observed ; but not until a church is actually instituted, are they actually eccle- siastical laws, and not before. It is not denied but that there is a signifi- cance and binding authority in the Holy Scriptures, and that they have a power to bind the conscience of every Christian in themselves ; but they do not become the laws of the church except where an assembly of believers link themselves together and covenant to make them the canonical rules of their conduct, for certainly a disorganized multitude of Christians have no authority to command an observance of them, and to punish, by proper penalties, breaches of these rules. And in its proper place we will be able to show that it is in the same manner that articles of faith are agreed upon — that is, by covenant they are made such. Those fundamental principles that underlie the constitution of every Baptist church that determines the manner in which ecclesiastical authority is to be executed, is what forms church polity. These first principles are nothing more than the establishment of the order in which a church pro- poses to labor in common for obtaining those advantages with a view to which the church was established by Christ. Although in this treatise I speak of ecclesiastical government as one by covenant or agreement, yet Baptists do not hold, and I do not here advocate, the doctrine that a church, together with the right to govern it, originates in a voluntary covenant between the members of a church alone. They have never held that church government has only a conventional origin or authority. They have simply meant, by the covenant compact, the mutual relations and reciprocal rights and duties of the memberships, as implied in the very existence and nature of a church of Christ. Where there are rights and duties on each side, the subject is treated, not as a covenant vol- untarily entered into, and which creates them, but as a covenant which binds alike all the members ; and in determining whether any has broken the terms of the agreement. They engage themselves, not with the ques- tion as to whence church government derives its authority, but with its nature, and the reciprocal rights and ethical duties of the governors and the governed. While these things are all arranged by covenant, yet the great institution of the church itself was imposed by Christ, either immediately or I OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 71 mediately, through his apostles. Under this Grand Charter — this Royal Prerogative, equal, free, independent sovereign individuals, being first spirit- ually qualified, meet and enter into a covenant with themselves, each with all, and all wilh each, that they will constitute a church, and will each take the word of God for their only rule of action, and submit to the determina- tion and authority of the majority in all matters lawful to be done. Eccle- siastical government originates in this covenant, under and by virtue of the laws of the gospel, and derives all its lawful authority from the consent of those governed under that law. Though the early churches were supervised and presided over by the apostles, the right of government to govern cannot be deduced from the right of the ministry to govern the churches, for the ministerial right itself is not ultimate or complete. All ecclesiastical governments that assume this to be so, and rest on it as the foundation of their authority, are anti- scriptural, and, therefore, without any legitimate authority. The right to govern rests on covenant by and between those entering the local church. Where there is no mutual covenant, there is no dominion in church polity ; and where there is no dominion, there is no right to govern. But even granting what is not the fact, that the authority of the ministry to govern the churches is absolute, unlimited, it cannot be the ground of a right to rule the churches. Assume the ministerial right to be perfect, that would give them no right to govern where no covenant relation exists. The apostles themselves did not assume that right except in some instances where they were pastors of particular churches, and even then their authority was exercised under the direction of the churches. Nothing true, real and solid in church government can be founded on uncertain suppositions. The logician, as well as the theologian, if worthy of the name, ascertains and con- forms to Scriptural realities, the verities of God's word ; and all church systems that accept traditional fictions are imperfect and censurable. The presumptions or assumptions of church polity must have a real and solid basis, or they are inadmissible. How, from the fact of being called to preach the gospel can we conclude his right to govern the churches ? How from this ministerial right, can we conclude the right of the ministry to consolidate all or many of the churches, institute an imperial government, and exercise ecclesiastical authority over them ? It is quite certain that the apostles Matthias, Paul and Barnabas, the very first ministers after the original apostles, were not made by our Saviour him- self, but were elected by the churches to which they belonged; namely, Matthias by the church at Jeru=:alem, and Paul and Barnabas by the church at Antioch. These ministers proceeded to the ordination of ministers, in the cities where they had converted men to the faith of the gospel, immedi- ately after they had received their apostleship. We read that they ordained elders in every church; which at first sight might be taken for an argument that they themselves chose and gave them their authority. But if we con- sider the original text, it will be manifest that they were chosen and author- ized by the churches in each city hy the holding up of hands in every church. 72 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; For it is well known it was the custom in all those cities to choose magis- trates and other officers by plurality of votes, and that by the holding up of hands. It was, therefore, the assembly of the church that elected their own ministers and pastors; the apostles were only the moderators of these churches to call them together for such election, to supervise the same, and to pronounce them elected after the custom of our pastors at this day. In that passage in Paul's letter to Titus where he says, For this cause left I thee in Crete, that ihou shouldest ordain elders in every city, we are to understand the same thing ; that is, he should call the churches together and ordain them pastors by the plurality of votes, as he himself was ordained. Indeed it would have been a strange thing, if in a democratic city, among a demo- cratic people, where men perhaps had never seen any officers otherwise chosen than by a majority vote in an assembly of the people, those of a city becoming Christians, should so much as thought of any other way of elect- ing their ministers, than this of taking the vote of the church. As much is intimated by Paul when he says : Aiid when they had ordained them elders in every church, and had prayed with fasting, they commended them to the Lord, on whom they believed. No combination of men can be durable for religious purposes, if it is not really voluntary ; and in considering the normal form of the churches of Christ, w^e must get rid of all artificial and violent bonds of union, and retain only those which are spontaneous and free. Long experience has proved that the free and independent gospel churches, as they are seen in the New Testament, in their full completeness, are the largest bodies of Christians which can exist in churches, without becoming domineering and oppressive. To extend the range of ecclesiastical powers beyond this, its Scriptural limit, would require violent and arbitrary procedure, the efiJect of which is always unscriptural. For brotherly love and faith, with their strong grasp over the membership as a whole, is sufficient to unite them in the moral union of the church, without extraneous bonds to supplement the task with its mere material unity. The truth is, the membership of a church can only be properly governed and disciplined by an authority, purely intellectual and moral ; training the will and bending the spirit, but not enforcing acts against the w^ill. A control, to be truly Scriptural, should seek always to persuade or to convince ; never to force, even in a moral sense. This is the extreme limit, beyond which church government should never pass. Across this borderland, the domain of temporal authority begins, on which church authority must scrupulously avoid to trench. Ecclesiastical rule, if it can no longer touch the conscience or the reason of the offender, must appeal to the voice of the denomination ; and it may find there a force, truly coercive, though not ceasing to be moral. Thus we have seen in our treatment of this subject, by a comparative scientific method alone, without any external evidence of any kind how we have been able to find out a great deal as to the social, ecclesiastical and religious state of the early churches at various stages of their existence. We have seen that some of the most important steps in the rise and develop- OR, THE COMMON LAW OP THE GOSPEL. 73 ment of these churches were taken while the apostles yet lived and had full supervision over them. We have seen how other systems sprang up inde- pendently of and differently from the Bible polity, after they had aposta- tized from the common stock and models. We have been able to go so far as to see that many new inventions or discoveries were made by different religious sects, after they had departed from the common centre, and after they had parted off from the true polity how the various branches divided up again into still different sects and orders. It gives us also the means of tracing in some degree the further departure made by these post-apostolic polities, while yet there was a faithful people in the world who still held to the original form of government. But in this line of inquiry it is to the polity of the primitive churches purely and simply that this comparative method is directly applied. The knowledge which it brings to light as to the growth of this peculiar system is most important in itself, and is estab- lished by the most certain proofs. The immediate object of the research was not the history nor the theology of the churches ; it was the government and laws, the ecclesiastical institutions of the churches into the nature and origin of which the inquirer has been searching. Such is pure Bible church government, the government of the whole mem- bership and not a part of it only, as carried out in its full perfection in a single independent local church. It is a form of government which works up the faculties of the membership to a higher pitch than any other ; it is the form of government which gives the freest scope to the inborn genius of the whole denomination and every member of it ; its polity has raised a greater number of human beings to a higher level than any ecclesiastical government before or since to the personal gifts of the foremost of mankind. It is the noblest government, the greatest government that human wisdom ever developed, and it could not have been framed by human wisdom alone. The human intellect never existed in the world that could, from its OAvn evolutions, have wrought out such a thing as this matchless constitution of Baptist churches. It is a government such as no other religious people ever dreamed of, such as no other rehgionist ever conceived or had the power to evolve. Reader, have you ever studied this wonderful system of Baptist church gov- ernment, the fundamental elements of which is here attempted to be explored? Have you ever compared it with other systems and noted how our Baptist fathers have clung so tenaciously to the Bible models and formulas ? Let me commend this noble study to every loyal Baptist in the land. Whenever our people, either for the purpose of improving or changing this Heaven- given pohty, shaU. thereby destroy this unparalleled government, this govern- ment without a model, this government without a prototype, they will have destroyed a government the foundation of which was laid by Christ and his apostles, and they will launch out on a sea of uncertainty, the result of w^hich no man can forecast. 74 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE J CHAPTER III. THE LOCAL CHURCH, A DIVINE INSTITUTION, AND THE ONLY DEPOSITORY OF ECCLESIASTICAL POWER. A BAPTIST churcli is tlie local assembly of which one is a member, composed of baptized believers in Christ, united under a common covenant to obey the laws of his kingdom, recognizing and receiving him as their only law-giver, and taking his word as their only sufficient and exclusive rule of action ; having a oneness of will, faith and practice, the members of which succeed each other, so that the churches to which they belong continue the same, and are preserved and perpetuated by a succession of churches and members of the same faith and order from the time of the apostles down to the present time. It is an organic unit, or union of baptized believers — a sovereign assembly of Christianized human beings, with an indelible character of individuality. It is a local institution which acts through government, a contrivance organ- ized under a divine charter, which holds the power of the whole church, opposite to the individual. Since then the church implies an assembly which acknowledges no superior, the idea of self-determination applied to it means that, as a unit and opposite to other churches, it is independent, and cannot be dictated to by sister churches, nor depend upon them any more than itself has freely assented to be, and that it be allowed to rule itself as best pleases itself. In its original meaning the word Ecclesia signifies an assembly. Ordinarily, in the New Testament Scriptures, the word denotes a Christian assembly, and is rendered into our language by the word church. There it never denotes the building, as its English equivalent " church " does. In Grecian literature ecclesia means an assembly called out, or summoned, to hear the magistrate speak unto them, and those who spoke were called Ecclesiastes. When they were called forth by lawful authority they were called a lawful assembly, but when they were excited by tumultuous and seditious clamor, then, as in Acts 19 : 39, it is called an unlawful assembly. In ancient Athens it is said that ecclesia meant a general assembly of citizens, met to discuss and to decide upon matters of public interest. Even then, it seemed that religion entered into the idea of the meeting, for before business commenced a sacrifice was made, and prayer offered to the gods, after which the subjects were stated and the speakers given permission to address the assembly. After delibera- tion votes were taken by show of hands. Most appropriately, and in its true signification, the term church is used for an assembly of baptized believers, as in Matt. 18 : 17, where it is said : Tell it to the church, and if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and publican. OR, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 75 In this sense, only, can it be said that a body of Christians is a church and has power to will, to pronounce, to command, to bind, to loose, or to do any act whatever. For, without authority from a lawful congregation, united under a covenant to obey God's laws, whatever act may be done in a promis- cuous concourse of believers, it is the particular act of every one of those who were present, and gave their aid to the performance of it and not the act of them all in gross, as one organic body, much less the act of them that were absent, or being present, were not willing it should be done. Without this power over its members a church must become, if not already, a body without order and discipline, and hence one without rehgion. It is as much a delusion to confer church privileges upon a body of Christians without power to bind and loose, as to create secular government with no power to punish offenders. Without this binding authority there could be no church order. It is this order that the great apostle to the Gentiles praised in the church at Colosse, when he said : Joying and beholding your order. ISTow, order in a multitude primarily represents their union into a body, for the use of such ends among themselves as thereby they seek to attain. This out- ward order is the form that gives this unity. A heap of stones is not one body, framed into a building, although each stone be of one and the same shape and kind, squared and ready to be used in the building. But that all these should be reared into a building, for it. is that which makes them one body. When Christ said : / huild my churchy over and above this indefinite commission given, it was necessary for the due and orderly execution thereof, that there should be an organic assembly of men which should be the seat of a government. It is this form and orderly union into a body that makes any company of men the seat of government, and to have a power among them ; for, how can there be a true government without a seat of jurisdiction, in which it must be exercised. It takes four things to constitute a church : — First, a divine commission from Christ, setting forth specifically how the church shall be constituted ; secondly, a number of baptized believers; thirdly, a place to meet; and, lastly, an assembly of those believers. As outward form and shape in the natural body, such as length, breadth, and thickness, are necessary to constitute it such ; as likewise nerves, bones and muscles ; so an union and moulding into one body is necessary to constitute a church. It is certain that ecclesiastical power and government does as much depend upon formality and order, as it does upon the qualification of persons. Take a company of Christians, or ministers, if you please, promiscuously assembled in a conference, synod, or an association, they have no ecclesiastical power, such as belongs to them in their proper churches. As judicial powers are not given to, nor can they be exercised by, a company of judges, assembled together, however learned they may be. But, when upon the JDench, clothed in the judicial ermine, in their respective circuits, according to law and the constitution, they have all the authority that attaches to their oflSces. The authority is the result of union, and a prior covenant, and that lawfully made, as well as found in persons fitly qualified. Ecclesiastical power is not 76 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; SO mucli given to Christians as it is to churclies. A church is not made up of a multitude met together anywhere, for then those who might assemble at a Young Men's Christian Association meeting could reasonably claim to be a church, and if that were so, those assembled at a May- day picnic would be a church. When we consider the apostolic examples of a church we shall find that it was necessary that Christ should appoint bounds and limits to them. As in civil governments, the form constitutes them as well as the matter, so that churches that are the seat of government, their orderly frame and forms by which they are united according to a law, or fundamental custom, constitutes them as churches. For, acts of ecclesiastical government being designed to have a spiritual efficacy, beyond the mere act of union, it was necessary for Christ to appoint the form and order in which he was to accompany them with that efficacy, as much so as it was to appoint and qualify persons to exercise it. It is no less the seat of government than it is the grand recep- tacle of the truth, and as such it is compared to a house : If a man know not how to rule his own house well, how shall he take care of the church of God f A church, then, that is the object of government is here compared to a house wherein a family is ruled. As a family has bounds and limits, so has the church. As no one would think of going beyond the circle of his own house- hold in the ruling of his family, so they who govern a church cannot go be- yond the limits of the organic unit to include others in its government. The founding of churches and marking the limits of each is the only rea- sonable solution of the problem of church government. If an earthly ruler had an infinite number of subjects scattered over the world, which could not be governed in a body, but by parts, distinguished and formed into several bodies united together, it would be his prerogative as a ruler to point out the several provinces and the bounds thereof, as much as to prescribe what should constitute citizenship therein, or the kind of laws that should govern them. So Christ, knowing that his disciples were to be scattered over the world, among the various kind of nations, more or less hostile to his gospel, and knowing that they could not be governed in one universal church, or in mass, he made it possible for them to organize into small units, as a &mily in a state, and by his divine power invested each church with a government com- plete in itself. As a family could dwell or remove whithersoever it pleased, so a church could organize wheresoever it pleased ; could worship in a temple, in the mountains, in the coves, or in the valleys. It could travel from place to place, from state to state, or from nation to nation, and yet retain its com- plete organization and worship. Its field would be the world, and its possi- bilities for good limited only by the providence of God. Yet it will not be here contended that the churches in all their perfection came into full formed existence at once. The history of what Christ did in giving form to the churches is not fully recorded in the Scriptures. In fact, the sacred record does not give us more than a passing allusion to the manner in which the churches were constituted, and describes them in action rather than gives a detailed account of the principles upon which they were founded and the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 77 way to apply them in practice. We find there merely the outline of the foundations of the churches, the models, as it were, after which to pattern. There are two modes of reasoning made use of by those who contend for the hierarchical form of church government. The first view is, that we should take the local church as established by Christ as a basis, and ascend upward by a sort of Imman invention to the church universal ; that by virtue of the same di\'ine commission Christ gave his disciples to form a local church, many churches may make up one chiurch, and more of those churches make a greater church, and then still more of the same churches make up a greater and grander national church, by a sort of rule of hocus pocus, for appeals, legislation and judicature. This meets the ^dews and practices of our Metho- dist and Presbyterian friends. The other view is that we should commence at the top of the house to build it, and descend downwards, after the fashion of a western dugout ; saying, that when Christ instituted the church, ecclesiastical power fell upon the univer- sal church, and that the local church has a right to its existence by virtue of this universal church, as the supreme power of a civil government has a right to make sub-political divisions, and invest them with powers of government. That when the first church at Jerusalem was instituted, it, in itself, was the church universal, but that afterwards when other churches were instituted, as that they were compelled to meet in several places, they were to be regarded still as one and the same church. So that the first church as a fundamental institution goes on under the general grant of a charter given by Christ. This view of church pohty accommodates itself to our Episcopalian and Catholic friends. If either be true, we will have to surrender the time- honored 2:)rinciples of Baptist church government and all turn Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, or Catholics. Doubtless the time is coming when the Christian world will admit that in common with all other organic bodies a church develops from within and never from without ; that the tree of ecclesiastical government grows from the roots upward ; that there are no branches or ofishoots springing from this tree, but each tree is complete in itself whose germs have been incorpor- ated into the system of every one of them of the same divine order. When this time shall come, the Christian world will cease to be misled and mystified by false notions of the church of Christ, that are wholly without a Scriptural base on which to stand ; and so little comprehended by even their very teach- ers, that these same teachers fail totally when seeking to make them compre- hensible by those who would be taught. The word church has had very difiTerent meanings ever since it has been used ; that is, people have taken difierent \dews of the subject at different periods, and but for the Baptists of the world the true meaning of th.e word would have been long since lost in obscurity. All along the line of ecclesi- astical history, when an indefinite idea, Tvdth regard to the nature of a church, seemed to be floating about, confounding it with church government, sometimes imagining it as something built upon the ministry, who were thus believed to form the substratum of the church, sometimes as if it were con- 78 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; centrated in the pope, who thus had a right to, and was the rightful owner of, the church and all things appertaining to it — even then there were a peo- ple who believed in and practiced the independent form of church govern- ment. There exist many different kinds of organizations called churches ; mankind are divided into a number of societies, in each of which exists the absolute necessity of forming something like a church — a necessity without which they could not rise higher, however different the view that people take of the church, or though the idea of a church may not even yet have devel- oped itself in their minds as a separate idea, distinct from all other earthly societies. There is involved in the idea of a church a divinity which elevates it higher than all earthly societies. It is the basis of all derived, vested or delegated powers, the source of all other ecclesiastical authority. Since the truth and God's oversight never cease, hence his true churches never cease, and since with them their necessity of existence never ceases, so the sove- reign ecclesiastical power is never exhausted or becomes extinct, but acts in all cases wherever the derived or vested powers, the powers of trust, are in existence, it being the never-ceasing fountain, and the last resort of all church power. It is the only true sovereign and supreme ecclesiastical majesty upon earth. AU systems of church jurisprudence and government, whether true or false, are but the endeavors of those who adhere to them, to arrive at conclusions, as they contend, in many respects, beyond the letter of the Scriptures. Here is the point of divergence, and likewise the dangerous point. The greater the danger, however, the more we ought to strive to find out the true rule to guide us. There is no doubt but that all the errors which have arisen and led so many of the Christian world astray in regard to the true Bible plan of ecclesiastical polity have sprung from this error : That there is on earth such an universal church, or ecclesiastical power, outside of, and above, the local churches that all Christians are bound to obey. This is the heresy of heresies, and the one to which all others are traceable, and is plainly contra- dicted by the Scriptures. There is nowhere in the history of the apostolic churches any account where they transferred their sovereign authority to any body of men and invested them with all the functions of ecclesiastical government, or where an ecclesiastical stairway has been erected, upon which popes, bishops and presiding elders, through these several stairs, may enter upon the heritage of the Lord and domineer over his people. Those who adhere to this dogma of the universal church on earth, seem to consider that man was made for the church, and not the church for man. They look upon the church as one great body politic, by institution, without, in the first place, being able to account for that institution in an intelligent way. They say that Christ, by one great universal charter granted to the whole Christian world, did at once endow and bestow upon them ecclesiasti- cal power to be governed by such written rules of order and discipline as human wisdom should see fit to impose. Furthermore that the local churches should be subject to a general power, from top to bottom, by virtue of this OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 79 divine right granted to the whole, so that all ecclesiastical power being given to the bishops and elders of the church, all regulations are to be made by them in their conferences and presbyteries, without even the consent of the local churches, of which they are members and officers. When called upon to defend this huge system, all that can be said of it is that Christ reared it up all at once by breathing into it the breath of life before it was born, and before it was brought into action by the apostles, without so much as hinting in the Scriptures how it was done. They regard the church as above and before the individuals who compose it, so that the existence of the redeemed man is subordinate and secondary to the universal church. This church acknowledges no limitations of its power. It assumes the immediate and exclusive control of all ecclesiastical matters. It calls, ordains and disposes, not only of all its ministers and reg- ulates their conduct, but directs even the thoughts and consciences of men. It, with impunity, creates high ecclesiastical offices and executes all the pub- lic trusts of the churches in the same manner as if subject to a military dis- cipline. On the other hand, in contrast with this, the apostolic plan is to regard the individual church member as above and before the church, for from the standpoint of polity they are the organizers of the churches, so that the existence of the churches is secondary, and was instituted for the individuals' own spiritual benefit, and is subservient to their interests. The freedom and exemption of the members of a church from the domination of others in church matters has not its origin or foundation in the church ; neither has the church its origin in the members, but each and all have their origin and foundation immediately from Clirist, who puts it into the hearts of his fol- lowers to institute these bodies after a model peculiarly his own. The church of the apostles is to be considered as an instituted organism, that is, an organic unit, in which that which exists in it is both a part and a whole, that is to say, a part in relation to other local independent churches, and yet a whole in itself. To each individual in a church has been commit- ted the exercise of a part of the ecclesiastical power of the church, and he must work in his own sphere. He cannot transfer that which Christ has committed to him as his birthright to a mythical universal church, but each individual is to work in it, and to work it out as laid down in Christ's word. Church sovereignty is inalienable. It is a right with which Christ has en- dowed his churches, and cannot be relinquished and transferred to another. A man may alienate all his earthly goods, but local self-government he can- not part with. It has its origin with Christ, and its spiritual life is with Christ. He can neither cast it off nor can it be usurped and taken away from him, but he is to guard it from all attempt at invasion, and to forbid every attempt to bring force to bear upon it. What Baptists demand in the name of local self-government. Catholics and Episcopalians insist upon in the name of divine right. Ecclesiastical power thus looked upon, according to its inherent nature, goes on increasing 80 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JTJEISPRUDENCE ; until checked. This is particularly true of Catholic church government. It continued to increase until it became the withering curse of the world, and to check it cost some of the best blood that ever watered the soil. It is a lasting experience that every ecclesiastic who has power is brought to the abuse of it. He goes on until he finds its limits, because it lies in the very nature of ecclesiastical power itself. The unity of the churches dazzles, and thus is the more dangerous. A despotic ruler of a huge monarchical system of church government strikes the eye and bewilders the mind ; as it requires nothing but pomp and pride to estabHsh it, all sorts of people are sufficiently good for it. It is the vice of this system of government to raise him who rules it so high and to surround him with so much grandeur that the head is turned of him who possesses it, and that those small people who are beneath him scarcely dare to look at him without getting down on their knees. The ruler believes himself a veritable god, and the people fall into idolatry. The idea that ecclesiastical power necessarily implies the union of several churches for government has always been contested by Baptists. For specific proof that they are right in their contention they refer to the consti- tution and practice of the apostolic churches. Let those who antagonize this view point to any two or more churches in the apostolic times that were ever united for government, or had anything to do with one another e±cept so far as church interdependency prompted them to observe the amenities due from one to another. According to the teachings of the Scriptures in refer- ence to these churches each one of them was complete in itself and had in its own organism the element or germ out of which all ecclesiastical power has been gradually developed, and beyond which it cannot go, but was thus tied down by the apostles themselves. Self-church government is founded on the williQgness and ability of the membership to take care of their own afiairs, and the absence of that disposition which looks to the denomination for everything, as well as on the willingness in each to let other churches take care of their own affairs. It cannot exist where the general principle of interference prevails, that is the general disposition in some one else to usurp a jurisdiction over them, and to substitute their action for individual activity and for self-reliance. Self-church government implies self-organiza- tion, not only at the first setting out of church government, but as a perma- nent principle of ecclesiastical life afterwards. It does not create or tolerate a vast hierarchy of priests and bishops, forming a class or order to them- selves, and acting as though they formed and were the church, and the mem- bership only the substratum on which the church is founded — a hierarchy of priests, with the laity only as the ground on which it stands. Baptists have never recognized the existence of an aggregate number of churches answering to this definition of a church. By what authority can the seat of church sovereignty now be transferred from the local church to the aggregation of churches — from individuality to corporate sovereignty? The limitation of sovereignty to the local church, when the sovereign or ruling power is not an individual, is not only Scriptural, but important, since it exempts church OR, THE COMMON LAW OF TEE GOSPEL. 81 government from the various artifices of a rule by a semi-ecclesiastical cor- porate authority, which in secular governments is said to be both soulless and exceedingly arbitrary. We know that the primitive churches during the apostles' times continued to be free and independent one of another, and belonged essentially and actually to that form of polity. But when we turn to post-apostoHc systems the process of change by which they were formed has been materially different from those early churches. The local churches have been completely broken up and absorbed in the larger, the larger ones have again been swallowed up in still wider, and these in yet wider organic unions, until at last we find the strange spectacle of one man — the pope of Kome — modestly contending for the divine right to rule the Christian world ! Whoever would prove that any peculiar organic unity existed between the apostolic churches, is bound to show something in their constitution, or some pecuHarity in their conditions to prove the assertions. No ecclesiastical historian of any note has ever made any attempt to do so. The facts, there- fore, upon which the reasoning of those who hold to the Universal Church theory is founded, spring from a different source from that which they are com- pelled to derive them, in order to support their conclusions. In order to con- stitute an Universal Church in an organic sense, something more is necessary than that the churches composing it should be of one common mind and one common allegiance to Christ. Neither is it sufficient that they were modeled ahke, and were under the same laws of the gospel, nor does the question depend upon geographical relations, for the churches were scattered over all the then civilized world. The membership of the different churches were one people, and the membership of contiguous churches were still a different people although professing the same faith. We mean by the term member- ship an ecclesiastical organization, the members of which owe a common allegiance to the different churches of which they were members, and do not owe any allegiance which is not common, and who are bound by no laws except such as that each separate church may prescribe, who owe to one another reciprocal duties and obligations, and who can exert no ecclesiastical power except in the name of each local church. Anything short of this would be an imperfect definition of that organic union which Baptists call a church. Tested by this definition of a church the apostolic churches were in no conceivable sense a centralized church. They had an interest, it is true, in common, but this interest was exclusive in, and confined to, each local church, to its own government and consequently to Christ as the head thereof, and not a common allegiance to all the churches, for there was no organic union between them. The very earliest apostolic churches were clothed with the sovereign power of making their own rules of discipline and enforcing obedience to them from their own membership. The membership of one church owed no allegiance, except love, fellowship and good mil, to the government of any other church, and were not bound by any rules except the laws of the gospel which prevailed in all of them alike. They had no common standing council, no legislative body, no common treasury and no 6 82 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; common judicatory for appeal. There was no prescribed form by wbich the churches could, or did, act together for any purpose whatever ; they were not known as a church in any one function of government, but they were universally known and called by all the apostolic churches, and acted inde- pendently one of another. The character of any one of them might have been destroyed, without in any manner affecting the rest. Thus they were separate in their organization ; separate in the changes in the union customs and usages of their governments which were made from time to time for their own convenience. The church at Jerusalem had a government of its own, the church at Corinth had a government of its own, at Antioch and Colosse the same. They could not be equally bound by the regulations of all the rest, because they might in some respects conflict. If so, to which gov- ernment was their allegiance due? Either then the government of the church at Jerusalem, which was the first one founded extended originally over all of them, and made them all one government, or else its supremacy along with all the rest was yielded to a new government, erected into the church universal. Every one who knows anything about those early eccle- siastical governments knows that neither of these things happened. If the government of the church at Jerusalem extended over all, and was the basis for the church universal, what acts of government did it exercise over them all? On the other hand if a new government was formed, and by that means the church universal was set up, thus consolidating them aU into one for the purposes of government, when did it happen, and by whom was it done ? No semblance of either kind of such governments was set up, and no such right was ever claimed, and it will scarcely be contended for now, in the face of the known history of the apostolic churches. What then is the foundation of this universal church government ? It is certainly incum- bent on him who asserts this doctrine against the inferences most naturally deducible from the historical facts to show at what time, by what process, and for what necessary purposes, it was effected. It will not do to infer that this union took place, or to require us to reject the plain information of his- tory ill favor of this inference. The only place seemingly in the history of the apostoHc churches where one church ever had anything to do with another was the council held between the churches at Jerusalem and Antioch. Even here, in point of fact, this council was a deliberative and advisory body, and nothing more, and for this reason it was not deemed important, or at least, not indispensa- ble, that all the churches should be represented, since the letter of the council had no obligatory force whatever as a law that was bound to be obeyed, except in so far as it was recorded and thus became a part of the law of the gospel. It was appointed for the sole purpose of taking into consideration some errors that had crept into the church at Antioch, and of devising and recommending proper measures for the security of the churches against a further spread of the same. For these objects no precise powers and instruc- tions were necessary, and beyond them none were given. The duty with OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 83 wliich it was charged was extremely simple ; but it was taken for granted that the council would, and did, dissolve itself as soon as that duty should be performed. It is perfectly apparent that the mere appointment of this council did not make all the churches a universal church de jure, nor one de facto. It is equally clear that the powers with which a universal church is clothed did not flow from, or constitute a church of either kind, nor a government of any kind whatever. The apostles had no power to form such a government, or presumably they had not, because they did not. They knew that the council was temporary only ; that it was permitted only for a particular and temporary object, and that they could at any time recall any and every power which it had assumed. It would be a violent and forced inference from the powers of such an agency, however great they might be, to say the churches which established it meant thereby to erect a church, or legislative body with power over the churches, or to legislate for them, and surrender all the rights and privileges which belonged to them as separate churches, and to consoHdate them into one church ; and it is an absolute fact established by the record that this council exercised no power which was considered as abridging the absolute sovereignty and independence of the churches. The power and authority were not possessed by tliis council to set up either a church or a judicatory unless given it by aU the churches expressly to do this thing. I conclude, therefore, that every particle of authority which resided in that council was derived from the two churches either in sending or receiving those messengers, and their duty was confined to the subject matter involved in that controversy. It would be incredible to suppose that Christ who came to earth, among other things, to establish his churches did not formulate a plan and a model for this peculiar kind of government. On the other hand we do find the independent churches with complete governments in each in full operation, and during the lives and labors of the apostles these churches were stiU unchanged, and any measure establishing a universal church government would have been an act of open rebellion, and would have severed at once all the spiritual and brotherly ties which bound them together. Indeed the churches were called into existence by the new converts to Christianity under the care and direction of the apos- tles, and as they continued in existence without any new grant of power, it is exceedingly difficult to see how they could form an universal church govern- ment organized by the whole of the converts to Christianity. Each convert was subject to his own church, and if they had been delegated or empowered to enter into this kind of government, they had no right to so do. It is rea- sonable to presume that these independent churches were of Christ's own creation and procurement, and were fostered and maintained by the apostles, and if so by what authority were they consolidated for governmental pur- poses? No original powers of legislation were granted them, and it is only from their acts that we can determine what powers they actually exercised. Great confidence must therefore be reposed in the apostles under circum- stances of this kind. If it were the intention and purpose of Christ that 84 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; such a churcli should be founded, then and there it should have been done and by the apostles themselves. The question then naturally presents itself to the mind, whether a large number of distinct and independent churches, each having its own peculiar government, without any direct organic connection with each other, such as the apostolic churches were, yet all being of a oneness of will, faith and practice, ovdng the same allegiance to Christ, the great head of the church, should unite in a declaration of rights and doctrine, which they believe to belong to all of them alike, would that circumstance, alone, make them a consolidated church ? If the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch and Colosse had united in declaring that each church was free and independent one of another, and disavowing any purpose of uniting for the purpose of govern- ment, but for other objects specifjang them, would they thereby become a church ? Surely, this will not be asserted by any one. We should see in that act nothing more than the union of several independent churches, for the purpose of effecting a common object, which each felt itself too weak to effect alone. Nothing would be more natural than that churches so situated should establish a common interest, and a common agency through which to carry on their intercourse with one another ; but that all this should unite them together, so as to form them into one church, is a consequence not readily perceived. Yet no intelligent man, who has studied the history and nature of the apostolic churches, but will say that this is far more than those early churches did. The effect of thus uniting under a common cove- nant pre-supposes that the early churches were not so united before, and did not constitute a church for government. This fact, alone, is necessary to be inquired into, and, until that fact is ascertained, any reasoning as to the effect of entering into an union, in making them a church, does not apply. All who reason thus are, therefore, obliged to abandon the ground taken, that the churches were one in the time of the apostles, otherwise why enter into this union ? The apostles might, by reason of the power inherent in themselves, expressed by themselves, or through their lawfully constituted agents, have made the churches one church through all time to come ; but their power as to this matter could not extend to the time past. And in the absence of all proof that they did so make all the churches one for govern- ment, we can but reasonably presume that they never did so unite them. And whether the churches so established, under that particular form of gov- ernment, were intended to last forever, or only for a limited time, did not affect their characters as churches of sovereign power. In point of fact, then, the apostles, by establishing such separate governments, did by that very act assert their sovereignty and independence. It is singular that it should escape the observation of any one, that the very fact of forming this union, and the course pursued in doing so, attest, with equal clearness and strength, the previou.'^ independence of the churches. What had the churches to do with that which made them a consolidated church, if they formed together one church ? And yet in all post-apostolic systems, when the act of OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 85 union was effected, the churches alone performed it, each acting for itself and binding itself. Those who followed after those early churches had no power, under their charters, to change their governments. They could do so only by setting their charters aside, and acting upon their own inherent right ; and no one loyal to the truth, and to the word of God, will deny but that this would be ecclesiastical revolution and rebellion. It requires stronger and plainer proofs than our adversaries have yet been able to adduce to convince us that a church of Jesus Christ once sovereign has ceased to be so. And yet they require of us to believe this, although they acknowledge that they cannot tell, with any degree of intelligence or precision, when, how, or to what extent the sovereignty, which they exercised in the apostles' times, was surrendered. According to their way of looking at the matter the churches are to be presumed to have yielded this sovereignty to a government established by themselves, which existed only by their will and by their own aid and support ; whose powers were wholly undefined, and for the most part exercised by usurpation on its part ; legitimated only by the acquiescence of those over whom it was placed ; whose authority was without any adequate sanction which itself applied, and which, as to all the important functions of sovereignty, was a mere name — the shadow of a power without a substance. Every one will admit that, had the apostles so provided, the form of government of the churches might be changed, amended, or we might establish a new one entirely. We might do this, because we have the physical power to do it, and not because such a pro- ceeding would be either wise, just or expedient. It would be, nevertheless, revolution in the strictest sense of the term. Be this as it may, no one can truthfully say that this authority can be found in the writings or teachings of the apostles. As the churches were first formed and constituted so did they remain during the lives of those eminent men to whom Christ delegated the power to set them upon foot. They did not afterwards take this subject in their own hands independently of the law of the gospel, and those who followed them could not do it by any agency afterwards. So far as these churches were concerned, the law of the gospel, from which alone they derived their power, contained no provision by which the churches, or the membership belonging to them, could authoritatively express a joint purpose to change their government. A joint resolution of any conference, synod, or convention authorizing them to do so would have been void, for want of right in that body to pass it. It is equally clear that there was no right or power reserved to the churches themselves, by virtue of which any such authoritative expression of the common will and purpose of the members of all of the churches could have been made. The power and jurisdiction of each church were limited to itself. If the members of all the churches could not, by any aid to be derived from their joint union, have effected such a change in the constitution of the churches, that government thus formed, itself, would have been equally destitute of all power to effect such a change. It results from the very nature of all governments, freely and voluntarily estabHshed, as were those of the apostolic churches, that there is no power to 86 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; change, except the power wMch formed it. No man will be so bold as to deny that churclies were formed strictly by the apostles, instituted by them as such, and deriving all their powers from them under the grand charter given them by Christ. What power and authority was there other than that of the apostles that could do it ? Could a majority of all the Christians in the world or a majority of all the churches have done it ? If so, where, and from whom, did they get their authority ? It is worthy of remark that in every place in the New Testament where the churches are alluded to as implying a body capable of exercising the functions of government, they are called churches, and not a church in the singular. This proves, in itself, that the apostles never regarded the churches as an amalgamated body organized for government ; and that those who lived in those early times of the churches, doing and performing all the acts of government, never for a moment imagined that they Hved under an uni- versal church, in which the local church had no voice. If our opponents r establish that this universal church was created by the churches, and that they were at the time distinct, independent and perfect sovereignties, it fol- lows that they could not treat with one another, even with a view to the for- mation of a new common government, except in their several independent characters. We are not to presume that each church designed to change the character in which they negotiated with each other. Every fair and legitimate inference is otherwise. The sovereignty of a church is the last thing which it is mlling to surrender ; and nothing short of the clearest proof can warrant us in the conclusion that they ever did surrender it in apostolic times. Those who hold to opposite views contend that local church sovereignty was merged in the act of union, and that the gov- ernment established was emphatically the government of the whole Christian community. And yet those same people are forced to admit that they can neither alter or amend the government of the churches of Christ. In order for them to perform this function it is necessary to call again into hfe and action those very church sovereignties which were supposed to be merged and defunct, by the very act of creating the government which they are required to amend or change. To alter or amend the form of any gov- ernment it requires the same extent of power which is required to form one ; for every alteration or amendment is, as to that extent, a new gov- ernment. And every lawyer knows that of all political acts the formation of a constitution for government is that which admits and implies, the most distinctly and to the fullest extent, the existence of absolute and unlimited sovereignty. Hence Baptist churches have been favored by heaven with the blessing of having a Bible form of government furnished them, and the power of choos- ing this form of polity for themselves, and building upon it from the founda- tion ; and the happiness of the membership of each church is allowed to be the end of government. If this is really a favor from heaven it would be no proof of the wisdom or piety of the present age to return it to the state of abeyance and non-use. A successful vindication of the right to concoct and OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 87 fabricate new forms of churcli polity, and to draw tliem from the sources of men's intellects and wills, is no proof of the light of the present age ; rem- nants of priestcraft and superstition will obscure this Hght; because it is impossible for a system of church government divided and distracted by dif- ferent orders of the ministry, peaceably and deliberately to make, mend, destroy and renew forms of ecclesiastical government, as intellect and Tvill may dictate. The Baptists, as church history abundantly verifies, are the only people under the sun who have preserved this birthright from the begin- ning. And if the circle of ages has exhibited all systems, except the Bap- tists, without choice as to their forms of government, and if most or all of these systems contain aristocratic orders of the priesthood, can time make stronger the evidence to prove these orders were in reality the usurpers of the birthright belonging to the churches of Christ, and that the solitary church, so fortunate as to preserve this rich birthright, owes its prosperity and promi- nence to the absence of priestcraft and its accursed influence ? From these two conflicting forms of government — the Baptistic and the EpiscopaHan — ^result two theories on the nature of ecclesiastical power. The Baptist theory is that all power is lodged in the local church, and none is legitimate except in so far as it governs and is itself governed by the law of the gospel. No human will can confer an ecclesiastical power on external and borrowed legitimacy ; the principle of its legitimacy resides in itself, and in itself alone. On the other hand the Episcopalian theory is that all legiti- mate power comes from above. It does not reside in the local church, but is lodged in one man or a favored few, and he or they who possess and exercise it hold it by his or their own intellectual and moral superiority. This superi- ority is given to them by God himself. They do not, therefore, receive power from the will of those over whom they exercise it ; they exercise it legitimately, not because they have received it, but because they possess it in themselves by virtue of their ministerial office. They are not servants, but superiors and chiefs. While Paul, Matthias and Barnabas were made min- isters by the local churches of which they were members, and received their authority in this way, yet they make ministers, in and of themselves, by vir- tue of a law, from whence it comes no one is wise enough to know. They affirm that all power ecclesiastical comes down from above, but soon, forget- ting that they have placed sovereignty beyond the earth, and that no one here below is God but themselves, they thus became dazzled by its own lustre ; they persuade themselves, or try to do so, that the power which comes from above descends upon earth as full and absolute as it is in the hands of God ; they are indignant that limits should be affixed to its exercise, and if there be nothing to stop its exercise, and nothing to stop its progress, it establishes a permanent ecclesiastical despotism ; whereas the Baptist theory forestalls the accumulation of a huge mass of power in the hands of the clergy, and destroys it in fact by establishing only a limited power in each church under the laws of the gospel. The transmission of actual ecclesiastical power from God direct to the ministry, taking place, altogether independently of the members of a local church, who, in the days of the apostles, both possessed 88 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and exercised it, is, to a Baptist, an enigma, a chimera and an hallucination of the brain. It cannot be denied, then, but that the historical inquiry into the primi- tive nature and condition of the early churches is useful and necessary. From this inquiry we learn, distinctly and without doubt, that the churches were organized separately and apart from each other, though all upon the same model, and that they did not constitute a consohdated government in respect to rule and polity. This is to be construed as the fundamental law of their institution, estabhshed by the apostles, according to their own free pleasure and sovereign will, and is the acknowledged basis of all ecclesiasti- cal power and authority, the sole chart by which all Christians should direct their conduct. It is to be construed strictly. That the law authorizing the organization of the churches of Christ should be construed loosely and liberally is the bane of the churches and the cause of Christ. This latitudi- narian mode of construing church government cannot apply, because the facts on which it is founded dre not true. This error arises from the fact that people have taken it for granted that church sovereignty resides in the government itself; whereas, the true rule is to regard government as the agent of those who create it, and subject, in aU respects, to the authority of the laws of its creation. In the gospel churches the sovereign power is in the membership of each local church respectively ; and the sovereign power of the universal church would, for the same reason, be in the people com- posing that church, if there were any such people in the church polity known as a single universal church. We have seen already, however, that there are no such people or church, in a strict, ecclesiastical sense, and that no such people had or can have any agency in the formation of a church, but that all church power on earth is lodged in a local church, emphatically as such. It would be absurd, according to all principles received and acknowledged among us, to say that the sovereign power is in one party, and the power which creates church government is in another. The true sovereignty of the church of Christ, therefore, is in the local churches, and not in the membership of the church universal, whatever that may be, nor in the ministry. Now we have already shown that it is by covenant that an apostolic church is instituted, and consequently those who have already entered into tliis institution, being thereby bound by covenant to own the actions of the majority, in all things lawful to be done, cannot lawfully make a new cov- enant amongst themselves, to be obedient to any other power in an}i:hiDg whatever. And therefore they that are members of an already organized church cannot cast off their allegiance to that church, which, if they do, they return to the confusion of a disunited multitude, and, whatever else they become, they cannot be caUed a church of Christ. It is therefore manifest that by the church of Christ is properly meant a local . assembly instituted by the consent of those who are to be subject thereto for their ecclesiastical government and the regulation of their . behaviour, not only towards God, but towards one another in point of disci- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 89 pline, and likewise towards other churches constituted in like manner; which, properly, was a church wherein Christ was King and Law-giver. This is the natural way to account for the institution of a church, which in no way differs from the examples or models of the primitive churches of which we read in the Scriptures, as it also corresponds with the Baptist churches of this day. For in treating of church government we are not to renounce our reason, experience and common sense, though there may be many things in the Scriptures above reason — that is to say, which cannot by natural reason be either demonstrated or confuted, yet, thanks to the Lord, there is nothing therein contrary to it. Any intelligent body of men who go about to institute any government whatever, the first and most important thing is to agree, or to covenant together what shall be the form of that government, and where the sovereign or ruling power shall be lodged, and by whom it shall be exercised, and to set out the bounds and extent thereof by wliich the jurisdiction of that govern- ment is to be Kmited. Therefore in trying to find out the order and form of that government, wliich Christ has instituted for his church, it is highly proper to begin by seeking what kind of a body it is that should be the pillar and ground of the truth, the seat of power and authority by which Christ would have his government exercised, and within which it shall be confined. It is contended by those belonging to the papal, episcopal and other post-apos- tohcal forms of church government, that their systems are the necessary results of a spontaneous, irresistible " church development." This is their only excuse for the assumption of extra ecclesiastical powers and functions, frankly admitted by them as being unwarranted by the Scriptures. The rigidity of these systems, arising chiefly from the association and identifica- tion of principles of religion with written rules of church law, has chained them down to those views of church poHty which they entertained at the time when tlieir ideas were consolidated into a written code. The Baptist form of church government is the only system of church pohty that has been exempted, by a marvelous fate, from this unhappy calamity. Its com- mencement, it is true, in many details not mentioned in the Scriptures, eludes our research, and its final termination lies hid in the inscrutable future because it began in the infancy of the churches, and will end when the All- wise founder may see proper to bring them to a conclusion. To organize a church of Christ is to invest an assembly of baptized be- lievers with the authority of Christ, whereby they are authorized and em- powered by a commission from him, and in his name, to do that which others cannot do, and by virtue of which, what they do has a special efi3.cacy in it from the power of Christ for the sake of his mil and institution. It is this that makes a church different from an association. It is this that gives the ordinances of the church — Baptism and the Lord's Supper— their virtue and authority. For the ordinances, likewise the Lord's Day, w^orship and dis- cipUne are also institutions of Christ. It will be remembered that an insti- tution of Christ is that which is founded upon the mil of Christ, raising it up above its own nature, with an efficacy beyond itself. 90 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Therefore, when there is a commission of power given by Christ, there is a declared institution, differing only in nature and degree, according to the purpose for which it is designed ; as where Christ says : What you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven. Go and teach all nations^ baptizing them. Do this in remembrance of me. These, like the church, are virtual as well as actual institutions of Christ, because founded upon his will and power, and are but the declarations of his will. For all church power and govern- ment which has a spiritual efficacy annexed to it must be by special institu- tion, and that is, in a special manner, government, by a divine institution, which has a power and authority annexed to it beyond what is in the com- mon nature of the act itself to do. It is not in the power or nature of man to erect a like power in any com- pany of men if they have it not by Christ's institution. Men may know how to manage and conduct an institution that Christ has erected according to the nature and design of that institution, and if it could be made to appear that Christ had appointed a supreme judicatory for appeals and legislation which churches have not, man's wit and ingenuity would teach him how to use and make use of it, but could never have authorized the erection of such an institution, clothed with such power, had not Christ appointed it. Because the church, its worship and ordinances, flow from Christ, not only as the author of man and his wisdom, but as the author of divine grace, as Lord and King of his church, and so depend upon his will. Whatever is set apart by Christ supernaturally as founded on his will, and separated from other things to be the instrument of a supernatural power and efficacy, is such by his divine institution, and all such power must be dis- posed of and executed according to his mind and will and by his own instru- ments. Every man is to serve God always and everywhere, but that a select body of men should be peculiarly singled out to organize for Christ's govern- ment, worship and discipline, is an institution more efficacious than belongs to a promiscuous company of men. And that they should have the promise of the power and presence of Christ to accompany them in that government, they derive this power from Christ's special institution. Thus Christ takes this simple union which otherwise would have no divine efficacy in it, and yet over and above this material union puts them into a divine organization to serve for some special end to have a further virtue in it. The gifts given in general to men to pray, to sing and to exhort men to repentance, are common to multitudes of men, but not by institution ; but that a body of men should organize under the law of the gospel to publicly govern, to preach, baptize, pray and worship in a continuous and constant way, this is by special insti- tution, and has the presence of a divine blessing upon it. Now government and worship are relative terms, and as the one must have a local seat for its exercise so must the other. And as the churches of the New Testament are formed into fixed local bodies which must be the seat of government and worship, the question is whether the settled form and order of these bodies should be set out by Christ's special appointment and institu- tion, or whether it has been left by him to men to frame and order as a pro- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 91 fane society is organized ? This is a matter of such importance and weight, as belonging to the very substance of church government, as that if men could design and set up other forms in its stead, then they could overthrow the whole system of ecclesiastical order and government and ignore Christ altogether. The position is here taken that there is no human ground on which a church can rest. They whom Christ has honored and entrusted with eccle- siastical power hold it as his representatives. This power which is in the membership forming the church, is over the local church, and while each individual acts for liimself in the government of the church it is over him and he is subject to it, and this is a power which is and can be in the church only as it is a divine institution. It has in it a two-fold significance. It denotes not only a material visible organization, but is likewise the sign of a divinity in Christ in whom it was conceived and founded. To deny its divine origin and efficacy, and the setting of limits and bounds to its juris- diction, is to imply that it is set up by usurpation and force. If there is for the church no divine origin and ground and we are to concede the right to man to change its form of government at will, and if we are to listen to the voice of man separate from Christ, then his government on earth is destroyed and gone forever. There is no one man, or set of men, apart from the organic church who can assume to be the church, and say that powers ecclesiastical are in us alone. With the Universal Church, whatever that may be, from the standpoint of government, it has nothing to do, and the church universal has nothing to do with it. It is not a sum, conglomerate mass, or a chance collection of men, but exists in an organic unity. Neither is it measured by any determinate enumeration of individuals, but where two or three are assembled together in my name, to them the promise is given. There is no arbitrary ground in numbers or multitudes or in classification, but the blessing is of, with and for those who keep pure its order and guard its ancient landmarks, faith and doctrine. None who stand outside and aloof from it can direct its order, and none can control it beyond its own organic law save only Christ under the rules prescribed for its government. Its power belongs to itself, and no individual or order of men separate from the church or within the same have power to direct that authority, as there is no one exempt from its authority. The right of ecclesiastical government is in the will of those who are of the organic unit, while it is only in its being in the local church as a moral being that the will of the church subsists. Its authority apart from this has no foundation in fact and can be referred to only as a fiction, and held only in an arbitrary assumption and vacant conception. As it is instituted under a covenant to obey God's law has it a position and substantial ground apart from which the will of the church is only visionary, and its freedom knows no subjection and is but an empty and outward circumstance. This over- grown power, having destroyed the divine prestige of the local churches, goes on ever increasing, promises ultimately to reduce them to a purely secular &2 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; institution, whose regulations are limited in their sphere, and have no other authority than the general will of those bodies which created them may- bestow ; the authority of the one ever on the decrease, and that of the ether ever on the increase ; originally, in the primitive churches, the same, but now placed daily more in marked antagonism. Thus alike in authority, in essence, and in form, the Universal Church and the local church have ever been more widely diverging from the same root. Its existence outside of Christ's divine institution is confusion and not order, the creation of disor- ganization and chaos, and not the church. It is a mythical body without limbs, without nerves, bones or muscles, without thews and sinews; the breath of the divine life has never been breathed into it, and hence it has no soul. Man can no more create it without conforming it to the apostolic models and making use of the divine patterns than he can create a human body and breathe into it the breath of Life. It is profanity to attempt it, and shows a want of loyalty to Christ's reign and rule on earth. The church is constructed out of its own material, which itself has accu- mulated, building itself after its own j^attern, an institution peculiar to itself. Notwithstanding this, it is not to be regarded as a device which man has formed for his own private ends. Neither is it to be considered as a contrivance of human skill and government, as a device for the accomplishment of certain visionary objects, to be changed for the better or worse to suit human views, and to subserve private purposes. It does not owe its conception to the genius of a single man, such as Henry VIII., Calvin, Wesley, Luther, or Campbell. It is not Popery, Protestantism, Methodism, Presb}i:erianism, or Campbell- ism. It is not a reformation, nor the development of a reformation, or the result thereof. It is not to be counted among the achievements of human wisdom, for the highest ingenuity could not have compassed it, and tran- scends the achievements of a single man or a separate age. It is instituted and designed by Christ for all ages, all peoples, all places and all conditions. The first church founded by the apostles was not the receptacle where the first and only ecclesiastical power was lodged, nor was it the vehicle in which that or another power was carried or dispensed to the church universal, nor the frame-work in which another church was to be built. Neither is it the dim shadow of a still dimmer ecclesiastical economy that falls from some other man-made organization, that is lifted into the clear light of true church government. Its character is its own ; the mould in which it was cast was designed by Christ, and is not derived from any powers on earth ; it does not proceed through any extraneous power, and its responsibihty cannot be transferred, but its vocation is its own, and is judged by its own standard. The position is here taken and maintained, that a sovereign church of Christ cannot be represented. Everything that a local church does not do it- self is to be considered void as to authority, and only adverse in effect. The membership of other systems think they are free, but they deceive themselves. They are free while they are engaged in the election of their representatives to legislate for the church, and as soon as that act is per- formed, they are subjects. The idea of church representation is post-apos- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 93 tolic, by which the churches are degraded, and Christianity dishonored. In the apostolic churches they had no representatives; the term even was unknown to them. In the post-apostolic systems, whenever a church is to be organized, they have furnished them, from a higher source, a constitution ready 'written and made to order, for all communities, all with the same trade-mark — priest craft — stamped upon them, thereby placing the symbol above the reality. Such a system makes the action of the ecclesiastical power mechan- ical, its postulate being a formal and mechanical conception of a church. When the organization of a church is thus imperfect, when, for instance, the soul power that forms the organization comes from a foreign source which enacts the laws, and then enforces and administers order under it, and judges all questions, whether of faith or practice, that arise from it, the result in the construction of such a power of unrelated and unlimited action is nothing short of ecclesiastical absolutism and tyranny. Christian indi- viduahty and religious freedom and liberty of conscience have no place or home in such a system. To stand aloof and see these constituted overgrown ecclesiastical powers crumbling down on every side is exceedingly gratifying to Baptists. They see all this unscriptural authority dying out, all unnatural restraint upon the local churches tottering to its fall, and the judgment of the priesthood is troubled at the sight; they are amazed at the revolution which is taking place before their eyes, and they imagine that Christianity, together with the churches, is about to fall into perpetual anarchy. For myself, I confess I see in it all the handwriting of God, who seeks thereby to bring the churches back to first principles, and to once again establish them in that liberty wherewith Christ hath made his true disciples free. It is to be doubted whether all the sins that have actuated men to rebel against God since the beginning of the world have brought more guilt and misery upon them than the preposterous and ignorant pretence of trying to imitate what God has instituted. Man not having the power to do what God can do, and for him to attempt to exercise such power for himself without express commission immediately from him, is but usurpation and profanity. But even if men were to originate a new system of church government ; they could never develop an institution that has the right to govern as a di\T^ne institution or to administer the ordinances of Christ's church, for none but a scripturally organized church has that right. Not being themselves omnipotent and having no divine attributes, they cannot create a divine institution as a fact and endow it with the attributes of a church, no more than an assembly of Masons could turn a lodge into a church. Baptists aim not to destroy the Bible form of polity, but to plant their churches as the apostles planted the primitive churches, and then to regulate, direct and restrain their abnormal developments for their own good. They force all concerned in their development to submit to a law which is higher than the church and is unchangeable. Viewed in their first cause the churches of Christ are the immediate creation of God and are therefore supernatural. 94 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Cliurcli sovereignty, or the riglit to govern the churches, is in Christ, and he has at his will delegated it to men whom he calls and organizes for that purpose. While these local churches are supernaturally constituted — having their original existence in the will of Christ^yet the persons selected to exercise powers of government and to administer the ordinances are selected and inducted into office through human agency — thus blending the human and the divine. This view is here maintained notwithstanding the fact that there are those who hold that church governments are founded, constituted and clothed with the power of the ministry alone by direct and express appointment of God himself. No reform in Baptist church polity, no change in it, whatever the advan- tages it may promise, can be successful if introduced, unless it has its root or germ in the past history of the churches Man, in true church polity, is not a creator; he can only develop and continue that which Christ has already established. In all post -apostolic systems there is no germ of Bible church government, and the transition to a true system would not be a development, but is a complete rupture with the past and at variance with it, and is a total new creation. It is with the greatest difficulty that neces- sary reforms are introduced in an old system of church government like that of the Baptists, and when it can seldom be done at all without a terrible commotion and convulsion in the whole denomination, how can we suppose that man can deKberately, and, as it were, with malice aforethought, found a new church? Without conforming to the apostolic models, how can they initiate, establish and sustain a new system that has no resemblance to the one we see reflected in the Scriptures ? To suppose it, would be like suppos- ing that a faction of the people, in a well-defined government, could disrupt the same, and set up one of their own, with impunity. In Baptist church government there is, perhaps, more freedom and liberty than in any other system, yet there is no such license as that allowed. According to the new theory the rights of the government are derived from the rights of the indi- viduals who form or enter into the compact. But individuals cannot give what they have not, and no individual has in himself the right to demohsh the original forms and to set up something new. After a church has been constituted it must always be borne in mind that the unit is not the man, but a majority of the members. But in regard to inter-church relations, ecclesiastical sovereignty, complete disunion was among the most cherished principles of the apostolic churches. The only source of supreme authority to which the apostles felt respect and attachment was to be sought within the walls of each local church. Ecclesiastical disunion — sovereign authority within each church — thus formed a settled maxim in the apostolic mind. The relation between one church and another was inter- church relations, not a relation subsisting between members of a common ecclesiastical aggregate. Hence the true view of the very earliest churches, under the immediate supervision of the apostles, is that, as a whole, they were divided into a vast number of free and independent, self-acting, organ- ized social assemblies, communing and associating one with another upon OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 95 terms of perfect equality — each an ecclesiastical unit, a little nation, so to speak, possessing all ecclesiastical powers, executive, administrative and judicial, in a confused mixture. These church independencies which we call Baptist churches, while they are in contact one with another, they are not joined ; connected, but not united. This was the characteristic nature of the apostolic churches, so it is with our system ; there was no organic union between them, and there is none now. When, however, these many inde- pendent churches in the course of religious and social development could not withstand the gradual desire and necessity for a social voluntary union of their many elements of strength, and were forced into closer contact, they met, nevertheless, as separate elements and desires, separate rights, privileges and under separate ecclesiastical charters. The church of Christ is a divine institution although organized in the manner herein-before pointed out. A divine institution is that which is founded upon the will and command of Christ. It is the elevation of a thing above its own natural, or moral efficacy, with a divine essence beyond it. An Odd FeUows' Lodge is an institution, but it is not a church, because it is not founded upon his express command. To immerse a believer in water, if done according to the laws of Christ, is an ordinance, and there- fore it is a divine institution because it is a command of Christ. Likewise the Lord's supper, the observance of the Sabbath day, preaching of t*ne gospel, and the like, are institutions of Christ because founded upon his will. These things depend upon his will and are authorized by a special commis- sion from him, and have a special efficacy from Christ, and must of necessity be institutions authorized by him. It is an organization instituted by believers in him under his declared will concerning such things as are exercised above its common nature to some further spiritual end and efficacy. While Christ and his apostles were not as explicit in the New Testament in founding the churches as Moses was with his express positive directions, yet there is reason why they should not have been. It was in the infancy of the civilization of the world when Moses founded the economy under which the Jews worshipped, and they needed all the details of the law to assist them in a proper understanding of their duty. God dealt with them accordingly by giving them here a line and there a line. Besides, there was a blending of church and state under that system, and the law had to go into details to make plain the intricate relations of the two powers, the blending of which was on purpose to estab- lish both upon a national basis. But the apostolic churches were instituted upon a different plan; they delivered their rules to the churches alone, at first by word of mouth and by example. Men were converted by them through the medium of preach- ing, and they organized them into local churches and settled ecclesiastical government and order amongst them, as well as faith. It was their pleasure as well as their design to leave to the good sense of posterity those rules which the apostles expressly gave out to the churches, by mentioning what those practices were in the churches. So that what was delivered to them 96 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; in the way of positive commands, is shown to us, by way of example, how the churches were then governed. For we hear the apostle saying, We have no such custom, nor the churches of God. And those customs of the churches were afterwards recorded by the writers of the New Testament and thus handed down to us. Then we have both the precepts and practices of the primitive times, and also the footsteps of the apostles remaining in the churches to this day. The proper understanding of the will of Christ in the institution of his churches is a matter of vast importance. Some reason, that, inasmuch as Christ has commanded his disciples to form this union and given them liberty so to do, that therefore they may likewise employ their reason to set up any form of government they please. But in so doing man's reason becomes a judge, and he takes upon himself Christ's authority, in inventing and authorizing something not found in the Scriptures ; whereas we should be content with the church Christ has appointed. Man's reason is a good thing, and indispensable in church government, but it serves only as a witness and a help that applies a thing according to what, by reason, he gathers from the Scriptures concerning that government. Man's inventive genius has been quite active in framing divers forms of church polity. Some of them are so overgrown and deformed that it is not possible to reform them except by reforming them out of existence, body and soul, and reducing them to the simple apostolical models, and placing responsibility in the local sovereign church. The only way we can be assured as to what is a church of Christ is by examples which we meet with in the Scriptures, without which we could not discover the will of Christ. "We should therefore endeavor to demonstrate that the examples and practices of the primitive churches are to be taken as rules to us. For if an apostolic example or practice be written as a rule, there it will bind because there is no chance or supposition of error. For whatever the apostles did in the churches, are laid down as patterns and rules for us to follow. Those examples of the churches recorded in the Scriptures, not complained of by the apostles, Baptists take to be directions from Christ, and for that purpose they were laid down in writing, and we may safely take them to be commands of Christ, as well in matters to be done, as to be believed. They are denominated Acts of the Apostles and were writ- ten on purpose to show what the apostles taught them to observe concerning church government. It is further said that passing from example to doctrine, Jesus began both to do and to teach those things which pertained to his king- dom and the government of the churches. So that while we have not an express authority for every minute detail of church government, yet we have the general and fundamental principles, which, if we can make out, it is enough. This peculiar system of church la^y acknowledges the Scripture in the broadest and highest sense, but retains its own vitality even with refer- ence to its o"wn customs and usages in this, that it decides, by its own organ- ism, and upon its own principles, and in its own way, on the interpretation of the Scriptures when applied to concrete and complex cases Even if Bap- 97 tist church jurisprudence should be reduced to written rules, as in other sys- tems, the living common law of the gospel would lose as little of its own in- herent vigor and expansiveness, as it has lost in the civil law of the land. Every lawyer understands this perfectly. If Baptists were to reduce their unwritten law to a code it would be as the garnering of ripened fruit of a savory taste, while it was the pronounced intention of the promulgators of other systems to prevent interpretation by referring everything to the legisla- tive body of the church for determination, appointed by the conference or synod for that purpose. That these institutions were uniform in polity and practices is also plainly to be seen. Although the Jews differed in language, in fashion, in manners and in civil government from the Gentiles, yet we read that the same kind of officers and practices were ordained in all aHke. That all the churches were founded under the direction of Christ after a uniform pattern is evident as in the case of Paul, who never saw his Saviour in the flesh, nor any of the apostles except James, yet all the churches set up by him were exact models of those erected by the other apostles in far distant lands, without consulting one another. This could not be done except that they must have been guided by the same Spirit, and as going by the same rule common to all, which was nothing more than the command of Christ. The apostle exhorts his brethren to follow him as he followed Christ. Be ye followers of me even as I am of Christ; and commends them in that they had kept the ordinances as he had delivered them, saying of them. Those things which you have both learned and received, and heard, and seen in me, do. That is, those things that you have received by hearing and learned by seeing. Christ and his apostles did not first set about preparing a written constitu- tion and laws for the churches ; the first work was to set up the frame-work of the churches and put them in motion, and then call upon those estab- lished afterwards to imitate the first pattern given them, and whenever they departed therefrom they reduced them to that which they had first received, and learned from the apostles, as containing an immutable rule, not to be changed. As I ordained in the churches of Galatia so do ye also. If they, under the immediate supervision of the apostles, inspired of God, had not the liberty to swerve from them, certainly we have no such authority. This is both natural and reasonable, for matters of practice and order are as well, if not better, represented in examples than in rules, as men are moved more by examples than by precepts. What was the use of writing a law specifying that the churches were to be instituted in this way, or in that way, or that they were to have such and such officers when they already had them ? But rather to exhort them to maintain the form of government already existing among them, is a suffi- cient law for us to follow. If it had been necessary for them to have written to a company of believers at a distance, who had not already been organized into a church, then it would have been reasonable for them to have written the laws and rules of the church, and recording exactly how to form it. But Christ had first to convert them through the preaching of his apostles who 7 98 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; were present to organize them into a church. But before the Scriptures were written and compiled, they had abeady organized very many churches into that cast which Christ had appointed, and by both example and word of mouth had taught them how to order their OAvn affairs. Besides, we resort to these same sources to find out what is the doctrine of Christ, and why should not as great a liberty be left us to find out Christ's poHty as his doctrine ? It being quite as necessary that men should have directions to guide them in the government of the Lord's house, as in the ordering of their own house- hold affairs, as to what they shall believe. Baptists have never resolved themselves into law-makers, and then boldly intruded themselves into the judgment-seat of God, and damn their members for breaking laws, not of God's, but of their own making, lest they involve themselves in the same condemnation. For wherein thou judgest another thou condemnest thyself. It is evident to be seen that, as it is the Lord's house, he has not left it unto man to frame and model his building to what proportion he please ; Christ's body instituted, like the natural body, it is to have set limits to it : though it be ever so small, it is a perfect body, as much so as if it be a large one, and has bounds set to it, both as to parts and proportion of stature, which none should exceed. The ingenuity of man could have taught him how to institute a body politic, but this would never have authorized the erection of such a body armed with the same powers of a church, if Christ should not be found to have appointed it. Because both the church and the ordinances of the same flow from Christ, not only as the author of the church, but as the author of the grace by which it was instituted, as Lord and King of his church, and so depend upon his will. And if, therefore, he by his will has made an institution modeled after a certain fashion, man cannot make a par- allel to it, and certainly it is parallel to it if it be supposed to have power and influence such as the other has which Christ has instituted. It is a law of nature that nothing can work beyond its own sphere and aptitude. Whatever men may do may be sanctified to subserve the institu- tions of Christ, yet not to raise up anything new on a level with an institu- tion of Christ and to give it a divine efiicacy beyond itself. A spiritual body parallel to such a spiritual church as Christ has instituted is what exceeds the power of man, be his intentions ever so good. This would be as much impossible as if a man were to attempt to produce a spiritual act of grace of the same nature as that which the Holy Spirit produces. Natural gifts and natural parts may be subservient unto Christ who sanctifies them, but they cannot erect a church of Christ and endow it with ecclesiastical powers. Christ's government then cannot dispense with man's help, and he must utilize it, but he cannot usurp it or in the first place generate any part of it. In the episcopal form of government the object is different. In the one, it is to give effect to the government and to preserve it in its integrity according to covenant. In the other, it is to act on the government itself by any change that may be desired whether it be lawful or not. In the iipostolic form of church government the membership cannot go beyond the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 99 limit prescribed in the law of the gospel, without taking the government into their own hands, and overthrowing the existing one. To make church gov- ernment competent to its objects, its powers must be commensurate, under proper guards, with those of the sovereignty, and to preserve the govern- ment in the hands of the membership of each church, the means of restrain- ing the church within the limits prescribed to it by the law of the gospel, of enforcing a faithful execution of the duties enjoined on it, and punishing a violation of them, must be vested in, and performed by each church itself. The whole system, as heretofore observed, must turn on the suffrage of the membership, and the government, that those in office may find that they can obtain nothing independent of the membership, nor from them, nor even escape discipline, otherwise than by a faithful adherence to forms and doc- trines. If Christ had not settled the order, discipline and government of his churches, we should have no authority to endeavor to reform any thing we might see amiss therein, when the order and discipline of the churches of Christ are impaired and almost lost. For there would be no rule to go by in such reformation. Without a model and a rule there could be no setting things right when amiss, no reformation, as Paul says in the ninth chapter, tenth verse, of his epistle to the Hebrews, if we did not know, by the rules and laws of his own institution, what it is. It cannot be said that Christ has left us in a perpetual ignorance of his will in a matter of so great importance as the institution and government of his churches. And certainly we cannot be discharged from the necessity of searching the Scriptures in order to know whether Baptist church gov- ernment be true, as well as to see whether other systems are false. This duty obliges us so far to search into matters of government in general, and especially church government in particular. TVe cannot distinguish truth from falsehood, right from wrong, or know what loyalty we owe to Christ, or what we may justly expect from him unless we know what kind of a church he has instituted as well as where its seat of power resides. Now if powers ecclesiastical do not reside in the local church as we have contended, but have been transferred from the local to the universal church, the authority to do so must have been given to the first church established at Jerusalem. If given to that church, a matter of such importance requires good proof, when, where, how, and by whom it was done. But the Scrip- tures testifying to the contrary, that Christ located the seat of government in the local church, and that no such thing as a church universal was insti- tuted by him, we may safely say that Christ never gave any such power to the church at Jerusalem to transfer its sovereignty. If he did not give it to that church he did not give it to any or to all, for every one is compre- hended in all ; and if no one has such power, it is impossible that all can have it when no man knows, or can tell, where, when and by what hand it was given, nor what is the sense of it. If the right of the church universal was given by Christ, all is well ; no better right could be asserted. But if there be no justification for the exercise of such power by a promiscuous 100 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; body of men, then that which was usurpation in its beginning, can of itself never change its nature. On the other hand if Christ instituted the local church and endowed it with powers ecclesiastical, that which was true in the beginning is so now and must be forever. And he that persists in using a power in matters so sacred as that of a church to which he is not by divine right entitled, thereby aggravates it, and takes upon himself all the guilt of his predecessors and adds the offence of treachery to usurpation. In the first place it is agreed upon by all that a local particular church is such a body as has entire power to cast a member out by excommunication, and that casting out of a church is, consequently, by the law of communion and fellowship, a casting out of all the rest, one church thus reverencing the action of the other until they see apparent cause to the contrary. Likewise, even in all hierarchical systems of government, each particular church feel themselves perfectly competent to examine and admit ordinary members without the help of other churches. Both acts of receiving and casting out are acts of power, the one opening the door and the other shutting out. He that opens may also shut ; he that shuts may also open. The act of receiving them, or not receiving them, is an act of power of as great moment as to cast them out. If a church, then, is by Christ entrusted with the one power they should be intrusted with the other, without foreign interference. Christ's honor and the purity of the church is as much concerned in what members are taken in and owned as members as what are cast out. This power has its parallel in civil government ; for to enfranchise and to disfranchise belong to the same power, and if there be a difference, to enfranchise is the greater, for in so doing they admit foreigners to citizenship, and when a man is disfranchised the act is done to a citizen who theretofore had been entrusted with all the rights of a free subject. But if it be contended that to excommunicate a man is to cast him out of the church universal and therefore it is a greater act ; to this it is answered that by the act of admission he is taken into fellowship with sister churches, not actually or formally, but consequently, because the churches have and hold communion and fellowship one with another. For if it can be said that all churches have an interest because they cast a man out, so they have an interest also in admission, and they cast a reflection upon the church that receives him, if they receive him not by virtue of his fellowship. And hence, if the universal church has a right to join in his excommunication they ought to join also in his admission, as they are as much interested in the one as the other. It is evident from this that to receive a member as well as to expel him requires a local church with a local seat of power and government without interference from the outside, and that if single congre- gations may admit a man to fellowship without consulting others they may excommunicate him. This is evident from the standpoint of those who are not Baptist, from the fact that they provide a way for those who are to be excommunicated to appeal from the decision of the local church to a higher judicatory to inquire whether he has been justly cast out ; and if aU churches are to be thus consulted in OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 101 casting him out they ought also to provide for a higher tribunal than the local church to pass on his fitness to be admitted, for church government ought to be a sensible thing and no contradictions in it. Besides, Paul com- mands his Thessalonian brethren to whom he writes, That ye ivithdraw your- selves from every brother that walketh disorderly ^ and to have no converse with them. Now how is a whole universal church scattered over a whole prov- ince to know this brother when he happens to move among them ? Does it not rather mean that the local membership who happen to know him are to withdraw themselves from him, and to have no conversation with him in order that he may be brought to repentance ? Besides, Paul says. If one member suffer, all the members sufer. Thus we see that locating discipline in the local congregation it serves a double pur- pose, both as respects themselves and the person to be excommunicated, and his good, showing that it must be one body. He is to be first dealt with by the brother he has ofiended, and then he is to take one or two with him as witnesses before he is brought before the congregation. This is to be done by those who are not strangers to him ; and, therefore, they are to sympa- thize with him, to be humbled together with him for his sin. In the follow- ing verse the apostle says, Now ye are the body of Christ, and members in particular. That is, the church at Corinth being a particular local body they have a special relation one to another more than to any other churches. And this sympathy and this mourning is to show themselves clear of the matter, which would otherwise be a sin of the church. As the members of a family will mourn for the sins of a member of that family, so especially in this special nearest relation of all others each member is to mourn and sorrow for the sins of a member, as if it were the sins of the whole church, because a dishonor is thereby reflected upon the whole. It is therefore necessary when a man's sins are ripe for public admonition that his own particular people should know it, that all these labors and admonitions should be before his own church where the seat of discipline is lodged, that the enormity of his transgression might bring him to repentance. Then to excommunicate a man is a law of a local church, and of necessity must be much more efiectual to work upon a delinquent than if it were brought before aU the universal churches in the world who know nothing about his sin at least is effected by it, but remotely, as these bodies must be remotely situated one from the other. To make this matter plain the apostle says in the same letter to the church at Corinth, You have not mourned that he that hath done this deed may be taken away from among you. Showing that in the act of excommimication itself the church should be present in a body, and if they are to be present that they may mourn when any are thus cast out, their presence is much more required before the act of expulsion, because their labor and sympathy with and for him might be the cause of his repentance and retention in the church. Besides this view to take of it, a local church has a joint interest in this discipline to judge and to sit in judgment by way of voting by show of hands, that all or a majority of the church may concur in the sentence in 102 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the act of exclusion. This corresponds with courts of justice in the trial of offenders before the law. They have such an interest in cutting a member off, like a jury ; they have joined together that they may judge of the facts and of his obstinacy and the genuineness of his repentance. Why, then it follows that the power to discipline and to excommunicate must rest in every local church. This is the fairest law in the world, that a mau be judged by his own brethren. And we account it the glory of Baptists that no member's standing as a Christian and no man is to be subjected to the judgment of outsiders, but that he is to be tried by his own brethren. And if no outsiders have a right to sit in this judgment, then the power of all acts of government must lie within the body of the local church, because there are no other ordinary constant church meetings of the membership of a church for discipline, but by congregations. There is an old maxim, and a true one, that says, The first in every hind is the measure of the rest We have then to contend that the first church in existence with complete local ecclesiastical government was such a church as we are now pleading for. If this first church was a proper repository for church power, and that was to be transferred from that to another, with power to establish a still higher one, what became of that power and right when churches came to be multiplied, having the very same mould and pat- tern ? How could this power come to be taken away, or come to lose it, and it transferred unto a universal church of many congregations ? If upon this association there had been cast a new power, yet the old former power must be supposed to stand still entire, or else they lose it, unless Christ had mirac- ulously created this power, which we deny. It cannot be said that inasmuch as the multiplication of churches was accidental, so a new accidental power must come over them which they had not before. And suppose that a local church, alone by itself, can be supposed to have an accidental independency, yet that positive power we see in the first church with which Christ invested it, for positive acts of government, was not given it because there was no other church in existence, but because it was a complete church in itself. If the first church had this complete power, it is not to be taken from it by the multiplication of churches. For the multiplication of churches may be accidental or Providential, but the form and mould they were cast in by Christ at first is the essential form that constitutes them churches and makes them complete ecclesiastical bodies. We know of no power surpassing the human, unless it be the divine ; but a divine power never miraculously shows itself except to bear witness to the truth and to give authority to those who announce it. If, therefore, the glory of this particular kind of government was miraculously supported by a more than human power, it was good in itself, and to change it, it will take another miraculous manifestation of that same power that first insti- tuted it. If we lay aside the word miraculous it will be hard to know how Christ should give such a virtue to this form of church government, and to the people under it, unless there had been an excellency in its government and discipline far surpassing anything ever before seen on earth, or how OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 103 that can be called ill in its nature which Christ so gloriously supports and no people have ever been able to improve upon. This species of religion and church government by deputy is the cause of all the benighted darkness now extant in the world ; and parties and indi- viduals, pretending to be intelligent, who are thus governed, are groping in darkness and ignorance. The most ignorant, enslaved by priestcraft, discerns goodness by the light of his own conscience, and distinguishes between a Scriptural and unscriptural government by the light of his senses as well as his reason. Bat authority, whether it be priestly or otherwise, by depriving us of conscience and reason in religion and church government, causes such calamities and blunders as are encountered by a blind man who is a lunatic. It assures us that neither the light of the Scriptures nor reason can select a religion nor a church government for the sake of making a tyrant of this very reason. It confines us to the will of others as the authors of its dogmas, but refuses to our human reason a capacity to con- strue either, that it may construe both by its human reason to enslave and defraud ours. Yet this baneful influence only serves to rivet the conclusion that the common sense and common honesty of a local church of Christ is both a wiser and honester source of religion and ecclesiastical government than the authority of popes, cardinals or bishops, or separate interests in any form. The glory of Baptists has been in their devotion to the local church, and they have the names of those who have gone willingly to the stake to preserve its order as an immortal heritage. Their history is an universal attestation, that when the life of the local church has been the deeper in its higher development, the world has apprehended in this peculiar people the glory of the work of our ancestors in preserving this enduring heritage. They have ever contended that in the decadence of local church government there is^ corresponding loss of personal individuality which inspires men with a love of the church, and likewise a love of the truth. It was the degradation of the local church and the exaltation of the Universal Church body politic that has been the cause of the death of thousands of the choicest Christian men and women that ever graced the annals of the world's history. When the sacred ness of the Bible form of church government is no longer regarded, when it is no longer apprehended as a divine order, but as devised by men and shaped by a law of expediency, and subject to caprice, then the life of Christianity is corrupted in its very source. The sacred counsels of God are impenetrable; but the ways by which he accomplishes his designs are often evident. When he intends to prosper and exalt a people, he fills both them and their leaders with grace and all the virtues suitable to the accomplishment of the end desired ; and takes away all wisdom from those who have departed from the faith and practice of the gospel. The history of hundreds and hundreds of denomi- nations furnish examples of this kind. The Lord will surely take care of and prosper his own. The farther the departure from the apostolic church government the greater will be the rebellion against the faith of the gospel. 104 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; Possibly nothing has done more to distort and pervert the order of church government than the efforts of those who contend that the early- churches were modeled and fashioned after the Jewish synagogues. The mistake which they make is analogous to the error of one, who in investi- gating the laws of the material universe should commence by contemplating the existing world as a whole, instead of beginning with the particles which are its ingredients. True church government is not Judaism, or the development of Judaism. Unlike it and the papacy, it does not aim at again confining man or the churches in the environments of outward ordinances, human laws, human creeds and doctrines. As Christianity was a new creation, so were the churches charged with its propagation, and they called to their aid entirely new laws for their government. Nothing has ever been more pernicious to the growth of true Bible church polity than the habit on the part of post- apostolic sects of looking backwards rather than forwards for models of excellence. They looked not only to the old Jewish priesthood, but to the far-fetched analogies between the Christian and Mosaic economy to justify their own ecclesiastical polity. From this source has sprung many of the conceits and heresies which have cursed these so-called churches and made them, instead of the plain and simple bodies they have become, some of them, powerful engines of tyranny and oppression. Whereas, in fact, the old order of things and the views formed on them, had to decay, and the new church and an apparatus of new notions of church polity, congenial to it had to spring up before the seeds of true church government could take root and come forth in all their exuberance and beauty. It is a universal law of nature that a new organization shall always be preceded by the entire dissolution of what has gone before. In the day of the founding of this church was the day when a new revelation was daw^ning upon a new world, of a new religion beginning to breathe, of human liberty struggling to be born. So, too, a new church can arise only when the old one has been wholly dissolved, its atoms freed from each other, and its old arrangements broken up, that every particle may be at liberty to become part of the new living frame, according to some other law than that which governed the foundation of the old social unit. Judaism had served its purpose and had to be dissolved by Christian influences before the formation of this wonderful church became possible. The disciples set about the task of reorganizing a new creation and endeavoring to arrange it in logical order and sequence. Roman Catholicism was the first to spring up and conform its polity to that of Judaism and its system of priestcraft. When we look for a moment kt some of the peculiar characteristics of these people we will not be sur- prised at the wide departure they have made from the simple patterns of Christ's churches. It was, and is now, the prevailing notion among Catholics that the Scriptures do not contain all the declarations and teach- ings to be observed in church government, but that many things belong to what they call, deposits of doctrine, which were not made a matter of record. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 105 Pontifical councils, presided over by the pope, felt themselves authorized to enact, as revealed word or truth, whatever has come down from the begin- ning as the traditional teachings of Christ or his apostles, such teachings as generally relate to doctrine. In cases of doubt and difficulties they feel themselves competent to examine the evidence and decide whether the doc- trine be really revealed, and, after the matter has been solemnly adjudicated, it is no longer allowed to question a truth sealed with their approval. Their judgment is claimed to be infallible. By this is meant the Providential guidance of the Holy Spirit, both directing and enlightening them in their doctrinal decisions, that they may not mistake error for truth or enact as divinely revealed what wants the stamp of divine authority ; and whatever is thus revealed is final and irreversible. The lay people, being not thus supernaturally endowed with the capacity of interpreting the Scriptures, are debarred the privilege of even reading for themselves, for the pope and bishops claim the supreme authority in determining the meaning of the Scriptures. The authority, or source from whence these ecclesiastical laws derive their force is held by this people to be vested in the pope as the vicar of Christ, and, consequently, whatever Christ could do he may do. Hence we can see how impossible it is for such a people to continue steadfast in the apostles' doctrine. Even as early as B.C. 300, both the civil law and the law of religion was entrusted to the interpretation of a body of men called Roman Pontifis. Over every class of people they had the power of judicial decision and pun- ishment. They had the power themselves of making new laws aud regula- tions, and were neither amenable to the Senate nor people, nor subject to any court of law. This will enable us the better to understand the very strange definition of the term jurisprudence given by Ulpian, one of Rome's greatest lawyers, found in Justinian's Institutes, namely. That it is the knowledge of things divine and human, the science of things just and unjust. In the" Greek Catholic church there was established what was called the Holy Legislative Synod, charged, as its name indicates, with legislating for the church, and a separate body sprang into existence called the Holy Gov- erning Synod, which administered religious law. Kings and people trembled at the decrees of these bodies and obeyed their paramount will. The Roman Catholic church even became more perverted and departed more widely from the apostolic patterns. It was the great aim of the priesthood in legislating for the church to bring civil questions within the jurisdiction of the church; and by mixing things divine with things human, the church attained a powerful influence over the proceedings of ordinary courts of law. The scope of this church legislation, so barren of good, and so prolific of evil, embraced many subjects of pure, civil and municipal law, such as relate to marriage and marital rights, divorce and legacies, especially such as were given for pious uses. A great rivalry sprang up between the canon and the the civil law. The clergy were the repositories of both systems and had the decision of how much should be assigned to the one and how much to the other. To be in those days a D.D. or LL.D., or both, was a great distinc- tion. Thus we see that at the very outset, as it were, of the Christian 106 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CITURCH JUMSPRTJDENCE ; religion there was laid a broad and deep foundation by these people, upon which later and more recent denominations have ever since been buildiog. But in contrast with this overgro^yn and perverted system, view Baptist church government in all its simplicity, beauty and scientific completeness. In this system of church polity there has been a period of material and spiritual prosperity, of which I think all Baptists will agree in saying that it has had no parallel in ecclesiastical history. Of late years this growth has been wonderful We ourselves do not seem to understand the elements which have brought it about. But a few years ago, even in the lifetime of our middle-aged brethren, the Baptists of the United States were but a dis- organized body of Christians, seemingly without any system of government worthy of the name. Our churches seemed to have no mutual dependence or inter-communion one with another except that consequent on their me- chanical union. But thanks to a kind Providence the red-letter day of their development has come. Now we must particularly remark the maimer in which all this is done. In the material world, if, for a new purpose, a new organ is wanted, Nature never fashions it in secret or apart, finishing her work by attaching the new product to the structure intended to be im- proved. Men, when they design to improve a house, bring the necessary materials from elsewhere, and make their addition by attaching it. Not so in true church government with its wonderful development. The builders evolve from what is already pre-existing — ^there comes an improvement, not an addition. It is not a mere growth or development alone that occurs ; but when that process has gone on to a certain extent, a new condition of things abruptly takes place, a difierence in structure, a difference in function suddenly arises ; for the new things have issued forth from the old by an insensible shading, so that we cannot tell at what time the one ended or when the other began. In spite of the rapidity with which the change may have taken place, we still discern consecutive points bearing a determinate relation to one another ; they do not stand in the attitude of antagonism. Notwithstanding this, apostolic church government is conserved and preserved in its integrity." In this system there is no place for a Pope, a Bishop or a Ruling Elder. As the visible hands of these functionaries are not seen and traceable in the acts and teachings of the apostles and primitive churches they wiU not be per- mitted to have a place in God's ecclesiastical government on earth. There is no place here for pontifical bulls, canons and decretals for Christ, the Lord left a law-book for the use of the churches which is an all-sufficient guide. The three preceding chapters taken together now furnish us with sufficient material for the abstract study of ecclesiastical government, the essential elements of which have each been eepraately considered, enabling us to draw conclusions of momentous importance with regard to the churches and to in- dividuals. These truths have been more distinctly developed in the course of the history of the churches ; the more essential their importance, the more steadily and distinctly have they gradually unfolded themselves, and become as natural to the membership and to the churches. AVe have now to consider in the abstract the laws under which they are combined. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 107 CHAPTER IV. BAPTIST CHURCH CUSTOMS AND USAGES; OR THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. IN all well-regulated systems of government, wHetlier secular or ecclesias- tical, there is necessarily involved three elements of power which must be exercised. That is to say, the legislative, the executive and the judicial. In secular governments these functions are kept separate and are exercised by different individuals and branches of government. There must be a legislature to enact the laws, an executive to execute them, and a judiciary to expound and interpret them. Happily for Baptists, they find their laws already enacted. The Bible is the law-book of the churches and contains the laws of both faith and practice. As to the other two remaining elements of government — the executive and judicial — both are retained in every separate Baptist church. Each church becomes its own judge, and executes its own judgments. The error involved in the maxim of a division of ecclesiastical powers is universally recognized in other systems of church government, but it can in no instance be shown that there was such a division in the apostolic churches. This division was made and recognized in post-apostolic times. It has wrought the greatest confusion in theory and disaster in practice. It is re- futed alike by the facts which have been adduced to sustain it, by logic and by the universal practice of the apostles in those first churches. Instead of the common endeavor toward the common good, it has resulted in conflict and the antagonism of divided ecclesiastical powers, and, instead of insuring and fostering religious liberty it has led to ecclesiastical despotism and has been one of its mainstays, in, not only all ecclesiastical, but likewise in all secular governments. As the error which would isolate and divide those powers is destructive of unity and continuity, so also the error which would transfer either to an outside tribunal is destructive of religious liberty. To place one of these three powers of church government into hands other than those of the churches, so that its own normal action should be suspended and its own proper functions determined by another, would subvert the de- velopment of the whole. It is by the union of these several functions of a church that the freedom of the churches is established. When the organi- zation is imperfect, when, for instance, the legislative power is vested in one tribunal, which enacts the laws, the executive authority in another which enforces order under it, and the judicial authority vested in another tribunal — all separate and distinct — this is a total destruction, of all true ecclesias- tical government, as we see it in the Bible. 108 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Now, as the Bible does not go into details and does not lay down a rule for everything, the churches must naturally have a considerable share in supplying rules for their conduct in matters of minor detail, thus supple- menting those which they find wanting in the divine record. As no church has any authority to enact positive laws,^er se, there must be a resort to some other mode of generating rules for their government. The authority to do so is derived from the peculiar character and function of a Baptist church, so different from what it is actually supposed to be from a cursory observation. Such a tribunal does in effect partake, to a great extent, of the character of a legislative body. The idea commonly entertained is, that it is simply invested with the power of expounding the laws of the gospel, which have been ordained by Christ, the legislator ; and this office it does undoubtedly perform. But this power of expounding comprehends a great deal, as every lawyer knows, and reaches much further than is generally imagined. It at once communicates to a church the double character of a legislative and judicial tribunal. This is inevitable, and arises from the in- herent imperfection which attends all such institutions. It is not in the power of any collection of men, formed into a legislative assembly, however fertile in resources their understandings may be, to invent a system of ready- made rules which shall embrace all, or anything like all, the cases which actually occur. Certainly the Bible does not propose to do so in church polity. The consequence is that a church, or any other judicial tribunal which has been instituted with the avowed design of applying the laws as they are made, finds itself engaged in an endless series of disquisitions and reasonings, in order to ascertain the precise rule which is applicable to any particular case. The innumerable questions coming before a church for set- tlement are perpetually giving a new form to private controversies, and pre- sent new views and new questions to the examination of the churches. However full and however minute the code of laws may be in its provisions, a vast field is still left open for the exercise of the reasoning powers and the Bound discrimination of those who are to sit in judgment in ecclesiastical matters. It is not a reproach to, or a defect in. Baptist church government, that this should be so ; it is merely a curious and interesting fact in the history of Baptist church jurisprudence, that the exigencies of the churches, the ever-varying forms into which the transactions of the churches are thrown, should ramify to such an endless extent the rules which regulate the conduct of individuals. Perhaps it is no more than happens to every other depart- ment of knowledge; for every conquest which .science makes, every fresh accession it receives, only presents a new vantage ground, whence the mind can see further, and take in a wider scope than it did before. But in juris- prudence, the experiments which are made are infinitely more numerous than in any other science ; and this contributes to modify and extend, to a wonderful extent, the rules which have been made, and the principles which have already been adjudged. For every question which arises in ecclesiastical government, every case which is tried, is a new experi- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 109 ment which lays the foundation for new views and new analyses, and which the finer and more subtle they are, the more they escape from the grasp of general principles, and the greater the discretion which is conferred upon the churches in applying them to church government. It is sometimes supposed that all the principles which are now established, all the rules which are declared, are mere deductions from general principles, which had been previously settled. But how far back, and by whom, were these prin- ciples settled ? Not by any ecclesiastical legislature ; for no such a tribunal is known to Bible church government. The greatest genius which had devoted itself exclusively to the task, would be incompetent to its per- formance. Bible church development is a fact, and its laws and conditions may be scientifically ascertained and defined. It starts out from definite models seen in the apostolic churches, and is developed in its own order and after its kind. The development starts from these Scriptural formulas, and in these formulas are given the law or principle of the development. From a system of free and independent local churches is developed churches of like faith and order, never a system of consolidated churches, with one or a few men to rule over them. Even in nature every kind generates its kind, never another. The germ of the oak is in the acorn, from the acorn is developed the oak, never the pine or the hickory. If we see in the Bible economy a set of local churches independent one of another, and all being equal in power and jurisdiction, each church choosing its own pastor, and administer- ing its own ordinances, we must conclude that these cardinal principles are grounded in the law of the gospel. No other system is spontaneous, or the result alone of the inherent energy or force independent of these formulas. One and the same law or principle pervades all these churches, binding them together in a unity that copies or imitates the apostolic churches. While each church is free and independent, no one is isolated from the rest, and are sovereign parts of one stupendous whole, and each depends on the whole, and the whole on each, and each on each. In this band of brotherly love, all are members of one denomination peculiar to its kind, and members one of another. When we take into consideration the fact that it was some twelve years before any part of the New Testament was written and sixty years before it was compiled and became accessible to the churches, we can see what a powerful factor customary law and usage became in the formation of church jurisprudence. Hence the error in the over-estimation of a written system of ecclesiastical polity and the under-estimation of custom and usage. This ap- pears with prominence in the Catholic, Episcopal, Methodist and Presby- terian systems of government where the origin of ecclesiastical polity is ex- plained by the hypothesis of a written constitution ; for this hypothesis involves the idea of those people, in the commencement of those churches, consciously and deliberately sitting about the construction of a government and system of laws suitable to their preconceived ideas of what a church government and law ought to be. The influence of this written theory on 110 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; ecclesiastical thought lingers even to this day, though in a constantly dimin- ishing degree as the world becomes better informed upon the subject. At present it may be considered as having generally given place to the view so plainly taught in the Scriptures, which is, that Christians are by nature social beings, and that ecclesiastical government in the beginning was the result of social growth as well as of a covenant, and is a necessary condition of ecclesiastical existence. Accepting this position we have to consider the method and forces of this growth. Among the purely human forces we find a covenant and customary law and usage. It is with these elements that we have here mainly to deal, and especially to point out the nature and ex- tent of their operation in the field of church polity. Baptist church customary law and usage may be defined to be an expres- sion, comprising all the faculties of the mind which lead to the conseious performance of actions that are adaptive in character, but pursued without necessary knowledge of the relation between the means employed and the ends attained. It works by experience, and is wholly dependent on indi- vidual experience for the wisdom of its actions. It belongs to the individual member of the church as well as to the collective body, and is improvable in the life of the individual by and in the light of the experience of the past. Written church constitutions in the beginning of the history of a church belong to the present, and hence unimprovable with age and experi- ence, and does not become wise by individual experience. It is this that makes Baptist church government so stable and unchangable. It is viewed in the light of primitive church polity. This habit has grown to be hereditary among Baptists. An act frequently performed in the administration of church government in the consciousness of a specific purpose may continue to be performed even after the consciousness of the purpose of the act has been lost. When the mental and habitual bias caused by the frequent and continued exercise of the mind in a given direction, has become hereditary, as it were, the habit has grown into a customary law or usage of the church. The long continuance of Baptists under the apostolic order of church gov- ernment engenders the habit of ecclesiastical thought and action which ripens into an ecclesiastical custom, and becomes powerful in determining the form of Baptist church polity and the direction of church progress without the necessity of written formulas. In the very earliest stages of the primi- tive churches, among the true adherents to that form of government changes -were less frequent than in the later stages, for the reason that opportunity was thereby offered for the ideas of social organization peculiar to the primi- tive churches and to primitive times to impress .themselves upon the minds of the early Christians, and in the course of centuries of ecclesiastical monot- ony, to ripen into a firmly fixed church customary law, fixed and immov- able. Thus the ecclesiastical instincts, customs and usages of the early Bap- tists have their origin in a pre-historic age ; in an age when generation after generation passes away, leaving no record of changes in ecclesiastical forms, or of the acquisition of new ideas foreign to the principles of the apostolic churches. And it is this principle that must be taken account of if we would OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. Ill fully understand the later progress of Baptist churclies ; it is in its force and persistence that we discern the main cause of that tendency displayed in these churches to preserve in their governments the essential features of the primi- tive form and order of the apostolic churches. One of the most striking results of this influence is to be found in the analogies which may be observed between Baptist churches of to-day and the apostolic churches, taken in con- nection with the fact that their common features and practices are at the same time the characteristic features, the one of the other. The first glimpse which we can get of the forms of government of the apostolic churches shows them to have been wonderfully like one another, and I defy any man to point out any perceivable difference between those early churches and our Baptist churches of this age. There is every reason to believe that this form of government, in which every man had a place, and every man had an equal place and power with every other man in the church, was really one of the possessions which we have in common with the primitive Christians in the days of the apostles. This, then, appears as the type of true apostolic church government. The existence of a strong ecclesiastical instinct to adhere to the original forms would lead us to expect to find this type perpetuated in the later history of the churches, and, in fact, we find that its essential features have been main- tained in all respects in our churches of this age. Whenever variations from the type have occurred they have been either the result of a more complete development, and carrying out the hereditary charter and scheme. One of the prominent characteristic features of this typical or primitive government, as compared with our Baptist churches, is the co-existence of three elements: 1, the independence and sovereignty of each church ; 2, the equality of the ministry and the membership ; 3, the assembly of the mem- bership thereby constituting a church proper, in which the several individ- ual members comprising the church act immediately for themselves, and not through representatives. This view is further confirmed by other essential similarities between our Baptist churches and that which is pointed out in the Scriptures, all of which indicates an inborn force leading it to resist aggressions and foreign influences, and seek the realization of its primitive ideals. In directing attention to the similarity of organization and similarity of ecclesiastical development as the result of a system of jurisprudence peculiar alone to Baptist churches, it is not intended thereby to overlook the efficacy of subordinate forces operating to the same end, as, for instance, the force of imitation. It is hard to put an over-estimate upon the influence of imitation in the formation of governments, whether they be human or divine. But when we have accorded all possible importance to the act of conscious imi- tation, there still remains the fact that imitation of ecclesiastical institutions takes place mainly between churches and people of the same faith and order, and only to a very limited extent between churches of different denominations. Roman Catholics may copy their ideas of priestcraft and the union of church and state from the old Jewish economy, the Episcopali- 112 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; ans may copy from tlie Catholics, the Methodists from the Episcopalians, and the Presbyterians from all the rest of them, so far as the consolidation of their churches for government is concerned, but we do not expect to find Baptist churches copying from any one of them, for they never came out of them, as those churches at difierent times came out of one another. Imita- tion in ecclesiastical matters is a certain inherited propensity, an instinctive adaptation to certain forms of thoughts and lines of action ; whence it would appear that the influence which imitation exerts in determining ecclesias- tical institutions rests on an instinctive faculty, based upon the law of the gospel and customary law and usage. Between churches having no com- mon inheritance, no oneness of faith and practice, we look in vain for any unity, or any lasting similarity of institutions. One church may borrow of another, although the two share in no common doctrine or practice, yet the borrowed institution or ordinance finds no soil adapted to its normal growth, as, for instance, the practice of immersion, and it either passes away or becomes unrecognizably distorted. On the other hand, we have ample record of doctrines and practices being transplanted from one sister church to another that have taken root and developed a strong and natural growth. Written church constitutions may vary, according to the whims of those who write them, but Baptist church polity remains stable. Humanly devised church governments are fickle, turn with every breath of argument ; but that which Christ founded is beyond the reach of argument and bears ever steadily towards its predetermined goal. Church-making aptness, and a proclivity to build up a church after the apostolic models among Baptists becomes fixed in the whole denomination, so that it is just as much an her- editary custom for them to construct a new church upon certain transmitted gospel principles, as it is for bees to build their honeycombs as their remote ancestors did. Hence we find those so-called churches which formulate written codes, furthest away from the primitive models, which have undergone the most changes. Every change has been merely experimental, and in most cases the ones least like the churches we see in the Bible are those the most admired by the great majority of the religious world. But even the most careless Baptist will not admit that we as a denomination have yet reached our final limit; indeed it appears to the student of the science of eccle- siastical government that Baptists have but gained firm footing upon the pathway of progress and development, and there lies before them a future grander than their fancy has ever dreamed of even in its wildest flights. No doubt that so far as the social, missionary, and educational features of our churches are concerned, the idea of constant advance is firmly fixed in the Baptist mind, the masses realize the necessity of constant change, if necessary, of a continual re-adaptation of means and systems to ever vary- ing conditions and desired ends. But it is quite difierent when it comes to the governmental polity of the churches. There never has been, nor can there be the slightest change in those forms which were fixed by the apostles. There may be a contest between custom, the institutions of our forefathers. I OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 113 and progression, but progression must give way; Baptist churcli custom stands still, progress never rests ; custom preserves all the ancient landmarks and doctrines of the churches, while progress, which is but another name for church precedents, endeavors to annihilate them and replace them with things human, which have never been tried. Each church having exclusive and supreme power to govern itself according to its own interpretation of the Scriptures, the result is that each church has not only its own code of Scriptural law taken alone from the Bible, but also its peculiar customs, usages and church decisions, forming a system of church common law varying, in some particulars, from that of every other church. Each church has borrowed, more or less, from the customs and usages of other churches, so that the laws of the sev- eral churches have been constantly expanding in a state of develop- ment, and generally improving, and assimilating more and more to the principles of the universal law of the Gospel. This system has, there- fore, worked well in practice, as a general rule each church working in harmony with its sister churches, all, in the main, administering the same common law. Each separate church has assisted in interpreting and exe- cuting the laws of the Gospel, great numbers of decisions and rulings have been made and opinions given by our churches and leading churchmen, to give interpretations to the laws and aid in executing them, under which usages and systems of practice have grown up, become established customs and assumed the force of laws, and now form what may be properly termed the Common law of the Gospel. It cannot be denied, therefore, that Baptist churches have a growing common law upon all inter-church subjects and questions to take the place of ecclesiastical legislation that figures so exten- sively in all other systems. Clearly, then, from the standpoint of the common law of the Gospel, it is visionary to hope that a written code of ecclesiastical law can be originated, which might forthwith replace the great fabric of customary law and usage directly based on considerations of experience, msdom and utility. A self- made system of ecclesiastical ethics cannot all at once and presently be rightly thought out, even by the select few, — the most learned — and I am sure it is quite beyond the mental reach of the many. In this respect Bap- tists have been exceedingly fortunate. The value of the inherited and theologically-enforced system of church law is that it formulates with some, — yea, a close approach to Gospel truth, the accumulated results of past human experience. It has not arisen through the impulse of the moment — not irrationally, but ethically, through the wonderful influence of ancient usage and custom. It is true that sometimes bodies of Baptists — even whole churches — have eventually gone right and been reclaimed after trying aU possible ways of going wrong. Those who have gone wrong have been habitually checked by disaster and disappointment ; and the true disciples have been Providentially prospered and continued because not thus checked. Without seeming so, the development of the true system of Gospel church polity and the true faith of the Gospel have been continuous from the begin- 8 114 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; ning ; and its nature when a germ — when first planted by the apostles — was the same as is its nature when fully developed. The apostles, with prophetic vision, saw the end to which it would drift ; Christ knew and saw it when he said. The gates of hell should not prevail against it. Hence the code of conduct suitable for the church of Christ, embodying, as it does, discoveries slowly and almost unconsciously made through a long series of generations, is the divine code, and has transcendent authority on its side. It is peculiarly Scriptural and Baptistic A standing ecclesiastical legislative body, such as we see now extant in the world, is a thing never once mentioned in the Holy Scriptures. Any such legislature at all, any constantly acting mechanism for enacting and repealing church laws, is, though it seems to some so natural, quite contrary to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures. Baptists conceive of their law as something divinely given, and therefore unalterable, or as a fundamental habit, inherited from the past to be transmitted to the future. From the standpoint of government our churches are preservative bodies and not creative. In its development we strive that the new government shall be in the old-fashion; it must not be an alteration, but shall contain as little of variety as possible. The imitative system of government tends to this, because Baptists most easily imitate what their minds are best prepared for, what is like the old churches, yet with the inevitable minimum of alteration ; what throws them least out of the old path, and puzzles least their minds. In all changes they like the new practices which are most preservative of old formulas, keeping what is old and tried rather than supplanting it with the new. The ancient customs of the churches, the landmarks, the aborigi- nal transmitted law, the law which was in the breast of the early Christians and written upon the tablets of their hearts could not and must not be altered. The use to which Baptists put church government is not to alter the law of God, but to prevent the law from being altered. Our system covets fixity: That the law of God should be known and read of all men, it should be left without authoritatively written interpretations, that this sacred text and God's church polity arising out of it should be kept in a sure and calculable tract, is the summum bonum of every intelligent Baptist in the world, and the first desire of every loyal lover of the Lord. The love of the novel is so powerful, the social bond so weak among men, that the august spectacle of an unalterable church polity is necessary to preserve pure Chris- tianity. Among Baptists all change is thought to be an evil. The practice and mode of worship in our churches are so simple and so unvarying that any decent sort of rules sufiice, so long as men know what they are. Baptist church customary law is the first check upon unscriptural innovation; that fixed routine of ecclesiastical life at which modern church innovations chafe, and by which modern improvement for the worse is impeded, is the primitive check upon unbridled license. A rigid adherence to the fixed mould of transmitted apostolic church government is essential to an unmarred and unbroken church life. In every kind of church government there should be such a system of OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 115 laws, which it is not lawful for any member to disobey; there is then a diffi- culty, which, if it be not remedied, makes it unlawful for a man to put himself under the absolute dominion of any kind of church government where man or an assembly of men have a right to make the laws for the government of the churches. Baptists have amongst them the word of God alone for the rule of their actions. Now if we subject ourselves to men also, obliging ourselves to such laws as shall be by them commanded, when the commands of God and man shall differ, we are to obey God rather than man ; and, therefore, the covenant of general obedience to man is unlawful. There is no such dilemma amongst Baptists ; for their ecclesiastical law alone emanates from God, the interpretation whereof belongs to the churches. Nor was this controversy taken notice of amongst the early Christians, for iimongst them their ecclesiastical laws were those promulgated by the apostles who had authority to make them. This difficulty therefore remains amongst and troubles those sects who feel that the Bible is not a complete rule of action, to whom it is allowed to fabricate a code of written rules, and to take for the sense of the Scriptures that which they make in the shape of written laws made by their councils and general assemblies, by their own private interpretation. Whereas, Baptists have ever taught that no human law in divine matters is intended to oblige the conscience of a man, unless it ema- nate from God. Nor did the apostles themselves, convened in the capacity of a college of bishops and law-makers, ever pretend dominion over the churches or over men's consciences. Take away the Bible from all other systems, still they would have their traditions, their decrees of councils, con- fessions of faith, together with the laws made by their general conferences and assemblies to guide and control them, which they prize more highly. But deprive the Baptists of the Bible and they are left without a law, without a constitution, without a rule and without a guide. Indeed, they would be blotted out of existence. Hence the importance of the word of God in the Bible plan of church government. The general influence of a system of church polity thus evolved is con- servative in a double sense. In several ways it maintains and strengthens church government, and so conserves the social aggregate — the church ; and it does this in a large measure by conserving beliefs, sentiments and usages, which, being evolved during the earlier stages of the churches, are shown by their survival to have had an approximate fitness to the requirements of the churches, and are likely still to have it in a great measure as they grow older. Conservatism has ever been the crowning virtue of Baptist church government. It is the most valuable influence in any institution, whether human or divine. But to have its due effect upon church government, it must be endowed with a healthy and vigorous life, with a growth, which, if slow, must be firm and preservative against Scriptural innovation as well as decay ; nevertheless, it must adapt its vigor and support to such new and improved conditions as experience and necessity may engraft upon the old stock, as well as cast away the useless, the injurious and unscriptural. Thus continually important changes and modifications of the unwritten laws are 116 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; taking place for the betterment of the churches ; but they are not intro- duced by ^vay of conscious legislation, but by the decisions of the churches either professing to interpret pre-existing rules of conduct, but really modi- fying them in order to adapt them to new circumstances, or overruling them in conformity to a higher law, that of the Scriptures, as apprehended by the conscience of an enlightened and equitable denomination. Hence the Bible rules are comparatively few, while the books upon Bap- tist church jurisprudence, if the whole field were covered, might be im- mensely voluminous. If it were lawful and possible to reduce these rules to writing in the form of legislative enactments, it would be an endless task. I have before me a large volume, styled " The Presbyterian Digest of 1886. A compend of the acts and deliverances of the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America ; compiled by the order of the authority of the General Assembly." This book contains 876 pages of closely primed matter, and is a monument to the folly of a people who think that it is both lawful and possible to legislate for the Lord by reducing their laws to written rules. The human mind is able to invent very little. Its true employment consists in the observation and analysis of phenomena, after, and not before, they have been developed, and then in binding them together into general rules. And this process of development, in the case of church jurisprudence, is constantly going on, after, as well as before, the ecclesiastical legislature have passed the most comprehensive laws; the functions of the church, do what we will, or turn the question in whatever aspect we please, are compelled to bear a very close analogy with those of the law-making power. If all the rules, which are now declared by Baptist churches, are mere corollaries from the Scriptures, or from previous adjudications, the same might have been said one or two hundred years ago, and then what is the meaning of that vast accumulation of experience and learning which then exercised, and still continues to exercise, the churches? Therefore, Baptist church jurisprudence, in its true sense, is where a few elementary Scripture truths being given, the whole subordinate mass of principles may be readily evolved from them. Yet this cannot be the case with a written system of church laws, which deals with abstract propositions simply. True church polity deals with a state of facts, where the question is perpetually recurring — What does human experience prove to be the wisest rule which can be adopted ? or what does it prove to be the wisest construction of a rule already in existence ? We come now to consider more specifically that peculiar kind of law which takes the place of ecclesiastical legislation in other religious com- munities, and how it is generated in the bosom of free and independent Baptist churches, and grows up to become, in itself, an unwritten code, sufficiently well understood to serve all the purposes of a written system of laws. The origin and progress of Baptist church customary law is in itself a remarkable step in the march which Baptists have made in the upbuilding of this powerful denomination. Baptist churches now begin to understand and acknowledge their subjection to church, and inter-church, laws in conformity OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 117 with the Scriptures, with justice and enlightened reason, as in the origin of society individuals acknowledge themselves bound by the laws of etiquette and honor. It is to be hoped, and we really believe, that we are only in the morning twilight of this development, and that it will proceed amongst the Baptist churches of the earth until all can see its beauty and its utility. The great desideratum is a well-understood unwritten code of laws adopted by the Baptist denomination and to be enforced by their combined consent in the last resort. How it is that so large and so powerful a Christian community as that of the Baptists scattered over the world can live together without ecclesiastical bonds to bind them together, and without a written system of laws, other than those of the Bible, is the wonder of wonders. It is certain that in the infancy of the world no sort of a legislature, not even a distinct author of law, is conceived of. So in the infancy of the apostolic churches there was a time when the only statement of right and wrong was the action or sentence of the church after the facts of the case had happened ; not one pre-supposing a written ecclesiastical law that had been violated, but one which is breathed for the first time by the church at the moment of adjudication. When a group of facts come before a Baptist church of to-day for settle- ment the whole course of the discussion assumes that no question is, or can be raised which will call for the application of any principles but old ones, or of any distinctions but such as have long since been recognized by the churches. It is taken for granted that there is somewhere a known Scrip- ture rule, or else a customary law which will decide the case ; and if such a rule is not discovered it is only because the necessary patience and knowl- edge is not forthcoming to detect it. Not so with the primitive churches. Long practice had not developed a system of usages such as we now have, neither had they in the outset a compilation of the New Testament Scriptures, and must need feel their way cautiously. If the Scriptures were a declaration of the fundamental forms which they were bound to follow in setting the churches in action, church common or customary law signified the discovery of the Scripture rules that ought to guide them according to the tenor and spirit of the Scriptures, wnth regard to the matters not specified, but which nevertheless belong to its province. The Scriptures were the necessary basis of the sys- tem. There being no written rules, however, laid down, the only question which could legitimately present itself was to ascertain what disposition should be made of the given case in the light of the Scriptures ; also what Christ or his apostles would have enacted had they undertaken to carry out the law in detail ; in other words, what was right and just in reference to the matter in question ; it not being supposed that Christ or his apostles would have ordained otherwise in any given case. The church having duly con- sidered all the circumstances, viewing it from the standpoint of the Scrip- tures, of reason and custom, its decision became a matter of as much import- ance as if it had been previously determined by a written law. 118 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; If a question arose and was left by tlie Scriptures wholly unprovided for, it was governed wholly by reason and customary law ; if in part, only then partly by customary law, and partly by the Scriptures. In the eighteenth chapter of Matthew, for example, an explicit rule is recorded for the govern- ment of the church in private offences, but they were left to establish a cus- tomary rule for the handling of public offences. Thus we see that Baptist church usage and customary law is the complement of the Scriptures — that is to say, it is literally filling it out in all its fulness. It follows then that customary law must of necessity be more or less extensive when the Scrip- tures go furthest into detail. It supplies all the Scriptures leave unprovided for, and thus develops principles which take the place of ecclesiastical legis- lation, and w^hich serve as rules of action for cases subsequently arising. The moment a correct principle was evolved, they, as it were, unconsciously and unavoidably habituated themselves to its adoption. It was one of the most efficient agencies in the development of true Bap- tist church jurisprudence, that certain general principles being thus estab- lished, the churches should be left to unfold themselves gradually, and be expanded, modified and limited by the spiritual action of the churches them- selves in their practical intercourse and interchange of opinions. And unless these principles had been left to develop themselves in accordance with the laws of their own peculiar nature, without coercion from without, there was certain to be more or less of either restraint or distortion. Church law, conformable to the law of God, is such as is freely formed in the hearts and understanding of those alone whose duty it is to execute it, and if it is allowed to abide in the heart, and understanding, to be called forth for exer- cise, when an actual necessity arises for its use, there can be no restraint det- rimental to true ecclesiastical development. All the God-given faculties of the Christianized human being should be left to work and bear fruit freely, and not be deprived of the liberty wherewith God has made us free, and constrained to expand in ways and shapes determined upon beforehand, and forced to receive the convictions of others. It may be laid down as an ascertained fact that in the primitive times of the churches, denominational necessities and progressive religious opinion were more or less in advance of customary law, thus far matured and devel- oped. Those early disciples and church members might have thought that they had often come indefinitely near to the closing of the gap between the principles thus far developed and the necessities of the churches in their on- ward and upward march, but the gap had a perpetual tendency to reopen. The Scripture rules and customary laws were stable ; the churches not yet having fully developed themselves to the highest point of perfection, were pro- gressive, and new usages sprang up to fill the breach between the two. The greater or less prosperity and true development of the churches depended on the degree of promptness with which this gulf was narrowed. Had they ceased their energies, their efforts and their perpetual reachings out after new and greater developments and enterprises, their customary laws would have over- taken their tardy march, and stagnation would have been the inevitable result. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 119 It must be borne in mind that it is only with spiritually progressive bodies that true church jurisprudence has any affinity. The principles governing the early churches, in the absence of specific Scripture rules, were necessarily elastic. Had they not been they would have been exposed to some especial dangers absolutely fatal to their progress. They were such as were best suited to promote their external and internal well-being at the time of their adoption ; these usages having been tenaciously retained in all their integ- rity until new developments taught them new practices, their progress was certain. Had they maintained, thus early, that no principles were to be sought after or advanced except such as had thus far been developed, their existence would have degenerated into the most disastrous and withering of all institutions — that of caste — something stagnant and stationary. It is impossible to say at what time in the history of the apostolic churches that this peculiar kind of unwritten law reached the footing of pure customs. When any practice in its nature and origin was found to be in strict accord- ance with justice and reason, and in strict harmony with the letter and spirit of the Scriptures, and found to be in all particulars convenient and benefi- cial, it was naturally remembered, repeated and continued from time to time, from age to age, and thus grew into a church custom, either special or general. And certainly the body of the system did not become complete until the various points and principles of church polity came up to be decided, and they became numerous enough to furnish a basis for a system of church law, broad enough to meet the various wants of the churches, after a full and complete development. Certainly not until there gradually came into existence a complete, coherent and systematical body of customary law and usage of an amplitude sufficient to furnish principles which would apply to any conceivable combination of circumstances which might come before the churches for settlement. From what has been said Baptist church jurisprudence may be defined to be those principles and practices which have obtained the force of laws by being uniformly and perpetually acted upon by the churches. Immemorial usage is the evidence of the custom. It is called a law because it is the common conviction, and is termed customary law, inasmuch as its existence is known by its usual recognition, and customary practice in all the churches alike. It is unlike all other systems of church law, in that it comes down from the apostolic churches, and does not require for its express or tacit consent the will of the ecclesiastical legislator. Who can tell into what net of absurd principles we should find ourselves entangled if the sages of the second or third, or even those of the eighteenth, centuries could have decided our probable cases in advance for us, laying down written principles to shape our form of church government? We cer- tainly owe it to our successors not to deprive them of the same freedom we enjoy. If, in the multifarious affairs of the Baptist churches of to-day, a question yet remains undecided, let it remain so until it is asked in a man- ner to prove that it needs deciding. The reason why Baptist church juris- prudence and government are so stable and uniform, is because each principle 120 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; has repeatedly come before the churches as a practical question, and because the churches have refused to commit the law, in advance, to a particular view, merely for the sake of rounding out a theory. Those who have not taken the pains to study the beauty of our polity regret this, and consider the ever-rough and seemingly unfinished outlines of it to be a defect, but to Baptists it seems inseparably connected with its merit, as the only purely divine system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence now extant in the world. The peculiar people who launched this system out upon its career, and kept it pure and undefiled, have, by the help of a genuine and a burning love for the truth, once delivered to the saints, and by the force of their steadfast wills, stamped themselves ineffaceably upon the history of the religious world. Wherefore this divine law which pertains to the doctrine, as well as the practice, of the churches is inherent in the human mind, to distinguish the good from the base, the gold from the dross. In this law the Baptists find the common tie that binds them together, and converts the churches into one denomination, not by bands of steel, but by love and fellowship, of which the head in spiritual matters is Christ alone. We find that Christ, in not laying down specifically the minutia of the rules for the government of liia churches, left his followers in time to com- bine and elucidate them, and gave them the patience to wait and see how these unwritten rules arise in time and places suitable for them, and how others wait to spring forth in their time, which constitutes all the beauty of order. There is nothing more apparent to him, who takes the time and patience to contemplate this system of church government, than that it has certain divine proofs which confirm and demonstrate it. These proofs will appear luminous and distinct, if we reflect with what facihty and on what occasions events arise which from the most remote distances, and contrary to all human foresight, take their assigned places, and have ever since served as landmarks to guide those who follow after. While other systems of church government have been built up by the aid of ecclesiastical legislation, ours, of itself, creates a world of greatness in constructing itself with its own elements. This system being once estab- lished and set on foot by the early disciples, the progress of the churches could not be difierent from that which they have been in reality. It will at the same time describe an ideal perfect history, in which all churches will march with equal step during their progress and development. The paucity of the New Testament in furnishing rules for the internal workings of the churches has been felt by all who have written upon this subject. Rev. D C. Haynes in his excellent work entitled, " The Baptist Denomination," after speaking of the organization of Baptist churches, says, "This is a simple but natural state of things, not adverse to the New Testa- ment, but in harmony with it, as far as can be gathered from its pages, so silent upon the method in which the primitive churches came into being, and entirely without laws for the constitution of future churches." Baptists in the outset found themselves in about the same attitude that the founders of our American government would have found themselves had OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 121 they been presented with our present constitution, as the frame-work of the government with a clause in it, like the laws of the Medes and Persians, that it should not be changed, or added to, and that there should be no legislation under it, either state or federal, further defining how the govern- ment should be administered. Yet no close student of the history of the primitive governments of the world, and especially of jurisprudence itself, as lawyers understand it, could deny that a most excellent system of gov- ernment, both state and federal, could and would have been founded upon our Constitution, without the intervention of legislation, in all essential fea- ures similar to the fabric we now see erected upon it. The English constitution is in the main an unwritten instrument. The fundamental principles of that government started at a time when society was in the germ, as were its laws. At this stage the system of English laws was simply composed of modes of dealing and rules of conduct, suggested by conveniences, established by usage and observed by the people, while yet there was scarcely any governmental agency to enforce them. Likewise in the primitive condition of the churches they had of necessity within them- selves the causes of the growth, and the materials for the nourishment, of those principles not provided for in the Scripture economy without the help of ecclesiastical legislation. Those who have undertaken to establish a written code of ecclesiastical laws are confronted with many dangers. The first and most important is errors in definitions. There is danger of perpetuity being given those errors by the legislative enactment, so as to preclude their correction upon discov- ery, as under our present system of church government. In ecclesiastical legislation there is also the danger of cramping the development of the scientific principles of customary law, and retarding the adoption of advanced rules more consistent with the genius of primitive church government. Be- sides it is impossible to codify the laws of a church in such a manner as that no change will be necessary. The notions of dififerent classes, or factions, are continually changing, and the narrowness of human wisdom cannot fore- see the cases and principles which time discovers. It is impossible to calcu- late in advance what experience can in time reveal. A book of discipline, however complete it may be, is no sooner finished than a thousand unex- pected questions present themselves to those who are to apply them in prac- tice. Ecclesiastical laws once digested and reduced to written form remain as they have been written ; while a system of customary laws, such as we see exemplified in Baptist church government, never stops, and produce at each stage of their development new combinations, new facts and new results. No churches having any authority to write and promulgate a system of laws are necessarily abandoned to the empire of custom and usage, to the dis- cussion of learned men in church law, and to the arbitrament of the churches. The Bible only serves to fix, with enlarged views, the general formulas, and not to descend into the details of the questions which may arise upon each matter. It is for each church imbued with the spirit of the law of the gospel to direct the application of these customary laws as they arise. 122 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Hence among Baptist churches, in addition to whatever of Bible princi- ples there are found to be laid down, there is fouud a store of landmarks, maxims, axioms, decisions and usages to be resorted to in every conceivable matter of practice coming before the churches for adjudication. If Baptist, are to be condemned to reproach because they have no ecclesiastical code, there are others who merit condemnation, because they, without warrant of Scripture, have multiplied written laws upon laws and by this means, and this alone, departed from the Scripture models. Certainly Baptists ought not to be charged with ignorance in commentary, discussion and authorship upon the subject of church government, and ought not to refrain from engaging therein for fear of erecting false standards in a dissertation of this nature. It would be without doubt desirable had it been the will of Christ, the founder of the churches, that all matters relating to the government of his churches had been regulated by minute laws. But in default of a precise text on each matter, ancient usage, a constant and well-established current of uniform decisions, or if you please, an opinion, or received landmark, holds the place of Baptist church law. Baptists have always doubted the propriety of, and religiously refrained from, legalizing the precepts of the Bible, or their customs, by reducing them to a written discipline or. code; believing that the moment they do so they fix their peculiar character. The superiority of this system of church law is in its flexibility, and that it adapts itself to all the circumstances of the matter to which it is applied. Custom may not be so wise as a written law, but it is more popular. All these qualities are lost the moment you crystallize a custom into legislation. They array upon their side alike the convictions and the prejudices of men. They are spontaneous. Church members love to deal with, apply, and administer them because they have grown out of their own necessities, and are of their own invention and in part of their own handiwork. As cir- cumstances change and alter, and die off, the custom falls into disuse, and we thereby get rid of it. But if you make it into a law, circumstances alter, but the law remains, and becomes part of the written law which haunts our minute books, and becomes the shell, as it were, out of which the spirit of true church law has passed. The usual course has been to find customs creeping into our churches through the administration of church affairs, as they are wont to eliminate themselves when they become obsolete. As soon as the churches lose their unbounded capability of throwing off obsolete customs, its carelessness about what it throws away, and their readiness in always supplying instantaneously new wants, its spiritual life is changed into a merely artificial existence. This disposition, however, to change applies to the voluntary usages of the churches, and not to those which are immutable and fundamental in their nature, as we will see in its proper place. The landmarks of the churches never change, besides saith the law. Cursed is he that removeth the landmark. Remove not the landmark which the fathers have set. it might be asked, what would have been the consequences had errors OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 123 crept into those early principles ? It is very easy to imagine cases -wbicli might have been and were doubtless decided not in strict accordance with the true genius of Baptist church law and the Scriptures. The early Chris- tians were fallible like those of this day, and as liable to err. Had errors been planted in the system, those who introduced them might not have intended to have them corrected, and doubtless withstood all effort so to do, but when they were in the course of time corrected and conformed to true principles, they themselves could not perceive the gradual corrective devel- opments. Errors could have been and were eliminated in the same manner, and with the same facility, they were introduced. Neither were they able to see the wide diffusion of those fundamental principles, and the efficacy with which customary law performed its two-fold office — that of eliminating errors and incongruities, and at the same time of establishing the system upon correct principles, and really concealing the manner in which it was done. They soon became accustomed to the modification, extension and improvement of church law, by a machinery which in theory and in fact was incapable in its very nature of altering one jot or line of the Scriptures. Hence we see that in this system the Scriptures are the first of laws, and it governs the churches in matters of polity as it does each member of the church in matters of faith and practice ; and as it is the first of laws, it cannot be modified by a law, and it is, therefore, proper that the churches should obey it in preference to any man-made law, and make it the ground of their decisions. The members of such a church are called Baptists, and their church attributes are three: First, religious liberty, that is, the power of not obeying any law except that which the members have themselves generated and to which they have consented. Second, religious equity, which consists in not acknowdedging any other superior in power except those of the body who have a right of imposing the law. Third, ecclesias- tical independence, which consists in owing obedience only to one's own church, and not be subservient to the will of another. Further illustrating the principle that Baptist churches are authorized to resort to customs and usages in their government, in matters indifierent, which are not commanded in the Scriptures, the same can be made evident by perpetual experience and the natural necessity of things. For ecclesi- astical laws are intended to regulate human actions in those matters in which there are infinite particulars, and are to be conducted by the rules of common sense and by analogy to the laws laid down in the Scriptures. If there be a law, it is well to follow it ; if there be not for everything such a law, their own needs will become their law^-giver, and force them to do it without a law. Whether a candidate for baptism be immersed in a bap- tistry or in a river ; the church celebrate the communion once or twice a month ; whether with fermented or unfermented wine ; whether leaven or unleavened bread shall be used ; whether every church shall have one or more deacons; whether the pastor shall be chosen for a long or short pastorate; what can the Scriptures have to do with anything like these, or anything of like nature and indifierency ? 124 A TBEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; For in the Scriptures all things are indulged to the churches' use and liberty, and they so remain until God, by a supervening law has made restraints, in some instances, to become matters of obedience to him, and of order and usefulness to the churches ; but where the law does not restrain the churches are as free as the elements, and may move as freely as the winds across the ocean. In proportion as the written laws of any church are multiplied the law is loaded with decrees that sometimes contradict one another, either because succeeding church legislatures are of a different way of thinking ; or because the same matters are sometimes well, and at other times ill, defended ; or by reason of the infinite number of abuses that slip into whatever passes through the hands of men. This is a necessary evil in that system of gov- ernment which the ecclesiastical legislator attempts to redress, but in so doing the laws are multiplied and varied beyond number, and thereby con- fusion becomes worse confounded, while in the Baptist church government there can be no comphcation of laws. The supremacy of the law of the Gospel is a peculiar guarrantee of the stability of ecclesiastical government. This guarantee of the supremacy of the Scriptures leads to a principle, which,. so far as I know, it has never been attempted to transplant from Baptist soil, and which has been in our system of ecclesiastical government the natural production of a thorough government of law, as distinguished from a government of church officials. Where the law rules there is sta- bility and certainty. It is so natural to Baptists that few think of it as essentially important to stability and certainty, and it is of such vital importance that none who have studied the nature of other systems can help recognizing it as an indispensable element of Scriptural perfection. The universal form of church government, or the consolidated form, does not permit so great a simplicity of laws. For in the consolidated form there must be various courts of judicature ; these must give their decisions ; these decisions must be preserved and learned, that they may judge in the same manner to-day as yesterday. And in proportion as the decisions of these courts of judicature are multiplied the law is loaded with decrees and ren- ditions that sometimes contradict one another, either because succeeding bodies are of a different way of thinking, or because the same kind of causes are sometimes well, and at other times ill, defended ; or, in other words, by reason of the infinite number of abuses that slip into whatever passes through the hands of men. But in Baptist church government, where every case stands upon its merits, there can be but little complication of laws. There is an infinite difference between law and custom ; indeed there is nothing that is an inflexible law to Baptist churches but what Christ has bound upon them, and recorded in Scripture, and everything else that is analogous thereto is permitted which is not by the law restrained. Liberty is before restraint, and until the fetters are put upon the churches, we are under no law and no necessity but what is Scriptural. But if there can be any natural necessities we cannot choose but obey them, and for these there need be no written law or warrant from either the Scripture or from man. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 125 Our love for the church and her needs are sufficient to cause us to choose to do that which is for her preservation ; experience is a competent warrant and instruction to conduct the churches' affairs of liberty and common life. When experience and practice are sufficient, Christ does not interpose, and unless these be defective, or violently abused, we cannot need written laws of self-preservation, for that is the sanction and bond of all ecclesiastical laws. Indeed it was first the need of the churches that introduced customs, for no law but necessity and common sense taught the first ages of the churches to meet under the general charter which Christ had given them, and organ- ize themselves into independent churches, to make covenants and customs, and to establish independence and equality among them, and since written laws were not the first to introduce these great transactions, it is certain they need them not now, after their thorough and more perfect organization. And if nothing were to be done but what we have Scripture for, either commending or condemning it, in the language of John, the evangelist, Tlie ivorld could not hold the hooks which should be uritten; a Methodist discipline, a dozen volumes of pontifical bulls, canons and decretals, and numberless Presbyterian overtures and deliverances, would not be sufficient to contain the laws. The result would be that if we must not do anything without the express warrant of Scripture, or a man-made law, we would, in many things, be left without a rule ; because we have from the Scriptures sufficient instruction that we should not be so foolish as to require a warrant f )r such customs in which we are, by our common sense, completely in- structed or else left at perfect liberty. Paul, speaking of things wherein he was left at liberty, says ; All things are lawful for me; he speaks of meats and drinks, concerning which he means, because there is no law, and if there had been one under Moses, it was taken away by Christ, and now there was no law forbidding it. And again when Paul said : This speak I, not the Lord; that is, he acted accord- ing to his own liberty, and not according to the word of the Lord. And when the apostle said : And why of yourselves do ye not judge what is right f he meant, that to our own reason and judgment many things are permitted which are not couched in laws, or expressed declarations from God. So a church can become a law unto itself, by covenants and voluntary engage- ments, and opinions. It follows then that in those things which have in* them nothing but an incidental necessity we are permitted to do as we please. As they are in their own nature indifferent, they may be also in their use and exercise. But if there be anything in church government which cannot be conformed to these measures, and yet cannot be dispensed with, it would be a kind of madness to keep still, because we have no command or author- ity to do the act which the Scripture has never made unlawful, and yet is by analogy deducible from the Scriptures. Those who are not of us allege that inasmuch as Baptists have no written code of procedure, they have no laws at all. Whereas, we have as much right to the use of laws as they have, except we have a different way of 126 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; evolving tliem. The church, being the supreme and only authoritative inters preter of its own polity, has power over such customs as it has authority to make ; that which gave them being has authority to change or to abolish them. The power that creates can change ; as when God had established the laws of Moses it was in his power to give the world a new law and a better one in Jesus Christ, and to establish a new way of executing it. For in Moses' law the rites and ceremonies were endless, troublesome and imper- fect, some of them being useless, and by shadows only pointed to the sub- stance to be revealed afterwards. It was the best law which that people and the state of things could bear ; but it was for a time, and a limited purpose, and the nature of the law required that a better should follow, and therefore he that came and gave a better was not to be rejected because he disannulled the whole and established a new. The pattern, extent and purpose of the new law was entirely different. The old was wholly written and painfully minute. It was largely temporal and related to this life ; it blended the secular with the divine, the state with the church. It was a law without which many ages of the world did live, and only bound that one people. Had it been fit to be universal it would have lasted always and been irrevocable. It was a covenant of works, and bound to exact obedience, and because no man could perform it, a change was necessary and expected. The change was foretold by the Prophet Jere- miah : I will make a new covenant with you in those days, and in your minds I will write it. He did not say that in a book of discipline he would write it, but upon the tablets of their hearts would he write the law under the new dispensation. It is verily believed that the Baptists of the earth are the peculiar people to whom has been committed the keeping of this unwritten law of the churches of Christ. Indeed the most distinctive difference between Baptists and others, and the one that is most far-reaching in its effects, is the manner of establishing the laws for the government of the churches. As has been shown Baptists have a law for every conceivable feature appertaining to church government, yet at no time in the history of the church has a written code of laws, aside from the Bible, ever been authoritatively prepared for the use of the churches. And doubtless the prophetic declaration that God would make a new covenant, and write his laws in the hearts of his people, refers, it is verily believed, to this great body of Christians, one of the most peculiar features of whose existence is that their laws and customs have ever been unwritten and are retained only in their minds and hearts. Baptist church jurisprudence teaches that it is vain to attempt to make laws which the Scriptures have already made, because we are already commanded to do that which is there prescribed, and nothing remains but to execute them. Yet in all things where the Scriptures have not provided any law, but left it to the careful discretion of the churches, wo are to search how the churches in these cases may be well directed to make that provision, by a system of common law, which is most convenient and suitable, and at the same time not to infringe upon the word of God ; for it is written : Ye OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 127 shall put nothing into the word which I commanded you, neither shall ye take aught therefrom J that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God which I coMinanded you. Possibly nothing has contributed so much to corrupt other systems of church government as the habitual blending of matters of polity with doc- trine, and then arbitrarily imposing them upon the churches. All volun- tary or customary laws must be unwritten and imposed so as to leave our liberty unharmed ; that is, it must not, nor can it be all at once universal, and be adopted with intent to bind all the churches, except by their volun- tary consent. As no church has authority to make a written law and thus fasten it upon themselves, and as the whole denomination never yet met together since the apostles' days in any one assembly to make a law that shall bind all Baptists, whether they consent thereto or not, and as all churches are free and independent of one another, and as one church is not superior to another, it must follow that no ecclesiastical law can be made with power of passing necessary obligations upon all churches. But when any custom is established it is adopted by a church, by a number, or by all. If by all, then all consent first or last, and then every church may govern itself by that measure. But if it is adopted by a certain number only, then they can but by that measure rule themselves alone ; but if they attempt to obtrude it upon others, then comes in the precept of the Apostle Paul : Stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made you free, and be not again entangled in the yoke of bondage. For when Christ made us free from the law of ritualistic ceremonies, which had been appointed to the Jewish people and priesthood, and to which all other people were bound if they came into that communion, it would be intolerable that the churches, that rejoiced in their freedom from the yoke j)reviously imposed, should again submit themselves to a yoke of ordinances which men should make. For before, they could not, yet now they may exercise that freedom wherewith Christ has made them free. But whatsoever has its foundation in the opinions of men, and not in something certainly derived from the Scripture, if brought into doctrine and religion, and imposed on men's consciences as part of the service of God, this is the teaching for doctrine the commandments of men. And whatsoever is deduced only by probable interpretation be obtruded as a matter of doc- trine, or whatsoever ought to be piously counseled be turned into a written, perpetual and an absolute law — not as matters of choice and liberty, but as of necessity ; in all these cases the commandments of men are taught for doctrine. The immutable principles — the doctrines of God's word — need no laws to make them more binding, nor ought they to be confounded with simple rules of church practice. They are stable and inflexible, and, once embod- ied into a written code, they are but human opinions, and, if they be imposed for doctrine, it is literally the thing which the Apostle Paul reproves. Although it might be conceded that these human enactments be not con- trary to the faith once delivered to the saints, yet they burden religion, and 128 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; load with a servile pressure the churches whom Christ left free, and charged only with two ordinances, Baptism and the Lord's Supper. If this be allowable, we are even in a worse condition than the Jews, for though they were burdened with many things, yet they were charged only with burdens that God imposed, but not with the presumptuous enactments of men. For, if by any means they be taught for doctrine and commandments of God, they become unlawful in the imposition, though they be evident truths, and do not bind the churches, for they are such things in which no man or church can have authority, for they are a direct destruction of both ecclesi- astical and Christian liberty, which no man can take from us. It is not only he who gives the law, but, likewise, he who interprets and authoritatively expounds the law, becomes to ua the law-giver ; and all who voluntarily unite themselves with the church confess themselves thereby subject to these ecclesiastical laws ; but all do not see the law, nor obey it, alike, who confess themselves equally bound, and are equally desirous of obeying. This is true, because men, by new, or false, or imperfect interpre- tations of the Scriptures, became a law unto themselves, or to others ; thus laying down rules which our blessed Lord never intended. Man's ideas of what a Scripture doctrine ought to be is not the law, or its measure. We cannot, independently of the Scriptures, reason out a system, because it seems to us reasonable. It is in vain that men talk about reason as an infallible guide in ecclesiastical matters. For the theory of the sovereignty of reason is the source of aU errors, for each pretends to have reason for himself, and each arrogates to himself the right of making his own ideas of orthodoxy triumphant as the most useful to the church, and each has his plan of action, or of reform. Hence we see that if men were permitted to enter the sacred domain of faith and doctrine, and to lay down rules to bind and fetter our liberty, and to call them God's laws, we see into what net and snare we might be led. Moreover, Christ left no commission to make laws for the government of his churches, but rather to obey, and teach obedience to laws already made. Indeed until the formal institution of the churches, and the entry into a church covenant to obey Christ's laws, and the setting up of an ecclesiastical authority to bioid and to loose, to obey and be obeyed, the apostles' teachings were nothing more than doctrine and wholesome precepts, which every man might take or refuse at his own peril. There was nothing in their teachings that savored of power, but it was all persuasion. They did not pretend to be legislators, as Moses was, nor was it given unto the churches to legislate. They did not pretend that they had authority even to make their own writ- ings obligatory laws. The principles laid down in their writings they left for the churches to turn into ecclesiastical laws when they came formally to adopt them as ready made laws under church covenants to execute and to obey them. The task imposed upon them was to teach, to persuade, to en- treat ; while it became the duty of the hearer to believe, and to accept the doctrine taught. Faith was imposed, and it being something that is exempted from all human jurisdiction and law, the early apostles refrained from hedg- ing it in with such fetters. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 129 God's people had been so long under the whip and spur of the law, as a schoolmaster, that now under the new order of things, we will no longer submit to the demands and commandments of men made for the govern- ments of the churches. We are not debtors to keep the laws of men, although we make them ourselves. They are but snares and fetters from which the new law has set us free. The law and the prophets were until John. John the Baptist — the first and greatest of Baptists — was the midway point between the past and the present ; so that we are no longer under the law, hit under grace. We are dead to the law. The shackles being stricken from us we propose to stand fast in the liberty with which Christ has made usfrect and be not again entangled in the yoke of bondage. Instead of again en- tangling the churches in the web and net of the laws of man, Christ intended that such rules as were necessary to supplement the Scripture laws should be such as should spring up in the bosom of the churches and be voluntarily assented to. There should be nothing of compulsion about them, but should be of the church's own making, and to which they would be willing, and be easy under, and of which they could have no cause to complain. For in the first incipiency of these laws, the churches in making them have no power but to exhort and to persuade, and therefore can enforce nothing but what can be reasonably persuaded, nor enjoin anything to which they are not willing. Being charged by Christ with the execution of her own cus- toms and usages in her own bosom and in her own way, she gives the gen- tlest and easiest sentences, and we are under no obligation to give obedience to the intolerable laws of those who are not of them. Church laws may be faulty either in kind, or in number and abundance of them. Of all the religious organizations now extant in the world, Bap- tist churches have the fewest and simplest number of any, yet it is the ten- dency to multiply laws even in our simple churches. It is undoubtedly the fact that the churches in both faith and practice in the earliest times were the best ; that in its first stages both faith and practice were the soundest, and the Scriptures were the closest followed ; and, therefore, it must of neces- sity follow that customs, laws and ordinances derived since are not so good for the churches of Christ, and the best way is to cut ofi" later innovations and to reduce things foreign to their original state wherein we found them. In many things, however, it is uncertain what the laws were in the days of the apostles, seeing the Scriptures do not mention all of them. So that in confining the churches to the practices of the apostles' times we tie them to a marvelously uncertain rule, unless we require the observance of no prac- tice but those which are known to be apostolical by the apostles' own writ- ings. We should be guided as much by the Acts of the apostles as by their writings, as the churches of this our age are known and distinguished from other systems by their Acts and examples rather than by legislative enact- ments. In Baptist church jurisprudence this rule is of such efficacy that it should be used as a touchstone to try all the laws of the churches of Christ forever. Hence by obligatory Scriptural examples which Baptists feel themselves 9 130 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; bound to follow and imitate, matters of practice as well as of religion be- come the law of the churches. For it is by the will and appointment of Christ, by whose spirit those examples were recorded in the Scriptures, that we find them propounded for imitation to his followers. Of course the cus- tomary laws, which Baptists have evolved in the practice of church govern- ment, help much, but the divine light of Scripture examples helps much more, as being more clear, distinct and particular, and with us only these examples are held forth to us by an infallibly divine hand, and those examples obliga- tory and binding. Therefore great use is to be made of such examples in matters of church government, by the obliging power thereof, that we may see how far these examples are to be a law and a rule for us under the gospel. The importance of these things upon church government is evident from these passages : Ye brethren become followers of the churches of God, which inJudea are in Christ Jesus. And ye became followers of us and of the Lord. Beloved, imitate not that which is evil, but that which is good. 1 beseech you, be ye imitators of me; for this cause have I sent unto you Timothy, who shall bring you into remembrance of my ways which be in Christ. These things which you have learned, and received, and heard and seen in me, do ; and the God of peace shall be with you. Whose faith imitate, considering the end of their conversation. Take, my brethren, the prophets, who have spoken in the name of the Lord, for an example. For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. Noiv all these things happened unto them for examples. Thus it is from the Acts of the churches Baptists learn wisdom. Baptists holding their authority from Christ, hold it not as an inherent right, but as a trust from Him and are accountable alone to Him for it. It is not their own, but it has been bought with a price. This authority can- not be transmitted to other hands, the churches are invested with it, in all its divinity and majesty, founded, as it is, in the common law of the gospel and is derived from Christ alone. Baptist churches become unreal, unscrip- tural and unapostolic, in seeking to become something other than them- selves. When they assume a politic place, and a politic relation with other churches for governmental purposes, they are thereby severed from the sisterhood of apostolic churches and government, and become weak and insignificant in the assumption of unreal powers which the apostolic churches never exercised. The denomination has its own place, and the churches have their own dignity ; but the worth and glory of each is in the fulfill- ment of its own law. The formation of the denomination into associations and conventions, if really it can be said to have any form, is artificial, and the government and order of it, if it can be said to have government and order, are of human contrivance, and are certain expedients for the accom- plishment of separate ends. The local church is the exclusive possession of those who have constituted it ; its government is their agent, deriving their authority to govern from Christ alone ; its laws are statutes of their own making ; and each is limited to the members who are joint parties in it. Hence it is given to the churches to assent and establish its authority as OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 131 law. It is a law regulative of tlie individual as it also regulates tlie action of the churches. This power and authority belong to no individual nor to no collection of individual, but it is in the churches. These principles are themselves applications of a great universal principle — the discovery and perpetuation of the truth. In effect, if it is truth properly so-called, which regulates the relations of a church member with himself, ecclesiastical jurisprudence regulates the relations of men between one another. What is true for the spirit is good for the heart, the lives and the consciences of men. The establishment of these principles and the satisfaction of these hearts constitute the religious liberty which is assured by the common law of the gospel. This guarantees the free exercise of religious thought and action ; converts this common law of the gospel into rights and duties, and preserves them from danger and innovation by proper protection. All these principles are different modes or different expressions of the eternal truth of the gospel, for they are founded on truth itself, on liberty of conscience which is nothing more than the application of the truth, and on that Christian charity which is an extension and a fulfillment of this law. The science which insures the liberty of these religious principles, and the exercise of these rights and duties, is ecclesiastical jurisprudence, which may be termed the science of religion established in accordance with the law of the gospel. Jurisprudence then is the science of the law of the gospel as applied to Baptist church government, and, as such, is the theory of the rights, privileges and duties which are capable of being enforced by ecclesi- astical authority. So treated, it may take its place as one of those inductive sciences in which, by the observation of facts and the use of enlightened reason, a beautiful and true system of truth and doctrine has been established perfectly in harmony with the Scriptures, which is universally received by every Baptist church in the world. Not only so, but Baptist church jurisprudence in its investigation of the origin, principles and development of the common law of the gospel, obvi- ously furnishes rules which teach the churches to search for and acknowledge the truth, and to evolve good and wholesome customs and usages, to shun error, and to practise the existing laws and apply them conscientiously and religiously to every-day practice in church government. So that we may say, that the first principles of the common law of the gospel have a char- acter of truth, which touches the heart and persuades the conscience more than that of the principles of any human science. And that, whereas the principles of other sciences, and the particular truths which depend upon them, are only the object of the mind, and not of the heart and conscience, and that they do not even enter into the minds of all persons. The first principles of these divine laws, and the particular rules essential to these principles, have a character of truth which every Christian is capable of knowing, and which affects the mind, the heart and conscience alike. Thus the whole man is penetrated by them and is capable of knowing them, and more strongly convinced of them than of the truths of all the other human sciences besides, for these divine laws are rules which admit of no exceptions 132 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and dispensations. In order, therefore, to discover the first foundations of these laws of the apostolic churches, it is necessary to know what is the true end of those primitive churches, because their destination to that end will be the first rule of the way and of the steps that lead them to it, and conse- quently their first law, and the foundation of all the others. And that the philosophy of this form of government discovers nothing in it besides what may be of use to us and grows darker and more unintelligible the greater the departure fi-om the form laid down by the apostles. But new church constitution-makers can do nothing towards building up a permanent system of church polity, the models of which are not found in the Scriptures, for all their energies are frittered away in minor attempts at petty improvement upon what Christ and his apostles have made perfect. One sect has gone off* from the known track in one direction, and one in another; so that when all Christendom is called upon to make a show for unity — Christian imity — requiring massed combination, no two churches, or rather sects, would be near enough to act together. It is the dull traditional habit that Baptists have of going back to the Bible for forms and models, that guides their actions, and is the steady frame in which the writer upon eccle- siasticail government must set the picture that he paints. In all this tradi- tional part of our polity is most easily impressed and acted on by that 'which is handed down by the apostles. From the Bible standpoint, yesterday's form of ecclesiastical government is by far the best for to-day ; to-day's is best for to-morrow ; it is most ready, the most influential, the most easy to get obeyed, the most likely to retain the reverence which it alone inherits, and which every other must win. The characteristic merit of Baptist church polity is, that its true nature is rather complicated and hard to describe. Baptists have made, or rather stumbled on, an ecclesiastical constitution, which, from a worldly standpoint, seems to be full of every species of inci- dental defect, though seemingly of the worst workmanship of any church constitution in the world— yet has two capital merits: it contains a simple machinery which, on occasion, and when wanted, can work more simply and easily, and better, than any instrument of church government that has yet been tried ; and it contains Scripturally historical parts, which it has inherited from a long past, which guides by an insensible but an omnipotent influence all the churches under its jiu^isdiction. Its essence is strong with the strength of Scriptural simplicity, its exterior is august with the landmarks of Scriptu- ral grandeur. Its footprints may be traced all along the line of ecclesiastical history in many various countries and ages. Besides its visible outside is narrowly confined to simple independent churches with an analogous history and similar ecclesiastical materials to the apostolic churches. The sum total of the whole matter is that by the use of all these laws thus engendered Baptists are taught to do that of their own voluntary free will and accord which they in other systems might be compelled to do by an arbitrary law imposed by others, and that from without. Such a system is far. more than Baptistic ; it is a common apostolic possession; it entered into the very constitution of the early churches and has been the rule of action ever since. OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 133 CHAPTER V. BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; ITS RELATION TO CHURCH GOVERN- MENT. ""^yO truth is more patent than the adage that it is the tendency of power, J-N whether ecclesiastical or political, to escape from the many to the few. This is literally true in all countries and more especially in all denominations of Christians where the mass of the people are uneducated and ignorant. While overgrown ecclesiastical governments such as we see now erected in the world have been the principal instruments of despotism in all ages, ignorance, dense, dark ignorance, has been the sole condition which invited and led to it. But the adage that the tendency of ecclesiastical power is to escape from the many to the few does not apply to the Baptists of the world, who of all people have been the most zealous of the right to self-govern themselves, and among whom the knowledge of the gospel is universally diffused by means of the popular preaching of the same, and where the membership are free in spirit, as well as in person, and enjoy the means, as well as the lib- erty, of reading and thinking for themselves. The intellects of such a peo- ple are always active ; they are generally intelligent and imbued with the true spirit of religious liberty and a love of political, as well as ecclesiastical freedom. Such a people can seldom be influenced by priestly authority, or managed by factional leaders in either temporal or spiritual matters ; but each one seems to be governed by the independent operations of his own mind, and relies upon his own judgment. There is no danger of such a people and church being too much under the influence of those who term themselves leaders, but in Baptist church government the tendency is to the contrary ; they are apt to have too much confidence in themselves, and to pay too little heed to the experience of others, to the instruction of the aged, and to the lessons of ecclesiastical his- tory. Every Baptist is a full-fledged freeman in Christ Jesus, cognizant of his freedom, too much so to recognize the superiority of others, or to follow them blindly as leaders. The only restraint upon them arises from a love of the church and denominational public opinion. Such a people may therefore be truly said to govern themselves ; inasmuch as each one helps to make the laws, and to form the public opinion, by which they are governed. It is a pure democracy, which means a government in which every member of the church has equal ecclesiastical rights and equal powers, and partici- pates equally in the practical business and administration of the government of the church in all of its branches. This was the case in each of the apes- 134 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHIJRCH JURISPRUDENCE; tolic churclies we see set up in the New Testament by the apostles, where each separate and distinct body of worshipers constituted an independent church and government ; and being few in numbers, and the subject and proper jurisdiction of ecclesiastical government being very limited, such a system and form of government can be carried into elSect ; but it is utterly impracticable when applied to what is called the universal church. The apostles doubtless saw this and refrained from setting up any ecclesiastical hierarchy, or monarchy to lord it over the churches. How can an ignorant multitude scattered over a broad area of country who have no definite opin- ions upon, or experience in matters of church government, have an equal influence in administering the government with the priesthood who believe they have a divine right to rule the church, and who think for them, and control them ? How can the laws of the church and the blessed truths of the gospel be a compound and a consensus of the opinions of men who have no opinion on such subjects, and who have never been allowed either to think or act for themselves ? Or is all this difficulty to be avoided by erect- ing a huge ecclesiastical power, wherein and whereby the clergy in councils, conferences and general assemblies, prepare codes of written laws and creeds, and have the people, without understanding them, adopt them as their own ? These illustrations are sufficient to show that it is impossible, in the nature of things, when the apostolic form of church government is destroyed and local church lines are obliterated, for the mass of the membership of the churches, who are denied the right of self-government, to have a real and substantial and intelligent influence and participation in the administra- tion of ecclesiastical affairs. It is true they may have an apparent and nominal participation, but a nominal one onty. They may have a nominal power equal to that of the priesthood, and the more educated classes, who form their opinions, but it cannot be real. How indispensably necessary, therefore, even in Baptist church government, that all the membership should be admitted to equal participation in church affiiirs, and all should be educated and have their minds and hearts expanded by a thorough under- standing of the Scriptures — the law-book of the churches — so as to be able to think and judge for themselves. It is susceptible of demonstration from a scientific standpoint, that a powerfiil ecclesiastical aristocracy retards the human mind and stifles Christian development, and holds it in bondage, thereby paralyzes the energies of the great mass of the churches, checks and depresses a spirit of inquiry into the great truths of the gospel, and prevents progress and improvement in the Christian religion. The apostolic form of church government was the origin of local ecclesiastical power and the very germ of religious liberty in the world. Without church independence and local church government no such thing as religious liberty and liberty of conscience can exist. Local church sovereignty, local church equality and local church independence are the main bulwarks of rehgious, political and civil liberty. True church government, in order to fulfill the notion of a wise and useful OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 135 institution, such as the apostles erected, should aim to connect the private welfare of individuals with the good of the church. To suppose that the proper idea of church government was that it had regard exclusively to denominational affairs, and took little account of men's private and spiritual interests, would be to form a very inadequate conception of apostoHc church government. The development of a great denomination is necessary to a great end, rather than the end itself. To permit all individuals in a church to participate in church government and to allow them as much liberty and freedom as is consistent with good order and good morals, is the final aim to which they should tend. In the pure form of apostolic church govern- ment the executive and judicial powers are to be wielded by the same persons in mass, thus encumbering every member in the church with the multiplicity of all church affairs, that they may know what is going on and take an interest therein, in order that there might not be wanting that con- centrated attention to the affairs of God's house, which is indispensable to a skillful management of them. Thus is laid the foundation for a great body of experience. It is of the highest importance that churches, as well as individuals, should be placed in a situation which enables them to make actual experiment of the utility of those diversified rules which the wants of the churches render necessary. The administration of the affairs of a Baptist church embraces a vast scope of practical interests which, being leveled to the capacities of all, call into requisition a great amount of popu- lar talent which in other systems lies dormant ; and as they who make the rules are the very persons who will execute them, and will derive advantage, or suffer inconvenience from them, a most instructive school of experience is established, in which all are compelled to learn something. Whenever the great mass of the membership of any religious people are denied the rights to participate in church affairs, they feel themselves inca- pacitated to take any part, even the most indirect, in church affairs. This feeling cannot be shaken off, for knowledge is power, in religious affairs, as well as in every other department of human life ; and whenever there is great ignorance in these things, the desire and the power to will effectually are both wanting. This state of things, for the time being at least, with- draws all ecclesiastical power from the membership, and reposes it in the hands of those who, either by rank or education, are lifted to a higher con- dition. Ecclesiastical power is thus transferred easily, and without noise, to a very small portion of the denomination. But whenever a set of institutions come to represent the opinions and feelings peculiar to a class, such as the clergy, those opinions and feelings will not be understood by those who are out of the class. The modes of thinking and acting among the former will begin to wear an air of mystery and superstition, which time will only increase, until at length the whole machinery, of what are termed great ecclesiastical affairs, will be absolutely unfathomable by the multitude of church members, whose right and duty it is to participate in these pro- ceedings. In the contemplation of an infinite and eternal Providence, which founded 136 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and has miraculously preserved true apostolic church government, the science and philosophy of it finds certain divine proofs, which confirm and demonstrate it. He, who would attempt to explain this peculiar kind of gov- ernment and law, must do so by ways which are as easy as the natural man- ners of men, having not for an end any display of his own learning, if he have any, but have for a counselor that wisdom which, it is hoped, comes down from above, and disposes everything in perfect order. Throughout all the obscurity the commencement of these wonderful churches, what more sublime proofs of their divinity could we desire, than in the nature and order of events, and their end, which have resulted in their preservation and perpetuation, without change and without corruption? We have seen that the Scripture rules of church government, and the customary laws arising out of them, are truths which experience and reason teach men, that they have of themselves the Scripturalness and authority which oblige the churches to observe and obey them, and that no one can pretend ignorance of them : that, on the other hand, the arbitrary written rules laid down by other systems are, as facts, naturally unknown to those who are to execute them, and which are not binding till after they have been promulgated. From whence it follows that those laws which prevail in Baptist churches regulate both the time to come and the time past, -while written rules as applied to church government derive their authority only from the power of the ecclesiastical law-giver, who determines as to what he prescribes, and since they have not their eflfect till after they have been made known to the churches by publication, they regulate only what is to come, and have nothing to do with the past. When it becomes necessary to repeal an ecclesiastical law, which has been reduced to writing and enacted into a law, it must be done by the same tribunal that made it, by enacting another law for that purpose ; whereas in Baptist church govern- ment, it is done by a long disuse, which either changes or abolishes it. ¥/ith us, by usage a law is enacted, and by long disuse it is repealed. In like manner Scripture rules and customary laws are interpreted by usage. If the difficulties which may happen in the interpretation of these rules and customs are explained by an ancient usage, which has fixed the sense of them, and which is confirmed by a constant series of uniform action of the churches, — Baptists have ever adhered to the sense declared by the constant practice, which is the best, and, with us, the only authoritative interpreter of these laws as applied to church government. But if we look to the proper basis, the true essence of Baptist church jurisprudence in relation of cause and effect, we must conclude that such a law as that we here treat of has its existence, its reality, in the Scriptures themselves. In the uniformity of a continued and enduring mode of development by interpretation, we recognize its common root quite distinct from mere chance. Usage and custom, then, are the signs and outward manifestations of church juris- prudence, not its foundation. It is only in a popular form of church government, like the apostolic, that the whole church is sovereign, and at first glance one would suppose that OE, THE COMMON LATV OF THE GOSPEL. 137 this form of polity would be subject to fluctuatioos and changes. But the exercise of the right to change is very rare, because there is no clash of the different forces or interests of the different bodies amongst which the differ- ent shares of power are distributed. In post-apostolic governments, -which are mixed in their nature, the different bodies or classes of ministers share the authority, each is in a perpetual anxiety to execute its own portion of power, and the body which represents the greatest part of the sovereignty, and possesses the power of disposing of the fundamental elements of the churches, has always an interest in altering it, either by increasing its own share of power, or diminishing it, to gratify themselves Under such a sys- tem church government can never be fixed and certain. This distribution of powers ecclesiastical without some central outside influence to hold it in check leads to different views, not only according to men's ambition and wickedness, but because they are finite beings. Though these clashing inter- ests were not actuated by selfishness, still sovereign power lodged in the local church as an organic unit would be necessary in order to preserve primitive church polity in its original integrity, and to protect the entire relations of the membership. Each member, first of all, is the key through which he has to understand that which is around him. If, then, every member is equal, and shall have his due, how can it be otherwise done than by an equal distribution of powers among the membership, to sustain church law and authority in its original integrity ? AVhile insisting that Baptist churches are the most free and independent bodies in any church polity, and are incapable of legal limitation, yet we must admit that their sovereignty is restrained from issuing some commands, and are bound to ksue others by rules which, though they are not laws, are of extreme cogency. Every church is perfectly sovereign, and we might say for the purpose of argument, it might do anything it pleaded, yet it would be outraging all experience to assert that they would do this. That reverence they have for the law of the gospel, together with that great body of common law rules which is embodied in ecclesiastical maxims, keeps them from doing some things ; while that body of rules which in ordinary usage are called moral precepts keeps them from doing others. Its sanction is denominational opinion, or the disapproval of the great bulk of the churches following on its violation. The rule that keeps the churches from consolidating themselves into a body politic for rule and government, the rule that prevents them from making distinctions amongst the ministry, and allowing them to govern the churches, are connected together through the penalty attendant on a breach of them, which is the strong disapprobation of all the churches of like faith and order ; and it is having a sanction of some kind which principally connects both rules with laws proper. A church cannot cede its sovereignty even on condition that it shall be used for its own good. God has abundantly blessed the Baptists of the United States in that he has kept them free from parties and factional quarrels. Let every Baptist imagine what would be the inevitable consequences of local errors, of which 138 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; we are not entirely free, if we did not live in independent churches under a system of covenanted self-government ; each shock would be felt from one end of the denomination to the other with unbroken force. Had we nothing but an universal church government, ruled over by priests and bishops, spreading like one universal see over the whole, an error perpetrated would disturb the whole as it now agitates a local church in our polity. Each separate church is a royal republic, and is pecuHarly efficient in breaking those shocks which in centralized systems reach the farthest corners of the denomination and are frequently of a ruinous tendency, and has the same effect upon the local church which a careful and responsible occupation with one's own affairs and duties has upon .the individual. It is true some can discover slight shades of differences upon points of doctrine and practice, but it is believed and hoped that these differences will become less noticeable as the churches become better acquainted with one another. By parly and factional differences I understand those which are founded in the history of the churches through a long series of years, parties and factions which ad- here to certain ecclesiastical ideas, handed down from generation to genera- tion, developed and modified by repeated practical application, and expanded into a certain system and doctrine, having taken root in the practical life of the churches. But so far as the government of the churches is concerned, with which this treatise has only to do, it is happily the same in every section of our country. There are those who adhere to what exists in faith and practice, who strive to maintain, to preserve, and who represent the neces- sary stability of the churches, without which church government cannot remain stable ; and there are those who look forward, desire to change, inno- vate and develop. Either tendency is dangerous if adhered to too tena- ciously. The former frequently carry their endeavors too far, and wish to preserve indiscriminately, so that conservatism alone becomes the watch- word. But that which is bad, inconvenient or mischievous, ought not to be retained, for it is frequently as heretical to preserve as to destroy. The others often go too far, disregarding the gradualness of one set of ecclesiasti- cal principles growing out of those that preceded them, and desire change without experience or modification ; change for its own sake. The failure of those bodies of Baptists which have sprung from the regular Baptist denomination, such as the Free-will Baptists, the Primitive Baptists and several other orders of a more fungus growth, permanently to establish a new form of church government, shows how powerless they are to change the fundamental elements of the Bible form of government in which they were educated. When at first they broke away from that polity it had a tendency to disturb and retard the progress of Christ's churches, but they had not the heart and, indeed, they knew not how to set up a new form of government. It is the same with individual men who have from time to time appeared in our churches, and who have attempted to change either the polity or faith of the churches. Those who regard the history of the churches as, to some extent, the history of the great men of the churches, and that these great men have shaped the polity of the churches, overlook OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 139 the truth that such men are the products of the churches. Without the churches they neither could have been generated nor could have had the culture and training which formed them. If the churches are to some extent guided and ruled by them, they were, both before and after their ordination, guided and ruled by the churches. They were the results of all those influ- ences which fostered the ancestral character they inherited from those who went in and out before them, and gave their own early bias, belief, knowl- edge and aspiration to make them what they are. So that such changes, if any, as are traceable to outside kindred bodies or to individuals, are still remotely traceable to the legitimate causes which produced those individuals, and hence, from the highest point of view, such legitimate changes also, are parts of the general developmental process. So that which is true of the ecclesiastical structure of the local churches, is true of the whole denomina- tional structure. The fact that a system of church government is not made, but is a growth out of the laws of God's eternal word, is a fundamental ele- ment of church polity that under all its aspects and through all its ramifica- tions Baptist church government is a growth and not a manufacture. If Baptists can claim any one virtue for their form of church govern- ment above another it is stability. It is the tradition of the churches ; each generation of churches describes what it sees, but it uses words transmitted from the past. Hence some will charge the author of these commentaries as being antiquated and old fogyish. But when a great subject like Baptist church government has continued in a connected outward sameness, but hidden inner change for many ages, every intelligent Baptist can but inherit the same spirit of antiquity, which has ever characterized our denomination. It is like an old man who still wears with attached fondness old clothes in the fashion of his youth ; what you see of him is the same ; what you do not see is wholly altered. This system, whether it be the best polity or not, is conceived to be the one which the early Christians inherited from Christ and his apostles. It is believed that out of these materials nothing better, and certainly nothing more Scriptural, can be made than the Baptist form of government ; and it is also believed that the essential parts of the Bible system cannot be made except from these materials. Now these elements are alone the accidents of the apostolic times where these co-laborers with the Saviour founded the churches ; they belong only to the first century of the churches before they became corrupted and distorted in governmental form. This form of polity cannot become monarchical, so to speak, even if the whole Christian world had so decreed, even if the whole of the churches had ratified it. This independent form of government is inherited just as we have inherited the Bible as the law of God. You might as well adopt a father as to adopt a consolidated form of church government. The special sentiment belonging to the one is as incapable of voluntary creation, by human wisdom, as the peculiar aflfection belonging to the other. It is a polity indigenous to Bible soil alone. This mode of constituting a Baptist church, which is the type of countless others, is but the direct handing on of churches of like faith and order from 140 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; one generation to another, and from one country to another. It is a process which can properly be called imitation ; it is not so much the framing of something after the model of something else ; it is rather the actual transla- tion of the thing itself to a kindred soil. Men who feel themselves at liberty to choose their own form of church government, may, after thought and debate, choose one model to follow, when they might have chosen another. This work, however closely it may attempt to reproduce the likeness of the original, is not the original ; it is not even the transplanted original ; it is something which has a distinct being and which starts from a beginning of its own. When we find an exact likeness between Baptist churches of any two nations, which likeness we cannot reasonably attribute to conscious transmission, there are two ways possible in which the likeness may be explained. It may be that there is no direct connection whatever, conscious or unconscious, between the two. The likeness may be real and beyond doubt, but there may be a reason to believe either that one people has bor- rowed from the other, or that both have inherited from a common stock — the Bible. The cause of the likeness may simply be accounted for upon the scientific grounds that like causes have, at however great a distance of time and place, led to like results. The ecclesiastical institutions of a people are the natural growth of the circumstances under which they find themselves ; if churches that take their polity from the Bible alone, however far removed they may be from one another, both in time and place, find themselves under like circumstances, the facts are inevitable that the effect of this likeness of circumstances will show itself in the likeness of the churches themselves. The same evils will suggest the same remedies ; the same needs will sug- gest the same means of supplying them. Like begets like is a law of development. Then the important question arises, Do these churches perpetually suc- ceed one another and have they thus come down to us from the apostles* times ? This burning question among Baptists can only be answered by a careful comparison of our churches of to-day with the primitive churches in the days of the apostles. As there are some topics of church jurispru- dence quite beyond the reach of ethical rules to define, so there are some matters of church history beyond our knowledge and understanding to find out except by comparison. This really is a question of church history, with which this treatise has but little to do, and belongs to the historian rather than to church jurisprudence with which I am dealing exclusively. But that an independent church may voluntarily relinquish its sovereignty by dissolving itself or destroy itself by the practice of some rank heresy, is frankly admitted. It can cede itself only to something already actually existing of like faith and order, for to cede to nothing and not to cede is one and the same thing. It can part with its own sovereignty by dissolving itself and uniting with another gospel church, but not by merging itself into nothing; and when it parts with its existence it ceases to be a church and becomes a part of the church with which it unites provided it be of the same faith and order. A church can thus abdicate its power, because by OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 141 abdicating it lays down its trust, but cannot transfer that trust to a body not a church of Christ; for an independent church not merged in another of like faith and order, cannot cease to be a sovereign church, even if it would. And this they cannot do even by agreement, because the moment the parties to the agreement cease to be churches, the agreement, on which alone depends the new institution, is vacated, in like manner as a contract is vacated by the death of the contracting parties. A church cannot delegate away its own ecclesiastical existence, for a church it is, and cannot but be, so long as it remains a church not subjected to another body or tribunal of men. We have, therefore, to make a careful comparison of these churches with the churches of the apostles' times, and if we find them in every respect essentially the same in faith and practice, we conclude logically that they have succeeded one another and have come down to us from the primitive times. But after all we should put more stress upon the likeness and similarity between the two forms of polity than upon the perpetual succes- sion of the churches, for it seems to me that it is impossible for the church historian to prove the succession beyond the possibility of a doubt. And even to a.dmit (which I do not do except for the sake of argument) that a hiatus existed at some time during their history it would prove nothing as to the genuineness and Scriptural validity of Baptist churches of to-day. For Christ has left us the grand charter by which to institute these churches, and we are at liberty to use it at any time when the material is at hand to build a church of Chrtst. As I have said, it devolves upon the Baptist church historian to prove the perpetual succession of the churches. But one of the objects of this treatise is to assist the historian in that task. And one of the means of so doing is to show that the first work of the first disciples in building the apostolic churches was to bind men together in the strong bond of a Scriptural legality, and in an indissoluble, inflexible custom. Every independent church was an hereditary co-operative assembly, bound together by not only the laws of the gospel, but by the force of usage and custom. And we know that these independent local assemblies continued for ages. The first history of the apostolic churches does not delineate a great ecclesiastical monarchy composed of all the then churches in existence, but rather of local independent churches. If these early churches were to be gradually improved, each generation must be born better, and more capable of Chris- tian civilization. Indeed the greatest difficulty with Baptists is not in pre- serving the original polity of the churches, but the hard thing with them is to know how to end it. As we find the polity of the churches reflected in the Scriptures, so has it ever remained. It has been closely embalmed in an exact imitation of its primitive existence. Baptists rejoice that so far as this ancient polity is concerned they have been pegged down by ancient usage and custom, and forced to move in the straight and narrow furrow of the old fixed way of the law of the gospel. The characteristic necessity of these early churches was strict usage and binding coercive custom arising out of this gospel law. The obvious result and inevitable consequence of 142 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; this kind of polity is a rigid stability; no one church can be different from the other, nor can it cultivate any difference in polity, without destroying itself. Hence we as Baptists would not regard the fundamental forms upon which ecclesiastical government rested, as destroyed with the extinction of every church now extant in the world, as long as Christ's royal charter exists by which others are authorized to be instituted. The gates of hell can no more prevail against the churches of Christ than they can prevail against his authority to institute them under the forms given to the apostles in the law of the gospel. Baptists hold fast to these divine foundations, and though the institutional bond that now binds the churches together be broken, Baptists could look to Christ's authority for the institution of others of like faith and order under the same charter that authorizes the establish- ment of churches now, and that without the permission or assistance of pope, or bishop, or conference, or synod. Great has been the progress and development of this form of government within the last quarter of a century. We attempt to-day, and with good reason and much anxiety, to reconnect what we now are with what we form- erly were ; we feel the necessity of bringing our habits as a denomination into association with the recollections of the past, and to gather together the links in the chain of time, which never allows itself to be entirely broken, however violent may be the assaults made upon it. Plow much soever we may deprecate any departure from primitive Baptist church government, we should not refuse the aid which can be derived from modern ideas and institutions, in order to guide our apprehension and judgment while study- ing the primitive ways of the churches, since we neither can nor would wish to place any stumbling block in the way of any legitimate progress of the churches, or be separated from our brethren who are leading these great developments, any more than we would attempt or desire to isolate ourselves from our Baptist forefathers. Let Baptists be exceedingly cautious, how- ever. The superior vantage-ground on which we stand, and on which Bap- tists have been born, so to speak, is a gift from our ancestors whose precious blood has been freely shed to uphold them. The Christian world reaps the fruits of their labors and sacrifices — is it too much for us to follow closely the memory of those laborers, and to render a just recompense for those sac- rifices? When we investigate the cause of this rapid growth only one explanation can be found. At the moment of all great developments in church affairs, during epochs full of progress and hope, when important changes are on all sides demanded and necessary, the authority of the past is the one obstacle which opposes itself to all tendency to innovation. The present time is not only fraught with hope, but with many dangers, and the wisdom of the centuries is appealed to by one party, in order to resist the future to which the aspirations of the other party are directed. Baptists should never allow a kind of blind hatred of the past history of the churches to take possession of their minds. Let us then reassure ourselves with reference to the study of the past. It is the sheet anchor of true church polity, and contains nothing which ought to alarm the friends of all OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 143 that is good and true in church law and history. It is into our hands, and in subservience to interests which are dear to us, that it will ever deposit the authority of antiquity and the lessons of experience. Give us the primitive beginning of a system of church government dating from the days of the apostles and there is no trouble about a succession of churches of like faith and order under that system. Cut off the beginning and end of the churches and the rest of the demonstration proves nothing. Give us the beginning and the end of a pure and Scriptural system of churches and there is no trouble in arriving at their true nature and tend- ency during those times when recorded ecclesiastical history sheds no light upon them whatever. In any system of church polity where the primitive beginning is ignored, where there is no likeness or imitation, no claims as to its divinity can be set up and successfully maintained upon any scientific or Scripturar principles. An intelligent and a divinely inspired system of gov- ernment must start at the beginning and be a continuous whole — an organic whole — an aggregate of independent and inter-dependent churches perpetu- ated by a divine organism. It is a divinely inspired whole, having its com- ponent elements inextricably bound up with the apostolic models which never have been departed from. We see the same kind of free and inde- pendent churches in full operation in the days of the apostles, and we see the same kind in organic operation in this day and generation. They did exist in the earliest times, must have existed from the earliest times, must, in the providence of God, have been in continuous existence, generation after generation down to the present day. So that Baptist churches are so grounded in the law of the gospel, and in the lasting benefit to the churches, that it must be taken as the expression of that immutable law which cannot be abolished. I have no hesitancy in affirming, that it was impossible, under the apos- tolic system of church polity, for a consolidated system to spring up by natural growth under both the example and practice of the apostles. These imperial systems, we now see set up in the Christian world, are incompat- ible with the teachings of the apostles. They belong to a later period of apostasy from the faith and practice of the gospel. This system appeared in some instances as early as the latter part of the second, and the first part of the third centuries, and was founded upon usurpation, was considered illegitimate by those loyal to the gospel, and was, in fact, alien to the ideas of apostolic church government. The union of all those churches, for gov- ernmental purposes, was a religious despotism founded upon usurpation, and was the germ out of which all later consolidated systems arose ; while the independent churches founded by the apostles were ecclesiastical democra- cies, so to speak, and nothing more. And Baptists affirm, and verily believe, that this polity, as formed by the apostles, which we see in full and successful operation in the Bible times of the churches, with their powers, functions and mode of administration, has come down to them through all the generations since that time to the present, with scarcely a change in its internal organization. Their primary institutions root themselves in this 144 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; original apostolic form of government, in whicli each remained independent in all matters pertaining to local self-government, on the basis of equality. If in anything they have departed from the faith or practice of the gospel, they desire not to depart further therefrom, but to return to the original formulas. It has often been urged against the history of the Baptist church that it is not one of the historic churches, and that its laws and government have no philosophy in it. That it does not embrace in it anything like a systematic and succinct code of laws, as applied to government, that elevates itself to the dignity of a system worthy the name. Those who make these charges have not taken the pains to look into the system, and hence do not know how much of beauty and utility there is in the Baptist form of church gov- ernment, embracing as it does the longest line of consecutive ecclesiastical church government and history of any system now extant in the world. It began with the beginning of Christ's churches on earth, and will end with the ending. Whatever of philosophy and science there is in it has been discovered by, and utilized to the edification of, those who, from long study and practice, are in the best condition to understand and appreciate it. This system, when properly understood, is one of the greatest triumphs ever achieved by any religious people in the world, and the rich treasures, of its ancient wisdom ought not to be left unused any longer, for in this enlight- ened age there are numerous and important reasons for its cultivation among Baptists. It will give us an insight into the beauty, wisdom and divinity of our system that perhaps we never saw before, and cause us to reverence the more the Divine Author of it. It will show us that this Author of the churches is related to them as creator and preserver ; the laws by which he founded the churches are those by which he preserves them ; and that Baptists, like good architects, accommodate their building to the nature of the materials which they meet on the ground, and con- form and confine the superstructure to the foundation already laid. Baptist church jurisprudence is as the history of one man who has lived through all the ages since the foundation of the churches and continually learned something, and now seeks to record it so that it may serve as a guide and a ready reference to those of this present time. How this law becomes binding upon the churches is plain to be understood. As the Scriptures give but very few rules relating to the internal workings of the churches, and as the common welfare requires the development of a system of cus- tomary laws, they are bound to submit to the law thus evolved ; and the law thus introduced, so far as it does not conflict with the Scriptures, ought to be considered, and really is, the common law of all the churches. This law rests its obligation upon the general consent and practice of the churches as evidenced in the usage of it. It is a law which necessity imposes on the denomination as a necessary consequence of their social union, and to which no one church is at liberty to refuse its consent at the risk of incurring the denominational displeasure and disfellowship. It is difficult to see how this form of government could be easily changed in the absence of a power to OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 145 legislate which Baptists never have claimed, but have always denied. It is very evident that nothing but a long series of events and a continuous line of thought, all having the same tendency, could substitute for this combina- tion of common laws, opinions and customs, a mass of opposite usages and customs sufficient to change this form of government and establish another. Before this could be done the whole Baptist denomination must be blotted out of existence or revolutionized. Hence not only is there beauty and utility here displayed, but likewise stability is one of the characteristic fea- tures of the system.. Hence Baptist church government is not a thing generated and completed in a day, a year or in a single generation. It no more exists complete in a single period of time, than does the common law of the gospel, upon which it is founded. It is not a momentary existence as if formulated in a written constitution. It is not composed of its present living membership alone, but it embraces those who are, and have been, and shall be, till the second coming of the Lord. There is in it the continuity of the generations, it reaches backward to John, the first great Baptist, and to the fathers, and onward to the children who have been satisfied with no other kind of baptism than that administered by this, the greatest of all men, to our blessed Saviour himself. This peculiar government appears in the apprehension of these churches as an inheritance, received from Christ and his apostles, to be transmitted unimpaired to the children yet unborn. The firm conviction that the Lord founded this ecclesiastical government, makes the churches an heritage worth living and worth dying for and worth preserving in its integrity. It has been the same in sunshine and in shadow, in the dark ages as well as in those of enlightenment. In it the law and the testimony also are conserved and preserved. As the best productions and choicest attainments pass slowly from their germ to their perfection, so Baptist church government, as well as its jurisprudence, has been slowly but surely developed, until now it has come to be recognized as the most stable as well as the most simple of all systems. This government has been shaped by no external force, but by an inner law ; its changes, if any, are those of a development ; and the glory of Baptists has been not in uprooting, but in maintaining and advancing the work of their ancestors. In systems in which the sovereignty is vested in the membership of each local church, a very extraordiuary effect is produced. The government which is the creature of the church, and hence inferior to it, operates on those who hold the sovereignty, and in consequence on the church itself. But it operates on the membership individually, and not collectively, and as free citizens of Christ's kingdom, and not as subjects. The government is the agent which executes the covenant between the members. In church governments in which the ruling power is in an individual as in a bishop or a pope he stands above the law, and cannot be affected by it. His ^vill forms the law by which aU others are governed. The government is his instrument, and is made for others, ^nd not for him. Like the king he can do no wrong. 10 146 A TREATISE UP02T BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; A church covenant, which is the ground of the government of every local church, cannot become that of the government of the denomination. The government of the local church rests in the right of that particular member- ship to govern its own affairs, and this is necessarily limited to those of a particular church, and cannot justify the extension of any authority over those outside its jurisdiction. AVhen it is sought to be extended over other churches, it conflicts with the unity and continuity of the local church and its authority in its natural sovereignty, and wherever, in the organization of ecclesiastical government, it has been transformed beyond its natural limits, it has sought its justification in a civil and profane conception, and in some vague fiction, in imitation of the kingdoms of this earth. In Baptist church jurisprudence, so far as government is concerned, the denomination is a fiction, and the free and independent churches are over and above it and the former, in its relation to the churches, is subordinate. The churches, therefore, instead of residing in and growing out of the denomination, hold the latter in subjection. The denomination has its origin in the existence of churches all being of a oneness of will, faith and practice. The common law of the gospel, which permeates the whole, does not constitute the whole a body ecclesiastic for government, and does not attain to the dignity of a church of Christ. It is the churches of Christ that have generated this jurisprudence, and not the denomination. The denomination has its fruition in the lives of the churches, and receives and helps to preserve such laws as spring up in their bosoms. Let it be said to the honor and credit of the Baptist denomination that they have never sought a false and fictitious jurisdiction over the churches. That other systems should struggle and contend for jurisdiction over the churches is a human frailty; a certain vain conceit seems to rule them, that it is the evidence of a good system to enlarge its jurisdiction over the churches, and to give a spur to such things rat'her than a bridle. But nevertheless true church government is not of a negative character. It does not consist in merely denying power to the churches. If it did, apostolic church government never could have emerged from its swaddling clothes and been set in operation. Government must have power to perform its functions, and if no provision is made for an orderly and organic grant of power, it will, in cases of necessity, arrogate it. This applies to all species of government, and especially to that of the early apostolic churches. Merely denying power to government, or, still worse, not creating a proper organism for granting it, must lead to ecclesiastical death or to church anarchy ; but it is equally true that the strictest possible limitation and hedging in by the law of the ' gospel of all ecclesiastical powers, are as requisite for the cause of Christ as the avoidance of the error just pointed out. It is easy to see that the effect of what has been called the universal church— or the extension of powers ecclesiastical over many churches, limited only by geographical boundaries, — is the reversal of this process. It is the negation of the church, the result being the paralysis of all the inde- pendent churches, as we see them in full and beautiful operation under the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 147 immediate supervision of the apostles, coupled with the necessity of forcible contribution towards the support of the unscriptural dominion. This system is post-apostolic and anti-scriptural, and has been perverted in all directions by priestly influence. A great deal of it is Jewish in its origin, and for that reason it is undoubtedly of prodigious antiquity, and, what is more impor- tant, we can see every essential feature of it in full operation in the Jewish regime. Ecclesiastical legislation has corrected some of its excesses, but its principles are untouched, and are still left to produce some of their results. This system is the Jewish idea of priestcraft a little altered — but still is the anti-scriptural plan in its matured, developed and refined condition, and the ancient Jewish institutions are seen through it plainly. In this way the local church is wiped out, all freedom and independence, all self-identifica- tion with the organic unit, all pride in self-government and self-control, gradually die out. Each local church is domineered over by the ministry of this imperial power, and misrule of every sort eats deeply into the vitals of Christ's plan of church polity. History and existing facts combine to testify to the truthfulness of the picture. The preservation of the individual Christian as one of an integral group, out of an assemblage of which the local church is formed, is one of the most momentous of the objects on behalf of which true church government exists It is obvious that the determination of the moment at which a new church takes its rise is of the utmost con- cern to the rest of the churches ; and, furthermore, the importance of keep- ing distinct from one another the diflTerent churches, although of the same faith and order, is of scarcely inferior concern. It has thus appeared that a church of Christ is an aggregate number of professed Christians in a par- ticular locality, preserving ideal integrity inviolate in spite of the death of its successive members from time to time, and having its modes of action determined by ecclesiastical government, upon which the whole structure depends. In the early stages of the existence of the apostolic churches, the process by which the spontaneous usages of the early Christians became transmuted into ecclesiastical laws, is constantly being repeated throughout the whole history of Baptist churches everywhere, and naturally so among Baptists, for they have no legislative tribunal to make laws, and the great mass of their laws continue unwritten. The process, in the case of each custom so transmuted into a rule of ethics, commences with a cautious admission, within clearly-defined limits, of the custom as a rule binding on the churches who may be supposed to have contemplated its existence in their transaction with each other. When a rule of ethics is found to exist, not among a very small number of Baptist churches, but among all of the same faith and practice, and to be constantly observed in their common transactions, and if the custom be ancient, certain and not counter to the general ecclesiastical and spiritual and social welfare of the denomination, the admission of it as qualifying the ordinary Scriptural rule, if there be one, becomes a fixed rule of ethics of all Baptist churches. This admission in time acts back again on the rule thus generated, and gives it definiteness and solidity. In this 148 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; way tlie rule becomes eventually binding on all the churches, and, in fact, takes the place of ecclesiastical legislation, which all other systems practice with impunity, and is indistinguishable from written law itself. Every part of the law of every Baptist church, which is not found in the Scriptures, is made in this way, especially that great body of ethical rules regulating churches in their intercourse one with another. In the very earliest times of the churches in the absence of ecclesiastical legislation, the main machinery for the conversion of desultory and uncer- tain customs and usages into fixed ethical rules, needing only the develop- ment of church government to transmute them into true ecclesiastical laws, were the decisions of a lawfully constituted church which were constantly demanded for the purpose of ascertaining, for practical purposes, the true purport and extent of an alleged usage. The decision may have been called for at the hands of the church itself, or of a regularly constituted ecclesias- tical council, specially invited to interpose its good offices in the administra- tion of church affairs. The grounds of the decision may have been either a well-grounded knowledge of the law in such cases already established, stored away in the memory, or upon the ground of general expediency, or upon considerations purely personal in their nature. Whatever the grounds may have been, the decision was something more than the custom which it was called upon to interpret and solidify. It became a true precedent itself, and from the particulars of its form and the solemnity of the circumstances out of which it sprang, was likely to outweigh in authority the original material on which it was based. It needed only the complete institution of ecclesias- tical government, and the recognition of denominational authorization to perfect the truly legal character of these ethical rules in embryo. The process of ecclesiastical controversies, so far as they take place before a church, affords the only occasion on which, in the primitive churches at least, that public attention is arrested at the presence of law. The bulk of ethical rules thus generated are observed without thought or criticism. They are a part of the inseparable consciousness of every Baptist church, and prescribe the same sort of natural limitation to their activity as do the Scriptures upon which they are based. Another way in which rules of ethics grow and expand is that, they are developed in one church and transplanted to another. This process is likely to be hastened by removal from one church to another, or by the immigration of large Baptist populations from one section of our country to another, carrying with them their peculiar rules of ethics, and which cannot fail to affect the nature and administration of both the law and government of the churches. An intelligent Baptist reared in the churches of the South, traveling or living in the North, witnesses the observance of many minor rules to which he is not accustomed. Likewise one sojourning in the South, v/ho has spent the greater part of his life in the North, will see many usages to which he is a stranger, and in f-!ct he may discern slight shades of differ- ences in doctrine. As bodies of these brethren go from one section to another and mingle and commingle, this will have a tendency to infuse a OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 149 very large tincture of what may be called foreign ethics into the systems of the various sections which now most obstinately resist all external influences, 80 far as this element can be incorporated independently of express ecclesi- astical legislation. This seeming difference, if any, is rather a difference of development than of origin, rather of degree than of kind. Moreover, the uniformity in the fundamental laws, usages and customs found among the churches of the North and South, may be adduced as evidence, in spite of the constant difficulty in deciding whether any particular development is due to the independent invention, or to transmission from some other systems to those among whom it is found. For if the same laws, usages and customs have been produced in the two localities by independent invention, then, as has just been said, it is direct evidence of a oneness of will, faith and prac- tice. And, on the other hand, if this difference, though it be very slight was carried from the North to the South, or from the South to the North, or from a foreign system to either, the smaliness of the change it has suffered in transplanting is still evidence of the like nature of the soil wherever it is found. We might reasonably expect that Baptists of like faith when placed under widely different circumstances of locality, climate, and so forth, should develop very various usages and customs, and we know by evidence that they actually do so; but, nevertheless, it strikingly illustrates the extent of the homogenousness of the Baptists of the world ; so much so that it is really difficult to find among the Baptists of two widely separated nations, usages and customs, a single one of which something closely analogous may not be found in both. This is the more striking T,vhen we consider that these churches have no legislative tribunal to formulate a uniform system of faith and practice. In Baptist church jurisprudence there is a law of unity above all the enactments of humanly devised codes —the same through- out the world — the same at all times — it is the law written by the finger of God upon the hearts of all Ba^ptists everywhere. It holds the churches together by a sort of code of laws self-existing and antecedent to all human law. It points out the origin of the churches, it is the very genius of their unity and continuity, it has been and will ever be at the organization of every true church of Christ. This something which binds this great family of churches together is the law which is superior to man and made for him. The true law of God's churches is not the work of man ; he receives, but does not create it, even when he submits to it, it is not his own, it is beyond and above him, it is the divine law. There is yet another important, though often ignored, mode of replenish- ing a system of church ethics, without the aid of ecclesiastical legislation, which is the adoption of the opinions of eminent text-book writers and com- mentators. In any system of law where legislation is absolutely prohibited, like that of the Baptists, the works of text-book writers of repute become scarcely less authoritative on the state of the law than the Bible itself, especially when the writers are of considerable antiquity, and wrote without any intent to settle a question then being agitated. And it cannot be doubted that the constant authority such writers have seems to gather 160 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; strength with every fresh writer who is considered orthodox and loyal to the principles of Baptist church government. It is not only right but necessary, in order to obtain the clearest possible insight into the subject of ecclesiastical ethics in its bearings upon govern- ment, first to consider it absolutely, that is in its essentials, by which it wholly diflers from all other things, for which purpose we must examine it when at the commencement of its existence it takes its start, and then view it when at the highest degree of perfection peculiar to itself. If we omit this, we shall obtain but indistinct ideas, leadiug to a thousand erroneous conclu- sions. But having done this, it is equally important to view the same sub- ject in all its transitions, through which it is affiliated and joined, in the various directions, to other things. By doing this we can alone discover its position and bearings and find out how great an agent rules of religious ethics are in Christ's household. To apply them requires but the common- est kind of common sense. When common sense is enlightened, well versed and practised, it is the most useful talent that can be applied in the practical operations of church government. No church member can dispense with a degree of common sense, not only as being requisite to discern the nature and workings of the apostolic churches, how they started and took their rise, but likewise to enable us to institute a comparison between those .early churches and Baptist churches of this day, and to apply all rules of ethics to them whether scientific or Scriptural. The more we have to do with this peculiar kind of church polity, the more important common sense becomes. We need it always to apply our rules, to fix the proper limits, beyond which any rule transcends its own spirit, to select the proper ones to apply to par- ticular cases, and to discover the wants of the churches, all of which, how- ever, requires much cultivation and practice. Therefore the queistion narrows itself down to this: Are the fixed and fundamental rules concerning the relations of men to each other, observed in Baptist churches, such as follow from the nature of Christian men, organ- ized into an organic church under the laws of the gospel, or are they arbi- trary inventions as they are in every other system of church government ? Is the distinction between the customary laws of a Baptist church and the written systems of others in any way inconsistent with the substantial natu- ralness of both, not to say anything about the Scripturalness of written church laws ? Can lawyers trace the evolution and progress of civil laws as practiced by courts of justice from the necessary relations of civil society? Are there any analogies between these civil or common laws, which follow from the nature and conduct of men associated. in Baptist churches? We contend that the analogy is plain and can be traced with unerring certainty, and along with the Scriptures themselves these ecclesiastical common laws form the basis of Baptist church jurisprudence. If the Scriptures furnish that lav/ in all its minutia, it should be observed with religious fidelity. If the Scriptures do not go into detail, but leave many things undetermined, there must be a resort somewhere else for a rule of action. If customary law does not furnish a rule then in this respect, we must all turn Methodists, OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 151 Presbyterians and Catholics, who feel at liberty to legislate for the govern- ment of their churches. Now the first condition of the primitive churches just being set up for government was mutual love and confidence, and unless there was such a thing as love and confidence, individual men and churches would have been unable to shape for themselves any course of conduct in which they might have to depend on the assistance and co-operation of their brethren, acting without a definite rule to guide them. A natural constancy in the custom- ary actions of members of a church endeavoring for the first time to evolve a rule of law, is a preliminary step towards the constancy and uniformity of their actions in relation to each other. And if the same action is natu- rally performed together by different persons in the same church for a great length of time, that circumstance alone gives it consideration. Joint action suggests the possibility of concerted action, and in the future discourages and discredits isolated action. That habit is formed, not only of doing certain things appertaining to church government, but of seeing every one else do them, and any member who does differently jars on the established sense of fitness in the rest. Even outside of the church men act together in certain ways led by common sympathies and interests, but being united in a church of Christ brings fresh necessities and obligations with it. Estab- lished relations in a church by making them more complicated, suggest, while at the same time they restrain, personal impulses such as would mar the whole. The nature of an action is thus modified by its joint perform- ance becoming customary, as that of an indifferent omission is modified when it comes to appear as a departure from established usage. What Bap- tists ought to do under the positive laws of the gospel is what they always have done, and they do it, and thereby it becomes a law unto them and they thereby become a law unto themselves, so long as it continues to apply to any matter before them. Primitive Baptist church common law, which sprang up before the writ- ing and compiling of the New Testament Scriptures, consisted in doing the bidding of the apostles, who delivered their instructions orally to the churches as they organized them, and, after they passed away, it consisted in doing what every one else rightly did in pursuance to their teachings; but so far as every one readily and naturally does the same thing in reference to church government, it is not by conscious voluntary submission to an external or written rule, but from a common internal impulse, which may be called necessary, since it is effective to perform the functions of a written rule, as well as it is natural, and as apt, and more so, to be Scriptural as one that is written by the ecclesiastical legislator. True church law does not originate in a conspiracy on the part of ecclesiastics, assembled for that purpose, to coerce the churches by formulating a written rule, any more than in a conspiracy on the part of individuals in a church to coerce the church ; and while church organizations are wholly voluntary and based on a common interest and inclination, there is no need for positive legislation, aside from the Scriptures, to enjoin practices which are followed as of course, 152 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; as readily without it as with it. The habit of following a custom creates a secondary, subjective disposition to go on doing so, if it proves to be Scrip- tural, which is in its nature conscious, and lislt as a restraint upon the natural liberty of absolute indifference. But, doubtless, when this peculiar kind of law was first generated, it was not the idea that certain things must be done in the church because they were done by the church. If this had been the case, the action would have become only habitual to do it, whence a secondary, artificial difficulty would have been felt in substituting any other kind of action, till motives of a new class had come into force. The majority in wdiich the sovereignty of the church resides, after feeling the same kind of original impulse, experienced the same kind of difficulty in ceasing to act upon it in particular cases while its general force subsisted, and the same necessity for ceasing if a change in the conditions made the old act, which needed to be innovated upon, uneasy or undesirable. The mere cessation of an old motive does not give a feeling of obligation, unless a habit formed under its influence survives the change of circumstances, which makes its maintenance useless or inconvenient; but if a present motive for acting in one way comes into collision with the formed habit of acting in another, obedience to the habit, if it proves the strongest, is attended by a consciousness of necessity, moral or religious, that may be quite independent of reason or expediency. In other words, custom and religion are identified, and made to sanction each other's ordinances. But it is not the purpose in this treatise to discourse about religion. Tlie history about Baptist church government is the history of relations between individuals, as they are members of churches, and the churches themselves, whose conduct and attitude toward each other is liable to be modified by the fact that they are conscious of the relation and the obligations, which supply new motives for the maintenance or modification of the relation. It is a matter worth noting here, that the stability of the relations between the various members of Baptist churches is proportioned to the simplicity of those relations. These relations, considered objectively, while it occurs to no one to modify them, or to conceive them as modifiable, form the status of the membership, who are classified as equals naturally by their own acquies- cence in the position allotted to them by their mutual covenant. Among Baptists, early ecclesiastical law is admitted to rest on covenant, not status ; it begins by consecrating or affirming that which already is, for facts precede reason and legislation, even from immediate self-interest. The explanation of what is meant by a church covenant becomes clear if we consider that a covenant is a deliberate engagement to do or to forbear to do on certain conditions, or for certain considerations, and implies the distinct conception of two independent, voluntary actions, and the possibility of performing either or both ; conceptions which, it need hardly be said, will not be formed until experience, that is previous action, has furnished mate- rial for them. Every lawyer knows that law, as a record of facts, is posterior to the facts themselves. Baptist churches must have been constituted by somebody and somehow, before Baptist church jurisprudence in all its OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 153 perfection could exist, otherwise it could never have been generated and developed. The chief difference between Baptist church customary law or common law and ecclesiastical legislation is that Baptists conscientiously make their actual and every-day practice the standard of right or obligation, while the followers of ecclesiastical legislation follow the utterance of an embodied authority enjoining something which the member who is to obey it does not know or imagine that he would have done without the written injunction. On the part of ecclesiastical legislation, law is, ideally, the expression of what would be the general will if the self-individuality of the church could be suddenly submitted and intensified, so as to become at once aware of all its own strongest impulses, and of the adjustments and limitations necessary for reconciling and harmonizing their notions of church government. Only, as the organ by which the church expresses this will is itself subject to con- crete human infirmities, that is self-interest, books of discipline and ecclesi- astical digests are no more infallible than Baptist church customs and usages are omniscient, and to secure a tolerable practical approach towards the ideal system of church law ; that is to say, the apostolical system, the intel- ligence of the church needs to be consciously turned towards the considera- tion of its own real organic needs and wishes which is the only standard of right, and which the ecclesiastical legislator may otherwise ignore, for want of a sufficient present sense of their material wants. Good ecclesiastical cus- toms when they have been evolved by actual experience embody the indi- vidual ideas of what each individual considers as just and Scriptural ; good ecclesiastical written laws, if it were lawful and possible to write them, de- mand a higher intellectual and spiritual intuition which none but the apos- tles ever had. Denominational or inter-church customs may be strong enough to control the erratic or naturally rebellious impulses of free and independent Baptists, but a class such as we find in other systems, having common interests not identical with those of the rest of the same church may form a custom of its own, incompatible with older customary rights and privileges. If the passions and interests of individuals come into collision they either fight out their quarrel as Baptists do, or compromise it, as it were instinctively ; but when the conflict is between the different interests or usages of persons, instead of individuals, all standing upon an equality as in Baptist churches, the power of automatic adjustment or adaptation breaks down, and the scattered motives to mutual concessions, existing in post- apostolic systems have to be summed up and brought home to the conscious- ness of all alike in the official sanction of a written law. The supposed growing want in Baptist church government of some central authority, such as we see in other systems, to decide betvreen the conflicting interests among individuals in the churches, contributed as much as any other cause to the strengthening of the authority of customary law to rule the church. The lawful authority of these laws increased the more because there was no avow- able class interest concerned in resisting them, while every dawning custom that could claim to be Scriptural and innocent or useful or advantageous was eager to receive its sanction. 154 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; The process of allotting a church into classes, such as clergy and laity, or any other division is just as double-sided and unecclesiastical as any other irrational political development, and the historical steps in the, process can be summed up in the simple generalization which makes all written law and government alike the mere expression of the will of those who assume to be the rulers of the whole church. The most obvious difficulty in the way of supposing ecclesiastical law to be made by the arbitrary will of ecclesiastics, is that no merely natural difference between church members living in a church upon terms of equality and in simplicity is sufficient to enable these church dignitaries to terrorize and control the wills of the churches. This rule and control has to be built up gradually, and with the consent or assist- ance of those whose subsequent obedience to the power they have helped to form, is assumed by an arbitrary theory and is naturally reluctant and only extorted by force. It will scarcely be maintained that the apostolic churches subsisted without law and rules till such time as they had suc- ceeded in educating a class of priestly potentates, and in providing them with followers in such force as to make the mere announcement of their wills the law of the churches. This kind of law will be obeyed if their blind fol- lowers believe in their power of compelling obedience, but among Baptists their obedience is determined by their opinion about the authority of such men to rule them, as the real extent of that authority is determined by their readiness to acquiesce or not in its exercise. More interest has always been felt by Baptists in the specific laws of the churches, than in their government, for unscriptural laws betray themselves more easily than bad government and more frequently become the subject of contention. Baptists see in the law they are called upon to execute the record of what is and has been done. But others who feel themselves at liberty to make written laws for the churches address themselves to the task of laying down beforehand what ought and must be done ; so that among Baptists, in practice, respect for their customary law always means respect for the laws that already exist, and not so much for what it ought to be. They verify their interpretations of a church law by an unconscious refer- ence to the individual opinions of each member as to what is the true rule of action, or by their own unimpassioned judgment. The dictates of a cus- tom are felt to have the force of law whenever the customary motive is recognized as being properly dominant as a rule. The regularity with which men seek to reduce their actions to a rule has its cause in the con- stant pressure of an orderly system of things in favor of systematic adjust- ment, concert, and co-operation amongst persons united under a church covenant to act in concert in furtherance of a common end. The reason why Baptist churches are governed by these unwritten laws is, that men of the same faith and order under the same circumstances act in substantially the same w^ay ; the motive to do so is not only felt, but it is felt as always present, laying its injunctions on the will, and acquiescence in its power grows into a habit. The proof of Baptist church common law is the fact that all the churches OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 155 observe it, and the philosophy of precedents is simply the assumption that whatever has been habitually done heretofore was done for good reason and because it was Scriptural, and will, and ought, therefore, to continue to be done until cause positive be shown for its omission, when such cause, not having existed in the preceding case, the precedent ceases to be binding. Early Baptist church laws are rather declaratory of existing usage than imperative as to future practice ; in other words, usage is the evidence of the existing custom. It may plausibly be concluded, in all matters indif- ferent, not involving fundamental principles, that only those customs will permanently prevail amongst Baptists which they freely choose to observe — that is, such as the common denominational interest and inclination approves. Hence the most reasonable and useful compilation of Baptist church laws will be those which state with accuracy the formulas that include all the adjudged or recorded cases, or give the soundest or most Scriptural gene- ralization of the real practice of the churches. The completest attempt at such a work is that recently published by Rev. Edward T. Hiscox, D.D., published by the American Baptist Publication Society, Philadelphia, which should be found upon the shelf of every Baptist in America, entitled, "A New Baptist Church Directory." This excellent compilation of Bap- tist church law and doctrine is not what the author has himself made it, but it is only a faithful recital of what the law already is. These laws never could have been compiled before there was a consensus of usage respecting them. It is not a fruitless search after church law, which does not yet exist, but a record of what has been evolved by the churches in the past. It is not binding upon the churches only in so far as it is intrinsically Scriptural and voluntarily acceptable to the churches, and is as much a standard authority as Blackstone's or Kent's commentaries upon the com- mon law. are authorities in courts of justice, and is entitled to as much respect. He who would attempt to collect and record the customs and usages of Baptist churches should be the apostle of the truth, and not the inventor of rules or systems. The absence of a report of all adjudged cases in our churches is a great defect in Baptist church jurisprudence. It has led to a nearly arbitrary exposition of the rules and regulations by each church as each separate case arose. The almost total want of respect for church precedents may be traced to the fact that there has never been any attention paid to their com- pilation and preservation. This species of law so important in our civil jurisprudence has lost much of its force and authority by reason of this fact. In civil law judicial precedents act to a considerable extent, as a check upon the conduct of judges. As it is necessary that there should be rules to restrain private individuals, so it is also necessary that there should be some kind of law to restrain the court, and precedents constitute that law. The respect for cases which have already been adjudged and published, although it should never be carried so far as to render them absolutely binding, pre- vents any marked or habitual departure from the law of the land. The legal profession are apt to be keenly attentive to both the motives and the 166 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; reasons of the bench, when it undertakes to overthrow a decision which has grown to be a principle ; and in this way a system of responsibility is created, which can only be brought about by collecting and making known these adjudications. The'respect for adjudicated cases becomes a habit; they are of general notoriety, because they are in print, and any departure from them is viewed with extreme jealousy. The analogies and comparisons here made correspond roughly to the dis- tinctions met with by lawyers almost everywhere between written and unwritten law, the latter of which is naturally preferred until cases become overwhelmingly numerous, just as written and unwritten laws are allowed to remain undigested till the extreme limits of the libraries and lawyers' and judges' memories have been reached. The position of him who undertakes to systematize and compile the unwritten laws of the churches is indeed a critical one. The unwritten law, as it has been evolved by the churches, supplies a standard for itself to be tried by, and unless the commentary upon it is intrinsically orthodox, and is such that Baptists can and do spon- taneously accept, the law and the commentator lose their authority altogether. When this peculiar kind of law exists it is what it is, not by the w^ill or arbitrary command of the ecclesiastical legislator or the commentator, but by the necessity of its own peculiar nature, and arises by a logical necessity. The laws of Baptist churches are only the record of the practice of those churches, but it does not conduce to clearness or accuracy of thinking to call every uniformity in church government a law, because the real uniformities observed in this kind of government are distinguished, or rather distinguish- able, in practice, according to what we find to be the cause, or constant con- ditions of their occurrence, yet they have their importance in making up the system. Rational Baptist church law, as it is attempted to be compiled by the commentator, cannot pretend to do more than state the rules of conduct normally followed by the normal or rational members of the churches; because the normal members obey the laws of the church because these laws on the whole represent the permanent will of themselves and their contemporaries concerning the conditions of relationship amongst themselves. Once that true church law has generated in the churches, it bears within itself something vital, divine and immortal, which never more perishes in its entirety. Discords in the churches, and vile passions, may for a time crush it under foot, may mutilate it under the sway of ignorance and pre- judice ; its fruits may be retarded for ages, but the hand of Providence is full of ages, and, at the destined time, the living idea of which the seed has been spread and multiplied, even by the storms, it bursts forth at once, and is conformed to the divine model of Christ's churches. It has long been observed that the practice of a science always precedes the science itself. And with Baptist church jurisprudence, the rudimentary principles and general rules it demonstrates were practiced long before the existence of the science underlying this peculiar form of ecclesiastical gov- ernment was ever suspected. And in ord-er to thoroughly understand the beauty of the system, it is necessary to follow out its philosophy, for no OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 157 system of laws, if isolated, can be understood. A system cannot be com- prehended until we know all the consequences which have actually followed its development, and which it is the business of the historian to trace from it in the application of principles. It has been heretofore noticed that it is only with spiritually progressive bodies customary law has any affinity. Nothing is more remarkable in this age than to look around us and see the extreme fewness of spiritually pro- gressive churches. Take, as a fair example, the English establishment, or Episcopal church. In spite of overwhelming evidence, it is most difficult for a " churchman " to brhig thoroughly home to himself the truth that the spiritual inertia, which hangs like a mill-stone about the neck of their establishment, is attributable to the part which ecclesiastical legislation has performed in their system. And what may be said of this people, may be applied with equal force to all such bodies as have reduced their form of church government to a written code. If Baptists could at a glance see the ponderous load of irrational absurdities under which these organizations are groaning and pining away, in consequence of ecclesiastical legislation, and the departures from true church law and government, they could thereby be made fully to appreciate the beauty of Baptist church polity. It is true that all these Pedo-Baptist denominations have never shown any particular desire that their bodies should be further developed and made to conform to the primitive models, since the moment when external completeness was given them at their organization, and their written codes were first com- pleted. One set of written laws has been violently overthrown, and super- seded by another. Here and there a code of canons pretending to a super- natural origin, that has been greatly extended and distorted to meet human views by the perversity of sacerdotal legislators and commentators, has sprung up; but only in the system of Baptist church law the world has ever seen anything like the gradual grow^th of a body of church law, with- out the withering influence of ecclesiastical legislation. It is true that there has been in many instances, as in the Methodist church, a material external development, but instead of the growth expand- ing the laws in harmony with the true genius of the primitive churches, their laws have limited their development, hence it is easy to see the end to which they will ultimately drift— to that of caste. The study of true church government in its primitive conditions affords us a clue to the point at which their development stopped. We see that they have not yet been able to pass beyond a stage which occurs in all their histories, that is, the stage at which a true rule of church law can be distinguished from a plain precept of religion. AVe see this in their practices of infant and adult sprinkling for baptism. This they do not because it is Biblical, but because this divine ordinance has been perverted by ecclesiastical legislation whereby the sacred text has been made to mean something aside from its letter and spirit. Their pernicious practices have educated many of them up to the idea that the transgression of their man-made law should be punished by both civil and ecclesiastical penalties. In the more recent denominations, this point, 158 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; it is true, has been past, but their progress seems to have been arrested because their written laws are co-extensive with all the ideas they are capa- ble of evolving. "When a domain of science, such as true ecclesiastical jurisprudence, has been insensibly cultivated by the uninterrupted practice of many ages, it offers to the present generation of Baptists a rich inheritance. It is not merely the mass of achieved truths which have descended to us, but every attempted direction of intellectual powers, all the endeavors of the past, whether they have been fruitful of successes or failures, avail us as guides, as warnings, and thus we are able to labor with the united strength of the centuries that are gone. To abandon this vantage ground of our position is to repudiate the most precious inheritance of Baptist church polity, the community of scientific convictions, and that continued living progress with- out which our system would long since have degenerated into a dead letter. We have perhaps almost a superstitious regard for the method in which Baptist church law has been built up out of actual cases and principles, as distinguished from the speculations and entanglements into which those of other systems plunge themselves by a process of legislation. The conception of a written constitution and discipline for a church seems to belong to a range of ideas not found in the Bible, or among the apostles, and is more recent and advanced. The principle seems to have been fully recognized in the outset, that it was indispensably necessary that a rule should be estab- lished, if there was no Bible law applicable to the matter in hand. There being no Scripture authority given to resolve the rule into a written com- mand, the mode of deciding all questions was left to the intelligence and skill of those charged with the administration of church affairs. We have seen that in those immutable principles which are fundamental in their nature no man or church can impose anything that can alter any part of the institution, or make a change or variety in that which is of divine appointment, for the effect of these things depends wholly upon the will of Christ, and we know nothing but what we see reflected in the record, and, therefore, we must with simplicity and obedience apply ourselves to practice what we have received, as having nothing else to guide us. But in all matters voluntary and indifferent in their nature where there is no Scripture rule, the usages of a church introduce a law, so far that we can- not recede from it without some probable cause. If the Scripture has not interposed a law in the particular case we must keep the customs and usages of the churches ; and as all who attempt to disintegrate the immutable laws are to be restrained, so are all they that disregard the customs of the churches. But, above all things, individual isolated opinions are not to be taken up by customs, and reduced to practice, because custom is no war- ranty for opinions. Besides this when an opinion is offered only by the hand of an isolated custom, it is commonly a sign of a bad cause, and that there is nothing else to be said for it ; for customs proper must gradually grow up and graflually become assented to universally before they arise to the dignity of customs proper. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 159 If the churches differ in the handling of indifferent matters where there is no Scri})ture rule, it is allowable to observe either, or neither, as it may suit each individual church. But in such cases as where several churches have several usages, every church ought to follow her own custom, and all her members to obey it. Yet, notwithstanding every church is tied to her own customs, it is allowable to adopt by common consent any other good custom of another church ; and in going from one church to another keep the cus- tom of that church, if you will neither give or receive offense ; do as that church does where you happen to be, unless you are persuaded that thereby you infract a divine commandment. In which case no custom is binding, no matter how venerable by age. A custom is obligatory by being a custom in the particular church to w^hich we belong. In other words, no man can go from one church to an- other and carry along with him the customs of the church he left behind. The customs he practiced in the church from which he goes may be whole- some and the best, but he cannot obtrude them upon the church except by their consent, and should it be adopted at all it is for the reason that it is useful, and not because it is practiced in another church, otherwise one church could make rules for another, which is contrary to the genius of Baptist church government. In such cases we can say with Paul : But if any man seem to be contentious, we have no such custom, ndthcr the churches of God. But if a divine commandment is urged to take the place of a cus- tom heed should be given, for when the law of God is called upon, although there be a custom in the church against Scripture it is to beheld for naught, for when the law of God is alive custom is dead, because custom can only take life and spring into existence when there is no law, and when there is a law actually called upon, a custom to the contrary is a direct evil, if not a heresy, and is that against which the Scripture is intended to guard, and that which the Scripture did intend to remedy. In all post-apostolic religious communities the custom of sprinkling, instead of baptism, prevails. In all cases like this w'e should stand to the law, not to the custom, because the law is still in force, and is actually intended to prevail according to the mind of Christ, and is more agreeable with the practice, the laws and usages of the primitive churches, and to the practice of Christ and his apostles ; for that came by the laws of Christ, this by the customs of men. If the reason why customs were instituted may be known, and being known, if it appear manifestly that there is a perpetual necessity for them, then are those customs perpetual, unless they cease to be effectual for the purpose for which they were first instituted. Because when a custom ceases to be available and useful for that purpose, the continuance of it must of necessity be superfluous. It is very apparent to Baptists how that some customs have done great good which afterwards when time has changed the ancient course of things they grow to be hurtful, or not so greatly profitable or necessary. If then the end for which a custom is provided be perpet- ually necessary, no doubt but that every such custom ought forever to remain unchangeable. Whether Christ be the author of a law, by authoriz- 160 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; ing the exercise of the power by which the law was made, or by deliveriDg it ready made from himself, it thereby becomes immutable. So, for us to change that which Christ has established, is inexcusable pride and presump- tion. The laws of the Jewish priesthood and ritualistic ceremonies came from God. Moses committed them all to writing, and they stand there to-day. Post-apostolic sects draw therefrom their ideas of priest-craft and ritualistic ceremonies. But Baptists say that since the end for which that law was ordained is now fulfilled, past and gone, it has no longer any foroe. It is abolished and repealed by reason of the decease of the end for which it was given. Many things have been changed from the old dispensation and changed for the better. That which succeeds the old, as being now better, would not have been changed were it not for a different occasion that called for it. In these cases men did not presume to change God's ordinances, but Christ, the founder of the churches, made the changes. For man to have innovated the old system it would have been presumptuous, as it would now be a hein- ous and an impious sacrilege to abrogate the new. Touching points funda- mental, as, for example, church sovereignty, independence, and equality, and the rule by the majority, they have existed since the first hour tliat there was a church in the world, and they will to the last remain the same. ^ But as to matters indifferent, and not of substance, they are for the most part of another nature. There is no reason why we should esteem it necessary to do the same things ; matters of faith and doctrine, and the more important principles of church government and polity, are constant ; of customs they are changeable in their nature, and are such which each church may from time to time adopt, alter or abolish as there is occasion, and to do which will not destroy or impair the foundations upon which rests the fabric of Baptist church government. They are flexible and may be differently established and quite abolished without violating either the letter or spirit of the Scrip- tures. While the immutable laws proper are unalterable and indestructible and are so just and necessary at all times, and in all places, that no ecclesi- astical authority on earth can either change or abolish them, for they are grounded and rooted and nurtured in the Holy Scriptures. They are such which being taken away the church, as a church of Christ, fails, and is utterly dissolved as a building whose foundation is destroyed. They are like the laws of the Medes and Persians, they can suffer no change. But as to things which belong to discipline and practice, the churches have author- ity to make customs, as we read in the apostles' times they did. When the Scriptures do not interpose the churches have their liberty, and in those things indifferent which the apostolic churches prescribed they did with liberty, because rules of order are as variable as the tactics of an army, and have a transient and variable sense ; in all these things there are no in- flexible customs for the churches, although we did know what the first churches practiced, for they did it with liberty, and left that same liberty to succeeding churches. If inflexible rules in matters indifferent had been necessary, they would have been clearly taught it, and if they had, there is OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 161 no reason to believe but that such rules would have been made a part of the written record ; but if at first these indifferent rules varied, they had no common coherence of principle, and therefore thej had no necessity of rec- ord. In the unchangeable laws we have unity and necessity, authority and obedience, but when we go beyond this, we find variety and liberty. All those laws which the apostles received from Christ in which they were min- isters to all ages, thus conveying the mind of Christ to all generations to come, this was to bind forever ; for Christ only is our lawgiver, and what he said was to last forever ; in all those things which did not come authorita- tively from him, the early disciples could not be lawgivers, therefore, what- ever they ordered by their own wisdom, was to abide as long as the reason or necessity therefor did abide, but still with the same liberty with which they appointed it. For of all men the early disciples and the apostles would be the last to put snares upon Christian liberty or fetters upon the churches. Of the same nature is the time and manner of the setting a man apart to the work of the ministry, the ordination and call of a pastor, his installa- tion, his term of service, the church's time and place of meetings, the recep- tion and dismissal of members, their discipline, the time and occasion of the administration of the ordinances, the conduct of the secular affairs of the churches, and the exercise of the ordinary parliamentary rules for their gov- ernment. For all of this being done in the apostles' times without written rules, and immediately received by all the churches everywhere, and ever since were governed in this way, it is to be concluded to be a law of Christ which the apostles conveyed with intention to oblige all Christendom ; not only because the apostles could not make a law to succeeding ages in these minute things, or at least they did not exercise such authority, but because it was against the will of Christ that the commandments of men should be taught for either doctrine or practice, and it was against church liberty and Christian conscience, that a lasting necessity should, by men, be put upon anything indifferent, and succeeding churches would thereby be straightened in their liberty which Christ had given them, and in which they were bound to stand fast. Hence, there is not in the world a greater presumption than for men, or churches, to undertake to prescribe a written code of " overtures," " deliver- ances," or " discipline," unless by Christ they had been authorized to do so. For these innate divine laws, written upon the tablets of the hearts of God's children, with his own hand, are the sources and foundations of the princi- ples underlying the government and polity of his true churches in all matters where the Bible is silent. They need not be written to be valid. They are indestructible and everlasting, unalterable and immutable. Here, then, we have the germ or the rudiment of Baptist church jurispru- dence and polity. This is unquestionably the way our system had its first beginning. Unless this be the case it is difficult to understand how it could ever have escaped from its swaddling clothes and taken its first steps towards its present development. Its peculiar characteristic is that it apparently formed itself, and cannot be traced back to the determination of the will of 11 162 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; any one man, or the decree of any council, convention or other body of men. It was never thought of, however, as being founded on quite untested prin- ciples. The idea was from the very outset that such principles as were left undetermined by the letter of the Scriptures, underlay the inspired writings, and had to be looked at through them. In fact, true church law is grounded, rooted, and nurtured in the Bible, and built and cemented by actual expe- rience. In tracing its historical development down the line of time, we will see no ecclesiastical legislator formulating a human code, or creed ; we will hear no sound of edge-tool or hammer, or the confused noise of the work- men, but the materials and all the necessary conditions will be present to evolve the law whenever the workmen are called by the Lord to do his work. Hence, the body of our church law is properly termed unwritten, common, or customary laws; their original institution and authority not being set down in writing, but receive the binding power and force of laws by long and universal usage, and their universal reception throughout all the Baptist churches of the earth. Hence, the absolute validity of every church usage, which goes to make up our church polity, depends upon its having been universally received and acted upon, " Time out of mind,'' or, rather, " Tiiiie whereof the memory of man run7ieth not to the contrary.'' It is being grounded in the Scriptures, and it is their antiquity which gives them their force and validity. They contain not the wisdom of a single age or any particular age, but the accumulated wisdom of all the ages. They are held and re- garded with a reverence second only to that entertained for the Holy Scrip- tures, and are made of equally binding authority with, when they do not contradict the sacred text, for there can be no difference whether the churches declare their assent to a rule by formally reducing it to writing, or by a uni- form course of acting upon it. Take from the Baptists of the earth the Scriptures, the law-book of the churches, and it would be like sweeping away the pillar of cloud which guided the wanderers of old by day through the wilderness — take from them the customary law and it would be like extinguishing the pillar of fire which guided them by night. The one is as essential as the other. As in the for- mer days God chose the Ark of the Covenant as a repository for the preser- vation of the Ten Commandments, written with his own finger, so in the latter days he chose the receptacle of the Customary Law in which to pre- serve and hand down the principles of the government of his true churches unchanged and unaltered. Their customs are sacredly held to be as salt to jDreserve such truths as are Scriptural, and as lime to neutralize and destroy such as are heretical. It is hardly necessary to remind the reader that the science of ecclesiasti- cal government to which his attention has been called treats only of the rela- tions between individuals and churches, having to do with theology or morals themselves only in so far as was required for showing how they are liable to be affected, favorably or unfavorably, by governmental action of the churches, and how the latter is, in turn, liable to be affected by them. These are laws •that could not have been studied with advantage until the science of those OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 163 relations between individuals and cliurclies should first have been fully mas- tered. By their study it is that we are enabled to understand the process by means of which it had been provided that the higher attributes of both in- dividuals and churches should be stimulated into action. That it has now, and for the first time in the history of Baptist churches, become possible advantageously to so enter on this important study is due to the fact that our Baptist churches have, under the blessings of God, attained such full develop- ment within tbe past few years. Upon this development the foundation of this science must rest which is destined to furnish, in its turn, the foundation on which the apex of the edifice of a more perfect structure may at no dis- tant period be constructed. For a long period in the past our eminent authors have been laboring to that end, puzzling themselves with metaphy- Bical discussions, and that the laws of relations in church government have no foundation other than that of crude assumptions on which to rest. True church government could no more have been constructed in advance of the development of the churches than the history of a secular government could now be profitably studied in advance of the establishment of that government. If Baptist church government is to be vindicated from the aspersions cast upon it by those who knew nothing of its internal workings, and is ever to be erected into a science with its own appropriate methods and limitations, the foundation, of the objections to it must be investigated and their real value strictly assessed. One reason which accounts for the unscientific aspect under which the government and laws of Baptist churches usually present themselves is that it very rarely happens, or has happened, that conscious attention to the true character of ecclesiastical problems, to their difficulties, and to the modes of their solution, is aroused in any church till long after a practical solution of some kind has been instinctively resorted to, and a con- siderable iidvance in the art of administration achieved. By laying open a field of thought which is peculiarly Baptistic, and which has in an eminent degree, both a scientific and philosophical interest, I flatter myself that I have contributed, however httle, towards giving public attention to a subject which needs to be studied more thoroughly by all lovers of the churches of our Lord and Saviour. The instruction, ofiered by this interesting study teaches us that we should not depend upon others, but that we should search in the rich resources of our own literature and history, our own form of ecclesiastical polity and our ow^n institutions for the materials on which to construct a Baptist literature upon this subject. But it will be said, Why so much theory and so little practice ? It must be remembered that in the outset I undertook a treatise upon the theory and science of ecclesiastical government and not a compilation of by-laws for the use of the churches. Others have undertaken that task and performed it well. Story, Kent and Blackstone, the great commentators upon the Ameri- can and English common law, did not undertake to alone lay down rules of court, but felt called upon to go into the philosophy of the law in general that its true genius might be the better understood by those whose life-work was to practice it. 164 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; CHAPTER VI. BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; HOW IT BECOMES TRUSTWORTHY IN CHURCH GOVERNMENT THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF THE INTERPRETATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. rthis world of uncertainty we believe in part, and prophesy in part, and it is certain that this imperfection shall never be done away till we shall be translated to a more glorious state. Either we must get truth by diving down into the bowels of God's word, and bring it up ourselves, or we must take it upon trust from others, unless some other anchor can be relied upon, where we may fasten our floating vessels and ride safely upon the wide ocean of theology. Therefore, inasmuch as in the very nature of things we must defer to the opinions of others it is highly proper that we should gather a few of the maxims upon the influence of authority in mat- ters of opinion, and as to how far our opinions may be properly influenced by the mere authority of others, independently of our own convictions founded upon our reason. Now, in the discussion of any subject much depends upon a proper defini- tion of the terms used in the statement of the question discussed. The term opinion as here used seems to be a matter in faith or practice about which doubt can reasonably exist, as to which, two persons can, without absurdity, think difierently. The interpretation of a plain passage of Scripture which is so evident that it needs no further interpretation, or the existence of an object before the eyes of two persons, would not be a matter of opinion. But when testimony is divided, or uncertain, the existence of a fact may become doubtful, and, therefore, a matter of opinion. So the proper rule to be adopted where the Scriptures do not go into detail, and we are left in our liberty, or any proposition, the contradictory of which can be maintained with probability, is a matter of opinion. When any one forms an opinion on a question either of speculation or practice, without any appropriate process of reasoning, really or apparently leading to that conclusion, and without compulsion or inducement of interest, but simply because some other person, whom he believes to be a competent judge on the matter, entertains that opinion, he is said to have formed his opinion upon authority of some other person, or persons. Hence any person who determines our belief is an authority. But he who has either the ability or inclination to study a question for himself and draws his own conclusions, his opinion does not rest upon authority. He who believes upon authority, entertains the opinion simply because it is entertained by a person who appears to him likely to think correctly on the subject. It would be surprising to those OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 165 who are unskilled in the civil law to know how many lawyers — seemingly successful ones — in their practice base their knowledge of the law upon the authority of commentators rather than upon principle. Hence it is rather a bad sign of a good lawyer or a judge to see them base their reasonings entirely upon authorities or precedents rather than upon the elementary principles of jurisprudence which lie at the basis of all law. And I fear that these observations are applicable to many Baptists who have not taken the pains to study the Scriptures and the fundamental principles of eccle- siastical government for themselves. In the Baptist form of church polity denominational opinion is a thing of the greatest importance, as it is made to bear extensively upon all questions of heresy and all manner of disorders both public and private. In all writ- ten forms of church government the rule is, by the few, set apart for that purpose. Hence the responsibility of keeping all things in order rests upon them. But in a free church this responsibility is equally distributed to all alike. Those in disorder, whether they be churches or individuals, as soon as they have time to reflect, are conscious that they are under the ban of denominational opinion. All being free and equal they feel that it is not a privileged class that are trampling upon Baptist principles, but their own brethren, and they must be subdued and reduced to order through the power of public opinion expressed by the denomina-tion. This species of authority has a wonderful effect in crumbling the stoutest faction that can arise in our polity. The recalcitrants soon feel themselves to be powerless, their weapons drop from their hands, they fall off one by one, and seek to hide themselves from the view of the denomination. Often have we seen repeated attempts, by misguided factions, to violate Baptist principles. In every instance the attempt has been abortive. Often we have seen so many of our brethren fly off at a tangent, that it seemed that Baptist church gov- ernment was at an end, and after a time the whole of them, without the loss of one, returned with renewed satisfaction to the wise and salutary maxims which had been handed down to them by our Baptist fathers. Disguise the fact as we may there is more or less of dogmatical belief in every system of religion, \vhether it be the true religion or not. In other words the time never was nor will it ever come to pass when men will cease to entertain some opinions on trust, and without discussion. In relig- ious matters if every one undertook to form all his opinions upon the multi- plicity of subjects which go to make up a religious creed, and to seek for truth by isolated paths pursued by himself alone, it would follow that no considerable number of men would ever unite in any common belief And all must conclude that without such common belief no church could exist and prosper ; for without ideas held in common, there could be no common action, and without common action and a common belief there may be men, but there could be no social or orderly church — no oneness of will, faith and practice. In order that a church should exist, and the organization should prosper, it is required that all the minds of the membership should be ral- lied and held together by certain predominant ideas, for Christ prayed that 166 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; his people should be one ; and this cannot be the case unless each of them sometimes draws his opinions from the common source, and consents to accept certain matters of belief already formed. If man were forced to demonstrate for himself all the truths of which he makes use in a system of theology his task would be a difficult and an endless one. There is no Bap- tist so profound and of so great parts, but that he believes very many things on the faith of others, and supposes a great many more truths than he is able to demonstrate. An inquiry into this subject will appear the more important when we con- sider that a large proportion of the general opinions even of Baptists are derived merely from the authority and opinions of others, and are enter- tained without any distinct understanding of the evidence on which they rest, or the argumentative grounds by which they are supported. An in- quiry, therefore, into the legitimate use of the principles of authority, and the consequences to which it tends in church government, must be admitted to relate to an important subject in its relation to Baptist church jurispru- dence. The importance of investigations in church government furnishes the ultimate tests for the discovery of truth and the elimination of error. A complete and philosophical treatise upon the elementary principles of Bap- tist church jurisprudence is, therefore, a powerful instrument for facilitating the discovery and confutation of existing errors and the discovery of new truths. It thus opens the way to the progressive advancement of true church government and development ; as all accurate knowledge of the Scriptures must ultimately be derived from sound methods of reasoning and investiga- tion. For all religious truths, as well as scientific ones, we must be indebted to original researches, carried on according to logical rules. But when these truths have been first discovered by original inquiries, and received and tested and re-tested by competent judges, it is clearly and chiefly by the in- fluence of authority that they are accredited and diflused. When a person derives an opinion from the authority of another, the utmost he can hope is to adopt the belief of those who, at the time, are the least likely to be in error. If this opinion happens to be erroneous, the error is necessarily shared by those who receive it upon mere trust, and without any process of verification. It must be admitted that the formation of religious opinions by and upon the authority of others can never produce any increase or im- provement of knowledge, or bring about the discovery of new truths. But one of the crowning virtues of the teaching of Baptist church jurisprudence is, that truth and not error has ever been accredited ; that when Baptists have been led they have been led by safe guides. They have thus profited by those processes of reasoning and investigation, which have been carried on in accordance with the common law of the gospel and of the churches, but which many may not be able to verify for themselves, but take them upon trust as coming from those they deem sound in the faith. The influence that authoritative opinions have in the formation of a sys- tem of faith and practice in ecclesiastical government can readily be seen when we consider that the opinions of the young members of the churches OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 167 just forming church relations are necessarily derived from their parents^ and other religious teachers, either without any knowledge,, or with a very imper- fect knowledge of the grounds on which they rest. This is the case even where the reason is given with the opinion, the belief of the child is often determined rather by the authority of the teacher than by the force of the argument. Indeed very often the reasons given for an opinion are so nu- merous, so complex, and so far above his comprehension that a full explana- tion of them would necessarily bewilder rather than enlighten his under- standing. Besides, much instruction is conveyed to young Christians, by the ministry in particular, in language, the full import of which they cannot comprehend. Hence, in indoctrinating young Christians, a reverence and respect for the minister, as a minister, and for his precepts, independently of his reasons for them, is necessary. Yet it is important to inculcate principles and truths, even though the evidence of them is not, and cannot be, fully understood. But the transmission of opinions from the elderly to the young, in a lump, which results from the doctrine of influence and authority, doubtless contains a considerable alloy of evil, inasmuch as it perpetuates error in combination with truth, and affords no test for their discrimination. To what extent the youth of the churches, when their reason becomes mature, and they are emancipated from the control and teaching of their spiritual advisers, will modify the opinions with which they have been imbued dur- ing their childhood, depends upon circumstances of their subsequent life. With regard to the adult members of Baptist churches, comprising a large number of persons who have received a liberal education, and have leisure and opportunities for study, observation, investigation and reflection, the facilities for the independent formation of opinions are greater. But many of these are occupied with business and the affairs of active life, which either leave little time for reading and thought, or restrict it to one subject, and that subject not the one of the most importance to themselves — that is, the church and its great mission. Sorry to say, others consume a large por- tion of their time in amusements, or, at least, in pursuits of mere curiosity; and still more acquiesce, without examination, in the opinions current amongst their friends and associates. For instance, a lawyer goes to his library and there studies what others have said and believed about a ques- tion of science, and takes in on trust ; a physician takes his political opinions, a minister takes his medical opinions, all on trust. The difficulty and labor of original thought and investigation are great. Even the professed student can only hope to explore a portion of the field of knowledge. Hence the use of commentaries, manuals, reviews and other works of reference, which serve as guides and authorities, and contain results and opinions without the minutia by which they were construcfced, and abridge intellect- ual labor. But since we must necessarily depend upon others in many things for our opinions the question is, What are some of the marks of trustworthy authority in matters so sacred as that of faith and practice? Now, on looking at the qualities which render any one a credible witness in a court of justice to a 168 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; matter of fact, we remark that they are of common occurrence. For testimony, nothing further is in general required than opportunity of observation, ordinary attention and intelligence, and veracity. Almost every person of sound mind, who has reached a certain age, is a credible witness as to matters which he has observed, and as to which he has no immediate inter- est in deception or concealment. The qualities, however, which render a person a competent authority in matters of opinion are of rarer occurrence. A person whose testimony to a fact would be unimpeachable, might be utterly devoid of authority as a guide in matters of faith and practice. Besides, a person who in a court of justice is a credible witness for one matter of fact, is equally credible to be called for all others which may fall under his observation ; whereas no man is equally competent as a guide of opinion in all subjects. The first qualification is, that a person to be a safe guide in such matters should have devoted much time, study and thought to the subject matter, if it be merely speculative and moral; and that if it be practical, he should also have had adequate experience respecting it. In the second place his mental and spiritual powers must be equal to the task of comprehending the subject, and they must be of the kind fitted to it. And lastly, he ought to be exempt, as far as possible, from personal interest in the matter; or if he is not thus exempt, his honesty and integrity v ought to be such as to afibrd a reasonable security against the perversion of his opinions by views of his individual advantage. Whenever, therefore, we seek to determine who is a competent authority to guide our opinions we should select a person who combines these qualifications. But in Baptist church jurisprudence some further indications of trust- worthy authority, derived from other considerations, are to be taken into account. It is a matter of essential importance, with respect to these sacred things, that there be an agreement of the persons having the above qualifi- cations. If all the able, devoted and pious men, who have diligently studied the subject, concur at least in all the fundamental principles, and if this consent extends over all the successive generations since the founding of the churches, then the authority is at its greatest height. This agreement, or consensus of opinion, is analagous to the agreement of a multitude of credible witnesses to a fact. If a thousand credible wit- nesses agree in their testimony to a fact, the value of their concurrent testi- mony is more than a thousand times the value of the testimony of each. Therefore, as the agreement in religious opinion among competent judges widens its area, the chances of the rectitude of truth increase, and the chances of error diminishes, in a perpetually accelerated ratio. When any system of ecclesiastical government is in an imperfect, but constantly advancing state, the weight of authority increases as the tendency to agree- ment begins to exhibit itself; as the lines of independent thought converge; as rival opinions coalesce under a common banner ; as factions and sects expire ; and as the transmission of erroneous and unverified opinions from one generation to another is interrupted by the recognition of newly-ascer- tained truths. It is by the gradual diminution of points of difierence, and OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 169 by tlie gradual increase of points of agreement, among Baptists, that they acquire the authority which accredits their opinions, and propagates religi- ous truths, and binds them together into one great denomination. Indeed, it may be said that the authority of Baptist church government is binding and trustworthy, in proportion as the points of agreement among them are numerous, uniform and important, and the points of difference few and unimportant. It is mainly this process which among Baptists connects tho present with the past, and creates a unity and continuity of denominational character and feeling. It is the insensible and incessant propagation of opinions, usages and customs, from the old to the young within every church, all built upon the same model, and the adoption, by the growing generation, of the religious truths and tenets of their immediate predeces- sors, which give each church its distinctive attributes, and which enables it to maintain its characteristic peculiarities. The doctrine of authoritative agreement among Baptists applies to funda- mental opinions, without which a man cannot be esteemed a true Christian, nor a church a true church ; it does not apply to speculations upon questions not involving those matters of either faith or practice deemed absolutely essential to the well-being and peace of the churches. In the latter case, the person consulted advises about the facts of a given case, and his opinion is founded on his individual knowledge of the matter in question, and no general agreement can exist. It is only indirectly that the doctrine of agreement applies to opinions on practical and unimportant questions. But when an individual has mastered and thoroughly understands the system of jurisprudence which is sanctioned by the general consent of all the churches, and has combined experience with this knowledge, he is likely to advise well in any question belonging to the church government. Upon these minor question numerous discordant opinions thus arise, and for a time there may be rival factions, each with its own set of opinions. But by degrees even in matters non-essential, some system or body of opinions acquires the ascend- ancy; there is an approach to agreement in all matters of any importance; controversies begin to turn chiefly on subordinate points, and peculiar opinions are no longer handed down by factions led by a succession of leaders and disciples. Certain doctrines cease to predominate in certain churches and localities; they are no longer hereditary or local, but are common to the whole Baptist world. They are diffused by the force of the common law of the churches, by evidence and demonstration acting upon the reason of competent judges— not by force, or by and through the instru- mentality of ecclesiastical legislation, or the influence of councils, confer- ences or conventions. A trustworthy authority is thus at length formed, to which a person, uninformed on the subject, may safely and reasonably defer, satisfied that he adopts those opinions which, so far as existing researches and reflection have gone, are the most deserving of credit. While various causes have conspired to prevent a general agreement and consensus of opinion throughout Christendom respecting church government and the doctrine committed to its keeping, among Baptists the task has not 170 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; been so difficult. Among other denominations they look upon ecclesiastical government as a matter of theoretical speculation. They feel themselves at liberty to set about devising a form of government as best suits their own wit and wisdom, while Baptists feel constrained to take such as they find set up by the apostles. They have never been called upon to speculate upon the question as to which is the best form of church government, but they enjoy the sole distinction of belonging to a system that was ready-made, and handed down to them, and they have had nothing to do but to build upon the foundations laid for them. Not being allowed to form written constitutions and creeds, they had to develop their polity upon scientific principles, and necessarily had to rely much upon the authority of the common law of the gospel to do so. When, however, we advance a step beyond this point, and inquire how far there is a general agreement throughout Christendom, with respect to any particular form of church government and Christianity, and whether all Christians are members of one church, recognizing the same set of doctrines, generated in the same way, we find a state of things wholly different. We perceive a variety of churches, with sundry forms of govern- ment, some composed of all the churches in the world of their own faith and order, some confined to a single country, some common to several countries, but each with its own ecclesiastical superiors and peculiar creed, and each condemning the members of the other churches as heretics, Protestants, schismatics, separatists and dissenters, and sometimes not even recognizing them as Christians. The attempt to give authenticity to religious opinions, by defining the church, and according to it ecclesiastical powers in such a way as to estab- lish a living standard and rule for the right interpretation of Scripture, inde- pendently of the intrinsic grounds of the decisions, never has met with favor among Baptists. Now, in a certain sense, every denomination which pos- sesses a fixed written confession of faith predetermines the most important articles of religious belief, and therefore cannot be said to have a free scope to private judgment. Baptists agree in making the Scriptures the exclusive canon of religious faith ; they admit that their unwritten creed is only entitled to acceptance so far as it is supported by Scripture ; and they do not assume that their church, in its individual or collective capacity, is compe- tent to decide on the infalhble interpretation of the divine records. In this sense, therefore, Baptists admit the right of private judgment. They do not claim for the decrees of any church or council an authority independent of, or extraneous to Scripture. They have a specific belief, however, definite and well understood ; but what others accomplish by ecclesiastical legislation they arrive at indirectly by a consensus of opinion, which binds none except those who first consent to it. There is great difficulty in arriving at the true interpretation of the Scrip- tures, and on account of the intrinsic obscurity of the leading ideas in theo- logy, and of the difficulty of arriving, even Avith the aid of revelation, at dis- tinct and intelligent conclusions on subjects lying without the domain of human knowledge, it would be extremely desirable, for the guidance even OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 171 of Baptists, that a definite authority, in questions of Scripture interpretation, should exist. The attempts to remove error, to enlighten those who dissent from the true faith, to create a trustworthy authority in things spiritual, and to produce a unity of the churches, have been the work of many ages. They have originated in a sense of the evils springing from a diversity of religious opinion, without a common living point of reference deemed infallible, and of the advantages likely to accrue from uniformity of faith and church dis- cipline. By seeking to propagate truth in a matter in which allowances ought peculiarly to be made for differences of opinion, the ministry have multiplied controversies beyond all reasonable limits, so that the most patient student is bewildered in the labyrinth of discussion, and the most conscien- tious inquirer is at a loss to which individual authority he is to bow, unless it be to the church to which he belongs. When, however, a person, either from a firm reliance on the faith and practice of the church in which he has been brought up, or from independent examination, is satisfied of the general truth of the doctrines of any particular church, he will naturally regard with respect the best interpreters who are considered as authorities within that religious communion. At least it is noticed that in all controversies and discussions carried on between members of the same church, the works of the received text-writers and leading ministers of that church will be referred to as common authority and standards of decision. But in the interpreta- tion of a rule of faith the authority and binding influence of the Scriptures must be placed in the first rank, and then the authority of the churches in their customary and continued interpretation, which must be considered as more competent in a denominational capacity, to decide doubtful questions than any of their individual members, and in the last resort must overrule all other inferior judgments whatsoever, for Peter says : Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scripture is of any private interpretation. It is not always he who gives the law only, but likewise they who authori- tatively interpret the law, becomes to us a law-giver, and these interpreta- tions become as binding as the law itself. Human language is inadequate to express clearly the deep meaning of the many passages in God's law, not only in relation to the words, but also in regard to the doctrines couched in the words. And because men do, for the most part, draw the Scriptures to their own sense, rather than follow the true sense of them, there ought to be a standard higher and more certain than that of a private man. In every Baptist church there is a oneness of faith and practice, and whenever a number of persons participate in the same opinions, there is a strong inclina- tion to hold feUbwship and communion together ; and if there be erected among them a true standard of belief they will delight to celebrate in unison the worship of Christ whom they adore ; there is, therefore, no other way of knowing, with any great degree of certainty, what God commands or for- bids but by the interpretation which the denomination puts upon the law of the gospel. As the construction and interpretation of profane statutes is left to the civil courts of the country, whose duty it is made to execute them, so the interpretation of the Scriptures depends on the authority of the sove- 172 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE J reign local churclies. It is not altogether the letter of the Scriptures, but likewise the intention, or meaning of them; that is say, the authentic interpretation of the text in which the true meaning of the law consists, which does not depend upon the judgment of private men. Otherwise, by the ignorance or craftiness of a private interpreter the Scriptures may be made to bear a sense contrary to that contained in the text, by which the interpreter becomes the law-giver. Now, the interpretation of the Scriptures, in matters of either faith or practice, is but the sentence or action of a local church upon such matters as may lawfully come before it, and consists in the application of Scripture rules to the matter then before it, for in any act of ecclesiastical judicature the church does no more than to consider whether it be Scriptural to do or not to do the thing proposed, and the sentence or action of the church is, therefore, the authoritative interpretation of the law in such cases made and provided, is authoritative, not only because it is the church's sentence, but because it is given by the only tribunal having power on earth to make it, which is law for that time, and settles the matter under consideration. In Baptist church jurisprudence, practice precedes theory, and only through the art of authoritative church interpretation can the principles of Scripture interpretation be reached, as Scripture is to be interpreted by itself through the church. Baptist church customs and usages are nothing more than the usual interpretations which in practice have been placed upon the Scriptures, and therefore they serve as laws, from which it follows that if these customs and laAvs have the force of laws by common consent, with much more reason are they to be used as rules in the interpretations of the Scrip- tures. For there is no better rule for explaining obscure and ambiguous frag- ments of Scriptures than the manner in which they have been interpreted by the custom and usage of the churches^ for the reason that what has been re- ceived and observed by universal consent as the authentic interpretation for a long time is useful and just, from which it follows that if any former inter- pretation has been a long time in disuse, it is abolished. As its authority was founded upon a long usage gotten by a constant interpretation, so its dis- use can take it away, and shows that what has ceased to be observed is no longer useful. If any obscure passage of Scripture is explained by an ancient usage of the churches which has fixed the sense of it, and which is confirmed by a constant series of uniform interpretations, the church must adhere to the sense declared by the constant practice, which is the best and only authoritative interpreter of the Scriptures. The church is denominated. The pillar and ground of the truth, and hence is obliged to watch over the interpretation of God's law. It has a right inci- dental to its organization and sovereignty, to restrain those of its members who attempt to pervert, disturb or destroy either its doctrine or government, for the actions of men are governed by their opinions, and their opinions are drawn from their own private interpretation of the Scriptures. This is all that calls the churches to interfere in these matters, and on this footing alone can they intermeddle with the opinions of their members. Any other course OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 173 would destroy the very characteristics of church government, and leave each successive question to be settled by impulse, prejudice and caprice, and in a short time would leave the churches mthout a standard of faith or practice. For in the settlement of every question concerning either faith or practice it is necessary that there be some common judge, to whose sentence both parties to the controversy ought to stand. Where every member is his own inter- preter there is properly no judge at all, and where there is no common judge there is no end to the controversy. But it must not be inferred from these maxims here laid down that the churches are infallible in their interpretations of Scripture. There is noth- ing in the book from which can be inferred the infallibility of the churches, much less any particular church, and least of all the infallibility of any par- ticular interpreter of the Scriptures. There is no Baptist church, how cir- cumspect soever it may be, but may and does err in its interpretation of God's law. But, if, afterwards, in another like case, it finds it more conso- nant to truth, to give a contrary interpretation, the church is obliged to do it. No church's erroneous interpretations, whether in faith or practice be- comes its own law, nor is the church obliged to persist in it, but to discover by constant and prayerful meditation, what is the true intent and meaning of God's word, of which nevertheless the church must be the judge. In Baptist church jurisprudence there is but one sure sign of interpreting the Scriptures exactly and without error, and that is, that no Baptist church, in- cluding the apostolic churches, ever taught or practiced the contrary, as, for instance, the mode of baptism, the sovereignty, independence and equality of the churches. Where in opinions and questions of either faith or practice considered and discussed by all Baptist churches, it so happens that not one of them differ from another, then it may be justly inferred they hiow what they teach, and that the same is true. To this end a system of faith has been agreed upon, to which all Baptist churches have given their assent, and that the church's interpretation of these articles of faith, based upon and taken from the Scripture, is far safer for any man to believe and trust than his own private opinion. iSTow for all practical purposes in the decision of these matters it is not expected that there should be in all things absolute unanimity, but hberty is allowed for private judgment. It makes no distinction between members as to competency, but allows the same weight to the vote of the person most able, and those least able to form a correct judgment upon the question to be decided. The necessity, however, of having recourse to this principle of erecting a standard of faith and practice arises from the nature of ecclesi- astical government, and the expediency of a coercive supreme power which it impUes. Whenever the ultimate decision is vested in a church there is, by the supposition, no ulterior authority which can, in case of difference of opinion, determine who are competent judges and who are not. There is, therefore, no other alternative than to count the members, and to abide by the opinion of the majority. It is the right of the majority reduced to a legal expression. The necessity of decision by a majority in a church, 174 A TREATISE UPOK BAPTIST CHUKCH JURISPEUDENCE ; "whether its power be judicial or administrative, is a defect inherent in the nature of ecclesiastical action. There is, indeed, no infallible security for the right decision of practical questions in ecclesiastical government, as in some other matters. Unfortunately the judgment of the wisest counsellors is very far from infallibihty. But the decision of competent judges is less likely to be erroneous than that of incompetent ones ; and if any means of discrimi- nating between them could exist in Baptist church government, it would undoubtedly be desirable that the decision should be confined to those who are most able to form a sound opinion. But in all Baptist churches the deci- sions are always preceded by joint consultation and debate ; and, therefore, the opinions of the ablest and wisest members, particularly if they are dis- creet and pious, are likely to influence the rest of the church. Hence, al- though each question is decided by the votes of the majority, the votes of the majority are generally determined by the opinions of the minority, wliich gives a practical efl?ect to the rule of authority brought about by the most competent. This is far more in keeping with the principles of the liberty of conscience than to take the consideration of these matters away entirely from the membership and consign them to a separate body of men outside of the church. It is far better to recognize as a rule of the gospel the principle of perfect numerical equahty in the members of the church, and give the ascend- ancy to the majority, which will modify the practical operation of that prin- ciple by the principle of trustworthy authority, and of the moral superiority of the most competent judges. As the acceptance of a certain interpretation of the Scriptures by the mul- titude does not aflTord presumptive evidence of its truth, unless it also be entertained by the competent judges ; so the mere prevalence of an opinion does not prove its soundness. Now that which makes the interpretation of the Scriptures by Baptists more trustworthy than that of any other people lies in the manner of doing it. They have ever observed a scrupulous and a religious fidelity to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures, and have ever held that the divine law is universally clothed in inspired words and conse- crated forms, in which it is not permitted to alter a letter. Their interpreta- tion of the Scriptures is the sign by which we recognize that im written law which arises and grows amongst the churches as naturaUy and necessarily as their language. It is called unwritten law because it arises without the interference of ecclesiastical legislation and becomes a rule by the common consent of all the churches, and it becomes a rule to none except they do voluntarily assent thereto. It thus becomes tried and tested, and retested, before it is adopted. In the province of the local church this law takes the form of compulsion, when assented to, because there is an ecclesiastical power to enforce it ; in its application to other churches in general it takes the form of duty, otherwise one church might impose its ow^n private interpretations upon another. The authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures in the economy of Baptist churches proposes to itself nothing else than to find a oneness of will, faith and practice, in which the indi\ndual will of every mem- ber and the general oneness of will are synthetically united. Hence it has OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 175 never been the custom to call a general council to settle questions as to how a certain doctrine shall be interpreted. Private councils may be called with the consent of factions in a divided church, but they can have no binding authority but what is given them by consent. If it be urged that in the mass of ideas, unwritten interpretations and technical expressions which we have derived from our predecessors, there must be mingled with the truths achieved a great mass of error, which by the traditional power of authority and an ancient possession can obtain an undue influence over us ; to avoid this danger we must desire from time to time that the entire mass of what has been handed down to us should be proved anew, questioned and investigated as to its origin. It is necessary for Baptists and it has ever been their habit to make a periodical revision of the labors of their predecessors in order to separate the ungenuine and the erroneous and to appropriate the truth as an abiding possession to Baptists. This unwritten system of interpreting the Scriptures peculiar to Baptists alone has exercised immutable dominion not only over the present and future of the churches, but the connection must be acknowledged which binds the past with the present and future. If we consider the Baptist denomination as an ecclesiastical unity, and so far, and for this purpose, as the conductor of authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures, we must not therefore con- sider this unity and continuity of the faith as merely existing amongst con- temporary churches. On the contrary this unity proceeds through generations succeeding one another ; it unites the present with the past and the future. This system of ecclesiastical interpretation of the law of the gospel tends to the unaltered duration of these usages ; but it is also the basis of the gradual formation and improvement of the law, and in this respect we must ascribe to it a superior importance over any other system ever devised by man. Now it is quite different with all hierarchical system of church government. This mode of interpreting Holy Scripture is by the decrees of councils, synods and conferences meeting formally and ostensibly for that purpose, and Avhatever is decreed by these bodies and imposed upon the churches needs itself to be interpreted by all the arts and intrigues of disputation. We then have two writings — one Scripture proper, and the other Scripture im- proper. The one contains the wiU of God as expressed by inspired men through the guidance of the Holy Spirit — the other man's idea of what God has actually said or rather ought to have said. It is to the Scripture pri- marily, and afterwards to everything that is certainly and immediately drawn from thence. But if you go beyond this there are so many certain indiscern- ible fallibilities; so many intrigues of fancy in the ecclesiastical legislator, and so much inaptness in those who have not been educated to think and act for themselves in religious matters, that it is ten to one either they do not understand one another, or do not understand the interpretation placed upon the text for them by these extra-ecclesiastical bodies. So long as we go in a straight line to the fountain head, the Scripture, its letter and its intention, we commit no error, or can soon be reproved and corrected if we do, but if we allow some one claiming authority to step in between us and the law and 176 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; place an interpretation upon it for us, we at once double the difficulty, and lose sight of the law. For interpretations upon Scripture ought to be few, and they ought not to be multij^lied Avithout apparent necessity, and he that makes more than Christ intended, or puts false ones upon the law, lays a snare for his own foot. A law drawn from a law must be evidently and apparently in the bowels of it before it can be drawn out, or else it must not be obtruded as the sentence and intendment of the lawgiver. The influence of authority in matters of faith and practice thus brought about does not imply that numerous persons have examined the question upon its own merits, and have founded their conclusions upon an independent investiga- tion of the evidence. In other systems opinions may be held by a large body of Christians, but they may have all mechanically followed the same blind guide ; so that their number has, in fact, no weight, and they are no more entitled to be reckoned as independent voices, than the succession of com- pilers who transcribe an historical error are to be reckoned as independent witnesses. Men are often deceived by false interpretations of the Bible, but never by the Bible itself. A religious people thus governed are willing to acknowledge that the authority which represents the denomination has far more information and wisdom in it than any of the churches or the members thereof ; and that it is the duty as well as the right of that authority, to guide each church and each member. These ideas take root and spread in proportion as ecclesiasti- cal conditions become more equal and the whole Baptist family more alike ; they are produced by equality, and in turn they hasten the progress of equality. Baptists would rise up in rebellion if it were attempted to insti- tute a formal government, with one man, or several at its head to rule the denomination, but they hold that this unseen but felt authority ought per- petually to exist and exert itself to keep pure the doctrine and practice of the churches. The unity and omnipotence of the supreme authority of the whole denomination, and the uniformity of its ethical rules, constitute the principal characteristics of Baptist church government. In other systems there are synods, conferences and councils, invested with ecclesiastical powers to hold the denominations together, while amongst Baptists the idea of inherent power to govern the churches, or the denomination, residing in such tribunals is obliterated, and, indeed, never had a lodgment in their minds ; but, nevertheless, the idea of the authority of the denomination at large rises to fill its place. Baptists have ever challenged the right of these uninsti- tuted governments to rule the churches of Christ, and are constantly disput- ing as to the proper hands in which this supremacy is to be vested, but they readily agree upon the duties and rights of that supremacy. Pedo-Baptists cannot understand how so great a denomination can be governed without a formally instituted governmental agency to do the work. They say that it is a machine without machinery — a government without governors. But, nevertheless, it is a government. It originates in no caprice of the human intellect, but it is a necessary condition of the apostolic form of church polity, and has the stamp of divinity upon it. OR, THE COMMO]^- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 177 The tendency, then, in such a system of church polity is to destroy all originality, to crush every tendency to change, so that when variability and originality does become the prime necessity for progress in the flexible laws of the churches fixed usage and custom stands a most powerful and danger- ous enemy. See how long it took to get the whole Baptist world to consent to the establishment of church councils, associations and conventions ! A departure from the old fixed way of thinking about, or doing even the sim- plest things in church polity had its awful penalty, either in shocked denom- inational opinion which condemned the departure, or in some indescribable veneration for the ancient landmarks. Every Baptist knows how every step in the development of the various enterprises of Baptist churches has been combated ; and even to-day, how much courage it requires on the part of " oracles not well inspired " to advance a new idea in doctrine or polity, or to propose any measure not consistent with common usage and custom. The conservatism of the whole Baptist denomination is immediately excited, and often the most wholesome truths, when properly understood, can estabhsh themselves only after bitter conflict with fixed manner of thought. And if this be so in this enlightened age, how much more powerful it must have been in times of the great antiquity of the churches when men did not under- stand Baptist principles as well as they do now. And yet Baptists must remember that in time all these tilings will become antiquities, and hence we should beware lest we make haste too rapidly, and all the glorious land- marks of Christ's churches become demolished for want of defenders to pre- serve them. Once Baptist church government is subjected to the ordeal of innovation, it can never be withdrawn ; it can never again be clothed vdth. the sanctity of the law of the gospel ; or fenced by consecration ; it will remain open to free choice, and exposed to profane deliberation. Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath made us free, and he not again entangled with the yoke of bondage. Ecclesiastical government, in its truest sense, applied to a free church, must act out denominational opinion long since established and recognized, and not such opinions as we may have at the present time, growing out of some heated controversy, nor such as we may have five years hence. To do this, two things are necessary : it must know public denominational opinion, and, secondly, its action must be the regular action of the churches, not an irregu- lar series of accidental impulses. This consensus of opinion, however, can be ascertained by and through the medium of our associational, conven- tional and other meetings only. This may be done through the messengers coming up fresh from the various churches to these meetings, who are often instructed by their churches to voice the opinions entertained by them re- specting matters of grave interest. Otherwise, general, momentary opinion, even rumor, will rule instead of true, settled, denominational opinion. These messengers or quasi representatives from the churches must truly obey this general public opinion theretofore established, not momentary impulse, excite- ment, spite or fanaticism — all of which may seize and have seized the masses, because they seize upon the individual messengers composing them. The 12 178 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; messengers composing these Baptist bodies, standing at a distance, being separated from the masses, in many cases feel the necessity of calm reflec- tion, and opposition to the sweeping current of excitement. All unmedi- tated action on the part of Baptist associations or conventions, met together to formulate or carry out public opinion, is dangerous, because it is power, and unrestricted power, whether it be mental or moral, is hazardous and dangerous. It is a very remarkable fact that Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodists, Presbyterians and all other religionists adhering to the imperial system of church government are striving with all their might to destroy the local independence of the churches, and to transfer the administration from all points of the circumference to the centre; whereas the Baptists are en- deavoring to retain this administration within its ancient boundaries — the local churches. The Baptists have ever been a plain people — never divided by any orders, classes or privileges ; they have never known what it is to be priest-ridden ; they have never been deprived of the right of ruling them- selves, and consequently have never known the necessity of erecting a supreme power to manage their affairs. In those other systems the authority of their governments has not only spread throughout the sphere of all exist- ing powers, till that sphere can no longer contain it, but it goes further, and invades the domain reserved to private conscience. Amongst Baptists de- nominational authority contents itself with managing and superintending whatever directly and ostensibly concerned the denominational honor and unity ; but in all other respects the churches and members were left to work out their own free will. But they must not forget that there is a point at which the errors and disorders of churches and individual members often involve the welfare of the whole denomination, and that to prevent the ruin of churches and individuals must sometimes become a matter of denomina- tional importance. Hence it must be admitted that the whole denomination has, and ought to have a quasi-governmental oversight as to churches and individuals, and it gains a firmer footing every day about, above and around all the churches to advise, to assist and to admonish, but never to coerce them. A principle of Baptist inter-church authority must always exist in our peculiar system of polity. In the moral and intellectual world its place is variable, but in Baptist church government a certain and invariable place it has. The independence of individual minds may be greater, or it may be less, but unlimited and unbounded it cannot be. The question then is, not to know whether any ecclesiastical authority outside of the churches exists, but simply where it resides and by what standard it is to be measured. In other systems of polity w^here there are different orders of the ministry and every- thing is unequal, there are some individuals wielding the power of superior intelligence, while the multitude are unenlightened. In these systems men are, therefore, naturally induced to shape their opinions by the standard of their church dignitaries, whilst they are averse to recognize the superior opinions of the whole denomination. The contrary takes place in Baptist church government. The nearer the membership are drawn to a common OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 179 level, the less prone does each member become to place implicit faith in a certain man or a certain class of men. But his readiness to believe in and to be guided by the whole denomination increases, and the consensus of the opinion of the whole denomination becomes the mistress of all the churches. Not only is the denominational opinion the only guide which private judg- ment retains amongst Baptists, but amongst such a people it possesses a power infinitely beyond what it has elsewhere. In this state of equality Baptists have not much faith in one another, by reason of their common resemblance ; but tliis resemblance gives them almost unbounded confidence in the judg- ment of the whole denomination ; for it is not probable, as they are all en- dowed with equal means of judging, but that the greater truth should go with the greater number. When the member of a Baptist church compares himself individually with all those about him, he feels with pride that he is the equal of any one of them ; but when he comes to survey the totality of about four million Baptists in the United States, and places himself in con- trast with so huge and intelligent a body, he is instantly overwhelmed by a sense of his own insignificance and weakness. The same equality which renders him independent of each of his brethren, taken severally, exposes him alone and unprotected to the influence of the greater number. Baptists have, therefore, in this free system of church polity, a singular power and authority, which other systems cannot conceive of; for it does not force men to adopt certain religious opinions, but it enforces them when once adopted, and infuses them into the intellect and heart by a sort of pressure of the minds and hearts of all the whole Baptist family upon the conscience and reason of each. AVhenever a Baptist is honored by being elected a messenger to represent his church in any denominational meeting of any kind whatever, he is de- puted to serve not only his individual church, but to serve the whole denomi- nation. The individual messenger should have no selfish interests, but is expected to judge of general measures with reference to the denominational welfare, according to the light which he might receive then and there. The contrary should always be considered as a betrayal of the high trust com - mitted to his hands. If there be factional divisions, in which even his own church is interested, he should rise above them. If factional feuds and sel- fish interests were sufiered to be woven into a system of church polity, and to become a basis of denominational ethics, ruinous indeed would become the consequences. No set of churches, meeting together for associational or conventional purposes through their accredited messengers, can hope to pre- serve the doctrine pure unless they keep a guard over those deputed to act for them in these bodies. If Baptist church jurisprudence is ever to deserve the name of an authoritative science, it must seek to unite the churches by bonds more solid and lasting than those of self-interest ; it must seek to erect a higher standard of authority, and to harmonize the policy of the churches more with the laws of the gospel, and with the true precepts of religion and morals, than with the promptings of interest and expediency. Blinded by self-interest, some Baptists cannot see that any inter-church law does or can 180 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; exist, and if they apprehend its existence, they sometimes do not acknowl- edge its authority nor observe its doctrines. The supposition is that all rightful authority in every church is exercised by the majority of the membership of that church. But should that major- ity depart from the faith of the gospel and go counter to the authoritative opinion of the denomination, what is the duty of the minority under such circumstances ? For the purposes of government the majority must be per- mitted to govern, but it is nothing more than a pretended maxim, that the majority of a church is always right. It is nothing more than an ecclesias- tical fiction to designate a Baptist landmark, beyond which we cannot travel — that is church government by the greatest number. The true theory lies far deeper than in a maxim, such as that the majority is always right — a position a thousand times contradicted by the history of the churches. The liberty and safety of the churches consists, among other things, in the unre- strained right of the minority, of a faction, nay of an individual, to convert, if they can do so by lawful means, the majority ; ecclesiastical safety consists in the fact that the will of those who have the power may be modified by opposition ; for right and truth is never absolutely on one side. We may go farther; the more dictatorial and overwhelming a majority becomes, the more necessary, steady, yet lawful opposition may become, and, in most cases actually does become, lest ecclesiastical government approach to the vortex of Catholicism, Methodism, Presbyterianism or Episcopalianism — that is, governments in which neither the minority nor the majority have any voice. A majority does not always even indicate authoritative public opinion, although it may show momentary general opinion, to which mere rumor belongs. Then again authoritative ecclesiastical opinion depends in a very great measure upon those many extra ecclesiastical, not unecclesiastical, meetings which sometimes take place among Baptists, in which they either unite their scattered means for the obtaining of some common end, social in general, or ecclesiastical in particular ; or express their opinion in definite resolutions upon some important matter before the churches. These meetings may be entirely unofi3cial ; sometimes they are semi-ofiicial, at others they may be conventions of messengers, sent by the churches interested, and yet the whole being the effect of the voluntary action of the churches, not called into existence by any prescribed rules of Scriptural law. These meetings may be for the purpose of awakening an interest in missions, in education or in any other legitimate subject looking to the welfare of the denomination. No denomination can hope for true advancement before it is well acquainted with this important agent in carrying out denominational public opinion. Much latent energy lies dormant in the churches, because of a failure to realize the importance of these free extra-eccleSiastical meetings. In these meetings the denomination frequently acts as such, separate from the churches, for instance, when they consist of members sent for missionary, or, as we have often seen, for educational or social purposes, from the various sister churches. Sometimes, however, unless caution is used, they are greatly THE GOSPEL. 181 abused, and made the seat of factious excitement and hurtful divisions ; but, generally speaking, it is undeniable they are at once the generators of that important agent, which makes the machinery of ecclesiastical government move and work in a denominational spirit, and constitute the means through which the latent energies of the churches are made subservient to the good of the cause, which otherwise could not be utilized. I know there are Baptists who look with suspicion upon these meetings, but if we comprehend under them all those which are composed either of individuals themselves, or messengers from the churches, yet of an extra- ecclesiastical character, we shall see at once that they are of great import- ance in order to direct denominational attention to subjects of magnitude, to test the opinion of the denomination, to inform persons at a distance of the state of denominational opinion respecting certain measures, whether yet depending or adopted ; to resolve upon and adopt resolutions, to encour- age individuals or bodies of Baptists in Scriptural undertakings, requiring the moral support of well-directed and expressed denominational approba- tion striving for the same ends; to disseminate knowledge by way of reports of boards and committees; to form societies for religious, educational or charitable purposes ; to sanction by spontaneous expression of the opinion of the denomination, measures not strictly within the purview of ecclesias- tical government, yet not in gross violation of it, but enforced by necessity ; to agree upon more or less extensive measures of denominational utility, and whatever else their object may be, not unscriptural, and which do not foment strifes and discords to the injury of the churches. It does not seem, however, necessary to dwell upon these meetings particularly with reference to church ethics, except to emphasize their importance and usefulness in the formation of public opinion, if properly used. But there is no other subject connected with Baptist church government so fraught with danger as the use of such meetings if used for selfish ends, so that the churches instead of reaping the benefits from them, they are exposed to all the feverish and withering eflTects of passionate and wild agitation so hurtful to the churches of Christ. Those who are slow to see the utility and Scripturalness of these extra- ecclesiastical meetings in the promulgation of Baptist views and opinions, and who are not acquainted with the practical operations and necessities of free church government are apt to consider all popular meetings of this kind as so many deviations and exceptions from regular church government, and ask tremblingly, -Where is the guarantee against their abuse ? Among many guarantees which might be mentioned, there is one that is paramount above all others, which is, that all such meetings shall not and cannot exercise any ecclesiastical power, or in any way interfere with the independence of the local churches. Otherwise, an absolute guarantee does not exist against their abuse, any more than against the abuse of any other primary principle. Every Baptist ought to keep in mind, that all unnecessary meetings of indi- vidual Baptists either excite and stir uselessly, and, therefore, injuriously, or lessen the interest in such pubhc meetings, which is equally inconvenient, 182 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE , * and very injurious to the true interest of the churches; and that, on the other hand, we ought not to be prevented from taking those measures, which, through pubhc meetings, would produce demonstrations of denominational sentiments, sufficient to arrest errors, or to further the interests of the churches in every legitimate way. If a Baptist, as an individual, attends such a meeting, or is sent as a messenger for a specific end, he must be care- ful not to transgress the lines which we have endeavored to ascertain as the proper limits of denominational movements; in other words, the more avowedly the end of the meeting is one of a selfish character, the more imperative becomes caution against being betrayed into factiousness. What, then, is the duty of a messenger, sent from a church to represent it in these extra-ecclesiastical meetings? In order that the authoritative opin- ion of the church be truly represented, ought he to serve his own opinions, or those of his church ? On what these meetings ought to do, and how they ought to do it, is a question to be answered by the science of church ethics, but, in general, it is his duty to make himself acquainted, to the best of his ability, with the authoritative opinion and wishes of his church, and its wel- fare ; and especially that church to which he belongs, for he stands not for himself alone. If Baptist church government is to be kept pure and stable, his conduct should be influenced by, and reflect the general tamper of the church to which he belongs, and it should strongly influence him. If ques- tions of a factional nature should arise, he should never transgress the proper line between his church and a faction. In fact, the true messenger is in the service of the denomination, he is neither sent for his own ambition, nor to further the interests of a faction. These extra-ecclesiastical meetings should never be turned into debating societies, in which faction is arrayed against faction, party against party. If they do, hurtful divisions are sure to come, which it will take time to heal. Let messengers elevate themselves above all selfish considerations, and put themselves upon the high plane of the good of the whole denomination. He should obey the laws of ethics which pre- vailed throughout the whole denomination, that the greater and wider interest must prevail over the lesser and narrower. The interest of the cause of Christ prevails over that of the denomination ; the denomination over that of a particular church ; that of a church over that of a faction in it, and that of a faction even over that of ourselves individually. It is begging the question to appeal to the consensus of denominational opinion as to what a doctrine or principle of law is, as against that of the individual church ; for the denomination has no ecclesiastical tribunal for making its authoritative interpretations known, or of intervening between the church and its members to nullify the church's interpretation. I do not ignore the fact that some Baptists think they see in the body of inter-church customary or common law, the postulates of an interpretation wider than that of a single church. This may be true, and it cannot be doubted but that such a church ought to be guided by such interpretation ; but we must not forget that these agreements and customs are not the law between the church and its own members, unless the local church recognizes them as OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 183 such. For instance, it is a firmly established principle of Baptist church jurisprudence that each local church is the interpreter, in the last instance, of inter-church law, for all persons subject to its jurisdiction. At the present stage of the science of jurisprudence, a nearer approximation to the truth seems to be attainable from the standpoint of the local church, than from the standpoint of what is known as the general denominational opinion. An appeal to the denomination, if it brings any reply at all, will receive an answer confused, aud many times contradictory and unintelligible. In the far-distant future it may be otherwise, but for the present, and the discern- able future, the local church appears to be the organ for the interpretation, in the last instance, of all questions, whether of faith or practice. Contact between the churches may, and undoubtedly does, harmonize the interpreta- tion ; but it is still the church's interpretation which governs, and the church's power which is the sovereign transformer of these interpretations into laws. But it may be objected, if church sovereignty has this character of seeming infaUibilty, it should be denied to the church altogether. That would mean at once, and from the start, the annihilation of the local church. The church must have the power to make these rulings ; otherwise, it is no church ; it would be but an anarchic society, with no efficacy in it what- ever. Experience teaches that sometimes associations and conventions are quite as ready as any other bodies to assume arbitrary powers, and encroach upon the independence of the churches. A large body of representative Baptists sometimes is abundantly ready to impose, not only its generally narrow views of its interests, but its abstract opinions, as laws, binding upon the churches. The present social influences of our people tend so strongly to make the power of persons acting in masses, the only substantial power of Christianity, that there never was more necessity for surrounding our churches with the most powerful defences, in order to maintain their freedom and independence, which are the only source of their real progress and purity, and of most of the qualities which make Baptists a distinctive and a peculiar people. All tendency on the part of these bodies to stretch their interference and authority, and assume a power over the churches, should be regarded with unremitting jealousy. This caution in Baptist church gov- ernment is more important than in any other form of ecclesiastical society ; because where denominational opinion is so powerful a thing, which is opposed by the sovereign local church, it does not, as in most other things, find some other rival power to which it can appeal for relief. And then it must be remembered that in this day and generation there is a tendency for power and influence to drift away from the churches by the establishment of numberless societies, leagues and unions, and by this means the importance, power and influence of the churches are being minimized and weakened, and these other bodies magnified and exaggerated. The tendency is that the churches must do nothing, while these extra-ecclesiastical bodies are called upon to do everything. Let Baptists beware lest they run upon unseen breakers, before they are cognizant of the danger. The wise pilot 184 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJRCH JURISPRUDENCE; knows wliere the breakers are not, rather than where they are. To keep in the known channel is safer than to venture out upon unknown seas. As soon as we are out of the province of ecclesiastical government, how- ever, it is most important to assert the principle of individual independence in matters of religious opinion, taste and judgment, as against the principle of numerical preponderance, provided the individual does not make use of this liberty to advocate heresies to the destruction of the unity of the faith as taught by the denomination. Whether an individual exercises this inde- pendence by forming his own conclusions, or choosing his own guides, it is equally desirable that the majority should not force their opinion upon him against his incHnation, by the sanction of the popular censure. But so far as a change of the poUty of the churches is concerned, it does not admit of discussion. To admit the right to discuss the propriety of change at once breaks down the yoke of fixed legahty. The idea of the two is inconsistent. As far as it goes, the mere putting up of a subject to discussion, with the object of being guided by that discussion is a clear admission that that sub- ject is in no degree settled by established rule, and that men are free to choose in it. It is an admission, too, that there is no sacred authority — no one transcendent and divinely appointed polity which in that matter we are bound to follow. And if so sacred and solemn a thing as a change in, apos- tolic church government be once admitted to discussion, ere long the habit of discussion comes to be established, the sacred charm of that government would be dissolved. Once so far forget ourselves as to effectually submit a divine subject to that ordeal, and you can never withdraw it again ; you can never again cloth it with sacredness, or fence it by consecration ; it remains forever open to free choice, and exposed to profane deliberation. But how do the Scriptures themselves become authoritatively the law-book of the churches ? Their divine verity is not doubted. Their divine inspira- tion is conceded. The efficacy of the teaching of them is acloiowledged. But how are they made canonical rules and how do they become of binding authority upon the churches ? Now we have endeavored to show that the only authoritative interpretation of the Scriptures safe to follow, where there is a diversity of sentiment, is the sense the usage of the denomination and our wise men put upon the law of the gospel ; that is to say, that which reason and common sense makes choice of among opposite sentiments. And Baptists reckon only those to be trustworthy interpretations whose disposi- tions are such, that it cannot be said, that a sense different from them would be contrary to the principles of the Scriptures ; because God has engravened them upon our cousciences, and has made them so inseparable from our enlightened and Christianized reason, that it alone is sufficient for under- standing them, and that even those persons who are ignorant of the art, the criticism of the di\dne law, know these ecclesiastical rules and make laws of them to themselves. It is erroneous to suppose that any council or synod in the early history of the churches fixed the canon of the Scriptures, or in any way contributed to it by their deliberations and acts. This is a pure fiction v/hich has found favor with some because it seemed to countenance their OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 185 theory, tliat we have received the canon of Scripture from the church. We cannot prove the authenticity of the Scriptures by the churches, for it is by the same Scriptures that we first seek to prove the establishment of the churches. To contend thus would be reasoning in a circle. The churches only add their testimony to that of individuals in all ages that they were written by the persons to whom they have been ascribed. Therefore none can infalhbly know that the Scripture we use is the reve- lation of God, but from all the trustworthy evidences we are able to gather upon the subject we verily believe it. Faith in a supernatural law does not consist in a knowledge of its source, but principally in a belief that it is from God— a gift which he freely gives to whom he pleases. We do not know naturally, but we verily believe that the Old and New Testaments, as we have them now, are the true record of those things which were done and said by the prophets and apostles. Although these books were written by different men, yet it is manifest that the writers were all inspired with one and the same spirit, and that they all conspire to one and the same end, which is to furnish the churches authoritative rules, both in rehgion and ecclesiastical pohty. While there are innumerable marks of divine authen- ticity about these sacred writings, yet when we come to the question as to how we know that the Scriptures are the Avord of God, we know it by faith and take it upon trust. If by knowledge we understand that we must infallibly and naturally know it, as coming from our senses, it cannot be said that we know it, because it is that kind of a truth that does not proceed from the natural conceptions engendered by our senses. The great apostle defines faith to be the evidence of things not seen ; that is to say, not otherwise evi- dent, but by faith. For whatever is evident by natural reason is not called faith, for we are then said not to believe, but to know those things that are evident. From the standpoint of church polity for all practical purposes each church has the power to receive and pass upon the authenticity and genuineness of these laws in the same sense that a profane judge is called upon to know the source and authority of the laws he is empowered to ad- minister. While the church does not estabhsh its canonicity, to judge of the authenticity of the Bible belongs to church sovereignty, for if it is the law- book of the church, she must be permitted to judge of its verity. There is a mde difference between Baptists and other denominations as to the jurisdiction of ecclesiastical councils in passing upon the canon of the Scripture. The Bible comes down to us as a book divine. But how do we know it is divine ? We must give a reasonable account of the formation of the canon of the Scripture. Catholics and Episcopalians depend upon councils, which convened in the early ages of the Christian era, for the estab- lishment of the canon of the Scriptures. Indeed, I have a little book before me entitled: What is the Church? (D. Appleton & Co., New York, 1887) written by an English churchman, in which (page 12) it is contended, " That the first council of Nice established against the Arians that Christ was per- fect God ; " " The Council of Constantinople established that Christ was per- fect man as well as that the Holy Ghost was God ; " " The council of Ephe- 186 BUS established against the Nestorians the Unity of the person of our blessed Lord ; " and that " The council of Chalcedon established the twofold nature of our Lord." Whereas, in deed and in truth, the canon of the Scriptures was not, and could not be settled by any council. As for those other mat- ters which it is claimed were settled by the several councils mentioned, if the Scriptures themselves do not establish them, it is hard to tell how a set of men could have done so. The books of the New Testament were known to be genuine writings of the apostles and evangelists in the same way and manner that the works of any other writers are known to be theirs — that is, on the ground of a unanimous, or generally concurring testimony of con- temporary and succeeding writers, both friends and enemies. The churches did not create the canon of the Scriptures by the decree of any council, though the churches recognized the fact that a certain body of writings knov/n as the Scriptures had, imder the Providential guidance, grown into canonical authority. Hence we are led to believe in the authenticity of the Scriptures and that they are genuine, because they were esteemed authentic by those who lived closest to the times when they were first promulgated. It would be exceed- ingly unreasonable to suppose that in the early ages of Christianity there was no care exercised in ascertaining the true authors and genuine character of these writings. By those primitive Christians this law was universally re- ceived without opposition or contradiction, and by the churches preserved and handed down from generation to generation, and by them read and appealed to in all their reUgious controversies, and held in great veneration, and accepted by the churches all over the world as the authoritative rule of their faith and practice. AVe can see that it is very easy as to how each church can adopt the Bible as its law book, and how it can be made its rule of action by mutual covenant, but there must be a reasonable and sufficient certainty of the author and the authority of him who promulgated it, for nothing is law where the legislator is not known. God may command and inspire men, as in the olden times, in a supernatural way to write and deliver laws to men, because it is of the essence of law that he who is to be bound thereby, that he be assured of the authority of him who declares it. The question then is, how can we, without supernatural revelation to us, be assured individually of the authenticity of the law of the gospel ? not how we can be bound to obey it, that is not so difficult. By our covenants we undertake to obey it, but not bound thereby to believe it, for our belief is not subject to commands, but it is the gift of God. To obey is to do or not to do, as one is obliged, and depends upon the will, but to believe depends on the guidance of our hearts that are in the hands of God. Laws only re- quire obedience, belief requires preachers, teachers and arguments drawn from reason or from something already known or believed. But it must be understood that before we can have faith in anything there must be some evidence upon which to base our belief, for where there is no reason for our belief, there is no reason why we should believe. In the first place we say that there is an unbroken chain of evidence of contemporary OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 187 writers, extending to the present time, many of whom were not compelled as we are to take these sacred matters upon trust, but who enjoyed every oppor- tunity of knowing and believing the truth, and whose character for veracity is unimpeached and unimpeachable. These witnesses were not inspired men, but early disciples whom the Lord doubtless raised up as witnesses to the authenticity of the Scriptures, whose testimony they have left as a blessed legacy to those who succeeded them. They received these writings knowing where they came from, and took it as a power or germ of a new moral life as coming from God the Father. Possibly none of these contemporary writers saw any of the apostles pen these Scriptures but they lived so close to the apostoHc age that they were morally certain that they wrote them. The Lord might have made the proofs of the verity of the Scriptures more overpowering than the evidence of mathematics itself. The Lord uttered forth the precepts of the old law in thunder tones from Mount Sinai ; so might he have uttered this law in unmistakable tones, or wrote them in flam- ing letters of fire upon the sky for a scroll. But he designedly left some- thing to our creduhty, as he designed our present state to be imperfect and probationary, in which our faith and faculties should be called forth by the powerful stimulus of necessity. We were not placed in the noontide light as full-grown men in Christ Jesus. Under such conditions faith would cease to be a virtue in a world so constituted ; obedience to the law of the gospel would have become a servile compulsion, and the early Christians automa- tons. It is a blessed thought to know that we have light enough to direct us, if we are faithful to improve it. There are two senses wherein writings may be said to be canonical, for canon signifies a rule, and a rule is a precept by which a man is guided and directed in any action whatever. Such precepts, though given by a teacher to his disciple, or a counselor to his friend, without power to compel him to observe them, are nevertheless canons, because they are rules; but when they are given by one whom he that receives them is bound to obey, then such canons are not only rules, but they are, in the true sense, laws. The Scriptures being rules of faith and practice, the question is as to how they are made laws proper. In order, therefore, to understand how these precepts become ecclesiastical laws, and of binding force in all Baptist churches, it is necessary to make a distinction between the divine precepts of religion as revealed in the Scriptures, and the laws of ecclesiastical polity. The first is of divine origin, and hence immutable ; the latter is arbitrary, and takes in all the rules of manners and practice, and relates to the external part of divine worship and to church discipline. In order that there be an organic tribunal to disclose what laws are proper to be observed, and to enforce an observance of them, the church was founded by Christ, to which he commit- ted the exclusive oversight of all matters, whether of religion or polity. The church, as founded by Christ, is an assemblage of baptized believers, professing the Christian religion, united in the person of one sovereign, under a covenant to obey God's law. When such a covenant is entered into whereby a church is constituted, whatever has been agreed upon in their 188 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUPwISPEUDENCE ; covenants stands in the place of laws to those who made them, as parties to a contract make a law between themselves as to matters therein agreed upon, which a court will enforce in all faithfulness. Thus by this organic union there is erected a judiciary, so to speak, to declare what shall be taken as law and to compel the observance of the same. The universal authority of the Scriptures consists in the relation which they have to the order of the churches, of which they are the canonical rules. But there is this difference between the authority of Scripture rules proper, and the common or customary laws of the churches, that, the laws of the Scriptures being essentially fundamental, they are immutable and unchangeable ; and that their authority is always the same, at all times, and in all places. But the customary laws being indifferent to these foundations of the order of the churches, so that there is not scarcely any one of them which may not be altered, or abolished, without overturning the said founda- tions. The justice of these latter kind of laws consists in the particular advantage that is found by enacting them, according as the times and places may require and each church may see proper. But speaking generally the universal authority of all ecclesiastical laws consists in the divine appoint- ment, which commands all men to obey them. But as there is a difference between the intrinsic authority of the laws of the Scriptures and the cus- tomary laws, so likewise their authority is distinguished in a manner suited to the difference of their authority. The fundamental laws of the Scrip- tures being truth itself, they have a natural and a divine authority over the churches, which is given us for no other end but that we may discern the truth, and may submit to it. But because all Christians have not always their minds clear enough for discerning this truth, or their hearts upright enough for obeying it, ecclesiastical polity gives to these laws another juris- diction over them, by the authority of the ecclesiastical powers that oblige men to obey them by reason of their covenants so to do. But the authority of the indifferent laws consists purely in the disciplinary force which they derive from the power of those who have a right to make these voluntary rules, and in the appointment of Christ, who commands obedience to be paid to them. The authority of those learned in the faith and practice of the churches, in matters ecclesiastical, no body disputes ; the same should be the case with the text writer who has penetrated the laws of the gospel. To obtain a clear notion of the relation of one church to another, and of one member to another, that the problems which daily rise in practice may be scientifi- cally solved, is the aim of every lover of the churches. This work is evi- dently beyond the capacity of the great majority of our members. It is well, then, to erect a standard of authority for the solution of these ques- tions, learned text writers if you please, devoted to the solution of these dif- ficult problems, who have studied them and taken upon themselves the task of discovering the true law, and the proper thing to be done under that law, to formulate rules of action, and to interpret them when necessary, by throwing light upon such obscure points as may arise in the minds of those OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 189 wlio liave to follow them. If the great majority of our membership are too often incompetent to discover the proper principles of their actions in these difficult pi'oblems, it but the more forcibly demonstrates the necessity and utility of such a standard of authority, and the propriety of following it. Not only have they sometimes great trouble in discerning nicely the true moral principles that should guide them, but they often have small inclina- tion to follow them, unless they are laid under some disciplinary restraint, the application whereof never fails to degrade the dignity of the churches, and to lower the standard of morality. It may be said, indeed, that the constitution of a central, definite, gen- erally recognizable, and indisputable, ecclesiastical authority among all Baptist churches is the last and greatest triumph of Baptist church govern- ment. And all this has been achieved under the blessings of God, without ecclesiastical legislation. The history of Baptist church jurisprudence is that of the evolution and growth of customary rules out of the law of the gospel developed by the innate genius of our people, and of the conscious modification or extension of those rules by a series of tentative ecclesiastical authorities, operating from without the local churches. A final reconcilia- tion and balance between the rival influences is achieved so soon as a recog- nizable authority exists, which is in perfect harmony with the Scriptures, and the tendencies and aspirations of the denominational life. Every improvement that is introduced into the rules of Baptist church juris- prudence ; every attempt that is made to promote uniformity, certainty and harmony ; every effort that is made in arriving at a oneness of will, faith and practice, and of interpretative method on the part of the members of different churches ; all point to the gradual elaboration among our people of what may be properly called a supreme ecclesiastical authority, which must be acknowledged before this form of poKty can attain to the dignity of a government. Baptists should beware, however, lest this authority of the future take the form of a bishop or pope of an universal church, sup- ported by that kind of force which will destroy the independence of the churches of Christ. Unless Baptists be on their guard as to what form this authority will take, it may be impossible for us, in this generation, so much as to guess ; just as the Catholics, Presbyterians and Methodists had no materials from which to construct a notion of their present unscriptural sys- tems of church government, as we see them now in operation. He whose error proceeds from the authority of a teacher or an interpreter of the Scrip- tures publicly authorized, such as a professor in our theological seminaries, or that of a pastor, is a hundredfold more dangerous than he whose error proceeds from the voluntary pursuit of his own reasoning. For what is taught by one who teaches by public authority, the church is supposed to teach, and has a resemblance to law, tiU the same authority controls or overrules it. It is necessary to give this general idea of ecclesiastical authority which prevails, and must prevail, over all the churches of Christ, and which binds them together in the order of independent sovereignties. For siuce it is by 190 A TREATISE UP02T BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; these ties that God engages the churches to all the different duties, and that he has put into each engagement the foundations of the duties which depend on it, it is in these sources that we ought to find the principles and the spirit of the laws of the gospel, in order that the churches might be one in will, faith and practice. Every Baptist being a member of a local church, every one ought to discharge in it his duties and his functions, according to the demands of this universal law of the gospel. That every particular Baptist being linked to this body of the denomination of which be is a member, he ought to undertake nothing that may disturb the order of it. And this implies the engagement of submission and obedience to that general author- ity which God has established for maintaining this order. And when this divine authority links churches together that are animated by the spirit of the gospel of Christ, there is formed immediately between them a union of fellowship proportioned to the reciprocal duties of the obligations which they are under one to another. And if each of them finds in the other qualities proper to unite them more closely together, their union becomes permanent and perpetual. This ecclesiastical union has two essential char- acters : one, that they ought to be reciprocal ; and the other, that they ought to be free. They are reciprocal, because they cannot be formed under our polity, but by the mutual fellowship of the churches ; and they are free, because one church is not obliged to tie itself to those churches not of its own faith and order, and have not the requisite qualities that are proper to form this voluntary union. The wider the influence of the usages and customs of the churches, the wider will be the influence of the laws : that is, the greater the number of people who wdll contribute to the formation of what we here term denomina- tional opinion, the stronger will be the authority of the government of the churches. In every system of church government where the institutions are moulded on the democratic or popular model, the standard of both laws and usages -^ill be elevated. In Baptist church government the usages and cus- toms have necessarily a more extensive influence than in any other form of church government. Denominational opinion, therefore, has a more direct influence upon the execution as well as upon the formation of the laws of our churches. In all other systems the laws are devised by the few. The opin- ions of the many and the few are thus placed in an antagonistic relation to each other. In Baptist churches and institutions the spirit of obedience is still stronger than elsewhere, as is shown by the fact that there is no formal ecclesiastical government, outside of the churches, erected to keep them in forcible subjection. But, as a general rule, the laws, customs and usages of the churches are somewhat in advance of denominational opinion. The wider the sphere of their influence, therefore, the more powerfully will they act upon the manners and customs, and the manners and customs will be rendered more and more auxiliary to the execution of the laws of the churches. Here, then, also, what is termed the denominational opinion is obliged to take a direction favorable to the common good, and unfavorable to the selfish views of individuals. In this way the opinion of all is brought OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 191 to bear upon each ; and hence it is that in a democratic system of church government, where the government appears to be wanting in ecclesiastical authority, and individuals to possess unbounded freedom, what is termed denominational opinion is armed with so much power, inspires so general a respect for the laws and so much terror on the infraction of them. Taking this view of ecclesiastical government, I am constrained to believe, and I am equally certain that the Scriptures teach, that there is a secret gov- ernment of God over his churches in the whole universe. Christ said that the gates of hell should not prevail against his churches, which means that he will uphold and preserve them by his almighty power. This he does by virtue of the ecclesiastical authority that he bestows upon his churches. But we ought to be sensible, that it has a foundation which is much more essen- tial, and much more solid, which is the providence of God over his true churches, and that order in which he preserves his people in all times, and in all places, by his almighty power and infinite wisdom. There need be no bishop, cardinal or pope to rule over these churches, for Christ alone is the supreme ruler. For it is always the almighty providence of God that dis- poses of that chain and series of events wliich have guided the churches through all their trials and tribulations. Thus, it is always he who moulds them after the models of the primitive churches ; it is from him alone that they derive all the power and authority they have ; and it is the ministry of the laws of the gospel that is committed to them. It is for the preserving of the truth and the order of his gospel on earth that he gives to his churches the right to administer his ordinances, and to make the laws and regulations that are necessary for the good of the whole denomination, according to dif- ferent times and places ; and the power of instituting such discipline as will keep his churches pure. It is to settle and confirm all these uses of the authority of the churches that God commands aU members to be subject to them. This is the law of the gospel converted into the ecclesiastical law of the churches, and all executive power naturaUy belongs to each local church in its fuUest extent, and it is the church's province to have them put in execu- tion. There is embraced in every law that which enables some proper au- thority to command, to judge, and to discipline for disobedience, for it would be futile to say, do this, or do that, unless there be a power in that tribunal that commands, to judge whether the thing commanded be performed, and likewise some authority to enjoin obedience. Hence there must be a law- giver, an inferior subject, a command and a power in the law-giver, result- ing from some organic relation between the subject and himself, to enforce the command. This blending of religion with ecclesiastical polity, and the commitment of both to the administration of the same church, constitutes one of the most beautiful features of church jurisprudence. It is this which, in the temporal order of church polity, generates and sets the church in mo- tion, and gives to it all the power it has. From which it follows, that seeing religion and church polity have only the same principle of di\ane order, they do agree together and support one another mutually in such a way that those 192 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; belonging to tlie churcli may be able to pay punctual and faithful obedience both to the one and to the other ; and that the same members who are em- ployed in the ministry of the one, and the administration of the other may do so according to the spirit and the canons which reconcile them together. According to these principles Baptists acknowledge no other system of eccle- siastic law except the Scriptures, acknowledged to be such by the churches, supplemented by such interpretations as have been established either by the general consent of the membership, or by an insensible usage which gives them the force and authority of laws. For if every church should be obliged to take for God's law whatever extravagant interpretations private men, under pretense of authority, should obtrude upon them, it were impossible that any divine law should be kept in its purity, and the polity of Christ's churches be kept within the bounds marked by the letter and spirit of that law. There are two properties inseparable from the Baptist form of church government ; the one a capacity to receive impressions from well-authentic denominational public opinion, the other a power of reacting upon the churches. There is no contradiction between the two things nor any inter- ference the one with the other. On the contrary, the last is the natural con- sequence of the first The use of this opinion is to inspire the churches with confidence, fortitude and resolution, whenever denominational afiairs are well conducted ; and to impress it with distrust and a want of confidence, when- ever the contrary is the case. These two forces act in different directions, and yet both tend to the same result, thus causing the leaders of denomina- tional affairs to exercise a more prudent, and therefore a more effective influ- ence til an they could otherwise do. This democratic form of government will then possess the two properties just mentioned, in a greater perfection, than any other form of church government. It possesses the capacity of receiving impressions from without, because it is the creature of the public mil ; it has the power of reacting upon the churches, not only because it is powerfully supported by this denominational public opinion, but because the disturbances which will occur can never in the nature of things be more than local. Free ecclesiastical government, such as Baptists enjoy, introduces heart-burnings . enough sometimes, but these only constitute a state of disci- pline, by which men are rendered more wise, more prudent and more just than they otherwise would be. A vast field is left open to individual liberty, so that the mind, instead of being deprived of its elasticity and vigor in the free interpretation of God's word, is incessantly braced to fresh exertions, in order to turn all church difficulties to the best account. Thus we have endeavored to lay down some of the principles of trust- worthy authority in the formation of religious opinions. The subject is one of practical importance in Baptist church jurisprudence from the fact that Baptists have no legislative tribunal to embody the principles of religion and church polity into a written system as others have. And inasmuch as a resort must be made somewhere for a system of laws in all matters where the Scriptures do not go into detail, an attempt has been made to determine the marks by which guides in matters of opinion may be recognized, to ascer- OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 193 tain the legitimate province of authority, and to discover the conditions most conducive to its beneficial influence. It is very evident from the study of these principles, that one of the main elements of Baptist church govern- ment is faith, and well-placed confidence. A disposition to confide, to have faith, combined with a knowledge how to choose competent guides, and with a careful exercise of that choice, is both a mark of a highly spiritualized church, and a means of further religious improvement. On the other hand, a general tendency to distrust, unbelief and suspicion, combined with a blind deference to dishonest, ignorant and unfit guides, is a sure mark of a stag- nant and backward state of Christian development and a hindrance to ulterior progress. Perhaps, however, the prevalence of distrust is more often owing to the want of safe guides than to a popular dislike of the principle of authority. It appears to be a frequent occurrence, in churches not well informed and undeveloped, that men are willing to waive their exercise of the right of private judgment, but place their faith in impostors and mis- leaders, who are candidates for their confidence, but are unworthy of it, who seek to act as their trustees, but are unfit for the trust. That there is a strong inclination to the adoption of the opinions of com- petent judges, when competent judges can be clearly discerned to exist, is plain from the deference which is universally paid to the opinions and authority of the great men of our denomination, many of whom could be mentioned here. If there were a body of authority upon rehgious and eccle- siastical subjects, equally fulfilling the conditions which entitle it to pubHc respect ; if the choice of Baptists was not distracted by a love of religious liberty, freedom of thought and of action upon questions in this department of knowledge, it might be presumed that they would be equally inclined with others to place themselves under that guidance. Every one may, however, within his own sphere, and by his own wisdom and prudence, contribute his share to the accompKshment of this end ; and the denomination may thus approach more and more to a state in which trustworthy opinion and true church government will constantly predominate over theory and speculation, and wisdom will be diffused from various sources, until this peculiar form of government shall become strong enough to prevent and restrain many of the disorders that now unavoidably arise. Under the operation of these influ- ences it will be found that an increased knowledge of these afl^airs which accompanies progressive development is not inconsistent with ecclesiastical tranquillity; that the extension of freedom of religious thought and the glorious doctrine of soul liberty among Baptists does not promote ecclesiasti- cal anarchy, and that the principles of trustworthy authority in church gov- ernment will become stronger than a disposition towards church discord and division. How then can Baptist church jurisprudence become trustworthy in matters of religious opinion ? By an open Bible, a sound ministry, a free church and not least by an untrammeled denominational press conducted by our wisest and ablest editors of which last feature we will speak in another part of this Treatise. 13 194 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JTJKISPETJDENCE ; CHAPTER YII. ECCLESIASTICAL PRECEDENTS AND TRADITIONS; THEIR RELATION TO CHURCH GOVERNMENT. ECCLESIASTICAL jurisprudence proposes to itself nothing else than to find a common will, in which the individual will, and the general will are coherently united. This jurisprudence, in its most general signifi- cation, is the necessary outgrowth, resulting from the nature of the churches which it is to govern. The progressive development of the churches of Christ have been that, amidst such a diversity of customs and usages, they were not solely conducted by, and left to, the caprice of fancy. The history of this unique kind of law is only the consequences of first principles, in whicK every particular part is connected with another, as sequence and con- sequence — all being linked together in a stable and uniform system of rules. All other systems, even those of long standing, are but a chaos of incoherent and arbitrary notions and precedents, brought in from various sources, from the ancient schools, from the fathers, the canons, the casuistical theologians, the Jews and the Romans, as well as from the practice and sentiments of every secular government extant in the world, from which they could draw analogies. Hence symmetry and stability are not characteristic of these sys- tems. Whereas Baptists are advancing in their development, getting nearer to the truths of the Scriptures. They move slowly, it is true, but there is nothing of which they ought to be so convinced as the slowness of true progress. In all the various forms of church government now extant in the world, there are two tendencies which equally lead to error. The one exaggerates diversity of opinion, the other exaggerates unity and centralization. The latter has to fear the shoals of a centralized church despotism, the former is equally exposed to anarchy. Immobility is the character of the one, pro- gressive development that of the other. The new Testament form of church government is that of freedom and independence, a government in which Christ is sole king and law-maker, and each member a free citizen, having a voice in the administration of the laws of the kingdom. This insures diversity of opinion, arising from a difierence of individuality, and at the same time it cannot be overlooked that it begets a species of liberty, often arising from man's ungovernable nature. Hence it becomes important that we should inquire what efiect ecclesiasti- cal precedents and traditiong have in the formation of Baptist church juris- prudence. This inquiry becomes the more important, because it is by pre- cedents and traditions alone that the polity of the churches can be marred, OS, THE COMMOI^" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 195 and error engrafted upon the system. In the economy of those churches that feel at liberty to resort to ecclesiastical legislation to effect changes, all that is necessary is to introduce such written rules as are necessary to effect the object sought. But, in the Bible form of church government changes, if effected at all, must grow up gradually, and all the churches must by common consent adopt them, and, until all churches do agree to their adoption, they do not rise to the dignity of a church custom, and have no place in the body of the law. It has been shown heretofore that not everything done in a sister church is authority for another, and worthy of imitation. Precedents are such decisions as usually arise in churches in a time and state of discord and agitation, and are apt to become contrary one to another. Under such cir- cumstances, we ought not to follow a multitude to do evil. Let us not inquire what is the most usual and customary in churches in a state of tur- moil, but seek to measure our conduct by those rules generated in a state of peace and prosperity. The example of an agitated church is the worst pre- cedent in the world to follow. We should look after those things that may place us in the condition of peace, not those things which agree with the confused voices of an agitated church. All the upheavals in churches are but the deformities of the system, and, instead of serving as precedents to follow, they are but beacon lights erected along the shore to warn of danger. Some one has said, " A wrecker, who lives from the goods of foundered vessels and shipwrecked crews, knows where all the dangerous rocks are along the coast, and he is always hovering about them. But the ship-master knows more about the channel than about the reefs." A calm, self-possessed captain of a vessel was asked, " Captain, I suppose you know where every rock and shoal is along this whole coast; do you not?" "I know where they are notj' was his reply, '' which is the more important thing." While true church government in a state of peace is but the beaten chan- nel, yet it is also true that the churches sometimes fall into the hands of those who steer the ship either in ignorance or wantonness, and the breakers are thereby encountered. It is also a sad confession that it is too often the case that we find discordant spirits in the churches, who, like the wreckers, are more conversant about the breakers along the coast than about the channel. A precedent is something done that may serve as an example to authorize a subsequent act, of the like kind, but has no authority out of itself. Plence we are accustomed to look with suspicion upon any act which needs to be propped by citing mere precedents, for if the matter decided is in harmony with the great body of the law, that law is an universal principle long since acknowledged by all the churches, and being coherent and universal, there is nothing to distinguish it from the body of the customary law, and there can be no precedent in it. To say that isolated precedents, or even a line of them in the same church, has any influence upon the action of the churches in forming a true system of church government would be to say that any successful transgression of ecclesiastical power would at once establish the right of trangressing it forever. Surely the first unwarranted act had n© 196 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; precedent. The consequence may therefore be seen ; every precedent would beget a worse, and the churches of to-day would soon become as much per- verted and distorted as those of other systems can possibly be. Had the early churches taken every such act as a precedent and justification of simi- lar and subsequent ones church government would soon have become per- verted, and in a short time subversive of every principle upon which true church law is constructed. If we would go back over the long history of the churches we would find in every age some ecclesiastical precedent that was sought to be fastened upon the churches which, if followed, would have led the churches astray and changed the whole tenor of their being. A church precedent, in and of itself, merely as a thing that has happened, or been done, has no binding authority one way or the other, and the com- mon sense rule that that which was wroag in the beginning could not be- come right in the course of time by being repeated, is too deeply engraven upon the mind to be doubted, and in building up this system of church law, this principle is found to have been acted upon. It may be set down as a sound principle that the more the advocates of a certain act or omission feel themselves obliged to rely on precedents to justify their conduct, the less they ought to be trusted, and on no account ought precedents alone to decide anything in church or denominational afi^airs if doubts exist at all. One church being entirely free and independent of another, but all being equal, a measure decided in one is no reason why that decision should be followed in another, only in so far as it is correct, and in that view persuasive only of what is right. To contend otherwise would be fo contend that one church has a right to make laws for another. Neither is the same church bound by any former decisions of its own, except in so far as rights and church privi- leges have become vested by those decisions. Otherwise one set of members might forever commit their successors to a course of action which might be erroneous ; for predecessors have no more power than they leave to their successors, since the power of both are equal. In no case is a church bound to go on doing a thing because they themselves, or others, had done it before them, or merely because the motives for doing it before still continue to ope- rate upon them. Each member is in duty bound to scrutinize the motives and the reasons that prompted the act, and to ask himself whether upon re- flection, or a better understanding, he ought to continue the precedent. They must be convinced that those who before them adopted the measure in question, acted with them on the same principles, or on principles they acknowledge to be good, and were not prompted through sinister motives, but that the measures were carefully adopted in accordance with the Scriptures and the customary law itself. There is but one view in which it is safe to adhere to precedents, and that is where unwarranted encroachments upon the fundamental principles of the churches are sought to be made in the name of church law. Then it is safe to stand upon precedents, if there be any, opposite to power, or an undue in- crease of power. In that case the air of revolutionary innovation, or rebellious resistance, is wholly taken away from the act, and the charge of revolution is OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 197 thrown on the other party. Whenever ecclesiastical power is suspected to have been unduly exercised or distorted, let the case be decided on its own merits, because it is the natural, inherent and necessary attribute of all powei* that it tends to increase. If denominational precedents were always entitled to respect, they would only increase and propel the power, instead of regulating the measure and effect thereof. It rarely ever fails that when a principle of ecclesiastical law has been disregarded and overturned that those who have done so did but protest that the denominational welfare de- manded the violation. It is true on the other hand that those churches that encourage such disorders never fail to gradually decline and fall to ruin under the scrutinizing eye of the very denomination for whose welfare they pretended to act as the result of their offending. Denominational welfare is a matter of vast importance, but it does not rise higher than the laws that have been developed by the denomination for its own use. It is not only from denominational precedents or glaring innovations that the Baptist system of church law has mainly to guard itself. It is a very rare thing to see any organized system, as old and deeply rooted as that of Baptist church government, openly and boldly opposed. It is against silent and gradual attacks it ought to be particularly on its guard. Sudden inno- vations strike the imaginations of men ; they become part of the detailed history of the denomination. Their secret springs and sources are under- stood. But changes that insensibly happen by a long train of steps that are but slightly marked are overlooked until violence is done and the system marred. In all such cases it cannot be insisted that general acquiescence has taken place. On the other hand, while precedents and innovations on settled customs are to be avoided, the lateness of time at which a new principle is intro- duced is not a strong argument against its soundness, if it be in accord with the Scriptures, otherwise Bacon's saying wiU be verified, that " they who reverence too much old times, are but a scorn to the new." These new prin- ciples, however, must be formed out of that same law and be in strict harmony with it. We then have a standard indicated by itself, according to which we may judge whether it be correct. Precedents being but the debris of other systems, they become delusive and dangerous in the same degree as those systems are foreign to the New Testament plan. It has been an ob- servation among Baptists as old as the denomination itself that whenever an ancient church custom, for which the reason perhaps could not be readily given, has been wantonly broken in upon by new practices and precedents, the wisdom of the custom in the end appeared from the disastrous results that followed the innovation. Likewise with respect to customs which taken separately seem trifling, and even trivial, but tend to influence the future transactions of the churches, it is more important that they be strictly fol- lowed than that they should be theoretically correct, and should not be abolished, and others set up of doubtful propriety at the instance of " living oracles not well inspired." A precedent in church polity is a principle applied to a new class of cases 198 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; or a new priEcipie applied to old cases, as for that, which in the variety of practical church-life has offered itself. It is not absolute, and does not pos- sess binding power merely as a fact, or an occurrence. Nor is it unchange- able. It can be overruled, and for the safety and stability of Baptist church government it often ought to be overruled. But, then, it must be done by the law itself, and that which upsets the precedent cannot otherwise than become, in the independent life of the law of the church, precedent in turn until it becomes the universally received customary law of the whole denom- ination. Hence Baptists have a great fear of precedents, for we can fre- quently point to the fact that the most atrocious departures from true church government and doctrine were founded upon precedent, either real or pre- sumed. On the other hand we know that true ecclesiastical polity in the past has been rescued from a centralized church despotism in a great measure by resting the system on the common law of the gospel, without the aid of either precedent or ecclesiastical legislation. This has been the anchor to the ship of church. It is the tap root with which the church of Christ fastens itself in the Holy Scriptures, and through which it receives the sap of ecclesiastical life and being. It is the weapon by which interference is warded of. The churches could not have developed themselves upon true principles without it. It consists in the fundamentals of Baptist church polity laid down in received and recognized customs and usages ; and the common law principles in it are a far greater portion than the Scripture rules themselves. The constitution of every Baptist church is chiefly a common law constitution, and this reflex of a continuous church in a constitution of gospel law, is more truly philosophical than the theoretic and systematic, but lifeless constitutions of every other church in existence. Baptist church government is that form of polity in which each local cliurch exercises directly the functions of government. This form in theory must always be unlimited except by the law of the gospel itself. But as the gospel is so scant in its rules as to the exact powers of the church, we must look to the apostolic churches themselves, in action, for the limitation of the powers appropriate to them. The lengths to which they went in the govern- ment of themselves, we may go, and beyond which we dare not go, although we have a thousand precedents for so doing. If they were organic units, were self-governing, and independent one of another, so must we keep them forever. We should look to see whether they were monarchic in form, in which one man ruled, or aristocratic, in which a few ruled, or whether they were democratic in their organization, in and by which the membership ruled themselves. Christ and his apostles, in the institution of the churches, might have made them separate organic units, free and independent one of another, and yet have made them monarchic, aristocratic or democratic in the form of their government. In other words th.ey might have ordained that each should be ruled by the pastor alone, or by a select body of men, as by the pastor and deacons. But in this inquiry we are not concerned so much about what Christ and the apostles might have done, as we are as to what they did in this important particular. Suffice it to say that ecclesiastical OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 199 government is either what Christ and his apostles made it in the beginning, or what man has made it since by precedent or otherwise. It is true in fact that no system of ecclesiastical government, whether ancient or modern, whether true or false, is a scientific necessity. It is what those who instituted it made it to be, whether human or divine. The like sentence a thousand times repeated by a church or several churches is not enough to show that the sentence is Scriptural. For whatso- ever action is against the law of the gospel, though it be reiterated ever so often, or that there be ever so many precedents thereof, is still against the law of the gospel, and therefore not the law of the church, but contrary to it. Has sprinkling for baptism become the law of the gospel because it has been practiced by pseudo churches for a thousand years in the past? Thus we see how church precedents are misleading in their nature, and how they per- vert and mar a system of church government and doctrine ; whereas the influence of long-established customs and usages rooted and grounded in the Holy Scriptures tends to mould men and churches after one pattern, and destroys that desire for change and innovation which has been so destructive to true church polity and doctrine. Ancient usage and custom directs all things in one channel, and institutes an unvarying routine which never leaves a beaten track and never goes into the by-ways in search of innova- tions which when followed up may ultimately prove the destruction of that which the Lord has instituted. These long-established customs and usages have the effect of hampering Baptists, and confining them to one fixed and constantly observed system of polity which is fixed by the laws of the gospel. See how hard it is for Baptists to break from its power, and how it tends to hold them in one beaten path — in the old ways — ^while it destroys all versa- tility and originality so far as changing the form of church government is concerned. The tendency of a free church and an open Bible is to strengthen our lovefor the original form of church polity, and to cultivate a sameness of doctrine and churches in their development and progress. This influence has a powerful eflTect in throwing oflT all unmeaning precedents and foreign traditions, and fixing these long-established usages and customs unalterably upon the churches of Christ. This yoke of usage and custom puts upon this divine system a sanction and a penalty so fearful that no Baptist would dream of not conforming to it, and this veneration for gospel law so fixed grows stronger and stronger with the generations. There is no point in regard to which Baptist church government presents so marked a contrast to other systems as in the recognition of a province within which government shall not intrude itself nor permit intrusion from any other quarter. In this system it is the sovereignty or power vested in the hands of the membership, back of the government which defines and defends the form of ecclesiastical polity, not only against all precedents extra-ecclesiastical, but also against all other arbitrary encroachments of the government itself. This supreme power back of, and separate from, the machinery of the government, vests the ruling majority with the power to interpret the laws of the gospel in behalf of church rights and immunities 200 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; regardless of precedents and to defend the same against the arbitrary acts and encroachments from whatever other source they may come. Those who band together to form a church, both for their highest development and the highest welfare of the church in which they live, should act freely within a certain defined sphere ; the impulse to such action is a universal quality of all Christians ; but the church, the ultimate sovereign, is alone able to define the elements of church independence and individual liberty, limit its scope and protect its enjoyment. Both the church and the individual members are defended in this sphere against the government, by the power which organizes and maintains, and can put an end to the government ; and by the same power, through the government guard against encroachments from every quarter, whether from within or without. The individual may ask for liber- ties and privileges which it has not granted, but until the church grants them he certainly has them not. The ultimate sovereignty, the church, can neither be changed or limited, either by individual liberty or governmental powers ; and this it would be if individual liberty had its source outside the church. This is the only view which can reconcile religious liberty with the law of the gospel and preserves both in proper balance. Every other view sacrifices the one to the other. Therefore no church's error becomes its own law, nor is that church obliged to persist in it ; neither does it become a law to other churches. A precedent made by an individual church may become the leading decision of that church for all future cases of the same import, until, by the constant ruling of the churches upon the same subject matter overruling the particu- lar case, they should reverse it ; whereupon it becomes the duty of the church to change its decision to conform to the general usage of the churches in general, and by that means the Scripturalness of the law is virtually decided in a natural, easy, legitimate and safe manner, according to the principle of the supremacy of the law of the gospel and the independence of the churches. This is one of the most interesting and important evolutions of Baptist church jurisprudence, and certainly one of the greatest protections of the churches. In our system it may be called the very palladium of Baptist church government, one of the best fruits of the Baptist mind and heart. Churches succeed one another ; one set of members pass away, others come and take their places ; nay Heaven and earth shall pass, but not one jot or tittle of the immutable laws of Christ's churches shall pass away. Therefore all the decisions of all the precedent churches that have ever been cannot altogether make a new landmark, or lay the predicate for one contrary to the true genius of his churches. Nor can any precedent of any former church warrant an innovation upon fundamental principles, nor discharge the churches of to-day of the trouble of studying what is the true Bible rule in the case. For the church that makes an innovation judges unjustly, and no injustice can be a pattern of judgment to succeeding churches ; for pre- cedents prove what was done, and not what was well done, and to build on false grounds, the more we build the greater is the ruin. Hence to make Baptist church government fixed and stable, it must be OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 201 contended that any practice which has no coherence of principle gotten by long study, practice, observation and experience, and is not universally ac- cepted by all Baptist churches, has no place in church jurisprudence. The formula of words and the precedents of the churches do not admit of an extension into like cases. For what departs from custom gotten by long experience is wanting in authority, and the introduction of new things cor- rupts the majesty of the old. Modern customs have less authority, as the most ancient examples should be received cautiously inasmuch as the course of time changes many things. Therefore the customs of the middle times are the safest and the best. It might be considered by some that the term customary law, as applied to Baptist church polity, is unfortunate, and might lead to the following train of reasoning : As it supplies principles where the Scriptures do not furnish a rule, and in such cases something must be done, custom was indifferent as to what was done, and that after all precedent and arbitrary will gave the decision. That when the same case occurred it was more convenient to repeat the same precedent than to think of a new one, and with every new repetition this proceeding appeared more convenient and natural. Thus after some time such a rule became a law, which originally had no more claim to validity than the opposite rule. Hence according to this train of reasoning the fundamental origin of this law was precedent alone. No doubt but that this view is correct when the precedent is not based upon a written law such as the Scriptures, or as in civil government the statute law, to prescribe the bounds beyond which it cannot go. The Scrip- ture was in the beginning the natural basis of the law arising out of it, and is its natural origin, and has its existence, its reality, in the Scriptures. We recognize this law in external acts, usages, manners and customs. In the uniformity of a continued and enduring mode of action, we recognize its common TOot quite distinct from mere precedent. Customs and usages are the signs of Baptist church jurisprudence, and not its foundation. It is of a two-fold element— one Scripture and the other customary law, evidenced by usage. It is the Scriptures which are always, and customary law which 13 frequent. That which is frequent is next to that which is always. It is possible, and in many instances profitable, that customary law should be changed, but the Scriptures never, the Scriptures being a transcript of the wisdom of Christ, the founder of the churches, and not a product of experience, as cus- tom is. The sense of this is, that Scripture is the first bond of the laws of the churches, and custom is the next, for Scripture is nothing but the law of Christ, given us for the preservation of custom. Customary law is the record, but the Scriptures were the first declaration of it, and till then cus- tom had not all the solemnities of a law, though it was adopted by each church, and practiced ever so long. For Paul said. But for the law, I had not known sin. If the Gentiles, having not the law, might become a law unto themselves, much more may we be so, in matters indifferent, where the Scriptures do not furnish a guide. In all these indifferent or customary 202 A TREATISE VVO^ BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; laws there was variety, aud, although they were in danger of being over- thrown by mere precedents and the arbitrary will of man, they were in time maintained and cemented by what will be treated of hereafter as eccle- siastical authority, and kept by the spirit of Christ, who was pleased in his love for the churches to put into the hearts of his disciples, that they might be governed by laws which would not fail. So customary laws are after the Scriptures in point of time and nature, and are such licenses as are left when there is no rule specified. When a church is to ordain laws suitable to be observed, it is not possible it should comprehend all cases, or all the different phases of the same case, that may arise ; but as time shall instruct them by the discovery of new principles, so are also laws from time to time to be ordained, and, in all such cases where the Scriptures do not go into detail, customary law obtains, and the church gives sentence according to it. The Scriptures, by which the action of the churches are abridged, are written, because there is no other way whereby Christ could make them known, and hand them down to his churches ; whereas customary laws are supposed to be written in men's hearts and memories. The Scriptures, then, are the constitutions of the churches expressed ; and customary laws are such as arise out of the Scriptures, and are in strict conformity thereto. Hence custom of itself makes no law, and under no circumstances do precedents. Nevertheless, when a church makes a sentence, whenever the same is right and Scriptural, it attains the vigor of a law ; not because the sentence has by custom been given in a like case, but because the church is supposed tacitly to have approved of the sentence, and thereby it comes to be a law, and numbered among the customary laws of the church. For if precedent was sufficient to introduce a law of itself, then it would be in the power of every church that is to pass upon a matter, if it did so erroneously to make its erroneous precedents to become laws. In like manner those principles laid down in commentaries and com- pendiums of church law by those learned in the law are not, therefore, laws, and have no binding authority, except the same be reasonable and Scrip- tural from the beginning. The divine commandments and precepts, such, for example, as that of the mode of Baptism, need no prescription, but have an intrinsic warrant, authority and a perpetual abode in the Scriptures ; but that which is war- ranted by custom, has but an accidental obligation, and is of human authority, such as sprinkling for Baptism. The laws of Christ are the parents of custom, but precedents cannot introduce a divine law or obliga- tion. All Baptist church customs are, and of necessity ought to be, accord- ing to Christ's commandment, but from mere precedents we cannot conclude or infer that anything fundamental is the command of Christ. No church can prescribe Scriptural truths ; thsy have their abode in the Scriptures. For precedents proper must commonly begin from weakness and ignorance of what the rule ought to be, and in time get strength by use, until they prevail even against right. But Christ does not call himself precedent, but truth. Therefore, whatsoever is against the Scriptures, though it be an old and continuous precedent, is heresy, notwithstanding its long usage. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 203 The purpose of this rule is not to bar custom from being of use in the exposition of the sense of a law or doctrine. For when it is certain that Christ gave the law, and it is uncertain what sense was intended, custom is very useful, and, in true church jurisprudence, is the only way to interpret it ; that is the custom of the first and best ages of the churches ; and, then, the longer the custom did descend, still we have the more confidence in it, because we have all the wise and good men of so many ages concur- ring in the interpretation and understanding of the law. Custom is the best reason, when we have no better ; but, when we have neither Scripture nor analogy to support it, it is the most unartificial of all arguments, and a good reason to the contrary is much to be preferred before a long, con- tinuous custom. A truly evangelical church is certainly guided by the spirit of Christ, and, therefore, where the question is concerning matters that are not clear in the Scriptures, the customs of the churches are not to be ignored ; for it is to be presumed, when the contrary is not proved, that the endeavors of a pious membership are graciously assisted by the spirit of Christ, and in this sense custom is the best interpreter, because, in the absence of the power to legislate and to prescribe rules, there is no better, and no clearer light shining from any source. Thus, custom can, in cases indifferent, declare the meaning of a law ; but it must be emphasized that a precedent of, and standing alone by itself, can be the interpreter of the will of Christ, or the sufficient warrant of a law, or immediately bind the conscience, as if it were a signification of the divine pleasiu*e ; much less it should not be opposed to any words of the Scripture, or reason, or proper arguments derived from them. If it has a coherence of principle, it then yields to authority, to law, and to enlight- ened reason, and, when it thus agrees with the laws of Christ, it should be kept inviolate. When it is both pious and reasonable, and of the analogy of the Scriptures, it is an excellent corroboration of the truth, but when it stands alone, as a precedent simply, it is very suspicious and very dangerous, and is a very ill sign of an ill cause, or corrupted manners. Hence neither precedent nor tradition has any place in Baptist church juris- prudence, as will be shown in its proper place. Because, through tradition, many errors have crept into the religious systems of men, and have trans- mitted her authority to that which ought to be destroyed. It is only when customs and precedents have shaped themselves into a constant uniformity, only when their characteristics of the past can be a clear light for their incidents in the future, that they rise to the level of a Baptist church law, which is the material out of which true unwritten church law is made. In other words, the law does not consist in isolated precedents, but in general principles. Bible rules of church government are the gift of Christ, and must be received from Christ, while customary law and precedents must be formed, tested and tried before adopted. To keep this distinction in mind is of the most practical importance. We should go to the study of the Bible for rules of polity, with faith in the Bible, as a complete guide, and our opinions should be drawn therefrom, 204 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and not take our opinions ready-made from others ; they ought to be our own. Neither ought we to take our faith in the Bible from the church, but to take from the Bible our opinions of the church, its doctrines and its laws. It is the first of laws, and it governs the churches as much as it does each member of the church ; and, as it is the first of laws, it cannot be modified by a law, and it is proper, therefore, that the church should obey the Bible in preference to any man-made law or precedent of the churches, and make it the ground of their decisions. In so doing it should be foreign to the purpose of any church to generate and practice any custom which they could not prove by Scripture. Custom in these things is to the Scripture as a sun-glass to the sun, it receives its rays in a focus, and thus unites their strength. The efiect of this is that Christ alone is our law-giver, and, instead of leaving any authority to formulate a code of written laws for our govern- ment, he has made our hearts to be the tables of the laws of his churches, that they might not be perverted, but always be there under the eye of the churches, legible and clear. It is not a law for being placed there ; but Christ first made or decreed it to be a law, and then placed it there for use and promulgation, so that each succeeding member, church and age might test it and compare it with Christ's word, to see whether those who have gone before were correct in their interpretation of it. And therefore what- soever comes from the Scriptures must tend towards the will of Christ, and, it being the fountain of perfection, nothing can be laws ecclesiastical but what is from, and in, and for, and by that fountain. Hence a people that abstains from writing their laws, and, instead thereof, resort to custom and usage, does not and cannot do amiss ; but when prece- dent alone is their warrant and their guide they shall not always find out what is the true rule ; indeed there is nothing that is a law to our con- sciences but what is bound upon us by Christ and confirmed in the Holy Scripture ; but everything else that is analogous thereto is lawful and per- mitted that is not by the Scriptures restrained, and until the fetters are put upon us we are at liberty to become a law unto ourselves, and for such a law there need be no express warrant from Scripture, so it be in harmony therewith, and not contrary thereto. Such a law, before it can be deemed good, must be certain to a certain intent, just in precept and convenient in execution. It is of so much importance to a law that without this it cannot be just. For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, luho shall prepare him- self to the battle f That ecclesiastical precedents, alone as such, have no place in Baptist church jurisprudence, has been shown; much less has tradition. Now that body of doctrine and discipline, or any article thereof, supposed to have been put forth by Christ or his apostles, and not committed to writing, is tradi- tion. It is the oral delivery of opinions, rites and ceremonies from ancestors to posterity — the transmission of any opinion or practice from forefathers to descendants — by oral communications, without written memorials, exclusive of rational processes. OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 205 Here is a sample of the many hundreds that have crept into the religion of these degenerate days, as practiced by a large body of people who pro- fess Christianity : " There is a tradition as old as Christianity itself, that after the crucifixion the Saviour's mother lived in the neighborhood of Calvary ; that, in her sorrow, she often visited the scene of her son's suffer- ings, and that she frequently walked up the rugged mountain path he had trod carrying his cross, and that at every spot where he paused she knelt and prayed. It is told that in this she was imitated by her friends. After she died the disciples gathered around her grave, and St. Thomas desired to open it. They removed the earth and found only the winding sheet. There were mysterious signs about the grave that forced them to believe that God had preserved her body incorruptible by carrying it to heaven. This has never been declared an article of faith in the Catholic church, but from the very earliest days of Christianity it has been held to be a pious belief." This is called the " Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary into Heaven." Many of these traditions relate to church polity, as well as to faith and doctrine, and it is certain that nothing has been more destructive to true Christianity and church polity than the evil effects of tradition. That the Scriptures do contain the whole will and law of Christ, and that the holy record is a perfect and only digest of it, has ever been held by Bap- tists in all ages of the world ; that the Scriptures are not a perfect rule of faith and practice, but that tradition is to be added to make it a full repos- itory of the divine will, is affirmed by the church of Rome, and all others who imitate them, by supplementing the law of Christ with written codes of procedure. This is the more evident because the church of Christ, iu all the first and best ages, when tradition could have been resorted to with more certainty, and assent to it might have been more reasonable, they gave no credence to tradition, but accepted the Scriptures as their only rule of faith and practice. It is further evident that the further we recede from the apostolic times, the more stress these people place upon tradition and the higher becomes the heap of man-made laws and devices of man's invention. No device or invention of man is to be admitted into either faith or prac- tice if they be without authority and testimonies from Scripture. All that which is worked into church polity, that has not its basis in the Scriptures, is but human tradition. As for the written word of Scripture, there is abso- lutely no power at all given to any one, either to do any of those things which are forbidden, or to omit any of those things which are commanded. As for those indifferent things which are passed over in silence, the apostle Paul has laid down for us a rule, saying. All things are lawful for me, hut all things are not expedient. That is to say, nothing is a part of the in- flexible law of Christ in faith or practice, but what is written in the Scrip- tures. If it is not written there it is left to our liberty, and we are to use it as all indifferent things are to be used — that is, with liberty and charity. If in these indifferent rules there be any tradition it matters not ; they are no part of our religion, but may be received like the laws of man, or customs of which an account has already been given, but, like the customary law, they must be rooted and grounded in the Scriptures. 206 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; In the first ages of the church when the apostles were yet alive, when they disputed with the heretic Jews they often urged against them the universal tradition of the churches. Because they denied both the divinity of Christ and the authenticity of the Scriptures. Until the whole of the Scriptures were written and compiled and their authenticity established and admitted, to such men as these it was of great use to urge the traditions then extant and yet fresh in the minds of the people, because all these things were orally preached in all of the apostolical churches, and by the universal preaching of these doctrines they could very easily refute the heresies urged against them. The Jews contended that, besides their written law contained in the law of Moses, God delivered an oral law which was handed down from generation to generation. The various decisions of the Jewish doctors and priests on points which the law had either left doubtful or passed over in silence were the true sources of their traditions. It was then that Paul said : Stand fast and hold the traditions which ye have been taught whether by word or our epistles. They had been reared under a system where much stress had been placed upon the traditions of the fathers, and therefore the apostles had reason to urge tradition yet fresh in their minds, and to wrest it from their hands, who were inclined to use it to a wrong purpose. But in all this there was no objection, for all this tradition was nothing else but the doc- trine and discipline of the Scriptures which were being preached, written and canonized into the veritable law of the churches, so that afterwards there would be no need to urge tradition, or anything else but the inspired law itself. They did not pretend to prove by tradition what they could not prove by Scripture, but the same things were preached which were written, and they had no better rules of faith and practice, and certainly tradition was of no use after the canon of the Scriptures was closed, established and recognized. The only way we have of knowing satisfactorily whether a tradition is of divine authority is by its having a place in those writings which are gener- ally acknowledged to be the genuine productions of inspired men. All traditions which have not such authority are without value, and tend really to distract and mislead the mind. Paul so advises his brethren when he says : That ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us. Whatever laws have been delivered to us whether by Christ or his apostles, or in any other way, there is no way of disputing it, so it be a tradition of God, whether written or unwritten, it matters not. But if it cannot be made so to appear, it is not obliging upon the churches. Unless the light be clear, it cannot be a lamp unto our feet. It is well enough as long as a truth is a tradition of God, but if it becomes to be a Catholic tradition, a Baptist tradition, your tradition or mine, there is nothing in them of divinity, nothing of that authority which has a binding efficacy that is safe to follow. This view of the efficacy of Scripture in church polity excludes the office work of human tradition to which is attributed so much power by Catholics in their economy which goes to make up the fiiith and practice of that peo- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 207 pie. Every plant which my heavenly Father haih not planted shall be rooted up. Now plants are those things which do not spring up of themselves, but by the planting. Some arise from seed sown in the ground, some from slips, some are grafted, and some are inoculated. If care be given to select the right kind of seed, and if grafts are taken from the best of trees which are indi- genous to the soil, they grow and bring forth fruit pleasing to the taste ; but if tliey grow wild, and of their own accord, they are but noxious, and the fruit is fit for nothing and the plant upon which it grows is to be rooted up and cast into the fire. If the rule be a Scripture one, or if it be grounded, nurtured therein, and watered by the dews of the divine law, there can be no tradition in it. On the contrary, if it be only tradition and springs up independently of Scripture as a wild plant in uncultivated soil it can have no divine authority and is to be plucked up and cast into the fire. With a certain school of theologians if the Scriptures do not prove some things, tradition must. Error needs the support of tradition, while truth is abundantly provided for in Scripture. It is in vain to contend that apos- tolical traditions can have any place in church government when it cannot be made to appear that there are any such things as apostolical traditions, of either doctrine, or practice, not contained in the Scripture. That being a competent record there was no necessity for tradition, and to attempt to prove by Scripture that there are any traditions, not written in Scripture, is a folly. So that all the pretensions taken from Scripture in behalf of tra- dition are to no purpose, unless it were said in the Scripture by Christ, or some of the apostles, that there are some things which we now preach to you that should never be written, which we hereby command you to keep ; but when we hear even Paul mentioning traditions in some of his writings and recommending them in others, it is no argument for us to inquire after them or to rely upon them, unless that which was delivered by the apostles in their sermons was never to be reduced to writing, and that we know of a certainty that what we are to receive as tradition is that which was so preached by the apostles. There is no traditional exposition of the Scriptures, purely as such, which has come down from the apostles and has been believed always and in all the churches, and by all men in those churches ; and of this we cannot be certain unless it be found in the Scriptures themselves. It has been shown of an ecclesiastical custom that it must be either Scriptural, or it must be analogous thereto, and assented to in all churches, at all times and in all places ; and unless traditions come up to the same standard they are to be rejected. Therefore those things are not to be inquired into which the Scripture has passed over in silence, for it has dispensed to us all things which conduce to our profit ; and whatever is from the fountain is a guide, and besides this there is nothing to be learned or practiced, and besides this it is not lawful for us to hear either man or angel ; and indeed it cannot be imagined how^ the Scriptures could be a law book unto the churches if it were so imperfect that it did not contain in itself a perfect rule of faith and practice. The question is not whether the Scripture is a rule for the churches, but 208 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPEUDENCE ; whether it is a perfect rule without supplement or change ; not whether it is the word of God, but whether it be all the word of God, necessary to be re- sorted to in the government of Christ's churches. As Baptists we know absolutely nothing of the constitution and frame-work of the churches but by those by whom the gospel came to us which they then preached, and which afterwards through the medium of inspiration was set down in writ- ing and delivered to the churches. This law which the churches were after- wards to administer, the Scriptures did ordain. Doubtless Christ and his apostles did and said many things concerning church government which were not written, but those things considered essential were chosen to be written, and those things which might be termed traditional teachings were but explanatory of that which was afterwards written. They left this writing as their law, and if anything be added to it, or taken from it, the same ceases to be their law. These founders of the churches left this writing as their Testament, and this will of the testators, concerning the government of the churches, has only to be read to settle all contentions. It was consigned to writing and hence is not nuncupative, that when the testators were gone we might not doubt concerning their wills and have to resort to a man-made codicil handed down traditionally to know what the testators meant. It is a sign of weakness and error to see any sect going about with great pretensions to prove their doctrines or practices by tradition, and certainly those who believe in the sufficiency and inspiration of the Scriptures have no need of tradition. Certainly they cannot with any regard for the truth say that all the superstitions and ghostly stories and ritualistic nonsense they practice is found in the Scriptures. Where do the Scriptures teach the fast of lent, the keeping of Easter, sprinkling for baptism, baptism of infants, godfathers in baptism, baptism for the dead, the apostles' creed, as they use it, indulgences, transubstantiation, universality of the church, the govern- ment of the churches by bishops, the divine rights of the pope and a thou- sand other evil practices that have no authority of Scripture ? They are neither agreeable to nor found in Scripture. Therefore it is confidently concluded that in either faith or practice noth- ing is to be received in church government which men upon their own fancy and invention think good in their own eyes ; or, as Christ expresses it, men shall not teach for doctrine the traditions of men. How then shall we know that any ecclesiastical principle comes down to us as a landmark and has resolved itself into an immutable law of the churches ? The most distinc- tive feature about it is, that like tradition, it must be purely unwritten, and if it can be made to appear that all Baptist churches and all Baptists did from the apostles' times down to the present time accept it as true and it has its source in the Scriptures, and we are able to derive it from the practice of the apostles and early churches, under their teaching, then it is to be received and continued, but not as a tradition, for a tradition is not based upon writ- ten memorials and derived from rational processes. Indeed a less series of successions might serve the purpose of establishing an immutable law of the OR, THE COMMOJT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 209 churches. If it can be made sure that the ages next to the apostles did uni- versally receive and practice the law as from the apostles, then we ought not to reject it. Therefore that which all Baptist churches practice which is found in the Scriptures is to be taken as having descended from the apostles, aad therefore to be taken and held as a landmark of the churches. It is not enough that one of these landmarks has been received for an hundred, or five hundred years by Baptist churches, commencing from a certain period upwards, unless it Avere also received by the apostolical ages and churches throughout the world, it is nothing ; and if it were based upon Scriptural memorials and received by all the apostolic churches and all the good and wise men of the early ages of the churches, whenever any one church failed to so receive it, it was to their own prejudice, and was not the fault of the law, for that was apostolical which was from the beginiung. Whatever came afterward could not change that which was before, and the interpretation of an apostolical truth, though for a thousand years together, cannot annul the obligation, or introduce anything to the contrary. So that in Baptist church jurisprudence when we take up a principle or custom and go backwards, although we find a break in it, it is nothing unless we go back as far as the apostles, inclusively ; but if we begin there, and make that clear, it matters not how little way it descends we must be able to point first at the fountain, and if the principle is derived from the Scriptures, and this head be visible, although it leaves the surface, and runs for a time under- ground, it is well enough, and it may be put down as an immutable land- mark and a law to be trusted. For a traditionary law might invade the whole denomination which was not practiced by the early churches, as if it might seem to have invaded them, and yet not having been the practice of those churches, it is certain that this universality could never be a Avarranty for a law of the churches. Hence there is great variety in the proof of tra- dition, so that whatever is proved to be tradition is not equally and alike credible ; for nothing but universal tradition (if there could be such a thing) is of itself credible. Now that a tradition be universal, or which is all the same, that it be a credible testimony, requires that it should be derived from, and believed by, all the churches apostolical, and must be either contained in the letter or spirit of the gospel. Unless principles descend to us with equal certainty with the Scriptures themselves, it would be very unsafe to re- quire of us an absolute belief in them if they be not written, and since nothing can require our supreme assent but that which is truly universal and apostolical, it must have the consent of all those churches which the apostles planted, where they did preside. Where this is the case tradition will be of so little use that it cannot be proved in any thing, or in any way, but in the canon of Scripture itself, as it is now received ; and if it is there laid down there can be no tradition in it. Traditions that are to be received and entertained, because they are recorded in the Scriptures, which is, in- deed, so reasonable in itself that we need not thus class them among tradi- tions proper. They are themselves as authentic as Scripture is, if it comes from the same fountain ; for a principle is never the more the word of God 14 210 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JURISPRUDENCE; for being written if we can have any way of knowing it is from God, but it will not follow that whatever is pretended to be a tradition, is so, neither can any authority for unwritten tradition be derived from the Scriptures. And hence it is pride and a veritable heresy and a palpable apostasy from the faith to bring in what is not written in the Scriptures and palm it off as tradition. So that all traditions, except those very few, if any, that are absolutely universal, will lose all their obligation, and become no competent medium in which to confine men's practices, or limit their faith, or determine their per- suasions, either the difficulty of their being proved, or the incompetency of the testimony that transmits them, or the indifferency of the things trans- mitted. For all traditions rely but upon single persons and single testi- mony at first, and yet descending to others, comes to be attested by many, whose testimony, though cumulative, yet in value is but single, because in its incipiency it relies upon the first single relator, and so can have no greater authority, or certainty than they derive from single persons. Owing to these uncertainties all traditions, both ritualistic and doctrinal are disabled from determining our consciences in either believing or obeying. Baptists have received the disposition of their principles and system from no others, as from father to son traditionally, but from those by whom the gospel came to us, and we know nothing except what we see there recorded. Which gospel the apostles first preached, and afterwards by the mil of God de- livered in writing to us, to be the pillar and foundation of our faith, from all of which tradition is excluded. The Christian world as we now behold it is not at unity about matters of faith or practice. But in the apostolic times of the churches they were at unity in both faith and practice, which unity was a good assurance that what they so agreed in came from some common authoritative fountain, and that was no other than what they preached from, came immediately out of the Scriptures as the fountain of all truth. If heresies had crept in and they had erred, they could but have varied and divided up into sects ; but when errors and divisions did come in the course of time, these unhappy things came not by error so much as by the traducing and misleading influence of tradition. So that now, in place of going to these various so-called churches and receiving from them certain and clear truths, we must expect nothing but certain and clear con- tradictions. For how can a people who put their faith in tradition assure themselves that the belief or practice of their churches can be orthodox, and a proof that the doctrine so believed, or the customs so practiced, came from the apostles ? Now we must not confound Baptist church customary law with tradition, and say that since we find in the Scriptures no law for this or that prac- tice, it follows that tradition must have given this observation to custom, which shall gain in the course of time ecclesiastical authority by the inter- pretation of the reason of it, as custom and the usages of Baptist churches are based upon reason when they are not contrary to the Scriptures. It cannot be said that the observing of the minor usages in a Baptist church OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 211 being somewhat of the nature of tradition, in that they are unwritten and confirmed by custom among those who believe in them, that, therefore, the one is no more defensible than the other. Now it has been heretofore shown in another chapter that customs in a Baptist church, as they do in civil law, pass for law where a Scripture rule is wanting, the continuance of the cus- tom being a good testimony of the goodness of the rule. In all matters of minor importance, in Baptist church government, it is not material whether the rule be grounded on the Scriptures or reason, seeing reason and utility are commendations enough for a law. For if Baptist church customary law and usage, being grounded on reason, and the word of God, all that must be perfect law which is so grounded, provided it be not repugnant to God's word and will, seeing he has expressly said, Why even of yourselves judge ye what is right f The generation of rules in a Baptist church, by custom and usage, is necessary, as no church has legislative powers nor has any tribu- nal outside of it a right to make a code of laws for its government. It might be said then, that taking the Scriptures alone as a basis to build upon. Baptist church jurisprudence has germinated itself, without the help of tradition, in such a manner that it necessarily becomes the author of itself. All things, therefore, in true church government which are as they ought to be, and are as Christ and the apostles intended, are conformed unto the Scriptures, and if there be yet any principle in the system not in strict conformity with the Scriptures, it is in some way ordered by the Holy record, and stands ready yet to be so conformed. To say the least of it, whenever the error is discovered, and an effort made to correct it, we will not be confused by the rubbish of human traditions and man-made law upon the subject, but we can look to the Scriptures, and leave customary law to do its office work in eliminating the error, in the same way it was engrafted upon the system. The teachings of the Scriptures are beautiful and easy to be understood, and without superfluity ; so are the customary laws and usages, if they are evolved according to the letter and spirit of the Scriptures. That which distinguishes them from all other systems of church law is that they are generated without the help of legislation. They are not of to-day's or yes- terday's birth. They are not agreed upon by one, or by a few, but by all ; and are such that being proposed, no man can reject as unreasonable or unsciiptural. There is nothing in them that being proposed any man hav- ing natural reason, and who has not had his mind already perverted by the study of a false, system, by a little labor can understand. That which is Scriptural, Baptists defend to the uttermost of their ability ; but that which is otherwise is left to wither in the root from which it sprung. Wherefore all traditional errors and abuses being studiously hunted out, which arise either from the ignorance or corruptions of men, and not from the Scriptures themselves, come to be improved upon by a constant comparison to the test, in which they are divinely grounded and from which they are drawn. Those who resort to legislation and to tradition to perfect their systems of church government, thereby admit that in many things, not laid down in 212 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the Scriptures, there arises a necessity for a rule for guidance. Likewise Baptists acknowledge this, and to supply this rule they recognize the obliga- tory force of no permanent ecclesiastical expositor of their principles and polity outside of, and above, each church, and must necessarily resort some- where for a rule for their guidance. While true church government begins as it ends, with the Scriptures, and while, at the present state of its perfec- tion, we rely entirely upon customary usage in all particulars wherein the Scriptures do not furnish a rule, yet it would be impossible to ascribe the descent of our system from immemorial usage ; for certainly there was a time in the early history of the churches when church law had not reached the footing of custom. At that early day, in all matters not fundamental, but indifferent, the Scriptures were cousidered as being not the only law whereby Christ made known his will to his disciples, touching all things that might be done. Christ's wisdom was boundless, and within it much was contained, and this wisdom imbued the disciples, who lived before the writing and compiling of much of the law, with the knowledge, doubtless, of many things concerning his churches, taught by Christ orally, not writ- ten in the law. It might be said that this unwritten law was in much hazard when it necessarily, at first, passed from man to man, and was in danger of vbecom- ing maimed and deformed. It certainly would have been miserable had there been wanting a clear outline of the fundamental principles of the churches, and we had no record of these principles but the memory of man, receiving the same by report from our predecessors. But the Lord in his wisdom has seen fit to deliver unto the world a clear and unmistakable record of the fundamental outlines of the churches, expedient to be known, as being the main original ground upon which the churches are built, to be patterns and examples to be followed in all ages to come. The application of all the elementary principles to these outlines did not take their constrain- ing force from either tradition or any written code, but from that power and authority of the apostles which gave them the strength of laws. That in the early churches a number of things were strictly observed of which the Scriptures made no mention one way or the other ; that those things once received and confirmed by use, long usage was a law sufficient to give them binding authority ; that, as in civil affairs, when there is no other law, custom itself stood for law. That inasmuch as all law is founded upon reason, to al- lege reason for it is the same as to cite Scripture when it is in harmony with and not contrary to the Scriptures. That w^hich has been received long since by Baptist churches, and is by custom now^ established, we keep as law, which we cannot transgress, yet what consent was ever thereto sought or required at the hands of Baptists of this day? But as every man's past actions are binding upon him as long as he lives, and likewise the deeds of a church as long as it continues, so the act of that same church done one or five hundred years ago stands as ours who belong to a church of Christ of the same faith and order, because Christ's churches are immortal ; we were then alive in our predecessors, and OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 213 they in their successors do still live. The customary laws of the churches are thus handed down from generation to generation, and are available by universal and perpetual consent. There must be some necessary cause whenever the judgments of all men generally run one and the same way. The general and perpetual voice of all Baptists, with the same impulses, and having a oneness of will, faith and practice, is as the essence of truth itself For that which all Baptists have at all times learned and taught God him- self must have taught. It is but the verification of Paul's saying that, They are a law unto themselves. The rule of those who work by simple necessity is the determination of the wisdom of God, known to himself, but not always known to those that are directed to execute the rule. But God illumines the minds of every one who comes into his spiritual kindom, being enabled to know truth from falsehood, do thereby learn in many things what the will of God is concerning the polity of his churches. But in undertaking a task so difficult as that of developing a system of Baptist church government and law, I am aware that there arises to us pecu- liar and great dangers. In the mass of ideas, unwritten rules and technical expressions which we have derived from our predecessors, there must be mingled with the truths achieved a great deal that needs, from time to time, to be scrutinized lest there be in it error, which, by the traditional power of an ancient possession and usage, it might easily obtain authority over us. To avoid this danger we must desire that the entire mass of what has been handed down to us should be proved anew, questioned and investigated as to its origin and thoroughly tested before it is adopted. It is necessary, in a science like this, for us to make a periodical revision of the labors of our predecessors, in order to separate the ungenuine, and to appropriate the truth as an abiding possession to Baptists. And herein consists the most beautiful and enduring feature of Baptist church government. By this means each age through which we have passed has left its impress upon the system, and in like manner we of to-day can leave our individuality upon it so that the living connections may be acknowledged which bind the present to the past, each age leaving it more perfect and better understood. Those who first generated this peculiar kind of law must have known that it was necessary that aU Scripture rules should be fruitful, that they should be hunted and sought for diligently. And that customary law should be at first barren, and should not engender cases and principles. Wherefore, whatever was received contrary to the Scriptures, or the analogies of the same, or even where the meaning of the Scriptures is obscure, it was to be drawn into a consequence, and a custom founded upon it hastily. As in nature, whether animate or inanimate, no moment of complete still- ness is experienced, but a constant organic development ; so is the life of Baptist church law, and in every individual element in which this collec- tive life consists. So we find in human language a constant formation and development. Considering the operation of these principles upon a system of unwritten law, we must admit a strengthening power and development peculiar to itself through constant practice. What originally existed in the 214 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; germ comes through application into more complete form and in time be- comes the common mind of all Baptists, all believing and acting one way and acting in unison, which according to the conscientiousness of each indi- vidual is not accidentally, but necessarily one and the same law to all churches, and the longer these usages live in the churches the deeper they take root in them, and are handed down from one generation to another, each one profiting by the experience of the last. Hence we see by comparison of this unique kind of law with other systems that it is radically difierent and antagonistic the one to the other. The one is conservative and preservative of the original formulas as we see them reflected in the Bible, and the other is by precedent, by tradition and by a false system of legislation destructive of the same. The post-apostolic sys- tems are founded upon the idea that the law of Christ is imperfect, and, needs amendment, and have fashioned their bodies after the Jewish Synagogues, and derive their strength from the mouldering elements of Kome and the dead past ; while the principles of Baptist church government, on the con- trary, are implanted in the progressive development of the human mind un- fettered by the entanglements of human canons and pontifical decrees and traditional ceremonies. These churches are not enthralled and impeded by the chains and manacles, the intricate web and woof of inherited priest-craft. Shake from these priest-ridden people these chains and manacles, and put in their hands the plain word of God, and they would soon return to the simplicity of Bible church polity, and learn the great lesson that the church of Christ was made for man, and not man for the church. We do not venerate and cherish our form of church government as a monument of ante-apostolic wisdom, the work of an era wiser than that of the Christian, or of that of our own, but its greatest merit is found in the fact that all true government ecclesiastical, both in form and substance, is at all times and under all circumstances, as Christ left it, in the control of the local members by and for whom the church was formed, and who refrained in the outset from adopting any of the dazzling forms of ceremonies, traditions and priestly splendor, and by the help of our kind heavenly Father, who has preserved us with a miraculous preservation, we will sufier none to be im- posed upon our descendants if fidelity to the present will avert it. Any system of church government that has thus preserved itself dominant and clear of the corrupting influences of tradition until it arrived at perfection must be considered a grand triumph of the true principles of religious free- dom and liberty of conscience. The common traditions, or such as are universally received, must flow from a source generally recognized as true ; that is to say, from the posses- sion of the confidence of men. It is by this confidence that traditions arise, and that they have been preserved by an entire people and during long periods of time. One of the principal ends of ecclesiastical jurisprudence must be to find the true sources of those traditions which have come to us enveloped in falsehood and lies through so many ages and implicitly be- lieved in by so many ignorant people. When some men in the world are OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 215 ignorant of the true sources and causes of things, they are naturally in- clined to believe without proofs, and when they cannot render even approxi- mately an account by comparison of them, they attribute everything to tradition. The physic of the ignorant who have unbounded faith in tradi- tion is but common metaphysics, by which they attribute to this source the cause of the things they are ignorant of, without considering the means em- ployed by the divine will to make known the truth. These men, struck by the terrors of superstition, refer to tradition the cause of all that they imagine is true which they cannot prove. Tradition is born of ignorance, and a belief in it is more vigorous as reason is more weak and faith in God less strong. The true rule by which all obscurities in religious matters should be settled is, that when they cannot themselves form an idea of things be- cause they are remote and unknown, they settle them according to what is known and present. God will not hold us accountable for the unknown and unknowable, but in his wisdom has revealed to us everything necessary for our comfort and salvation. All intelligent men when they cannot know what is true, they attempt to know what is certain ; for not being able to satisfy their intelligence by knowledge they strive to make their will repose on conscience, and certainly they ought not to believe a falsehood when they are not obliged so to do. Therefore we conclude that traditions and precedents are not the proper repositories of the principles of church governments and especially of reli- gious truth, and are so fallible that Baptists have always ignored them. They have no place in church jurisprudence, for they are such things as are un- known to be so, but such as by arguments and presumptions we conclude them to be so. If the setting up of precedents and traditions as standards of either faith or practice were allowable, we might thereby abuse the whole church and obtrude what we please under the specious title of church authority. If the report of traditions in the beginning was so uncertain, that they could only aim at them by conjectures, and grope as in the dark, the uncertainty is much increased since, because the lapse of time is so great and the obscurity so perfect that they have no binding authority now. Finally, the only true apostolic traditions we have are such as are recorded in the acts of the apostles and writings of the evangelists delivered to us, as Luke says, by those who were eye witnesses, and ministers of the word. The absolute supremacy of the Scriptures requires that where church covenants, whether express or implied, form the fundamental law of the churches, that there should be some authority which can pronounce whether the church itself has, or has not, transgressed its power in some precedent, or whether a specific precedent conflicts with the Scriptures. If, as in other systems, a separate body of men were established — a high court — to pro- nounce upon the Scripturalness of a question, nothing would be gained. It would be as much the creature of the church as any other agency, and miglit err as much as the church itself Such a tribunal would be as much liable to transgress their powers as other mortals. But there is a tribunal under the law of the gospel which, in the regular course of the administration of 216 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; church government, must decide upon both faith and practice, according to the paramount law of the gospel, and they must do so not upon precedents in the abstract, but nevertheless upon practical cases as they from time to time arise. These tribunals are the Lord's judicatories — the churches of the living God. The fundamental idea which underlies them is, that their ethic relations are not between themselves and the masses of the denomination, as masses, whether in associations or conventions, or smaller sub-divisions, but between every individual member and his particular church that exacts obedience from him. Churches are organizations arranged conveniently to express the ecclesiastical will of the particular assembly — a local church — upon those subjects which are within their jurisdiction. According to this theory, Baptist church government is formed by all the members of the church entering the organization agreeing to a certain cov- enant by which each places himself in harmony with, and under the direc- tion of, the general will of the local church. When this covenant has been formed, the whole church becomes sovereign ; but it must be borne in mind that while the sovereignty is the exercise of the general will, regardless of precedent, it is inalienable and indivisible. It must also be remembered that this is not the manner in which a church ought to conduct itself, but the one to which all churches must necessarily conform. In the strict and scientific meaning of the term. Baptist church sovereignty, we see that it has a limited sense. There is often included in the term what ought to be excluded, and often excluded what ought to be included. It is often presented to persons little acquainted with close ecclesiastical reasoning, who may easily confound real with figu- rative sovereignty, and thus be led to suppose that the membership of a church truly possess the sovereign power, and therefore have the right to do that which is wrong in the sight of God and man, and offer no better excuse than that some other church had done the like before them. By the sov- ereign power is meant the making of laws, for wherever that power resides all others must conform to and be directed by it. Under tliis definition it is pertinent to inquire where does the law-making power in ecclesiastical government reside? In a church, in an association, a convention? or in a synod, a general assembly or conference, or in a council? Nay, verily. The legislation, or law-making power in true church government, resides in Christ and the apostles, the first and original great founders of the churches. When they finished their work and their writings the only body of men authorized to make laws for God and his churches passed away, and the power has been dormant ever since. To take any other view of it would be to contend that a church, or any other body of men, so far virtually pos- sesses the sovereign power that if all or a majority of the members agree to destroy the true laws of the churches and substitute others, they can carry their agreement into effect, as all unlawful governments are untimately a question of superior force. But because the church holds in its hands the issues of sovereignty, it is not to be considered absolutely sovereign, in the true sense of that word, any more than a municipal government is to be called sovereign in that it holds a charter under the supreme legislative power OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 217 of a sovereign state. This sovereign power, sucli as churches now have, can only be exercised in administering the laws of Christ already made, or carrying them into execution, and in that sense alone are they sovereign. The power to make new laws, through the medium of precedents, is held in abeyance, the legislative sovereignty of the churches having been kept alive only during the lives of the apostles, while the power to execute the law is kept in constant activity, and lias been uninterrupted ever since. It is the belief and practice of post-apostolic sects that still a legislative sovereignty resides in synods, conferences and councils, or in those who have votes for the election of members of these bodies; but this opinion, if taken in its plain and direct sense, has no foundation in ecclesiastical jurisprudence ; and it is difficult to understand what benefit can be derived from such a perver- sion of the laws of the gospel and giving metaphorical or figurative mean- ings to expressions of such importance as that now in question. Within the true province of true church government — that of executing tlie law — there necessarily exists a supreme power from which the law of the gospel has provided no appeal, and which power, for that reason, may be termed sov- ereign, absolute, uncontrollable and arbitrary, and cannot be questioned by any other power, for there must be in every church a supreme authority, in which the rights of sovereignty reside as long as it keeps within the limits of the laws of the gospel, whence it is apparent that the supreme executive power of a Baptist church is vested in each local church, and to that extent alone it is sovereign. And thus a church cannot properly be said to pos- sess entire sovereign power, because all sovereign power is unlimited and uncontrolled. It must govern itself and acknowledge no legislative superior but God, and must not allow any legislative power to spring up in the church of God, to change, alter or subvert laws already made. But to conclude this chapter. Thus we see that in the Bible system of church polity there is no place for tradition. And we have further learned that in reality the lino between tradition and myth, ignorance and supersti- tion is not easy to draw, and yet the Catholic system of church government reposes largely upon foundations of this kind, being in its very nature very uncertain, insecure and is equally inventive and oblivious to authentic facts and to the truth. Tradition is as a blind man traveling in the dark. It is in this dense darkness that much that belongs to other monarchical systems of church polity is born. It is at best but the creative fancy of man, and the difficulty of separating fact from fiction, truth from error, in this con- fusion worse confounded, very often amounts to impossibility, its object being much more to instruct and dazzle the fancy of the ignorant than to instruct the understanding of tiie wise. As regards these vague myths Baptists regard them as baneful noxious weeds which it is their duty to dig up and destroy, while Catholics consider them as veritable articles of faith or at least as wrecks of former beliefs, over which the unknown has washed the debris of many centuries. That which is uncertain cannot be made certain by the fabrication of myths and superstitious mysteries. 218 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; CHAPTER VIIL BAPTIST CHURCH ETHICS IN GENERAL, AND SOME RULES IN PARTICULAR. WHILE Baptist Church Jurisprudence teaches us what has been and what are the laws governing the churches of Christ, Baptist Church Ethics is a body of rules of duty drawn from the science of the laws which govern our duties as church members. It is that science in church poUty which treats of what is good, noble, true, wise and right, because it is good, noble, true, wise and right, tested in the light of past experience. It treats of our knowledge of these attributes and the duties and obligations flowing from them, as they are applied to church government Common sense and common interest leads us to the observance of certain customs and usages, to observe certain ethical rules, without which intercourse and mutual under- standing would be impossible. These customs and usages in real ecclesias- tical hfe form a subject for reflecting minds to find out that which is stable in them, and why it is stable, as contradistinguished from what is variable, accidental and unessential. Ethics as applied to Baptist church government is a word derived from a Greek word which in the original means a custom or usage, that which is customary among Baptists living together in the same church, or in different churches of the same faith and order. It is that system of procedure which has been settled ; that on which they have long since agreed. While this is true, yet there is closely related to any system of ethics, ideas of decorum, that which is right, and that which ought to be done under particular cir- cumstances. Hence it belongs to the province of ecclesiastical ethics to furnish us with satisfactory answers to these questions; but a distinct under- standing of some points involved in these answers is so necessary for a correct solution of the true theory of Baptist church law and government, that it is essential that we pay some attention to them here. Now, it must be borne in mind that the apostolic form of church govern- ment came into being, and was set on foot without any specific written constitution, or at least none has been handed down to us from the apostles. The churches were called into being by the early disciples under the immediate supervision and direction of the apostles themselves. The first we see of them we notice them already in action and in operation. As to the exact manner how they were organized we are left to conjecture. We see them springing up one after another here and there as the Christian religion began to spread, all being of the same faith and order. We do not see any written code of procedure or ethical rules of decorum laid down for their government at the time of their organ izasion. As we see these OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 219 churches progress and develop we see many ethical rules of practice laid down, when in time the Scriptures came to be written and compiled for the guidance of the membership, which serve as guides in this day and genera- tion. But these rules are few and scanty, the great body of them being ethical, rather than governmental. From the fact that these churches were thus established under the guid- ance of the apostles and so remained without change during their lives, we are to infer that Christ intended they should so remain without written laws and ethical rules of decorum. But ethical rules they must have and will have, for without them there can be no churches. They are just as necessary as are the rules for the proper government of the family, and these rules have sprung up with as much naturalness and are as binding as are the rules in a well-ordered household. It might be asked, How can a system of ethics become uniform without being first written and promulgated by some man or body of men having ecclesiastical authority so to do ? To one who considers not the Baptist denomination as indeed the chosen, aa well as the peculiar people of God, there is in these multitudinous churches, composing this great people, without organic unity, and often out of geographical touch with one another, and which, nevertheless, are in perfect unison with, and respond each to each all over the world, an aptitude for uniformity which strikes the heart and spirit of mankind with wonder and admiration. Not only is the unwritten ethical code of the Baptists more uniform all over the world than it has been frequently supposed, but the inter-church laws are particularly so. Still, though they were far less uniform, it would prove nothing against the divinity of our beautiful system. Among Baptists the true and only scientific method is to explain the past by the present, and the present by the past — what we see by what we do not see — what we do not see by what we do see. In true church govern- ment weare not to busy ourselves so much about the future. God will take care of that. He has led us safely thus far, and in his providence he will lead us on to that perfect development which awaits us if we will take care of the present. We can only comprehend why Baptists have clung so tenaciously to the apostolic form of church government and have been so stable in their ethical rules of decorum, when we see how hurtful and hate- ful variation is, and how it has cursed the Christian world ; how every true Baptist turns against it, and away from it, as from some deadly poison. We cannot comprehend why progress and undue development in church government has been so slow till we study the true genius of apostolic poHty, and see how the rigid laws of the gospel tie us down to the original order of things, and how hard these obstinate laws make undue and hasty progress possible. Those church systems which have sprung up from time to time, as the fancy of men might conjure, like mush-rooms, come to perfection too soon ; they take on the strength of giants while yet they are but babes ; they have taken upon themselves to learn lessons beyond the knowledge of men to know, and yet only too apt to unlearn and to undo those things hastily learned and done. A study of these post-apostolic systems confirms the 220 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; principle, that Baptist cliurch government and the ethical rules made use of in it have, after eighteen hundred years, gained permanency and at the same time variability without losing its Scriptural legality. This is the only system of polity which has preserved the ancient landmarks of the apostolic churches and the only one that has a singular likelihood of being the prevalent and prevailing churches of the future. This system, though it be entirely unwritten, together with all the minor rules of procedure growing out of it, is marked by an intense Scriptural legality ; that legality is the very condition of its existence, the thews and sinews which tie it together, and that legality imposes a settled customary yoke of riveted steel upon all churches and all men living within them, and makes different churches of the same faith and order, of different ages, fac-similes of one another, as we see them reflected in the Scriptures. Development and progress are only possible where the force of legality has gone far enough to bind all Baptist churches together in a bond of indis- soluble spiritual union, but not far enough to destroy the autonomy of each, nor to kill out all variety and self-government and the right of each to make its own rules of decorum. Had it not been for the apostles priestly domination doubtless would have shown itself in those first churches. It is natural for despotism to grow in the first stages of society, just as it is the tendency of the spirit of democracy to grow in modern societies. Doubt- less the contests in those early churches cherished the principle of change, but the influence of the apostles insured stability and preserved that mould of thought which, under the blessing of God, was to last throughout all time to come. And now when we have no right to beget new laws, we, by covenant, adopt those already in existence, aiid what is remarkable, what is already made and adopted are better and wiser than any we can make Churches with these sort of maxims and this kind of ethics are not likely to depart from the original forms. Churches thus constituted, while the ethical rules may change under proper restrictions, yet the fundamental principles of their government remain forever the same. In the first place a Baptist's right and duty to think for himself and to rule himself in church affairs is inalienable. He cannot, even were he desir- ous of doing so, deprive himself of his individuality and moral responsi- bility. He cannot barter away these God-given gifts for any consideration, or on any account. Nor can others possibly deprive him of these blessings, though they, by his consent, may greatly limit him in the exercise of them ; he cannot alienate his free will and decide to be guided entirely by some one else and be a Christian after God's own heart. He must decide for himself, his conscience tells him go ; nor can others fetter' his will, which belongs to his rationality and individuality. He cannot bargain away his conscience and responsibility and submit to absolute obedience to man in whatever sphere this may be, because he cannot, if he chose, get rid of his ethic attri- butes, and, therefore, others cannot take his ethic responsibility upon them- selves No power on earth can obliterate this fundamental principle from Baptist church jurisprudence, which became the first starting point of the OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 221 apostolic churches. It is the individual Baptist who wills, and he alone that wills acts, and he that acts is responsible. A Baptist is what he is, first and essentially, as an individual. Ecclesiastically speaking, he cannot act through another, his acts are his own, he cannot act through a representa- tive ; for, if he be forced to do anything against his will, he does not act, in the ecclesiastical sense of that term, but he suffers^ is in a passive state. One of the ordinances of an ancient lawmaker expresses it exactly : " Single is each man born ; single he dieth ; single he receiveth the reward of his good, and single the punishment of his evil deeds." It must have come under the notice of every student of the apostolic form of church government, a matter of historical observation that, before the writing and compiling of the Scriptures, the very earliest churches came into being, and a series of practical rules sprang into existence under the guidance of the apostles. As the mode in which this was done was not left to us in writing, the manner in which such ethical rules were formulated seems to be the following : A rule of action was made, and this spontane- ous practice was first followed, and if good and useful it was generally copied over and over again, the more so as a habit, and this habit ever after- Avards always rendered the imitation of an old and familiar practice easier than inventing a new and untried one. These ethical rules, when thus gen- erated and are tested and tried, must ever afterward correspond to the prac- tice of the churches. If it be not kept steady by corresponding practice, it is sure to be warped by all sorts of extraneous infiuences. It is the pecu- liarity of that class of ethical rules which are in this way the true germs of future Baptist church jurisprudence, that they are being constantly brought to mind and tested by application to the churches in actual governmental operation. The Scripturalness, integrity and validity of such forms are being constantly exposed to the most searching ecclesiastical tests. It is also worthy of remark that it is in small organic groups of men, such as we find in Baptist churches, who are the obstinate conservators of this kind of cus- tomary law, but the accuracy of the custom diminishes as the groups become larger and wider ; it is also true that such a system of ethics, which is the germ of ecclesiastical law, are from their very nature likely to be handed on in an unbroken integrity from one age to another. The notion of a written law as we understand it, a written rule imposed by human authority, capable of being enacted and altered by that same authority when it likes, and, in fact, so enacted and altered habitually, can- not be received by Baptists, who regard ecclesiastical law, in the true sense of that word, as an invincible prescription, as a divine revelation. They do not profess to enjoin by inherent authority what church law in the future shall be, but to state and mark what the laws of the gospel already are ; they are found to be declarations of immemorial custom, not precepts of new duties, as boundaries to lands are perambulated, and landmarks searched out once a year, and thereby every rule tending towards errors and heresies made patent and cleared of new obstructions. They resist all authority which does not manifest itself in the local church. They look upon such authority not 222 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; as their own action, but as alien action ; as an imposed tyranny from with- out, not as the consummated result of their own original wishes. They conceive of their pastors even as the chosen agents of the churches, who, when they perform the most solemn and sacred functions of their office they do so in virtue of the mandate of the sovereign church. The apostolic, form of church government does not require a bishop to rule over the churches ; any system allowing such things cannot be Scriptural, healthy, free and vigorous like that system we see reflected in the Bible. Our church history reveals the attitude of Baptists upon this question all along the line of the ages ; our church freedom is the result of centuries of resistance to such domination, more or less legal, more or less illegal, more or less auda- cious, and more or less timid, purchased often at the price of the precious blood of our ancestors. To evolve, acknowledge and obey ethic rules of church government, is one of the highest prerogatives, as well as the duties of church members. It is indeed alarming to see how indifferent some Baptists are in the obser- vance of the laws of the churches, especially in the midst of those unhappy troubles which are apt to arise in every church. Obedience to law means our willingness to conform to rules of ethics in which principles, as applied to church government, are pronounced. The member himself, as well as the church at large, stands in need of fixed la-ws and principles ; without them there would be moral disorder. There is a vague idea prevalent in some of our churches that there are no fixed rules that need to be observed. Everything seems to be done by the rule of " aye " and " no." The church that does not adopt general rules of decorum and does not religiously obey them, is exposed to all the dangers of being carried away by passion and impulse. Churches do not only stand in need of laws in order to avoid the discords incident to a want of them, but also because without laws the churches would lose their moral characters, the membership would forfeit their individuality as social beings, and social advancement and spirituality would be impossible. Baptists are wholly Christians only in orderly and well-ordered churches, and churches are only gospel churches by the laws of the gospel, and the laws of the gospel are virtually laws when obeyed — therefore both the destiny of the churches and that of the membership requires obedience to the laws. Obedience to rules of ethics then is necessary, for without their being followed they are no longer laws in essence, because no longer rules of action. There is an absolute duty devolving upon every Baptist to make himself acquainted with the workings of the government of his church, for whatever the church is, it did not spring forth yesterday, aswe will see in the progress. of this treatise. The churches have become what they are by a long chain of processes, and the religious institutions which surround the membership, which form the essence of this government, are not known from their casual appearance as it may strike us at first glance, but from their operation, which is but their history ; nor can we possibly know from whence they oame, nor whither they tend, and whether they work good or evil, without OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 223 knowing the causes from which they spring, and the mode in which they have operated. This will increase our love, if possible, for our churches and make us proud of our heritage. Besides no genuine and firm love of our Baptist institutions is possible without its receiving strength from a know- ledge of the nature of true ecclesiastical polity and the history of our churches. If we do not know this we are deprived of a wholesome experience. To be a useful intelligent member of a Baptist church one must have this experience, and to have it we must study it. It has a long chain of history and is not composed of these few millions of Baptists, and the several thousands of churches that happen to exist at this present moment, but the Baptists of all ages with all the ethical relations subsisting between, them, their institutions, their usages and customs, their growth and history. In a local church alone can a Baptist study its laws, its government, and his obligations to it, and his rights under it, which he really enjoys, and ought carefully to preserve, and transmit inviolate to those who come after him ; through it alone he can learn how to appreciate what is good in it, and dis- cover what requires amending, and how it ought to be amended. We see, therefore, the great importance of studying deeply these rudi- mentary principles of church polity and imprinting on our minds sound ethical rules. It is one of the greatest blessings to live in a church under wisa usages and customs administered by an upright government, and obeyed and carried out by a good and pious membership. It greatly contributes to our spiritual growth in grace if we live in a church, the members of which we love and respect and gladly acknowledge as our brethren. On the contrary, we feel ourselves unduly humbled and dispirited, we feel our views contracted, our moral vigor relaxed, it wears off the edge of moral sensitive- ness, when we see ourselves surrounded by a membership with loose ideas of both morals and ecclesiastical principles ; when we hear of mutterings of discontentment, of factions, schisms and divisions, a membership without any opinion of their own, and without any trustworthiness, brotherly love, mutual forbearance and dependence upon one another. Orthodoxy gradually vanishes, heresies spring up, ministers begin to throw off their allegiance to Christ and to the denomination. The heresies of to-day become the religion of to-morrow. Heoce the rapid disintegration, disruption and downfall of churches, when looseness in these principles begin to undermine the churches. The church must, therefore, through its government maintain and protect itself, evil designs against its existence from within and attacks upon its in- dependence from without should be guarded against, and likewise it should protect each member in the full enjoyment of all his rights and prerogatives In other systems of church government a thorough acquaintance with these principles, though useful to some members of the church, are not so to every one. Ecclesiastical ethics may form a very proper study for a pope, a cardinal, a bishop, a presiding or a ruling elder, who makes a profession of ruling the churches, but in our system every church member is a ruler as they are likewise one of the ruled. These things ought to be well under- stood by every member. It is, in particular, necessary to instruct our young 224 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; members in them. It is every Baptist's business to known his duty, and his duties as a church member are among the most sacred and important, especially so in our Baptist churches where they are called upon to take part in the government of the churches, and have liberty of conscience and liberty of a free government. The success of the whole church depends upon the intelligence of the whole membership ; and there is no subject connected with the church, how to rule the church and how to rule themselves, which does not virtually affect the interest of every one. Baptist church rules and institutions are nothing more than dead forms, unless they are put in opera- tion, and this cannot be done without a knowledge as to how it should be done. As Baptist church government is a vital living principle, it must live in the heart of every Baptist, not only as an ardent desire, or indefinite no- tion, but we must have a knowledge of our church obligations, and a pro- found reverence for ecclesiastical morality. Our Baptist church institutions cannot be preserved, though the laws we have were inspired, if they find not a support in every church member, and this they cannot have if they do not understand them, and are not willing to follow their teachings because they are Scriptural and useful. No one can over-estimate a good system of moral ethics for use in the churches of Christ. Good laws are the best Baptist legacy which one gene- ration can leave for another ; the greatest blessing of the Baptists of to-day is a long continued series of wise ethical rules for the government of the churches. We have but to look at such a system as enacts good and whole- some rules in every other department of social life to understand fully its importance. Without ecclesiastical morality, that is, good customs and orthodox usages, there can be no sound churches ; nor can there be an eccle- siastical without a private morality ; but private morality among the mem- bership of our churches is best preserved where it has grown into good cus- toms and usages. " Custom," says Lord Bacon, "is the chief magistrate of man's life ; men should, therefore, endeavor by all means to obtain good customs." If this be true, ecclesiastical morality in all its manifestations is of elementary importance for the well-being of the churches. For in the multifarious affairs of our churches, there are certain general rules, which are of peculiar importance because they either prompt more frequently to church acts, or come more often than others into play in ecclesiastical life. Of these I beg leave to say a few words, as they embrace some of the most important situations in which church members are called conscientiously to act, although in many instances not guided by any Scriptural rule. A wise code of ethical rules must not only be made by an orthodox and pious membership, but they must be wise and Scriptural laws; and while an orthodox tone of the churches is of primary importance in free churches, prudence and sound counsel in the commentator is not less so. For wise rules must be made with reference to the membership themselves, the period they live in, and the environments that surround them. The great desideratum in Baptist church jurisprudence is a complete compendium of inter-church law, suitable to be adopted by all the Baptist OS, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 225 churches of the land, and to be enforced by their combined consent. It is to be hoped that Baptists will in time come to a oneness of will and practice in this respect as they have in regard to their articles of faith. The prac- ticability of such a scheme has never been exemplified for want of such a code. The complete development of a system of inter-church law can only take place from the influence of intercourse and intercommunion, which unites all Baptist churches by the strongest tie — the desire of supplying mutual wants and helps ; so that there shall be a uniform system in our mis- sionary and other operations, as that there shall not be one rule at one place, another at another ; one now, another hereafter ; but one and the same law shall obtain at all places and all times. The study of Baptist church inter- dependency will aid in the most important degree the development of such a system. Certainly, if there were ever an age in which it was important for our Baptist ministers, and others learned in our polity, to be acquainted with these underlying principles, it is the age in which we live. If we wish our churches to be developed to the highest point of efficiency, we must sys- tematize them, and by means of laws in conformity with God's word and sound sense, place them in a condition wherein they can accomplish the spread of the gospel. To do this will require the best thought of our greatest men. These considerations are the more important from the fact that Baptists have no ecclesiastical legislature in their system empowered to make laws for the government of the churches, and is the more interesting because their jurisprudence has grown up entirely independent of that from which others derive theirs. As Baptists, therefore, and especially as lovers of religious liberty we are bound to acquaint ourselves thoroughly with our ethic rela- tions in ecclesiastical government. We will do this the more readily when we contemplate to what denomination we belong and in what enlightened period we live. Church governments which are free and independent have this great advantage as regards the moral influence of their ethic usages and customs in general ; that the membership consider that these rules are made by themselves, and that they are not only, therefore, the more strictly bound to obey them and to assent to all their provisions, but that it may reasonably be inferred they are expressly adapted to their particular exigencies. If there were Scriptural authority for it, I would be a friend to the codification of Baptist Church jurisprudence, so as to fix in a text the law as it is, not as it ought to be, as far as it has gone, and leave new principles to furnish new doctrines as they arise, and then reduce these again at distant intervals into the text of the law. The trouble with all post-apostolic systems is they commence with a legislative body in the incipiency of the government of tho churches, and commence to warp and twist the law to suit the preconceived notions of the legislative body before the law had time to conform itself to Bible principles. It is what the law oiir/ht to be and not really what it is. Since multiplicity of written rules have great inconvenience and serve only to obscure and perplex, all manner of authoritative comments and exposi- tions, on any part of these fundamental principles of church government, are absolutely prohibited by Baptists. 15 226 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; If, nevertheless, churches are to have relations of ever-increasing intimacy with each other, there must be some uniform code of ethics, although it be unwritten, by which the rights and duties of churches are defined and cir • cumscribed. Beneficial and essential as is such a code of procedure in times of discord and confusion, it is equally so in times of peace. The construc- tion of such a code, although it be by a private individual without ecclesiastical authority to formulate it, must proceed upon some settled and generally recognized principles of ethical classification and conception. The materials for these principles must, and can only, be drawn from a compara- tive study of the systems of ecclesiastical law actually prevalent in the diflferent Baptist churches at the time it is written. It is needless to say that such a written code could not be made and promulgated by any Baptist church or other body of men having authority so to do ; but any church might adopt and use such a system of ethics in so far as it might be intrinsi- cally Scriptural and fit for use. But as any system of church or inter- church law progresses to still finer developments than any authoritatively written code, and trenches on regions of mutual co-operation wholly un- known to any other system of church ethics, some method must be discovered of expressing a common assent based upon the common needs of the churches. Such a method will evidently be a comparative one, and its elaboration presupposes a complete development and understanding of the rudimental principles of Baptist church government. In this peculiar system of Baptist church ethics, due as it is to the intercourse of church with church, and of individual with individual, there has been increasingly felt the same pressing need to discover principles of utility and justice to which the membership of all Baptist churches and the tribunals of all churches of the same faith and order will pay deference, for it is certain that these principles are capable of being digested into ethical rules and maxims. As ecclesiastical ethics thus gather what common sense has established among the churches by applying them to particular situations or important characteristics of the membership of each church, we obtain special branches or systems of ethics as they relate to every phase of church life. This being the case, the various rights and duties of church members in their various relations as individuals may consistently and justly be established with as much certainty as that of any other science. Ethics having ascertained and established a system of rules for the use of the churches, it is the province of church government to ascertain the best means of securing and enforcing these rules, both according to the result of experience, and the demands of existing circumstances. I would call this branch of ethics ecclesiastical government, proper. For, while every member upon entering a church acquires rights he assumes duties at the same time, and the church must offer to protect these rights and see that those duties are performed, or it would cease to be a church, so far as he is concerned who is denied to have a right to derive any advantage from it. Ethics treat, among other things, of the duties of church members, and secondarily of his rights derivable from his duties to his church and to his brethren. The confusion of Scrip- OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 227 tural law with ethical duties in church government has produced evil, and not unfrequently disastrous consequences. Without establishing these firm and absolute principles, all is confusion and insecurity. On the other hand, we are often so far misled by the rigid rules of the law of the gospel, as to judge every ecclesiastical question by theory alone, disavowing experience, expedience, and a due regard to the govermental elements given wherewith to work. The freer church government is, the greater is the force and authority of the laws of the gospel, as such, and is not to be attributed to the personal dictation of any other power whatever ; and less circumscribed at the same time is the individual action of the membership of the churches. This is not so much the necessary consequences of religious liberty, as its essential attributes. The more freedom of action and belief there is in any system of church polity, the greater necessity there is for general intelligence among the membership, and of reverence for the law. All consolidated systems of government may far more easily dispense with moral compliance with the law; they may coerce and dominate and thus maintain their authority. Baptists stand in need of a willing compliance with all wholesome rules of ethics, because it is the law of the church ; or else discord and divisions in the church must follow. Our system shows in this, as in so many other respects, its superiority over all others. Yet above all things Baptists must be intelligent and must know what the law is. Let other people bestow all their energy and means upon the education of the niinistry, which is well enough, but let Baptists have not only an educated ministry but an educated membership, because they, along with the ministry, are the rulers of our churches. Others would keep their membership in ignorance, that they may be the more readily hoodwinked. With them ecclesiastical power and priestly splendor is the most striking attribute of the church, and that part of the government which wields it most signally, is mistaken for the govern- ment of the church itself, a mistake which misleads farther, so that he, or they, who have usurped supreme ecclesiastical power came naturally to be considered the church itself In taking a view of this important subject we must suppose that organ- ized Baptist churches are existing side by side under separate and indepen- dent governments, exercising supreme control over their own assemblies, that, therefore, there is no central organ of legislation, by whose action any rule of inter church conduct which thoughtful persons may regard as desirable could be at once laid down as binding on all the churches morally ; and no central executive power able to force any recalcitrant church to obedience. We readily see that any code of ethics intended to govern such a system must be such as an independent body of churches can be induced to volun- tarily obey ; partly by their own voluntary sentiments of justice and equity, but chiefly by their love of the brotherhood and the fear of the disapproba- tion of sister churches, and the more or less danger of consequent hostile criticism on the part of those whose duty it is to obey such rules. Hence we see that a great part of the rules enforced by the churches in our polity 228 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; have not liad their origin in express ecclesiastical legislation ; they have been gradually brought to the degree of precision and elaborateness which they have now attained by a series of ecclesiastical decisions which have ostensi- bly declared and applied these rules and principles as they have been handed down from time immemorial. And it is contended that this eccle- siastical quasi church legislation is, in a highly cultured church, the very best machinery for introducing such improvements as may be required in the development of a true system of church government. In studying this system of ecclesiastical polity we find that its growth is through the actual controversies that arise between church and church, and between member and member, their moral claims and moral situations, and which call for formal decisions at the hands of churches, or the findings of legally constituted councils, that ethical rules first came into being. I mean of course such as the Bible does not prescribe. It is because churches and individual members thereof are doubtful about what is, and what ought to be, that rules come in to determine what shall be. Thus moral claims and contentions become converted into ecclesiastical rights and obligations, and moral ties into ethical duties. At first the principle is vacillating, uncertain and ofttimes retrograding ; but the customary and habitual use of the rule thus evolved, and the hardening and determining process is ever at work, until it is recognized by all the churches. The same beautiful process takes place though more slow^ly and cautiously, with true apostolic church government. Scriptural limits and bounds being gradually imposed on the arbitrary dis- position of the government, and the notion of a constitution — a divine charter — superior to the actual governing authority gradually making its way. Notwithstanding this theory of Baptist church ethics it will be observed that these principles can only take under their shadow a very small portion of the spiritual and inherent life and force to each rule, though to the whole church it gives so much ethics, indeed, marks out the limits of each feature of church government, and provides general remedies for the grosser violations of the integrity of the church. But it can go, and does go a very little way towards making good church members. Ethics can create and define a beautiful system of moral rules; but it is well known how little they can do directly to guide men into a truly spiritual life, how to make them love one another, how to make them charitable to one another, and how to love God with all their hearts. These things must come down from above and dwell inherently within them. It is one of the most indelible feelings in the breasts of Baptists that they cling to, venerate and cherish the apostolic form of church polity. Their gratitude must consist in acting out farther and farther what the apostles first began, not in a desire to change or innovate, but to consider that which they were able to obtain under the instruction of Christ as the best and wisest. Hence, Baptists from the standpoint of government have ever looked backward, not forward. The excellence of true church polity depends upon its fitness and its conformity to apostolic forms, that is upon the sound principle judiciously applied to the existing state of things, as we OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 229 see them reflected in the New Testament. This is not the case, however, with the mutable rules of ethics, laws and customs arising under this gov- ernment. These things change in the course of time, as the churches become more and more perfectly developed ; real standing still is, therefore, impossible, and if we do not move onward, if we force the same usages and customs upon changed circumstances, we would ruin the churches, and stop that progress without which they could never reach the acme of their perfection. In all things appertaining to the form of government of the churches stability is of itself most desirable ; it preserves that which Christ authorized and the apostles set up, and gives a divine tone to the churches, but in their mere ethical development to preserve that which is weak, im- perfect or bad, is either foolish or immoral. Every new custom or usage is not an innovation, nor is every innovation an error, nor should we declare war against everything that exists or has existed. A code of ethical rules arising out of a true system of church govern- ment is like a living common language, a common literature. It has the principle of its own organic vitality, and of formative as well as assimila- tive expansion within itself. It consists in the customs and usages of Bap- tists, the decisions which have been made accordingly in the course of the administration of the affairs of the denomination, the principles which the Scriptures and reason demand, and practice applies to every varying cir- cumstance, and the administration of church affairs which has developed itself gradually and steadily. It requires, therefore, self-church interpreta- tion, or interpretation by each church itself, and requires the non-interfer- ence of any dictating power beyond the limits of the church itself Eccle- siastical power cannot be sovereign if it be limited, for, in that event, that which imposes the limitation would be the sovereign. Those who hold to the idea of a limited sovereignty do not assert a legal limitation, but a limitation by the law of the gospel and the customary laws between the churches. But who is to interpret, in the last instance, these principles, which are termed the laws of God as applied to church government, when they are invoked by any one in justification of disobedience to the powers which the church authorizes ? Is it not evident that this must be the church itself? It may be that an individual, eminent as a theologian, might inter- pret these principles more truly than does the church, but it is not at all probable, and not at all admissible in principle or practice. Of course the church may abuse its unlimited power as the sole interpreter of the laws of God, but it is never to be presumed. It is the only ecclesiastical organ to which Christ committed this power, and the one least likely to do wrong, and, therefore, we must hold to the principle that the church will knov/- ingly do no wrong. If in its weakness it should err, there is always hope in the future that it will get right. A Methodist general conference, a Presbyterian general assembly, and all such ecclesiastical bodies are direct governments ; that is, the organization of these legislative bodies, and the organization of the general government of those churches are identical. No organization of the local churchea 230 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; behind the institution of these bodies has framed these general governments, organized the churches proper under the law of the gospel, laid out a realm of individual immunity, constructed a government and vested it with powers either enumerated or residuary. Consequently these centralized church governments are unlimited. There is no such thing as an unscriptural act of these all-powerful legislative bodies, and in the very nature of things there can be no such thing. Whatever these bodies ordain in the way of a code of ethics is in fact and in law perfectly permissible ; and whatever these bodies do so ordain, provided it has not been forbidden, or otherwise ordained by them, and provided the ordaining of it has not been placed by them in other hands, is also permissible. No judicial tribunal organized by them can pronounce the acts of these bodies even unscriptural. Those who are to pass upon the legality of these written rules have seats in these bodies, and are consulted whenever any question of the written laws is in issue, but their advice may be disregarded with perfect impunity. They have influence within these legislative and judicial bodies, but they have no power over them, either to nulify their acts or defeat their execution in any particular case. The liberty of the local churches and of the individual is thus com- pletely at the mercy of these general conferences and assemblies. Hence they are utterly despotic governments in theory, however liberal and benevo- lent they may be in practice. It is a mixed government, being both aristo- cratic and monarchic, not only so, but legislative, executive and judicial, in which the great masses have no voice. Ecclesiastical power should never be taken for church government, nor government for the church. It is the living assembly of the local church that constitutes the church, as we will see in another place. The danger of taking government for the church is that ostentation and show will become the principle ingredient in its life. The government of a church may for a long time have so effectively acted upon this principle, and may have smothered so entirely all spirituality in the membership, that the church may sink low in spiritual power, so that when the time comes for it to show its strength, the church may break down and fail to answer the great end of its institution — may become neither hot nor cold. It but illy becomes a body of Baptists to ape that formality we see in other quarters. Let Bap- tists beware lest they depart from the simplicity of the gospel. It is but natural that these things should grow upon a people, and most assuredly will do so unless they are on their guard. Brilliant, external, ritualistic success and self-aggrandizement is not a true index to ecclesiastical success ; we should stop to consider whether spiritual degradation and ruin does not follow this external success. The churches in which we see displayed the most fashion, wealth, stiffness and formality are not those in which there is the greatest growth in grace, and not always most eminent for spirituality and humility of spirit. Good ethical customs and usages may beget order and decorum in a church where ritualistic fomality has instilled little true religion into the tempers of men. I think that if anywhere ecclesiastical history teaches in bold examples the value of simplicity and humility, and OR, THE COMMON LAW OF TPIE GOSPEL. 231 the hoUowness of ritualistic show and formality, in religious worship, it is taught in the history of the Baptists. It is to be hoped that the common sense of our people will abundantly save them from this evil tendency. One of the most powerful agencies in the generation of ethical relations between Baptists in the absence of the power to make written rules is our love for the church. Our love for the church forms the transition and link between the brethren and the church as the aggregate of living men, with their associations arising out of their ethical relations one to another. It is that sympathy which brings brotherly love into the churches, and without which the churches would often be nothing more than any other secular society. Any other interest might unite men into churches, but it might also sever. Without brotherly love and a true love for our churches, men would separate into different sects, hostile factions and parties, and interest alone would not be able to supply the bond. Used in this connection broth- erly love and love for our church may be defined to be the whole body of those affections which unite the hearts of the membership to their church. It is for any church a most indispensable element in true church development, and infuses life and vigor into all parts of our denomination, and produces mutual support and Christian development ; God has implanted it in the human heart as much as he implanted filial love in the heart of the child. It is a good thermometer by which to judge whether a man be a Christian. It is made up of a thousand associations and influences. It requires a well- ordered and orderly church to keep it alive and fruitful. Our attachments must not only be for our church, but it must be denominational. As our rules of ethics, customs and usages extend over the whole denomination and enlarge instead of narrowing our views, so must brotherly love encompass the whole denomination. As every Baptist church is self-instituted and self-governed it should be self-developed and self-sustaining. This should be its first object. A church which, therefore, neglects its own development, and instinctively seeks to help every one else, as a field of action for its energy fails to answer one of the great ends of its institution. It is like the farmer who neglects the cul- tivation of his own farm, and spends his substance in the purchase of more land, and is known by experienced agriculturists to be the poorest of his class. As soon as a church abandons the extensive improvement of itself, both temporally as well as spiritually, it enters on its downward course, and loses the influence which otherwise might have been its share. The truest, most intense, and the most enduring influence a church can exercise upon others is through its own internal agencies and their progressive development and perfection. A Baptist church, in itself, looked at from a human stand- point, is but an humble institution, yet it is the most indispensable means to obtain the highest end, that the gospel may be preached and sinful men brought happily converted into its folds. The church was made for man, for he stands incalculably higher than the church ; for, that he may be able to be all that God would have him be and all that he ought to be, the church exists, and each member has a soul that over which the church can never 2S2 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; extend, because it will outlive the churcli. Nevertheless, the church is worthy of every sacrifice, for it is the institution of institutions, the deposi- tory of all ecclesiastical power on earth, Christ's judicatory, the ark of the covenant, in which the sacred law of the gospel is kept, the Holy of Holies, into which every man who is properly prepared has an equal right to enter. The question then arises, how do these germinal ethical laws in Baptist church government take their root and have a commencement in the absence of ecclesiastical legislation? I answer in a sentence of two words: By voting. This is the usual way of ascertaining the will of any church respect- ing the adoption or rejection of any measure coming before it for deter- mination. Whenever a church must come to a final conclusion and joint action, voting must be resorted to if there be any unanimity among them' By the voting of the whole church public opinion passes into public will, and this public will, if correct and Scriptural, passes into an ecclesiastical law. We see this practice introduced in the very earliest times of the churches. By this practice the very first ministers under the gospel dis- pensation were made, and, indeed, the vacancy in the number of the apostles was filled by voting, or casting of lots. And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered ivith the eleven apostles. It it is needless to say that this was done by an assembled local church. The true idea is that the will of God is wrapped up in the vote of every true church of Christ, for it is said : " And they prayed^ and said, Thou, Xorc/, which Icnowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two thou hast chosen^ Many instances might be added to show where the early churches decided everything by the process of voting. In the Episcopal and Presby- terian forms of government it is quite different. Everything is done by direct legislation and by appointment. Laws come from these legislative bodies full fledged and in full force. This kind of law ceases to have its own life, and the church ceases strictly to live under the law of the gospel, but under the rule of those who may be wise above that which is written. It lives under the dictating or interfering power of others, because each time that a rule passes over from an abstraction into a reality, it is subject to that power, be it either the church or a legislative body. As, by voting, opinion pas&cs into the will of the church, the extent of the right of voting, who shall vote, and the subjects which shall depend upon voting, what subjects shall depend upon mere majorities, what shall require two-thirds votes, the question of majorities and pluralities— all these sub- jects are in principle or practice in Baptist churches of the greatest import- ance, and should not be passed over in a treatise like this. In the first place I would lay it down as a law of the churches that every member has the right to vote upon every question which may come before the church for de- cision. It is the birthright of ecclesiastical freedom. In the second place no member of the church from disinterestedness, indolence or moral cow- ardice should be allowed to refuse to join in that manner of expressing his opinion. A member who for any cause does not attend upon the business meetings of his church and does not stand ready to assume his share of the OR, THE COMMON- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 233 responsibility of casting his vote knows little of the importance of tlie insti- tution of the church, or must be animated by very little pride and public spirit. I kuov/ that some churches would deprive their young children and female members of this right, but nothing can be more contrary to the genius of true church polity. Some churches likewise have a custom of re- quiring a two-thirds vote to settle certain matters which I believe to be equally erroneous and unscriptural. The subject, as being one of right to vote alone, belongs properly to church polity, but it is for church ethics to consider the moral obligation of every member to attend the church and vote, and how he should vote. That there is no safer means of preventing factious movements of any kind, and the church from falling a gradual prey to calamitous disorders, whenever all are allowed to vote, than to allow all the right to vote and to let the majority rule decide in every matter proper to be voted upon. If, however, a member is incapable of deciding respect- ing a measure by his own knowledge or capacity, and if he finds those he has most reason to trust, are divided upon a measure or course of policy, he ought not to be swayed by extraneous circumstances, but to abstain from voting, but should always be excused from voting by the church of which he is a member. The protection of the fundamental principles which underlie Baptist churches leads to that great institution called in common parlance — the minority. A well-organized and fully protected minority, in and out of the church — a loyal minority, by which is meant a party which opposes, on principle, the administration of the church, or the set of men who have, for the time being, the government in their hands, but does so under and within the common fundamental law of the churches, is so important an element of true church government, whether considered as a protecting fence or a crea- tive power, that it would be impossible here to give to the subject that space which its importance requires. But if by minority be understood a faction of men who consult aside from the church, for instance to turn out a pastor whom a few do not like merely to obtain the place for another, it becomes, indeed, an odious faction, the very last of those members to whom the gov- ernment of the church ought to be entrusted. The ruinous and rapidly de- grading effect of such a state of things is directly contrary to a sound system of church jurisprudence, and serves as a fearful encouragement to those who, ecclesiastically speaking, are the most to be dreaded in church government. A legal right of a minority to resist the church is an absurdity, if not a con- tradiction in terms ; but few would contest the moral right to overcome the majority in extreme cases of misrule under our free form of government ; and accordingly I have assumed the existence of such a right in this treatise. Few, on the other hand, would deny that such attempts at resistance ought only to take place in rare and extreme cases, when there appear to be no milder means available for remedying either grave practical misgovernment or persistent, deliberate violation of established and important covenanted rights and guarantees for good church government. But when popular Baptist church government is fully developed and understood the absolute 234 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; right of deliberate resistance for trivial purposes must be held to become obso- lete, for the reasons that the resistance of any part of a church to the will of the whole must be a breach of covenant, owiug to the indisputably superior right of the whole, and, where there is no heresy involved, to its irresistibly superior might. But this right of the majority of the church to rule should be thoroughly understood. The rule of the majority itself indicates the power of the church, its sovereignty ; but power is not always a rule according to the law of the gospel. Supj^ose the majority seek to change the form of church government, substituting the rule of one man, or a few, for that of the ma- jority? Or suppose the majority give away their right of self-government, and establish an ecclesiastical despotism to be ruled over by a bishop or a pope ? This has been done again and again in other systems of church gov- ernment. It is not a rule by the majority every time that constitutes true church government, but where the minority is protected, though the majority rule. It is the protection of rights and fundamental principles beyond the reach of the majority which constitutes true government, not the power of the majority. There can be no doubt that the majority ruled when the Presbyterian and Episcopal forms of church polity were set up. Was this right and Scriptural because the majority did it ? And both these mon- archical forms of church government must be supported, or acquiesced in by the majority, else they would be reformed and made to conform to the Bible system. If the definition be urged, that where the majority rule there is true church government, we must ask at once, what majority and how rule ? If it be a rule contrary to the law of the gospel it is a nullity and therefore void. It is the power of doing all the law of the gospel allows us to do and nothing it forbids us to do. This system is no invention of man, is no crea- tion of those assembled for the purpose of instituting a church polity accord- ing to the majority rule, but is given us by Providence in the living law of the gospel. , The merit of Baptists is that they do not destroy or deface the work of Providence, but accept it, and organize tho churches in harmony with the real order, the real elements given them. They suffer themselves in all their positive substantial work to be governed by reality, not by theo- ries and speculations. In this they prove themselves loyal to Christ, and their work survives and will ever survive till he comes again to reign with his people upon earth. There is a question of practical importance which is necessary to discuss in a treatise like this which occupies itself professedly with ethics in connec- tion with the churches. The question is : What is the true relation of the ministry to an independent system of church polity? Baptists have long since solved that great ecclesiastical problem, as to how to give sufficient power to the ministry, and, at the same time to prevent them from usurping more, and uniting into a formidable aristocracy of official places. I do not know that anything redounds more to the honor of the Baptist ministry than the readiness with which they eschew ecclesiastical power and self aggran- dizement, and labor for the churches and the salvation of souls. Baptist OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 235 ministers remember that the churches do not exist for them, but that God has called them into the ministry to serve the churches and not to serve themselves. A church may exist without a pastor, but a pastor can not exist without a church. Baptist church jurisprudence lays down the prin- ciple that the pastorate of a church is not descendible property, like some hereditament, but a descendible trust, falling into the hands of such as the church may from time to time elect to fill that office under the call of the Holy Spirit. The pastor has power to do but little else than to preach the gospel and to administer the ordinances of the church ; and these preroga- tives, as any others he may have, belong to his ministerial character, and proves no sovereignty in himself, for it would always be a second-hand sovereignty, that of the church being superior to it. Is it not clear, then, that the church is the fountain of all ecclesiastical power, and the minister merely the medium through which ministerial functions flow. If, therefore, church sovereignty must be somewhere, it certainly is not in the ministry that we find it, and if it is nevertheless applied to the ministry, it means nothing more than executive power within and under the church itself to preach the gospel and to administer the ordinances, which comes from sources of superior power than from themselves. The ministry is not invested with authority to create a power to rule distinct with themselves. Each church, however, chooses its own officers, including both pastor and deacons, who have in themselves specific rights and duties peculiar to them, each holding the station belonging to them, and performing their appropriate duties. They, therefore, together with the membership, constitute the government. It follows as a necessary consequence, that the sovereign power and the government are the same, and that they cannot be separated from each other. It is only in church governments in which the member- ship of each church possesses the sovereignty that the two powers can be placed in distinct bodies ; nor can they in them otherwise than by the insti- tution of a government by covenant, to which all the membership are parties, and in which those who fill the offices are made their representatives and servants. It will not do to say that the ministry exists by divine right alone and therefore they have the right to usurp the government of the churches and rule them as best pleases themselves. But surely the membership of the churches exist also by divine right, and, what is more, God has ordained that the ministry shall exist by their choice and election under the call of the Holy Spirit. When they trangress the laws of God do not the member- ship arraign, try and excommunicate them from the church? Of what then are they the divine rulers ? Are they rulers by divine right in their own persons, without reference to this choice, calling and election, then why are they not rulers from the moment of their birth, and not by the election and choice of the churches ? Until we are shown individual ministers who are, somehow or other rulers by divine right within themselves without the consent of the churches, we cannot believe in the absurd dogma of the divine right of the ministry. There must, then, be something beyond them, which 236 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPBUDENCE ; keeps a minister in his high offics ; it cannot be inherent. It is the local church, which is infinitely above the minister, wliich can see him pass away, and yet it remains the same. It is the Baptist ministry alone who are able to penetrate and understand the true character of this office. They understand that the minister is for the church, and not the church for the minister so much. When they are elevated to the ministerial office, they feel -that the membership has granted pre-eminence to one of their equals only. There have always been flatterers who would tickle the ears of the ministry with these ruinous theories which have done so much to curse the Christian world and brought true religion into disrepute. But be it said to the ever- lasting honor of the Baptist ministry, they have never thought of claiming for themselves a position above the law of the Gospel, which they understand they can in reality never occupy. Those high church dignitaries who consider themselves the special agents and self-selected vicegerents of the Deity, and not only so, but themselves able to control, at least to a certain extent, the divine actions, any minister possessed of these whimsical notions, and educated in that mystical theory of morals so generally prevalent outside of Baptist circles, wliich makes the divine pleasure the foundation of all moral distinctions, very easily imagines their own wills and that of the Deity to be the same, and very easily substi- tutes their wills, under the idea of its being the divine will, as the true foundation and actual test of all ecclesiastical government on earth. The influence of this superstitious mysticism keeps those under it in a state of abject, unquestioning, willing, submission, at the feet of those claiming to be God's vicegerents, and makes them look with fear and hatred upon every- thing which has a tendency to diminish the power of the priesthood. On principle and according to common reason and still more common sense there is no such thing as priestly aposto'ic succession in ecclesiasticial jurisprudence. According to the process of reasoning by which this doctrine can only be maintained, is that upon the death of an apostle that office passed to the legal successor immediately upon the death of the predecessor, without any process or ceremony of transference or ordination or consecra- tion, and even without the knowledge of the successor. This implies the perpetual existence of a royal house or line of apostolic lords, whose com- mencement and foundation reaches far back to the apostles themselves and has retained its identity and hold upon the Christian world ; has kept and still keeps attached to itself the only divine and capable personalities in the church suitable for rulers of the churches of Christ. This would be a kind of a hereditary government in which the church confers the powers of government upon a person standing in a certain ecclesiastical family relation to his immediate predecessor. This is certainly a strait and narrow way for a hereditary ecclesiastical ruler to walk in ; but certain popes and bishops have found it perfectly easy and practicable. From this criterion the bishop of New York, for example, ought to be able to trace with unerring certainty his apostolic genealogy back through the past nineteen hundred Christian centuries, even through the dark ages, to Peter, Andrew, Paul or some other OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 237 one of the apostles. The aforesaid bishop might have ecclesiastical acumen enough to know with the stretch of his imagination, who his predecessors were, and how they were made, but how can he know who his successor will be, is beyond the ken of human knowledge. The Scriptures do not pretend to unravel these deep mysteries, and no one can say that the Scriptures are less logical than the common sense of common mortals. Any system of ethics which has grown up and by universal consent has become assented to becomes thus the law of the churches ; but as to fellow- ship and communion with organizations not of our faith and order no such mutual fellowship or obligation passes between Baptists and them, nor ought to pass by direction of the law of the gospel ; for we neither find that the Scripture, by virtue of its absolute authority, commands us to maintain any communion with them, nor do they sustain any fellowship towards us arising from covenant. From which defect, on account of the disorders practised by them there arises, as it were, a state of non-fellowship between us and them, and by reason of which difference in faith and practice communion with them would be displeasing to God, as it is equally so to those in whose custody he has confided the truth as it is in Christ Jesus. As lovers and defenders of the ti-uth Baptists ought to oppose this communion. The con- sciousness that we ought not to mix error with the truth, the impossibility of mixing oil with water, and the great ethical law of the churches, which springs from the teachings of the apostles, and directly from the ethic nature of believers in Christ, make it necessar}' that we should have nothing in an ecclesiastical way to do with those who have apostatized from the faith and order of Christ's churches. The Baptist church or minister who invites an alien minister to preach in its, or his, pulpit ought to be ready and willing to say amen to all he says. If the seeds of heresy be thus deposited where the truth should otherwise be sown, the church is responsible before God. Pulpit non-affiliation is one of the great common laws of Baptist churches, in the breach of which they have everything to lose and nothing to gain. Church members, especially in these modern times, are drawn together by important ethical relations other than ecclesiastical, in smaller societies whioh have a kind of government. The most venerable of these is the weekly prayer meeting of the church, which has had a continuous life rivaling that of the churches in duration and importance to their members. But there are various other organizations mostly with narrower and more temporary aims, such as councils, committees, missionary societies, unions and leagues, which are of vast importance and usefulness in the social and rehgious life of our modern churches. All these have as their bond of union brotherly love and fraternal fellowship, and each have a kind of quasi- government, the structure of which will often resemble more or less closely that of the church itself. The control of all such organizations should be vested in, and be under the government of the churches whose permission should be obtained for their organization ; but most of the detailed regula- tions of them should be left to the societies themselves. If penalties are found necessary for a breach of ethical rules, as is sometimes the case, some 238 quasi-judicial machinery may be formed for determining whether such penalties have been incurred; so that all the fundamental functions of government are brought into exercise. Such penalties can extend no further than exclusion from the benefits of the society, and from voluntary relations with its members. Any individual who withdraws from these societies and is content to have nothing further to do with their members, can suffer no further penalty, except that if by withdrawal he commits a breach of covenant from which the society suffers damage, he ought to be willing to make adequate reparation, just as if he had broken any other contract. Churches should be slow to invest these societies with large grants of power, and it is only to a very minor extent that this grant of governmental power is likely to be expedient at all. In whatever they do they ought to be con- sidered as the agent of the churches and should never be permitted to do anything that would bring reproach upon the church of which it is an in- tegral part. By no means ought they ever to assume ecclesiastical powers, the performance of which in the least lessens the dignity of church authority. If they do it should constitute an adequate ground for special repressive in- tervention, and their action should be prohibited and suppressed, even though a part of their operations may be perfectly lawful. The facility with which these extra-ecclesiastical societies can and have been organized in and under the auspices of our Baptist churches of recent years has been, by some of our wisest brethren, considered a source of alarm. They consider that each society if not carefully guarded and regulated, bears within it the germ of more or less danger and ecclesiastical weakness, either towards the churches or their own individual members, for the simple reason even if there were no other, that it increases intensity of action, and separates, in some degree at least, the associated members from the church itself, and subjects them to separate ethical rules of action. If the whole church were to engage in the work of these various societies as a church it is contended the effects would not be so apparent, but they are generally and necessarily extra-ecclesiastical. We shall in this treatise find a place to treat of the necessary usefulness of regular Baptist associations and conventions, but each church must determine what are lawful and proper societies within its juris- diction and what are not. Generally speaking every society is unlawful which in the least attempts to exercise ecclesiastical authority, or which in- terferes with the rights of the church, for ecclesiastical ethics demand that the church should suppress all societies which in any way detract from the dignity of the church or in any manner interferes with its rights or brings reproach upon its fair name. Those societies will in general be the most harmless and useful which have a simple clearly defined object openly stated. But when selfish ends become the object of societies, it must be remembered that tliey easily superinduce a spirit of exclusiveness, of supposed superiority over the church, by promoting the selfish interests of those engaged in them only, in the various ways of social dependence, who, seeing that they are in need of the aid of such societies for worldly purposes, accommodate them- selves outwardly to them to the injury of the churches. The more numerous OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 239 and compact these societies become, the more their numbers are apt to valua the interests of the societies higher than those of the churches, and sometimes to end in adapting an ethical code or standard of their own, to be judged of only by the promotion of the selfish interests of those societies alone. Then again in a free and independent system of church polity there is this additional danger, that such societies once formed, and having obtained a strong hold upon the affections and sympathies of its members, must easily become channels and vessels of factious agitations and dissensions. There are many questions, some religious, some social, and not a few political, which at times have been so interesting to all members of our churches, that they alone, without any additional aid, have a sufficient tendency to create divisions and separations, frequently disturbing the plain and easy inter- course of these societies, and not unfrequently the churches themselves. Nor can it be denied that experience amply proves that these quasi religious subjects, whenever mixed up with and agitated by these societies, become injurious to the churches, and may end in fanaticism of one sort or another. I do not pretend to deny that there is a great moral power in mutually coun- tenancing these societies, and the vices with which we are surrounded may have become so general, or have obtained such a strong hold upon society at large that the individual Avill be too weak or frail to contend against them. But if these are legitimate things to be contended against, why not let the church, as a church, undertake the task? Or, better still, would it not be more in keeping with the true church ethics for the churches to steer clear of these quasi religious matters and let Christians band themselves together, not under the auspices of the churches, but as individuals, to right the wrongs we see in society? A dispassionate view of the subject leads us to believe that it is far more beneficial to the churches and to society for indi- viduals to take their stand boldly and prevail on others to join their endeavors outside the churches, and to promote their common views, than to form a specific society in the church for that purpose. In other words, do not mix the church up with worldly afiairs. Baptist young people should remember that they live under a government of fixed, determinate gospel laws. The code of their government is shaped by the letter and spirit of the Bible alone. It is a matter of the greatest pos- sible import that the last-named proposition shall receive not even a con- structive violation. Every successive act which tends in that direction opens more widely a door through which schisms will ultimately enter, and consign the cause of Bible church government to forced and unmerited oblivion. Every law, indeed, which cannot draw to itself the complete and unqualified sanction of our whole denomination actually offers a premium upon just such lawlessness as sometimes we see displayed among our people. In our close adherence to Bible truth and teachings and their fixity lies the safety of all forms of church government. This fixity is sought in unscriptural systems by setting up adjuncts to the church of Christ and attempting to endow them with ecclesiastical life. It is sought in Baptist church govern- ment by making the Bible the exclusive guide of governmental action. Let 240 ' A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; any people surrender their right to rule to one man or to a few, depart from the provision of the Bible in one instance, and who shall presume to hold that similar action shall not be taken in another? Where is the watchman who shall have the sagacity to determine when the ultimate limit of such de- parture shall have been reached, and, more difficult still, will he be respected when he speaks ? So long as our Baptist people assume to live under and have regard for a Bible form of government, just so long must they see to it that our organic law is preserved inviolate, or else incur the penalties which will im- mediately attach to its violation. The only legitimate way to here establish a new system, or to extend the old, is by a new revelation from Heaven, which is not likely to come soon. Whether or not it is lawful or desirable at this epoch of our history, that Baptist churches should have their authority extended over these many extra-ecclesiastical institutions of com- paratively local import which it is difficult, and to some extent powerless, to control, is one of the greatest questions which Baptists are called upon to solve. The usefulness or desirability of these various societies are neither denied or affirmed. I am here dealing with Baptist church government. In view of our peculiar form of polity — and that it is peculiar and delicate no thinking Baptist can deny — the paramount duty of our people is to in- flexibly pursue the course which, as a whole denomination, will alone assure us present safety and future existence — namely, protect the fixity of our form of church government. The attainment of this end is possible only by giving the most complete obedience to the mandate : Stand by the letter and spirit of our organic law, the Bible. Abide by the Bible, and the Baptists live ; de- stroy it, and they will soon sleep in the embrace of ecclesiastical oblivion, which they will deserve through disobedience. Then again, church ethics have evolved another rule, the breach of which has brought degradation to the churches of Christ, that is, that pastors should never preach politics from their pulpits in times of political excite- ment. The evil effects of these political harangues, as they have appeared of late, may, perhaps, thus be summed up : They degrade the church and bring it down on the level of a political mass meeting for campaign party purposes ; they degrade the minister and bring him down upon the level of the politician, and make him the laughing-stock of all right-thinking peo- ple ; they lower the high standard of the gospel, and make it subservient to the evil designs of a misguided man ; they destroy the respect of the mem- bership for the pastor, especially if they happen to differ from him in poli- tics, as they likewise create divisions and dissensions in the churches of which they are pastors. A Baptist preacher with a political mission is a misnomer and richly deserves all the contempt in which he is held by intel- ligent men. Christ has commissioned him to preach the gospel, and at the same time declaring that His Kingdom is not of this world. Baptists everywhere and at all times have labored to separate religion and worldly affairs, the church from the state, while the political preacher would unite the two. The founder of Christianity gave some pretty explicit directions to his disciples when he sent them out to convert the world, but it will be OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 241 generally admitted that in omitting to instruct them to preach politics from the pulpit, he left a gap in the religious edifice which has been worthily filled by the political preachers of to-day. That minister of the gospel whom the Holy Spirit has called to preach and who acknowledges the binding obliga- tion of the commission, Go preach the gospel to every creature^ is not allowed to preach politics, however pressing the case may appear at the moment, and whatever advantage at the moment may deceive his eyes, is too evident to be dwelt upon here. Rather than engage in the disreputable business of preaching politics from the pulpit a minister had better flee to the mountains of Hepsidara and gnaw a file the balance of his ministerial lifetime. The more ministers meddle with politics, the more, in the natural course of things, is religion carried over to politics, and the more we are exposed to fanaticism and persecution, open violent, or secret and indirect. Baptists cannot be too careful to have these two diametrically opposite elements separate, for it is contrary to Baptist teachings in all ages of the world. There are many proofs that religion, instead of being the balm of life, becomes, if once brought into contact with party strife, the fiercest of all excitements. The history of the present political contest (fall of 1896), when some of our Baptist ministers have become political preachers would alone suffice to check ministerial rashness in this respect forever. It is not only against the most essential interest of the church, but of the minister, and the cause for which he harangues, if the pulpit is turned into a rostrum of political strife. Besides it is also unfair in the highest degree. The minister has not been called by the Holy Spirit and ordained for that pur- pose, nor supported to preach politics. As a gentleman, alone, he ought never to make use of that place where no one can answer him, to debate politics. Is he not, among gentlemen, considered peculiarly exempt from insults because he is known to be unable to answer them like other men? On a similar principle he ought to abstain from political discussions or allu- sions in the pulpit. Civil liberty is in danger and can no where exist, when the ministry act thus against their own sacred calling. That the minister cannot violate these rules if he becomes a political preacher, and must inter- fere by doing so with his own essential efficiency as a pastor, is evident. While all ministers should take an interest in public aflTairs, yet under no circumstances can he aflford to preach political harangues from the pulpit. Some ministers, sad to say, have a metaphysical, speculative spirit — specu- lation for the sake of speculation — for the joy and excitement of intellectual activity — preaching for the sake of display and not for the conversion and salvation of the lost, but as a kind of gymnastic training to produce mental strength, agility and dexterity, not to be used to attain any spiritual result except to feed the fancy of men and to starve their poor hungry souls. They pride themselves in the art of wording skillfully and dexterously planting a blow. They are fond of debate for the sake of debate ; for the intellectual activity, which comes of dispute, and the glory of victory. The truly gospel preacher, whom the Lord has called to preach, and imbued with his spirit, are but fledgelings and nestlings in their sight, crying for food, and 16 242 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; are not able to soar into the realms of intellectual sky-scraping lest they fall and break their limbs ; but what they do preach is the power of God unto the salvation of the soul. The metaphysical preacher deludes us wdth promises of essential knowledge, and cheats us with gilded apples full of ashes ; while the old fashioned gospel preacher gives us the nourishing bread of eternal life — food fit for the soul of man — coarse it may be, and sometimes homel}^, but wholesome bread, such as is suited and necessary to our spiritual life and growth in grace. Oh ! that the Lord would convert our meta- physical preachers and turn them into preachers of the everlasting gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, else silence them forever by putting them out of the ministry. The gospel is said to be. The power of God unto the salvation of the soul. That being a gospel truism, that cannot be gain- said that, whenever a sermon is preached, and the salvation of some soul is not the result, he who preaches that sermon, ought to ask himself, seriously, whether in truth it be the gospel that has been preached ? It belongs to the province of general ethics as applied to church govern- ment to discuss the question as to the Scriptural ness and expediency of the ordination of women to preach the gospel. I know that this is a mooted question, delicate in its nature, upon both sides of which are arrayed some of our strongest brethren. But one who essays to lay down rules of ethics in church government should not hesitate to add the weight of his opinion to the one side or the other of so important a question as this as he thinks right. I believe that the whole tenor of the gospel teaching is against the ordination of women to the office of the ministry. But supposing that the gospel were silent upon the subject, there is one thing we do know that the customs and usages of the Baptist churches are against it, and those customs and usages cannot be broken in upon without demolishing one of the great landmarks of the churches of Christ. Not only the teachings of the great apostle are against it, but the almost universal practice of the churches is against it. The same obstacles in the way to the elevation to the bench, the bar and to political office has kept her out of the pulpit and consigned her to a sphere of Christian work and activity in our churches far more import- ant and far more becoming the many graces and virtues which have always adorned her life. The great apostle said most emphatically: Let your women keep silent in the churches. Therefore this is the divine order of things — not one of the common laws of the gospel, growing up by reasonable inter- pretation of the same, but a veritable thus sayeth the law, and has eaiiy and always been acknowledged as such by Baptist churches all over the world. By this plain teaching of God's word let our churches stand, and let him who would teach otherwise be regarded as a disturber of the denominational tranquillity. There is no one question in church ethics so well settled not only by the laws of the gospel, but by the universal practice of the churches as the public ministry of women, and I doubt very seriously whether God ever called one to publicly preach the gospel. And yet our churches would not be half what they are without her work and influence. Her true sphere OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 243 assigned by God is to serve and to wait at the feet of the Master, not onlj SO, but to act as wife, mother, daughter and sister, and through these ethical relations to bless, not only the church, but society at large in a degree far more useful than to preach the gospel, which is alone the province of man. A woman loses her natural character as well as her religious influence as she attempts to enter into the public preaching of the gospel, and whenever this fundamental law of the gospel is violated, evil ensues as in every other case of deviation from the laws of God and nature. As the laws of society prompt that she should not judge in the courts, nor debate in the halls of legislature, nor take a direct part in politics, so should she not preach ; if she does so it is always to the injury of herself and of society and of the church in which she attempts to exercise that office. This does not deprive her of the right to teach in private and do the work of a missionary if she feels called of the Lord so to do. In all religious work woman is but the helpmeet as she is in the family, yet deeply interested in these things. Likewise do I consider it highly derogatory to their position and character if they hold public meetings and make platform speeches, as they now very often do in these degenerate times. The reason for this divine order of things is that our Christian woman loses in the same degree her natural character, as women, as they enter the pulpit and go upon the platform, or go into publicity generally. Baptist church jurisprudence, however, does not underrate the capacity or usefulness of women ; there are, of course, women, whose extraordinary gifts and mental organizations is such that they are indispensable to church work; but whenever this fundamental principle is abandoned as a general rule, evil ensues as in every other case of deviation from the laws of the gospel and nature. To be thrust into the pulpit and upon the platform women would necessarily lose their peculiar character as Christian women, and thus a necessary element of Christian civilization would be extinguished, and a subversion of the whole moral order of things would be the consequence. Nothing of the kind was ever heard of in the days of the apostles and very earliest times of the churches, and to those days and to those primitive times Baptists go for inspiration and instruction. Had Christ and his apostles intended that women should preach the gospel they would have doubtless accounted them worthy by putting them into the ministry. The history of the apostolic churches is full of the brightest examples of many women who labored nobly for the spread of the gospel, as we see in our own times how devotedly, how assiduously and how lovingly they labor in the cause of the Master. What would our churches be without them ? What minister would prefer to take charge of a church where there were no women to hold up his hands ? Let not our noble Christian women meddle with spheres which would deprive her of her womanly character, and then her name will be held dear and in living remembrance for ever. The practice some churches have of a rapid change in pastors, of changes for the sake of change, and of selections frequently made of other pastors in utter and notorious disregard of the suitableness of those who are to fill 244 A theatise upon baptist church jueispkudence ; these vacancies, is based on a total misconception, or a false idea of the sacredness of this ethical relation, and is weakening to the ministerial function. The administration of church affairs, if not an art, is at least an occupation and a labor in which a knowledge of men and measures, and a skill and knowledge of church details are indispensable, and can only be acquired by practice and long experience. The ethical relation of pastor and people is a sacred one, akin to that of husband and wife, and should not be dissolved for trivial causes. Without the observance of this rule, the office of the ministry is but a plaything — all theory and no practice. But within this rule, all change and rotation of pastors, merely for the sake of change and rotation, are a positive loss to the churches ; this is true since a knowledge of these things is a matter not learned in a few months or a year, and as each church should be solicitous to avail itself of the benefits of the pastoral experience of those in office, and who are in other respects as competent and eligible as those who may be chosen to supplant them merely on the principle of change. And it must be remembered that this wholesome rule of church ethics applies not only to the church, but to the pastors as well. No pastor ought to resolve himself into a pastorate jumper and a place-hunter. There was a class of soldiers in the late war known as "bounty-jumpers " — men who after having enlisted in the army, and having been paid a bounty for enlisting would cowardly desert the army and again enlist and again desert for the sake of the bounty. I would not be so severe as to liken any minister to these bounty -jumpers, but I desire only to caution our ministers against the practice of a restless and everlasting change of pastorates, which I am sure is as contrary to the spirit of the gospel as it is injurious to the churches. If a pastor is thus bound by the laws of the gospel to his pastorate w^hat of his maintenance while thus in charge of the church ? The law upon this subject is very plain. Who goeth to warfare any time at his own charge f WIio planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof^ or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock f Say I these things as a man ? or saith not the laiu the same also? For it is written in the law of Moses j Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen f If we have sown unto you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things f Do ye not know that they which minister about holy things live of the things of the temple f and they which wait at the altar arepartakers with the altar f Even so hath the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel. Thus spoke the great apostle. It is very manifest from this that the pastor shall plow and sow in hope of a crop, and reap in the hope of eating the fruit of his labor in the gospel. He should, therefore, put a just value upon his ser- vices as they are valued among the churches, by the common rate of justice current among men according to the ability of the church to pay for those services. The preparation for this high office is long, laborious and expen- sive. In worldly callings men's salaries are fixed in proportion to what is required of them. The more and greater benefits any calling brings, the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 245 more it is prized and valued. If pastors bring in spiritual blessings to the church it is but just that they should partake of those carnal blessings which the members of his flock enjoy. It is not only a labor of love for the good of souls, but it is the labor of the mind which spends the best energies of a man and preys upon his very vitals, and, therefore, it is the greatest labor to which a man can be subjected. Hence the pastor himself in this sacred office of Christ has a right by previous agreement to set a value on the merits of his service, as well as the church calling him, who are the other party to the contract, as in all other like engagements. That which is justly due from the church to the pastor for his services should never be considered as a gift, but as a debt, and is not to be left to the arbitrary determination of the church alone. As the call of a pastor and his acceptance of the call is a matter of mutual agreement, so his salary is to be settled by a like agreement according to the ability and usefulness of the pastor, as well as the ability of the church to pay. As Christ ordains the institution of the church and calls men into the ministry, so he ordains a rule of ethics for the maintenance of pastors. This maintenance is due in justice to pastors as they are laborers, by the same rule that the law gives to the laborer in other callings, who is said to be worthy of his hire. And yet as pastors are the ordained ministers of God, and serve in the public worship of God, therefore offerings made to them are offerings to God, and thus they are gifts to God as well as dues to the pastor. To leave all, therefore, only to the free-will offerings of the church and cut off all fixed salary, is to put our pastors into a worse condition than any other class of men. Surely God has not bound his faithful ministers to these hard terms. What peculiar burden has God laid upon pastors more than upon men in other callings, that they should depend merely on free-will offerings to maintain themselves and those dependent upon them ? This maintenance is given to the pastor for the Lord's sake, and so it is honoring God with our substance, and sow- ing to the Spirit and to spiritual ends. Pastors are called by the church under either an express or implied promise to pay for their services, and if they are not dealt with justly by the church, they have a right to leave the church on the ground of a breach of covenant. Besides, pastors are ex- pected to be charitable and hospitable to others, but how can they be charitable and hospitable unless they have that wherewith to bestow these bounties ? Whenever a number of churches, whether few or many, enter into voluntary associations, the rules adopted by them to carry on missionary and other enterprises, should be strictly adhered to by all churches co-operating with them. No one should be allowed to constitute himself an agent to carry on work for which they were organized. Whatever is done should be accom- plished through the regularly constituted boards of these bodies, and by the agents appointed by them. Often do we see self-constituted agents going about within the bounds of our associations, as missionaries, preaching in an aimless way, holding a commission from no church or other body, making their own collections and disposing of the same in a manner as best pleases 246 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; themselves. Such habitual disregard of all rules of order, in an association or convention, not only produces confusion and clashing of action, but it leads to a want of trust and confidence in those who take it upon themselves thus to act. It is needless to say that a self-appointed agent is honest and well-intentioned, and in no danger of misapplying funds thus collected from the churches. These associations have their plans laid out, and missionaries already in the field, and need all the money the churches can spare to carry them out ; besides, if one man is allowed to thus act in opposition to all organized eflTort, another can claim the. same right and has a carte blanche to go around and depredate upon the churches at will. The churches by uniting in these associated bodies, cede to them the right to make these regu- lations, and all churches ought to observe them strictly and see to it that no member of their congregations, whether minister or layman, violate them. Though they may have a right to violate this wholesome rule, it is inexpedi- ent, and in many cases decidedly wrong, because of its inexpediency to make use of this right, if they thereby disorganize the work and expose the boards of the associations to embarrassments. Once destroy this government of these bodies, if government you can call it, and every man will take the rule in his own hands, and chaos and confusion will be the result. All stability of church government, so important as this to the cause of. Christ, would be undermined, if churches or individuals should be allowed to tram- ple so important a rule as this under foot. There is one question that very often perplexes church members, which it would be well, in this place, to notice. That is, where a member of a church applies for a letter of dismissal from his church, to join another church of the same faith and order, and there is one or more objections to the grant of such a letter. What is the duty of the church in such cases ? If the objection be for the want of fellowship, for the retiring member, and the objecting parties have had ample opportunity to file charges against him, it should constitute no bar to the grant of a letter of dismissal. Or if such charges should be preferred against a member wishing to retire from the church, and a majority of the church should fail to vote for his excommuni- cation, the minority would have no right to further object to the grant of a letter of dismissal. And it would, according to the very nature of Baptist church polity, not be a contradiction of terms for the letter to state, in the usual verbiage, that such retiring member was in full fellowship mid in good standing with the church. For it must be remembered, that for all purposes of government, the majority of the church is the church, and if he is in fellowship with a majority, who is supposed to have just voted a vote of con- fidence, he is in fellowship with the church, and the letter should so state. And I can see no difference in varying the rule in the reception of a mem- ber. If the majority, after due notice and deliberation, should see proper to take into the fellowship of the church, a member, bearing a letter from a sister church, although a minority should dissent, they should bow to the will of the majority. Baptist church government cannot be based upon any other principle ; to do so would undermine the whole fabric, and it OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 247 would fall to the gound. There is really no more reason why the majority should not rule in matters of this nature than in any other case of similar importance. It should be borne in mind, however, that I here speak of the ecclesiastical right to receive a member into a church under such circum- stances. I doubt very seriously the wisdom and the expediency of such a course, and a majority in the church as a matter of both policy and principle should never impose upon an unwilling and conscientious minority any man whose conduct has been such as they do not approve and whom they cannot fellowship. Besides, it is always better to ward off trouble than to deliberately take it into the church. There is no plainer rule of ethics inculcated by Baptist church jurispru- dence than the one which teaches obedience not only to ecclesiastical laws, but to civil law, and submission to the existing civil government, whatever be its form, whether a republic, a monarchy or an aristocracy. It also, teaches the principles, and inculcates the practice of justice and humanity- charity, peace and good-will to men. But it equally teaches that all gov- ernments have legitimate authority to make just and humane laws, and no others; and the citizen is enjoined to obey them. When a government exceeds its legitimate powers, and makes unjust, cruel and oppressive laws, the citizen is generally required by the principles of Christianity, to submit to them as a matter of expediency ; because any attempt at resistance will, in most cases, only increase the evil ; and because anarchy is generally pro- ductive of more evil consequences to a people than tyranny. But when a people have endured injustice and great oppression until they are nearly unanimous in the opposition to the tyranny, and can make a successful resistance and revolutionize the government by methods known to the laws of nations, they are justified in doing so ; at least this is the Baptist interpre- tation of the Scriptures. The contrary interpretation tends to establish not only the divine right of kings and monarchs, princes, popes and bishops, but also their unlimited sovereign power to make and enforce laws upon all subjects, temporal and spiritual, civil and religious, and to compel obedience to them by severe and unusual penalties and punishments, however unjust and tyrannical, oppressive and cruel they may be. Under any other system of government but the republican form, it has been insisted that the gospel imposes upon the citizen the duty of passive obedience, under any and all circumstances, to the laws and ordinances of his government. The great Baptist family of the earth, wherever they may be, believe that such an interpretation may properly be regarded as a perversion of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the true principles of Christianity, and certainly under this view of the case the free government of the United States of America could never have been established. And no doubt the early Christians were taught submission under certain circumstances, as a matter of policy, and not as a duty. But it may be laid down as a general princi- ple which Baptists have always followed, that the gospel seeks to inculcate its benign principles and doctrines, by preaching and moral suasion, by a study of the Scriptures, and not by force nor by law, which is backed up by 248 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUKISPRUDENCE ; force and civil power, to aid in executing it. The gospel gives no counte- nance to unjust and oppressive laws; and certainly no countenance to laws which attempt to regulate the religious opinions of men ; nor to human laws which favor one religious sect in preference to another ; nor to laws that donate public moneys for sectarian purposes ; nor to laws which pre- scribe the mode in which people may w^orship God; nor to human laws which attempt to impose a religious creed upon the people, and to punish dissenters, or to impose disabihties upon them. All such laws are per- versions of the principles of Christianity and sound ethics, and against which Baptists, be it said to their everlasting glory and honor, have ever been opposed. Such laws are based on absolutism, self-righteousness, and have for their basal rock an assumption of infallibility, and contian the very essence of despotism, and always fail to attain the objects and purposes for which they were made. The powers of ecclesiastical government are properly limited in their nature to moral and religious ends and purposes, and to the use of moral suasion and moral means. It should rest entirely upon moral and religious influences and opinions, and upon moral suasion, and not on force, nor the power of coercion It should have no authority over a man's person or his property; no power to impose corporeal punishment or restraint of any kind ; no power to reach a man's property by taxation or a system of tithes, not even for religious uses, but should be supported by voluntary contribu- tions and the voluntary donations of individuals. The consideration, dis- cussion, and the determination of political questions and all matters of gov- ernment should be regarded as foreign to all matters of religion, and should be left to legislative bodies, officers of government, political meetings, and to the people acting in their civil and secular capacity. It is a pitiable sight to see a minister of the gospel preaching politics from the pulpit. The pulpit and ecclesiastical bodies should have nothing to do with such subjects, and should be entirely separate and distinct from the civil government of the country, and be independent of it, except so far as they may need acts of incorporation and the aid of the law, in the management of their property and secular concerns. Such are the views of Baptists upon the subject of civil and ecclesiastical government, which have always been predominant in the denomination since the days of the apostles. And they coincide with the theory upon which the American system of government is based, and is the only one which can secure the civil and religious liberty of the citizen. I must be allowed to say that in the conclusion of this chapter that I have deviated from my original purpose not to lay down rules proper for the government of the churches. As an object of study I have endeavored to keep the governmental machinery of the churches held up to the constant gaze of the student. But throughout this treatise I have found it hard to separate in thought the moral, or ethical phase of the churches from their polity, however large a field the two studies may have in common. Eccles- iastical rights rather than moral duties must be the task of him who would treat properly church polity in its true sense. THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 249 CHAPTER IX. ECCLESIASTICAL COUNCILS: THEIR POWERS AND DUTIES. IT is with much diffidence that we take up the study of the question of ecclesiastical councils, as they relate to Baptist church government. In doiug so I wish to confine myself to my own proper task, and not usurp the functions of the ecclesiastical legislator, of the moralist, or of the philan- thropist. I feel called upon only to register and expound the practical rules based upon the tacit or express consent of the churches, and conformable to the dictates of abstract justice, so far as these can be ascertained ; and I am not entitled to impair the simple treatment of a subject, engrossing enough in itself, by speculations on a remote future of Baptist churches, or even by benevolently suggesting reforms for the immediate present. Indeed the literature of Baptists upon this subject is so meager that we are almost left without authority to guide us. The recent work, however, of the Rev. Dr. Hiscox, entitled "A New Baptist Church Directory," where this subject is mentioned, is the only work wherein we find the subject treated methodically ; and I am glad to say that in one chapter in his book upon the subject of councils the author has exercised the self-restraint here commended. Whereas, on the contrary, those outside of the Baptists have aU but universally assumed the character of legislators as well as commen- tators. Nor have they even confined themselves to the moderate course of hinting at what, in their opinion, the law of the gospel ought to be, while explaining what it actually is. Their views of what the law is have been largely colored by what they have wished the law to be, and, too often, by what they have conceived the interests of their own systems of church gov- ernment demanded it should be. They have given definiteness and preci- sion to principles which are, as yet, of most fluctuating authority, and are without Scriptural warrant. The most that can be said is that they have imparted clearness and simplicity to rules the true import of which can only be understood by laying side by side a long series of treatises, speculations and desultory utterances of the church fathers, which is nothing more than the traditional assumptions of egotistic self-interest. The wide departures of these ecclesiastical legislators from true apostolic church government has been one of the causes which has led Baptists to discredit councils as a system of actually binding rules. Thus it has come about that neither the subject of the law of councils, as it is, nor that of the law as it ought to be made, has been treated adequately; and when those who profess to be teachers of the law acknowledge themselves uncertain as to the existence of any rules at all wholly out of the region of further debate, there might be 250 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; an excuse for those who were interested in prolonging a period of uncer- tainty and confusion in declaring there was no law at all regulating these tribunals. Hence Baptists have been slow to attribute to councils much importance, and much less authority, over the churches. But, nevertheless, it would seem eminently proper to lay down some of the principles that should govern councils, and to show the exact bounds and limits of their jurisdic- tion. In doing this it would be well to lay this down as an axiomatical truth ; that in Baptist church government nothing is allowable, or of any binding authority, but what was done and reduced to examples and practice in the primitive times of the churches by the apostles, or what is reasonably deducible therefrom without doing violence to the law of the gospel. In confining ourselves to the Scriptures we find but one example of a council laid down for our guidance— that mentioned in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts. Whatsoever in matters of church government is commanded or for- bidden by God in his word is accordingly a duty or a sin by divine right and example. Whatsoever that council did, and whatever powers and authority it exercised, we may likewise do, as by a divine commandment from God. The council which met at Jerusalem was not a standing body organized for government and rule over the churches. There is no record of its ever having met again, but on similar occasions and for like purposes another might be called. It exercised no ecclesiastical authority. Its deliberations were about matters of difference which had divided the disciples, and their findings were alone advisory and not mandatory. Their mission was ministerial and not magisterial. But the question will be, what are the principles deducible from the only example given of any council the record of which is laid down in the Scriptures ? Every Baptist church has the inalienable right, and the absolute necessity is laid upon it to complete and preserve itself as an orthodox church in accordance with the orthodox faith and ancient practice and usage of the churches, independent of any foreign or other jurisdiction. No true and loyal church can govern its own actions and obstinately take to itself a private opinion, as to doctrine, according to its discretion, contrary to the standards of belief erected by the churches, but every church is tied down to do and believe according to that will only, which, once for all, is con- formable to, and involved in, the will of the whole denomination of which it is a part. For Peter says : Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the Scrip- ture is of any private interpretation. This is the only means which we have of preserving ourselves as Baptists, and keeping pure the gospel of Christ. We are preserved and held together as a denomination, in the unity of the faith, by an implied covenant to stand to and abide by these standards of belief. But it often happens that this covenant alone is not suflScient security for keeping the doctrine pure without some restraint to compel obedience, by a declaration of non-fellowship, by the fear of which the churches may be induced both to keep the peace, and preserve the doctrine, once delivered to the saints. The only tribunal known to the Scriptures OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 251 charged with the duty of inquiring into the true faith, or practice of the churclies, is a council ; which is nothing else but an assembly of brethren, large or small, mutually chosen by the contending parties in a divided church, to deliberate concerning something common to them all. Whether ecclesiastical councils have any authoritative jurisdiction in cases of heresy is a question of vast moment in church government. In the Episcopal and Presbyterian forms of church government councils are made standing bodies, entrusted with powers of government and control over the local churches. The churches surrender unto these conferences and synods the right, not only of control, but entrusts them with full legislative powers to make laws for their government. Unto the churches is given the right of appeal from the decision of the local churches, that they may review, ' affirm, or reverse their own decisions. In other words, their independency is completely destroyed, thus subverting and overthrowing the apostolic form of church polity. They thus resolve themselves into a body politic and claim for it the rights which Christ gave to the local churches, in the management of their own internal affairs. Not so in Baptist church polity. All the churches in the world might add their advice to a local church, with a reverential admonition, but they cannot assume a power over it, for that Christ has given to a local church, as it is a church of Christ. The adherents to Episcopalianism and Presbyterianism contend that the power of government is in their respective councils, aside from and outside of the local churches, because they insist that these bodies are themselves churches, and that the local organic assembly is an imperfect church. Whereas there is not one place of Scripture in the New Testament that does so much as call a council, a conference or a presbytery over many churches, a church. A church may be imperfect in many respects, wherein they need counsel and advice, and so may all other forms of government. As Baptists we acknowledge occasional councils, to be chosen and agreed upon by the opposite contending factions in a divided church, as the churches have occasional need to refer cases of difference to them for settlement. There are but two occasions when the assistance of councils can be called for ; One is where a false doctrine has crept into the churches, to settle which a council may be convened by the churches immediately interested, to pass upon the false doctrine taught ; the other instance is when a church is divided over a question of discipline, and upon a call of the church thus divided, a council may be convened to assist the church in settling the same. In all cases of maladministration, as to doctrine, or as to a supposed unjust proceeding, when discipline or excommunication is threatened, we acknow- ledge complaints may be made to other churches ; and these counsellors when met with the divided church in council may judge of, and pass upon, the matters in controversy, giving only their judgment of a fact done, to be referred back to the church calling the council for the enforcement of their decision. Baptists have never recognized the right of a sister church or churches, in the first instance, to call a council to pass upon the conduct of churches, unless called upon by the contending factions in a divided church. 252 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; To do so would be to surrender churcli independency, and to erect a judica- tory to lord it over a free church of Christ. If a church should destroy itself by the teaching of a false doctrine, to -which all Baptist churches could not give their assent, and the church thus corrupted should be unwilling to call a council, the district association with which such a church affiliates, according to custom, would have a right to pass upon the right of such a church to a seat in the body and to declare non-communion and non-fellow- ship with them, until they righted themselves in the opinion of the denomina- tion ; but as an original proposition sister churches can have no right to erect a council to try a church for any offence, and to undertake to excommuni- cate it from the denomination. * Now, we have a divine example in the fifteenth chapter of the Acts of the Apostles for the calling of a council, without which Baptists would have no authority whatever for their use. It is proper to say that from the study of the nature of this council of the chief men among the brethren, they assumed not the authority to make laws as such. What was said and done in that council was no more laws than the precepts. Repent ye, be baptised, keep my commandments, follow me; which are not laws in the judicial sense of that word, but invitations and exhortations ; much less are the doings of latter-day councils to be taken as laws, though what they might decree be eminently correct and Scriptural, unless the council had legislative authority given it which can be exercised only by warrant of the Scripture itself. But it cannot be denied that this example at Jerusalem was given to be followed as a divine pattern, and whatever was done then, no more and no less, may be imitated by the churches of this day. Taking this example for authority, we conclude that these tribunals when properly called and guarded have the right to inquire whether opinions taught are heretical and to denounce them as dangerous to the peace and order of the denomination. At least this council which met at Antioch after full and free discussion put the seal of condemnation upon certain practices that had crept into the church which threatened the purity of their faith and practice. The decree of the council at Jerusalem passed in the name of the Holy Spirit, and was written by men confessedly inspired, and it must be remem- bered that it confirmed only what inspired men had taught before. The findings of this council w^ere authoritative and apostolical, and were made a matter of Scriptural record, and they are as binding upon us as any other part of the record, because by covenant we have made them the rule of our faith. These decisions were certainly binding upon the church at Antioch by reason of their entering into the council, and the high character of those who participated therein. As to the binding authority of subsequent councils, such have a right to meet after the example of the one at Jerusalem, and to agree upon what doctrine they should teach, and they, as individuals, would be obliged by their entrance into it, to teach the doctrine therein agreed to be taught, but not that all churches should be obliged to observe what they taught. For they might deliberate what each of them should teach, but they would have no power to deliberate what others should do, OR, THE COMMOJ^" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 253 unless God had given them legislative power, which no church has. Besides there is no organic union between them with power to enforce the observance of their decrees, for such decisions would have no more binding force than the wholesome advice of otlier eminent men belonging to the communion, and might be received as their individual interpretation of the particular article of faith in question. If the trial of an heretic, or a question of discipline were committed by a church to the deliberations of a council, chosen from the churches by the mutual consent of the party to be tried, such council might find the facts, but would have no authority to make a final decision of the case, or to pass upon the guilt of the accused without authority of the church to do so, and that with the consent of the party on trial. Heresy, or no heresy, excommunication, or no excommuni- cation, in the last resort, like all other ecclesiastical questions, must be decided by the sovereign church, which if just and correct, and if the decree is passed in the fear and admonition of the Lord, and in the name of the Holy Spirit it is the authentic law of that case, to be followed in the future, should occasion arise. In all such cases the church has power to receive and approve or reject the decision of the council ; for who should be judge whether his trustee or deputy acts well, and according to the trust reposed in him, but he who deputes him, and must by having deputed him, have still a power to discard him when he fails in his trust. Where a palpable viola- tion of the trust reposed in them is evident, let a new council be called, which is the best safety against a division in the church, and the most probable means to hinder it ; for a division being an opposition, not always to persons, but to church authority, which is founded only in the very con- stitution and laws of the church ; and those, whoever they may be, who by force break through, and by force justify their violation of them, are truly and properly rebels against ecclesiastical government; for then men, by entering into a church of Christ, have thereby excluded force, and intro- duced laws for the preservation of peace and unity amongst themselves. From the clearest lights before us, taking the example of the council at Jerusalem as an example, and the custom and usage of Baptist churches based upon that example, it is not Scriptual that churches should be sent to for counsellors, leaving to them solely the question as to whom they shall send, but some particular person, noted for his wisdom and piety, mutually agreed upon between the parties at controversy, should be singled out and asked for to convene in council. If it were left to the church sent to for counsellors to say who should be chosen regardless of the consent of the party to be tried, great injustice might be done by the choice of counsellors unfriendly to the accused or the party prosecuting the case, and thus a council might be thrust upon the church who had already pre-judged the case. Neither is it necessary or customary to confine the parties to the nearest sister churches, for it not unfrequently happens that the nearest neigh- boring churches are themselves disturbed by the troubles agitating the church calling the council, and in that event any decision they might make would have but little influence in the settlement of ecclesiastical questions. For 254 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; every decision of a council is to pass under review by every particular church in the denomination, and accepted or rejected according to the best judg- ment of that church, and the intrinsic fairness and impartiality with which it was rendered, as the decision of every council carries with it as much authority as there is force in the reason for that decision, the force being limited by the reasonableness of itself, because it has no force unless it be reasonable and just. Any church that would so far forget itself as to select, in a shrewd political fashion, the material for its own construction, and pack a council to deliver a decision at the dictation of a dominant majority, may expect that a just and ever-watchful denomination will eschew its decision, and put the seal of condemnation upon its adjudications. Councils should be chosen in all cases when a church wants either light or peace, ordination, dismission or deposition of ministers, all troublesome cases of discipline, dissensions or other difficulties in a church which threaten to rend the church, which it is itself unable, or indisposed to settle, and in general, all those occasions which require the advice, or concurrent action of more churches than one to settle satisfactorily. It is for the whole body of a church to admonish or to censure, but for the purposes of counsel and advice in all difficult cases it devolves upon the few to be agreed upon by the con- tending parties, but those who are sent sit in council only by virtue of their delegation from their respective chui'ches. Their power is merely advisory, nor can they volunteer that service. They cannot come till they are asked for, and sent, nor extend their inquiries beyond the point submitted, and their advice may be regarded or not, as may seem best to the parties asking, unless there is an express agreement so to observe the award. But all parties should hold themselves in readiness to follow such counsel having asked it, so far as it is founded upon the word of God, as in the multitude of councillors there is safety. It must be remembered that neither a council nor a presbytery assembled as such can install a minister into his office, nor put him out of it, without the consent and co-operation of the church. It is not every controversy, whether of doctrine orof discipline, that should be referred to the decision of a council, for the church itself is said to be the ground and 2^ill(ir of the truth, and as such is perfectly competent to preserve and perpetuate the truth. If the controversy be such a one as is confined to the brethren at variance, and has not spread discord among the mass of the membership, the church can safely try the issue without danger of injury to either party. But sometimes, and not unfrequently, a church becomes so divided in sentiment, and so rent in twain over a controversy that the church itself is utterly unfit to entertain and try the cause. The factions in a church may become so angry over a dispute between brethren that they are thereby totally disqualified from doing justice to themselves, and common humanity, and the dictates of natural equity and justice require that the whole matter be relegated to the judicature of a body of councillors to be mutually agreed upon. To do otherwise would be to virtually make the parties to a controversy judges in their own cause, who, as it were, are bribed by their own interests, which is clearly against the law of nature and the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 255 spirit of the Scriptures, and would leave the good and innocent with no defense against the unjust. Even a committee drawn from among them- selves to investigate, would simply reflect their own turbulent insubordina- tion. Hence we ought not to be compelled to look to the Scriptures in such cases for a rule authorizing the call of a council, but custom and reason should regulate the matter though we had not a divine warrant for it. It is a law that concerns the conscience, and a church that so far forgets itself as to deny the right of a council, in such cases, to a party, or faction in a divided church, violates the Scriptures and breaks a law of nature. For a church to charge, arraign and try a party, or a faction in a church, under such circumstances, would be but a triumph of revenge, which is contrary to justice, and consequently it is against the law of God. This is taking away from a prejudiced church the power of oppressing one of its members. A councilman thus chosen from the body of another church to try a delin- quent feels his responsibility far more distinctly as a councilman than other- wise. Let a pious and judicious member of a church, whether a minister or a layman, be suddenly singled out, and made a member of a council to reflect and resolve for the factions in a divided church, and he will feel the diflerence in an instant. Councilmen chosen to sit in judgment upon these weighty matters, carefully looking around them, and conscious that they are the choice of the accused and the accusers, and that they will have to give an account to themselves and to the churches at large, are not easily swayed from the path of rectitude and the path of duty. It is the only means pointed out in the law of the gospel to temper the rashness of a divided church, and to overcome the obstinancy of those who divide them. It is, therefore, a customary law of the churches, long since recognized, that in every controversy in a divided church, either faction not being will- ing to risk the church in its divided condition, that the parties thereto ought mutually to agree upon a council, which they both trust, and mutually con- sent to stand to the sentence it shall render therein, to be chosen from among members of impartial churches It is indispensably necessary that such a council must be impartial and trusted by the parties to the controversy. They ought not to be concerned in the settlement of the controversy they are called upon to end, for in that case they are themselves parties, and ought for the same reason to be judged by another. Certainly they ought not to make any promise with either party to pronounce a sentence for the one more than for the other. For they violate a most sacred law, if for favor, or hatred to either party, they give other sentence than that which is just and right. No man ought to accept the position of counsellor, and make himself judge in any controversy between others, unless there is a per- fect consent and agreement thereto, as no man ought to intrude his counsel and advice upon any one that declares himself unwilling to hear it, or has just cause to suspect the good intentions of the counsellor. In matters of such moment and in order to enable the council to act intelligently, and to cut off* every pretext of which equivocation might make a handle, it is neces- sary that there be articles mutually agreed upon beforehand by the parties^ 256 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; precisely specifying the subject in dispute, the respective and opposite pre- tensions of the parties, in the form of charges and specifications, and the de- mauds of the one and the objections of the other. These should constitute the whole of what is submitted to the decision of the council, and upon these points alone the parties should propose to abide their judgment. The deci- sion of every impartial council ought by all means to be unanimous. But if this is impossible, and where not otherwise provided in the article of refer- ence, if there be an uneven number of counsellors the decision of the ma- jority is conclusive. If there be only two or any other even number, and they are evenly divided in sentiment, they cannot call in a third, as umpire, without the consent of all parties concerned. The council is dissolved by the resignation of any one of the referees. A decision once formally de- livered cannot be reconsidered without a new agreement, for when it is delivered the council is at an end. The council do not guarantee the execu- tion of their award, and have no power to enforce it. The decision is referred to the church, which, by previous agreement, is adopted, and by which the disputants have consented to abide, and they are bound to do so, except in cases where the award is obtained by collusion, or is not confined within the limits of the submission. If the award falls short of, or exceeds these precise bounds, and pretends to decide upon other points than those submitted to them, their decision is in no respect binding. Even if it were lawful for one church to intermeddle with the afiairs of another through the medium of a council there are some matters of so sacred a nature as will not admit of being submitted to a council. It is where a church believes that the action, or menaced action of another church is such as seriously to menace its own independence, or even its ecclesiastical exist- ence ; or it believes such action is hostile or fatal to some policy not sound- ing in heresy which it has, for reasons sufiicient to itself, deliberately adopted and long perseveringly adhered to ; or believes some act of another church, or some imputation cast on itself, to be injurious to what it designates as its own ecclesiastical dignity and honor. In respect to these and like cases, it is expected that when once it is believed that the existence, independence or the honor and dignity of the church is really involved, no church could ever be expected to submit to the judgment of any tribunal, however constituted ; and even if it were, the matters in dispute are usually too delicate and intangible even to be made matters of judicial references, and to enable any one church to trust itself implicitly to the integrity and justice of any one or all the rest. Although two brethren, and with them the church, are divided into oppo- site parties, each contending for principles diametrically contrary to each other, and although one of the parties is to blame in breaking the unity and peace of the church, they are not the less divided in fact. Besides who shall rashly judge them, inasmuch as both parties assert the right of judgment ? Both must be considered by the council as being candid and sincere in their intentions, and in a doubtful case it ought still to be held as uncertain which side, is in the right, and the cause of both to be considered just, at least, as I OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 257 to external effects, until every remedy has been exhausted for the decision of the dispute. Custom, founded upon the example of the apostolic churches, has wisely arranged it, for a council of discreet, trusted and impartial breth- ren to stand above and aloof from the two parties, and being removed be- yond the circle of interests within which they move, to hear and judge impartially between the two. This body of discreet brethren, where there is room for the smallest doubt, ought to suppose that each party has equal rights ; that the act of the party that has committed the injury may have proceeded from error, and not from a general contempt of the laws of the gospel and with intent to injure. Investigations by councils should always be entered into under the sup- position that church quarrels cannot be just on both sides. One party claims a right, or a privilege, the other disputes it; the one complains of an injury ; the other denies having done it. They ought to be considered as two individuals disputing about the truth of a proposition, but it is impossi- ble that two conflicting sentiments should be true at the same time. In doubtfid cases, where the matters in dispute are uncertain, obscure and dis- putable, all that a council can be reasonably expected to do, is to hear all the evidence from both parties, and allow the question to be fully discussed, as Peter and the other apostles discussed the questions that agitated the church at Antioch, and if it is impossible fully to clear it up to the entire satisfaction of both sides, to make a decision in a manner the most just and Scriptural in the sight of God, and in a manner most conducive to the best interest of the whole church. In making their decision they ought to rejoice in the opportunity of indulging in the pleasure which they derive from doing good, and thereby gratify their love of justice and truth. They ought not to consult their own gratification, or suffer themselves to be guided by their private inclinations. All their actions ought to be directed to the greatest advantage of the church, combined with the general interest of the Y/hole denomination with which they are inseparably connected by the ties of brotherly love. In the adjustment of troubles, whether they be doctrinal or disciplinary, in a divided church, a council should take care that they do no violence to the laws of Christ, nor to the fundamental principles of Baptist church gov- ernment, and these laws ought to be observed by both parties in every dispute. K it be necessary and proper to observe these laws in a state of peace, it becomes equally and even more necessary in the unhappy circum- stance of two disturbed parties lacerating a church of Christ. When we speak of an amicable adjustment of a church trouble by a council it must not be understood that either Bible or Baptist principles should be sacrificed even for the sake of peace. But that party which has right and principle on its side, ought not to neglect those methods of conciliation, which without compromising with error, may induce erring brethren to listen to reason. That party which is in the right cannot refuse, in some degree, to forget itself with respect to interests that are not essential, and to make some sacrifices, in order to assist other persons, especially for the greater benefit 17 25B A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; of the denominational tranquillity. All parties in trials of this nature ought to feel themselves invited hy their own advantage, by their own safety, each being conscious of the rectitude of their own conduct to make these generous sacrifices ; for the good of each is intimately connected with the denominational happiness. Every one owes this much to the peace and well-being of his church and the cause of Christ, to show himself open to every mode of reconciliation, in questions relating to interests which are neither essential nor of great importance. K he expose himself to the loss of something, by amicable adjustment, he ought to be sensible what are some of the evils and calamities of a church division, and to consider that the unity and peace of the church and denomination is well worth a small sacri- fice, and the council that does not share in these laudable sentiments, and work to these beneficent ends, fails in its mission and loses an opportunity of doing good to the cause of Christ. There is absolutely no right of appeal from the decision of a church, or from the determination of a council called by a church, no examples of which can be found in the history of the apostolic churches, whether it be in doctrine or manners. For the law says: Tell it unto the church; but if he neglect to hear the church let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican. The right of appeal to any body of men outside of a local church is denied. There is involved in the judicial meaning of the word appeal the right to hear, and the power to reverse and render null and void the sentence of a lower, and an inferior court, which has no place in Baptist church jurisprudence. There is no tribunal above a church that has power to review and reverse the acts of a sovereign church in the manage- ment of its own internal affairs. As far as Baptists have ever gone in this direction, is when an application has been made to a sister church by an excommunicated man for fellowship in that church for them to receive him should they believe him to have been unjustly cast out, although he comes without the usual credentials, and by so doing they only declare the sentence of excommunication unjust. The church that excommunicates may reverse its own act, or the excommunicated may appeal to the church from which he was cast out for a rehearing. The power to reverse a sentence of a church, in the true acceptation of that term, means an act of the same kind of the ecclesiastical power that gave the sentence. It means the same kind of power to make it void, that established it. Neither a sister church nor a council has any power over a church even in case of wrong to revoke it as such. But suppose a church is divided in fiict over a question of doctrine or discipline, and each party honestly believes they are in the right, and the majority of the church, wherein such a condition exists, should obstinately refuse, over the objection of the minority, to call for a council to investigate the differences according to the law and custom of the churches, would it be lawful for the minority to call an ex-parte council to investigate the matters at issue, either before or after excommunication ? This is a practical ques- tion, and one that often confronts the churches. In its solution we might OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 259 lay this down as a self-evident proposition : Wherever there is a wrong there is a just remedy, that all parties should be allowed to resort to, as a means against oppression. If the church refuse to call a council, the agrieved minority may do it without them by giving due notice of what is done, and inviting them to participate therein. Such a council should not, however, be packed to find a certain way, but should be chosen with the utmost caution, and if, when convened, they should find the aggrieved persons to have suffered palpable injury, they should endeavour in a reverential way to convince the church. If the church should obstinately refuse to hear the council, it is perfectly proper and right for them to advise that the parties be admitted to some other church, and thus to communion with them aU. If it be ^a^vful for a church to receive an excommunicated man into its fellowship without the advice of such a council, which by usage is often done, in cases of wrong and oppression, it would certainly be more prudent and cautious to do so upon the recommendation of a judicious council impartially selected It is not an exercise, or an attempt to exercise any jurisdiction over the churches, but it is the only way known in which lawful testimony might be established against oppression and maladministration in any particular church, especially in a system where the right of appeal is denied. This right to ask for a coun- cil is inherent in the minority before or after trial, or excommunication where the church refuses to join with them in the call for a council. But, on the other hand, should the minority refuse to ask for a council, or refuse to join in the call for one, then it devolves upon the church to proceed to try the case in the usual way and need not call a council for that purpose. Those bodies nearest the churches, generally bounded by county or district lines, called in our polity, associations, in case of maladministration, dis- order, or heresy, on the part of a church within the association, may with- draw fellowship from, and refuse communion with the offending church, but not to presume to excommunicate or to unchurch them, or to shut up their meetings, and thereby declare them to be as heathens and publicans. It might be said of this kind of government, that it is no government at all, because the power to excommunicate is wanting. That is exactly what Baptists have ever contended for ; that it is a government without ecclesias- tical power to hind or to loose, and cannot lay a feather's weight upon the local churches, except to say, that by reason of any disorders apparent in them, they refuse to associate with them, until such disorders are removed, and they right themselves in the eyes of the denomination. If a church in the use of its legitimate authority should cast a man out of the church, and a council or association were to undertake to restore him to the church he was cast out of, then they must have power to compel that church to receive him back again. In cases like this the whole church, and its officers, would be subjects to be dealt with by these bodies. There is neither necessity or efficacy in appeals from a sentence already rendered by a church, or a council, and in no instance can a case be taken out of the hands of a local church by making an appeal after sentence given, thus acknowledging a superior power in the body appealed unto. For 260 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJPvCH JURISPRUDEKCE ; in every sentence rendered by a church there are two parts to it, one out- ward and external, that the church performs, which is excommunication, and the other, inward, which God accompanies the sentence with. And if the sentence were formerly no more than a formal casting the delinquent out of the outward communion of the church on earth, then a greater power in earth might have power to rescind their decision, and restore him to com- munion, and thus oblige the church to live and commune with a man whom they deem as an heathen man and a publican. But if the sentence be just there is a further judicial act annexed to it, which is binding in Heaven : For the Scriptures say : Whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven, which must be supposed to be such a judicial act of God as cannot be rescinded, and can certainly never be rescinded in Heaven, till he repents. Hence the local church, which is the first subject of this ecclesias- tical power of ex-communication as coming from Christ, and he is supposed to have registered the sentence in Heaven ; and if it were possible that there should be a superior power, of the same kind on earth, to rescind the sen- tence, or unbind in Heaven, there would be a conflict of jurisdiction unre- concilable with any intelligent system of government, either in earth or in Heaven ; for God is not the author of confusion. Should the church ex- clude on earth and God saves in Heaven she has wrongfully used her jpower. If councils or associations were granted power to review and reverse the sentence of a local church, they would be presumed to have one key to un- loose what the key of the church and the key in Heaven had already locked and bound. It cannot be supposed that all sentences rendered in a church are unjust and wrong, and, therefore, appeals to councils and associa- tions should be allowed. On the other hand, it is rather to be judged that the local church has proceeded rightly than to side with the delinquent party. And whether the sentence be just, or unjust, it is the power and duty of the church to declare it so, according to its best judgment, and cer- tainly it is no part of the business of a council or association to undertake to rescind it. For, if it be just, no sentence on earth can reverse God's act upon that sentence, for it is bound in Heaven, and man cannot alter God's act ; and if it be unjust, there need be no power to reverse it, but any other sister church, being independent and sovereign in itself, upon application to it for membership, can, at their own risk, receive the party unto its fellow- ship, and thereby declare the excommunication to be unjust, and, therefore, void, and so hold the brother as if he had never been excommunicated. For this much is only claimed in courts of civil and criminal judicature, as no superior court has power to rescind the decision of another, but by its own act the sentence of the other court is made void, without any act of revocation by the other. Thus, if one sister church, in the exercise of its power and wisdom, should hold the act of discipline unjust, they have no power to compel the other church to reverse their decision, but simply holds it unjust without their consent, for one church is just as sovereign as the other. This is the only way known in which testimony may be borne against mal-administration in a church. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 261 "When we speak, however, of one church receiving an excommunicated member of another church, we mean the abstract right to do so, but not their duty. In all questions not involving the conscience and faith of a man, every one should submit to the rightful authority of the church, and no other church ought to interfere by receiving into their fellowship the ex- cluded member, lest they incur the denomiuaLional displeasure. But it has long since been a custom among Baptist churches that in all questions of conscieuce a man should be permitted to go elsewhere for membership, pro- vided he can find a church willing to receive him as upon a profession of his faith, although he may be condemned for so doing. The decision of no church or council is infallible. For the churches since the apostles' times have not been without their mistakes and shortcomings, who, when they are somewhat evenly divided, on a grave question concerning the w^hole denom- ination, they ought never to allow the opposite party to be their judge, and, therefore, it cannot be supposed that Christ should have appointed one faction to judge the other, who must always be considered to be a party at interest, and Avill never be accepted by the other, unless Christ had given infallibility to that one part, and the other part knew it. To the apostles, in the council at Jerusalem, he did give such infallibility, and they were the fountains of truth, but when they were gone the only way that remained was to see what they left, and that every one should conform to the exam- ples they left us. No man, or company of men, was charged with the right to judge them except by their own consent ; every council to inquire into their conduct was to be erected by their own consent, and all cases submitted to them before any judgment was rendered by the church and before the outward mode of the decision of the church was attempted to be carried into execution. If there had been a necessity for the erection of an ecclesiastical high court to which appeals might be made, in the times of the apostles, a set and con- stant judicatory, then Christ would have appointed one as he did in the local churches. If Christ had designated this form of church government he would doubtless have left authority for them in the \yord of God, and set proper bounds to its jurisdiction. And it cannot be said that there were not enough of churches in those days for such a government to be set up, for the apostles lived to see many large churches erected in a province, as well as in cities, as in Judea, in Asia and in Crete. There was material for the mould- ing and organizing the churches into these ecclesiastical bodies. Had this been the plan of government, these apostles would have designed and planned this government to serve as examples to be imitated by us, after they should have passed away. And it is certainly strange that in the case of the spread- ing of errors and heresies, they should not write to these bodies as gathered into councils as having the standing power to prevent and suppress them, if such assemblies armed with coercive power had been then in existence as they are now in these systems of government. But on the contrary the apostles, when they discovered great disorders, many of them doctrinal, yet they wrote only to the local churches, as they were standing and fixed bodies 262 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; for government and reproof, and not to standing councils. Nowhere are the churches in a province called a church, but churches in the plural. For a council or association to undertake to dissolve a church's external state, as to all ordinances and worship is a matter so far above excommunica- tion of single persons by a local church though they should be many, that it is Christ's prerogative to do it. This is evident by the analogy of the prin- ciples of civil governments. To dissolve an incorporated town, to call in and take away its charter and privileges as a government, belongs to the supreme power in the State ; and though judges and others may deal with persons in the incorporation, yet the incorporation itself depends upon the supreme power. Christ in Heaven speaking through John the revelator makes it his prerogative to remove the candlestick of the church at Ephesus. Repent, and do the first works ; or else I will come unto thee quickly, and will remove thy candlestick out of his place. Now it is agreed by every one that the candlestick was their church state, for in another place it is said : And the seven candlesticks which thou sawest are the seven churches. And, therefore, he speaks not of them as they were members of the universal church, but of them, as they were candle- sticks artificially formed into an organic church. It is Christ's prerogative alone to build and erect a church through the medium and help of a common council and a company whom he has re- deemed by his precious blood, without the intervention of any ministerial power, as deriving authority from them ; therefore, to dissolve that com- munion and fellowship, and the use thereof, belongs only to him. Churches to be instituted may and ought to have, and under Baptist church govern- ment do have, the direction and assistance of a council from neighboring sister churches because a new sister is to be added to and associated with them ; but they receive no power from them to become a church. It was not even the intervention of the apostles' power that constituted churches, further than they were instrumental in converting materials for churches to be made out of, and as they directed and taught them to become churches unto Christ, teaching them to do whatsoever Christ had commanded them. But nowhere in the Scriptures do we read that an assembly of men, thus organized, received their church state from any ministerial act. We read that they ordained elders, but not that they ordained churches. And min- isters could never have ordained elders but for the call and election by the churches as in the cases of Paul, Barnabas and Matthias. It is a great error to contend about the apostolic succession of ministers and churches, and to suppose that should either be lost there should come upon earth apostles to make ministers and churches again. Whereas if all true ministers and churches should become extinct, by reason of antichrist, yet if there be two or three true believers alive, and they have the Holy Scriptures, those writings would serve as authority, and would be a complete charter to them to become a church, and to choose ministers 'and then to ordain them, as if the apostles were alive. Moses was not the builder of tlie church under the Jewish economy, but God immediately did it. The law OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 263 says: For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses; inasmuch as he who hath builded the house hath more honor than the house. For every house is builded by some man, but he that built all things is God. Now if Christ has builded the churches who can tear them down ? If all the coun- cils in the world were to undertake to demolish it, it is of no avail, for it is the prerogative of Christ alone to remove the candlestick when it has de- parted from the faith and fallen into errors. If councils were to undertake to excommunicate an heretical church, its fundamental church state would not thereby be dissolved, as the character of an erring brother, or of a min- ister, is not so defaced when excommunicated, but that if they repent again they remain a brother and a minister, without a new baptism and a new ordination. So that if Christ were to remove the candlestick and unchurch any church, if they repent their church state would be restored. All that sister churches can do is to admonish them by refusiug to associate and com- mune with them, till they repent and return to the true faith and practice. The right to judge of heresy, what it is, and how it shall be treated was never delegated by the apostles to any council or other body of men outside of the church. In post-apostolic systems this right has been assumed by councils, conferences and general assemblies. But, as it has been shown heretofore, a church is not every company of Christians gathered together in any and every way, but it is an assembly of organic baptised believers united by covenant, one with another, into an organized church under an express charter emanating from Christ, and must be governed by a certain authority delegated by Him. Wherefore a church has no domicile in any other assembly, unless in that in which the power of the membership is supreme, and this supreme authority only can take cognizance of heresy. It has never been the custom among Baptists to call a general council to settle questions of doctrine or practice. If heresy should spring up in a Baptist church as it did at Antioch, so as to disturb the peace of the church, or that of the denomination, it would be lawful for the contending parties in the divided church to call a council of mutual friends, discreet and impartial brethren, to meet with the church and investigate the question, and advise the church as to what should be done in the premises. In no instance could the council take cognizance of the matters in issue without this invitation ; neither could they pass judgment in and of themselves unless requested so to do by the church with the advice and consent of the parties calling the council ; and certainly in no case could a councilexecutetheir own judgment for to censure, to admonish or to excommunicate belongs to the church alone. The great difference which exists between a case tried before a church and a council, is, that when the church tries the offense it passes upon the guilt of the offender and at the same time inflicts the discipline, while a council only finds the facts and. has no power to punish. Their connection with the case terminates and that of the church commences, unless the church in calling the council expressly empowers it to pass upon the guilt of the offender and to say, in the case of a minister, whether, in their judgment, he should be deprived of his official rank and deposed from the ministry, and whether in 264 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the future he shall be declared by his church incapable of officiating in his ministerial office. In that event the council is ])y mutual consent trans- formed into a jury, the church still retaining its function as a magistrate ; the church is always called upon to classify and to punish the offender. The judgment of the council as to the guilt of the offender becomes a judicial one instead of advisory. When the church retains the right, as belonging to itself, to inflict the discipHne after the findings of the council, the discipline is the consequence of the finding by the council and is no part of the finding itself. This full and unHmited power should be very seldom given to coun- cils, and certaiidy never without the concurrence and free consent of both the church and the accused. For when a church thus decreases its sover- eignty, it, on the other hand, puts it in the hands of a council, who unless they be composed of the most judicious and pious men, may employ that power the more conveniently to oppress and abuse tlie dehnquent. It would be a great service in the cause of Baptist church jurisprudence, in the maintenance of order and decorum, if it could be definitely ascertained and made a matter of general acquiescence, how far, at what times and in what way, one church a convention or association is entitled to intrude its good offices, for any purpose whatever, on the independence of another church. There. are a variety of different questions involved in this matter which are often either wholly confused together, or only very imperfectly understood. There is, first, the strictly legal question, the answer to which ascertains under what conditions one church, through a council or otherwise, may encroach on the independence of another church, without committing an actual breach of the law of the gospel. The ultimate limits of the right of intervention being thus fixed, the next question relates to how far a positive legal duty compels one church to intervene in the affairs of another church. A further question, of far greater difficulty than the former ones, relates to the moral right and duty, and the general ecclesiastical expediency, of inter- vention, within the limits within which it is legally permissible. Thus, in any actual case which presents itself, it has first to be settled whether the circumstances are such as would render intervention allowable, without a breach of Baptst principles. Then it has to be determined whether a church is under any religious obligation to avail itself of its right to interpose. In default of any such legal obligation, as a guide to religious duty, it remains to be considered whether it is morally obligatory, just, wise, or expedient for a church to avail itself of its moral right, keeping in mind the distinction between a right and a duty. It is unfortunate that the practice of the churches in the matter of inter- vention exhibits, in a peculiar degree, the inherent imperfections which at present cling to Baptist Church jurisprudence, namely, the shadowy line which separates the legal from the moral right. It will be found that Baptists are by no means explicit or ap:reed with one another as to what constitutes a just cause for the intermeddling of one church with the affairs of another. They have fully recognized that the topic is closely bound up with that of the sovereignty and independence of churches, and that the onus OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 265 of proving a special justification rests upon any church which ventures to in- terfere with the internal administration, or with the external action, of another church. Often in the history of Baptist church government have we seen one church, without the assistance or advice of a council, pass resolu- tions of censure against another for some supposed or real grievance, but inasmuch as the story of the past, unhappily, rather presents a chronicle of lawlessness than a record of scrupulous conformity Tvith orderly rules and principles, and encroaching churches have seldom failed to find a plausible plea for most barefaced acts of aggression. In many of these cases the inter- ference has been countenanced by the impartial opinion of surrounding sister churches, and approved by the judgment of the denomination; and that, in the practice of the churches, it is found that cases are constantly presenting themselves in which, while all sorts of views are held as to the time and manner of intervention, the right and moral justice of the inter- ference, in certain possible emergencies, is never a matter of controversy at all. In treating a subject like this we must take the practice of the churches as it is, and not as it ought to be. Hence as a faithful commentator I am compelled to recognize exceptions to the broad principle of exemption from interference. But it would seem that the time has not yet come for any general assent, sufficiently explicit to be the basis of a law, as to the principles on which the exceptions are to be based. It is something that it is recog- nized, with increasing clearness, that the interference of one church with the afildrs of another, especially in matters affecting its rights, must always specially justify itself on the ground of exceptional circumstances, and that the legal and moral right to do so is, at best, only an exceptional right, being, as it is, in derogation of the primary and fundamental right of the in- dependence of the churches, which is essential to the very being and nature of every Baptist church. This is, undoubtedly, one of the topics on which it is desirable that the language of Baptist church jurisprudence should be made more clear and unmistakable. In this aspect, the subject has been referred to in other places, but only where one church has not invaded the rights and privileges of another. In the meantime it appears that the practice of the chiu'ches recognizes a legal right of interference by way of admonition and censure, but affords a very dim and flickering light for the guidance of an honest and law-abiding government, desirous of informing itself beforehand as to whether it wiU be legally justified or not in interposing in any case which presents itself where one church encroaches upon the pre- rogatives of another. But so far as a duty of interfering in the internal affairs of a sister church goes, the circumstances in which such a duty could arise are becoming rarer every day, as the churches become more enlightened and their government better understood. Upon these points a study of the council held at Jerusalem sheds no light, for whatever was done by the church at Jerusalem that affected the interest of the church at Antioch was by the tacit cousont of both. But with respect to the interference of the other sort, that is, intervention in a subsisting quarrel between two or more Baptist churches, the right to do so is not by 266 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; any means given in the law of the gospel, and certainty nothing of the kind was done in the example of the mutual council at Jerusalem which gives the right to intervene in all pacific cases, and for pacific purposes, rather than for hostile purposes, and in cases where their good offices are unsought. It is, however, not with strictly legal questions, so far as these can be said to exist, but with what may be called moral questions, that the difficulties attaching to intervention are really concerned. Assuming one church is legally entitled to intervene, either in the internal affairs of another church, or in a dispute between two churches, and yet is not legally bound to inter- vene, the question is presented, whether in any case intervention morally ought to take place, or whether it is even expedient it should take place. The real issue at stake cannot be properly investigated without a prelimi- nary inquiry into the mutual relations of Baptist churches to each other, as members of a great denominational community, and the relations of each church to the denomination as a whole. It may be true that, as in the growth of a church, so in the gradual formation of a denomination, the component members have been very imperfectly conscious of the social aim, to the attainment of which their best energies were directed, and which their very mistakes and errors are often as distinctly furthered as their conscious purposes and successes. And yet a common denominational necessity, com- mon sentiments of morality and rehgion, and an increasingly assimilated form of church government, are, and have long been, silently operating underneath all the mere superficial influences, and tending to enforce at once the value and efficacy of an independent denominational life, and the equal value of co-operation, through which each church shall profit, and derive profit from the whole. The notion of a true and necessary relationship be- tween church and church is steadily making way through a number of scarcely suspected avenues ; and the attendant notion of mutual and moral rights and duties as existing between different churches, independently of their weak and ephemeral governments, is recognized as the consequence and expression of those essential relationships. The very growth and structure of Baptist church government, at its best but a feeble image and counterpart of a moral system, is a testimony to the confessed belief in the existence of such relationships. From the known inherent infirmity of this kind of church government, it is obliged to lean on the strength of such sentiments as those of good faith, moral claim and obligation, equity and justice. But these sentiments alone, whatever may have been the history of their evolu- tion, if they are the bulwarks of Baptist church jurisprudence, cannot be its products. They have never rendered a legal system of church govern- ment possible by which one church can claim the legal as well as the moral right to interfere with the affairs of another, except through a tender of its good offices; but, nevertheless, these ties and relationships, in their turn, have done much to substantiate and protect the churches, and upon them they must rely to keep pure the gospel, as was done by and between the churches at Jerusalem and Antioch. Baptist churches subsist on independent footings of their own, and imply OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 267 that independent churches have towards each other, or are generally be- lieved to have, moral relationships, which are an exact reproduction of the relationships that every member of a Baptist church has to every other. In approaching, then, the question of the moral right and duty of one church intervening in the affairs of another, it must be assumed that moral relation- ships and fellowships exist between church and church, which must be taken as the basis of interference, quite as much as the special and one-sided inter- est of a particular church or churches. But even with the help of this assumption, which regards free and independent Baptist churches, as bound together by the ties of moral right and obligation of the most enduring kind, the problem has yet to be solved as to when and how this intervention, which we see so beautifully took place between these two apostolic churches, may properly take place. In all moral inquiries it is quite as perplexing an in- vestigation to ascertain what is right and wrong, as to determine whether there is any right or wrong at all. But the preliminary question, as to whether a church can be morally justified in wholly isolating itself, and in exhibiting no public concern whatever in the transactions in which only other churches seem to be concerned, even though these transactions may in- volve the most serious issues to the peace of the denomination, must be answered first. What the churches at Jerusalem and Antioch did in their histories seems to answer the question in the sense that intervention is to be the rule, rather than the exception, when it is done with the consent of both churches as in this case. A troublesome heresy which produced no small dissension and disputation had sprung up at Antioch and the disciples called this counsel at Jerusalem with the consent of the church at Antioch, where they put the seal of condemnation upon the false doctrine taught, and with the award they sent chosen men of their company, which when they read they rejoiced for the consolation. It has always been a well-settled principle in Baptist church government that except for pacific and conciliatory purposes intervention is the exception and not the rule ; that all forcible and obnoxious intermeddling in the purely internal affairs of other churches is to be strenuously discountenanced, and even for pacific purposes it ought only to take place in disputes and quar- rels between other churches when a sufi[iciently strong case seems to present itself, where good can be accomplished by it, in weighing the merits of which case not only the immediate and remote interests of the church itself, but the interests of all other churches, and the general establishment of the denomi- national tranquillity and order, on the basis of free and independent church government, must be taken into the estimate. The doctrine of absolute in- difference is not one which Baptists have ever professed, and I do not think it is one which would be popular with the denomination at large. When the peace of a church, or that of the denomination, is at stake, we cannot absolutely decline to accept our share of the responsibility ; for, if every church that had reached a certain stage of religious development were to accept the principle of non-intervention in its absolute and extreme form, and say, " We will never meddle in any denominational questions unless our 268 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; interests are touched," the effect would be to leave the regulation of all de- nominational affairs to churches which may not be as well qualified to do so as ours. No one is more strongly in favor of non-intervention, within rea- sonable limits, than I am ; but we should not push any doctrine to extremes, for an absolute declaration of non-intervention on all occasions would be a proclamation of denominational apathy, and it is a dull Baptist who does not know that denominational apathy does not mean either peace or progress. Taking then the example of the council at Jerusalem as an example, it has ever been adhered to as among the most effectual remedies for discords in Baptist churches, either apprehended or existing, and the friendly interven- tion or aid of churches not directly concerned in the dispute, tlarough the medium of councils, occupies a high place. To Baptists, indeed, who have no high ecclesiastical court of appeal, this sort of remedy appears the most efficacious and hopeful of all, and one of immediate application. But it is very evident that these unhappy troubles are the last expression of every other malady which disturbs the relations of churches, and that it can only be removed by a series of remedial processes which address themselves to all Baptist churches at once. Nevertheless, the function of friendly service on the part of other churches, whether taking the form of councils or not, de- servedly ranks high among the agencies for keeping quarrels and discords at a distance, and finally, perhaps, in the near future, providing a substitute for them. It would be proper then in this place to say something about that form of friendly intervention which we will call mediation. Its true charac- ter is well understood, from the close analogy presented in the circumstances of private life. Its success must always depend on the known integrity and disinterestedness of the mediating churches, and the higher the reputation of a church for public sincerity and impartiality, the more likely its services are to be put in requisition for this purpose. It thus appears that the province of mediation, by churches or pious brethren, will become larger and larger as ecclesiastical and denominational morality improves, and the desire for denominational peace becomes everywhere more urgent and sin- cere. A single church of conspicuous integrity and piety, and still more, any group of churches, through the medium of a proposed council, may thus confer inestimable benefits in averting, at an early stage, the possibilities of discords. Suppose the church at Jerusalem had remained indifferent to the call of the church at Antioch and refused to join in a council to help them settle their troubles, disastrous indeed would have been the consequences. It was in the highest degree desirable that the element of private interest should be en- tirely removed — an object which can best be secured, in respect to such cases as these, by habits of combined policy among as great a number of churches as possible, and especially those churches which are above the suspicion of having an interested motive lower than that of promoting the denomina- tional peace, order, and general well-being. Thus, so far as this sort of in- tervention is concerned, it is above all desirable that the purity of the motives should be conspicuous, and, for this end, the more churches that OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 269 join, tbe better the reputation for the honesty of purpose of the government of those churches ; and the greater the publicity of the grounds of interven- tion alleged, the less likely is the intervention to be considered inexpedient, unjust, and provocative of discord. The case of the other sort of interven- tion, that of taking a public part on one side or the other in a dispute or quarrel between two sister churches, presents far greater difficulties than the former kind, because the breach is thereby widened instead of healed, and no church that has the denominational welfare at heart can be induced to do so. It is certainly by abstinence from siding with one faction or the other, that a just and pacific church will always best promote the cause of peace and order, or even succeed long in keeping discord at a distance from its own door. If it be true that Baptist churches, however various in charac- ter, numbers or temporary influence, together constitute a true denomina- tional community, of which the component members owe moral duties, and have moral rights in respect to one another, then such a breach of order and social continuity which such an intermeddling brings about, cannot but be a matter of most urgent moment to every member of a Baptist church, and should meet with a summary condemnation. That the apostles never intended that the council at Jerusalem should be an example of a fixed and standing government, to which appeals are to be made is evident from the fact that the church at Antioch consulted not with the churches of her o-wn province, but goes to Jerusalem, a church of Judea. This one example cannot serve as an instance of a standing council, but a reference by the local church at Antioch of their differences among them- selves, and they went of choice to the local church at Jerusalem and to no other. It really partakes more of the nature of an arbitration than a stand- ing council for rule and government. It was even an elective body of men, naming them, sent up there out of election and choice to them, and they went up with one specific question at this time, without any obligation to refer all other matters to them or to a like body in an arbitrary way. It seems that it was not the church at Jerusalem that was busying itself about the affairs of the church at Antioch, although gross errors were being taught there, but it all rested with the church at Antioch as to whether they would seek the aid and counsel of the church at Jerusalem. Nor is this example a sufficient authority for the multiplication of councils such as one above another, but only one council whose judgment the Antioch brethren sought, and on whose judgment they proposed to rest the case. Much less is it the instance of the rearing up of inferior and superior councils with right of appeal from one to the other. And much less does it hold that the churches of a particular district may claim a right judicially to decide these disputes and oblige them, sub pena, to their determination, and then the churches of a whole state or nation to claim a right of rule over all. The only Scriptural rule deducible from the council at Jerusalem, is this : that when offences arise among churches appeals or rather references ought to be made to councils before judgment rendered in the churches wherein the differences exist, to a church or churches abroad to heal them. But the 270 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; question arises, to what church or churches these references are to be made, and how ? The example of the Antioch church affords us the only Scrip- tural answer to this question. As that church was the offended or divided church, and it selected without let or hindrance the church of its choice as fittest and ablest to refer the whole matter to, so churches of this day may do likewise. This is clear from this example : Antioch was not bound to refer their quarrel to the church at Jeresalem, as greater, or as next door neighbor, or as of the same association, but doubtless as best able to judge of the differences. And this way agrees with common sense and the law of nature, and of arbitration so usual among men which God has set as a pat- tern to follow in such cases. Therefore, should a difference arise between brethren which is likely to produce divisions, for instance, in the First Church at Washington, that church is not bound to refer the matter to its sister, Calvary Church, in the same city, but the contending parties may agree to refer the matter to a sister church in Baltimore, Richmond, New York or Philadelphia, or to all these churches combined, but the First Church must make its own choice, agreeing to abide by the award they may render. But suppose a sister church should fall into grave errors, and the whole church should partake of the error, and be content to abide therein, with no man, or set of men, members of the church to contend for the faith as was the case at Antioch, what remedy have sister churches to rectify these errors? Herein we find the wisdom and utility of associations. Should a church of this character be associated with other churches, it evidently would become the duty of the churches composing the association to refuse such a church admission to a seat in the body until such time as it might repent and amend any errors apparent therein, of which the association would have a right to judge, but not to unchurch them. As every church has a right to judge of the fitness and qualification of its own members, to use the key to open or close the door of the church, so every association, by the law of nature and reason, has a right to bar its doors against any church by reason of disorders therein that may be offensive to them. This serves as a wholesome admoni- tion to churches to be thus cut off from the association and intercourse with sister churches, and puts them seriously upon inquiry as to whether these things complained of be true or false, and ought in every instance to result in the calling of a judicious council to ascertain the truth of the complaints, for no church can afford to live under the ban and displeasure of sister churches if they have any regard for the denominational tranquillity. So the refusal of an association to receive into its fellowship a sister church for having committed a gross impropriety, is a kind of a censure. A church inflicts its censures by way of excommunication. There is in this a special judicature, by way of ecclesiastical authority, and has accompanying it the power of Christ. Therefore, this is by special institution. But there is a different kind of judgment which a church, or an association, passes upon an erring church. The one is a divine institution, and the other is by way of the common or customary law of the churches. This seems to have been OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 271 SO held by the apostle Paul himself, for when he comes to speak of judging the incestuous Corinthian of his sin, he makes the church's authority a settled government when he says : For what have I to do to judge them also that are without f Do ye not judge them that are within f But them that are with- out God judges. While in another place he would have the brethren not go to law one with another before a profane court, and speaks of taking up differences about things of this life, he would have them do it among them- selves by way of arbitration or amicable settlement. While he did not com- mand this, though it was Christ's will it should be done for the sake of avoiding scandals. He does not command them to go to the ministry, or to the church for the settlement of these things, but he bids them to choose whom they please; upon the common ground of abiUty and fitness, to do the work. So that we see that in the way of settling diff*erences between brethren it was not by way of a fixed tribunal, or council for government, but it was only occasional and by way of arbitration, according to the com- mon law of nature and reason ; whereas in all matters of discipline and excommunication it was by way of a constant and settled government in a local church, and that invested with a supernatural spiritual power and efficacy which the other has not. In Baptist church government there is a general association and com- munion held between the churches, and ought to be, and yet the one cannot assume a power over the other, but each retains a power of jurisdiction entire within itself. This different kind of communion, appears by this, that there are duties which one church owes to another upon mere moral and spiritual grounds, as that one church should endeavor to build up other churches in the faith and doctrine of the gospel, and to admonish them, and not let a sin lie at their door and to show their displeasure if they do not repent. Indeed there is scarcely any duty that is practiced in a local church, but that a duty of a like kind is required between church and church. So that if one brother walks disorderly it becomes the duty of another to instruct, or to reprove him, and Hkewise if one church should fall into errors sister churches should in a proper unofficious way labor with, and admonish it that it may be preserved to the denomination and aU the churches be kept pure. Every church has a right of resisting, in some way or other, that which ought not to be done to it in violation of the common law of the churches ; and though this law does not in all cases make churches judges and punishers of the injuries offered to them, there is none who do not justify a church in its friendly admonitions when a sister church falls into disorder. This, in no sense at all, detracts from its dignity, or sovereignty. And while every church is under obligations to preserve, with the utmost care, the hberty and independence it inherits from the law of the gospol, yet when it has not sufficient strength in itself, and feels itself unable to preserve its unity, it may lawfully by consent submit grave questions of doctrine and practice to a council, on certain conditions ageed upon by both parties at interest, and the articles of submis^iion will thenceforward be the measure and rule of the 272 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUEISPRTJDENCE ,* rights of each, provided they violate no fundamental principles. For since those who enter into these agreements resign a right which naturally belongs to them, and transfer it to a council, they are at perfect liberty to annex what conditions they please to the transfer ; and the other party by agreeing thereto, engages to observe religiously all the articles of agreement. The council may be invested with the power to pass upon the whole question at dispute. For instance, if a minister be on trial for heresy, it may be empowered to say in the award whether the matter taught be heresy or not. If he be charged with a scandulous life, it may say he is guilty, or not guilty, according to the facts. In other words a council may be entrusted with the power to decide upon the merits of any controversy submitted to it, but in no instance can it render a decree of excommunication upon the facts found or pronounce a censure. In all cases, as has been stated before, the findings of the council must be referred back to the church to be carried into execu- tion. Any church dissolves itself, as such, which would undertake to trans- fer its sovereignty to a council. For having entered into a church does not oblige its members to submit to its authority when it destroys itself in order to submit to a foreign dominion, but when it divests itself of that quality in order to receive its laws from another body, it breaks the bonds of union between its members, and releases them from all further ecclesiastical obligations. We have hereinbefore stated, and we wish to emphasize the fact, that councils are not to be convened upon every ground of dissatisfaction in a church, nor in cases of light moment. They are proper only upon some matter of common interest to the churches at large ; such as relations of fellowship between churches, or the relation of a member to the communion of other churches, or matters of general interest to the cause of Christ. Any occasion when help is needed to secure light, peace or puritj^ of the churches, is a proper occasion for the calling of a council. Mere differences of opinion between a majority and a minority within a church, may, with the consent of all parties, be referred to a council for advice, but their award binds only such as consent. When a church member is under process of discipline, if he can persuade the church to join him in referring the unfinished matter to a council, it is proper and customary that such a council be called. But it is not proper should the church refuse so to refer the case, for him to call an ex-parte council, for it is to be charitably presumed that his own church wiU do him justice when the case is finally disposed of. Should he, however, be cut off from the church in the face of his conscientious couvictions that his exclusion is not warranted by the facts in the case, or by the word of God, he will then have the right, after having res-pectfully asked the church to join him in the call of a council for a rehearing of his case, and has been unreasonably refused, to call upon other churches for advice and relief, be- cause his relations to them or his right to join one of them have been dis- turbed by his excommunication. So, if a member in good standing in a church ask to be dismissed to a sister church, and a letter of dismission be denied him, it is nothing but reasonable to demand a trial or for him to re- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 273 quest a council, and should the church refuse to join in such a request he may himself call one to give him relief, because his right to transfer, which is the common-law right of fellowship of the churches, has been interfered with, which interference is strictly an interruption of comity, between the churches, as well as a wrong to himself. The findings of such a council are advisory only, and have no obligatory force in them only in so far as the churches may, or may not, see proper to adopt them. A church must always be the party to call a council, with the two excep- tions of the formation of a church, when the individuals desiring to become a church call it, and an ex-parte council when an aggrieved member expressly bases his call upon the fact that he has asked his church to convoke a mutual council, and has met with what he conceives to be an unjust refusal to do so ; because this is the only feasible means of a redress which the gospel must be assumed, in some way, to provide, under the just principle that when there is a wrong there is a remedy. There are three kinds of councils : Such as are assembled by the consent, and at the request of two parties in a divided church standing against each other which are called Mutual ; Such as are convened on the call of one party and when others have unreasonably refused to join in a call for a mutual council, which are called Ex-parte councils ; and lastly, such councils as are called together by indi- viduals seeking church fellowship and regular standing in the denomination, or by churches, as such, which ask light, or peace, which are called J. cZmsor?/. All councils are convened by letters missive, which is a written request to a sister church that they send a certain brother, therein named, to sit with the church, at a time and place, and for a specific purpose stated. The number to be chosen is left to the parties calling the council. They may all be chosen from the same church, or selected from several sister churches, whether they be neighboring churches, or those remotely situated. For the reason that the power of a council is derived, and not inherent, it has no right to increase, or diminish its number. No conscientious brother should sit in a council unless its members have been fairly chosen, and where he may have reason to suspect that through prejudice, or self-interest, its members may not be impartial. And upon the same principle a church has the perfect right, for cause, to refuse to send a representative to sit in council when invited. Likewise councils can exercise the right to inquire into the standing of the churches from which representatives or councilors have been sent, and members may retire, or refuse to act, if they become satisfied that the good faith involved in the call of the council has been abused. The common sense rule that the majority of a council must be held to be that body, is the one to regulate the question of a quorum to transact busi- ness. Should, however, a minority only of a council chosen be present, it has no right to proceed to the business for which it was convened. Such a minority, however, have a right to adjourn, and thus carry over the legal force of their authority to the date of a second session, in order that a ftill council may convene They may organize, as any other similar body of men may, by the election of a moderator and a secretary, and may adopt 18 274 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the ordinary rules of parliamentary bodies for their own government. The investigation of every council must be held rigidly to the exact specifications of the letter missive. Much more so must the decision be confined within this limit. The obiter dictum of a council, though sensible in its intent, and useful in its quality, can be injected into its decision only as a piece of im- pertinence As to whether counsel should be alloAved either party before the council should be left to their good discretion. But no good reason ap- pears why a lawyer, or some other brother, skilled in such things, should not be allowed, provided he be a member of a Baptist church and is in good standing, and has not, through prejudice, become a partisan in the case. But by no means should councils be held to the strict rules of evidence as prac- ticed in a court of justice. The witnesses may, or may not, be under oath or affirmation, as the parties may choose, and hearsay evidence may be taken for what it is worth. These are all matters of detail and should be agreed upon before the investigation is opened and should be such as to afford the fullest and fairest means of arriving at the truth of the matters submitted. The result of every council is always measured by the character, integrity, wisdom and good intentions of those who compose it. As has been before stated, it is of great consequence, when possible, for absolute unanimity to be attained by every council in its decisions. But if this is not possible the general judgment should be expressed in a formal result, and so criticised and amended as that the majority may take it as it stands. There are some instances, however, when it might be infinitely better for the council to come to no formal conclusion whatever, as offering more hope of good than any other course, or it might so happen that the parties might withdraw the sub- ject matter submitted at the request of the council, and so prevent a result. With the exception of rare cases when by mutual consent beforehand, all the parties bind themselves to accept and adopt its provisions, every award is in the nature of friendly advice which has solemn weight from the con- sideration that a council properly called, for a proper purpose, has a divine efficacy in it. If not contrary to the Scriptures it should be reverently ac- cepted as the voice of Christ, and as the reasonable and divinely warranted means of terminating differences that might wreck the church, and other- wise work interminable mischief The award of every council necessarily interprets itself, and is purely a question of language, and means what it says, all that it says, and nothing else. No member of a council is author- ized to interpret it, and when a question has arisen as to its intent, applica- tion ought never to be made to the moderator of the council, or to any mem- ber, as if they were authorized to furnish an authentic commentary upon the action taken. Too great care, however, cannot be taken to make such a document distinct and unambiguous. Morafity and a high sense of justice, indeed, are as applicable to and as binding upon councils as it is upon individuals, and upon churches that ap- point them, as upon any one else. In the handling of these delicate interests, wrong and injury may be perpetrated by them as well as by man, and what- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 275" ever they may do amiss is in all respects as heinous in the one as in the other, and more so because it cannot be punished with the same facility. A perfect code of ecclesiastical jurisprudence should provide for these exigencies ; and those who offend should be arraigned at the bar of denominational pub- lic ooinion, just as any other offender is arraigned for misconduct, thereby causing councils to deal seriously and justly with these momentous interests. The awards of councils, like all other agreements by consent, are irrevoca- ble, and are binding on all the parties to them alike, and can, on no account or pretext, be violated or departed from, or even modified, without the con- sent of all the parties to them. The utmost that can be allowed as regards their relaxation is the submission of a proposal for their revision by those who entered into them ; the only pretext for which, can be such an alteration of circumstances as entirely changes the state of things under which they were made. And even this affords no excuse for their violation without the consent of all who entered into them. The due observance of the findings of councils is as essential for the maintenance of confidence and fellowship in a church as is that of promises for the continuance of respect and unity among men. Noth withstanding this, there are no pieces of writing which are, from their very inception, so brittle as awards of ecclesiastical councils. There is always an element of unwillingness in the imposition of them wliich is wholly alien to the deliberate voluntariness Avhich a true mental engagement presupposes, and Avhich, in the case of any ordinary legal contract, must be present as of course. Apart, too, from this unwillingness, such an agree- ment is always made under circumstances of irritation and animosity, as well as haste, at a moment when the interests and feelings of the contracting fac- tions seem to be violently opposed, and when the latent object of the agreement on both sides must be not to further the common advantage of both, but to fur- ther the separate ends of each at the expense of the other. It is impossible to picture an occasion less suited to that impartial survey of a number of conflict- ing and complex interests and that calm appreciation of the merits of com- peting advantages, near and remote, present and future, certain and contingent, which a hopeful settlement of long-disputed questions between contending members of a divided church eminently demands. If the security of him who stipulates for anything in his own favor prompts him, or councilmen in his interests, to require precision, fulness and the greatest clearness in the expressions in drafting an award, good faith de- mands, on the other hand, that each party should express his promises clearly, and without ambiguity. The faith of articles of submission and of awards of councils are basely prostituted by studying to couch them in vague or equivocal terms, to introduce ambiguous expressions, to reserve subjects of disputes, to overreach those with whom they are made, and outdo them in cunning and duplicity. Let the man who excels in these arts boast of his happy talents, and esteem himself a keen negotiator ; but reason and the sacred law of candor and the gospel, will class him as beneath a vulgar cheat and fraud. True skill consists in guarding against imposition, not in practising it. Who can doubt that the solemn awards of councils are in the 276 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; nature of those things that are to be held sacred by the churches ? By councils the most important affairs of the churches are determined ; by them the pretensions of contending factions in a divided church are settled and regulated; on them churches are to depend for the acknowledgments of their rights and duties, and the security of their dearest interests. They are the only tribunals recognized by the law of the gospel outside of a church to which resort is allowable to adjust our troubles. In Baptist churches that have, and acknowledge no superior on earth, councils are the only means of adjusting their various pretensions, of ascertaining what they are entitled to expect, and what they have to depend on. But the awards of councils are no better than empty words, if churches do not consider them solemn en- gagements, and as rules which are to be inviolably observed by all who promise to so do, and held sacred throughout the whole denomination. It is but rashness to urge that as inasmuch as the findings of councils are sometimes through ignorance or prejudice erroneous, that therefore their decisions should not stand. Christ and his apostles in erecting this tribunal were not ignorant that those chosen to fill this important office would often- times be deceived in their judgment. But doubtless they considered that such judgments should prevail till the same or alike authority, perceiving the error, might afterwards correct or reverse it, rather than that strifes and dissen- sions should grow and divide the denomination. Not that it is right that breth- ren should be compelled to do something which in their hearts they are per- suaded they ought not to do, but they ought to be persuaded in their hearts that in controverted causes the will of Christ is to have them, for the time being at least, to do whatsoever the sentence of a judicial council shall determine, though it seem in their private opinion to deviate from that which is right. For if Christ be not the author of confusion, but of peace and order, then how can he be the author of our refusal to abide by such decisions as have been rendered by the only tribunal in ecclesiastical juris- prudence authorized to render them. Under the Jewish economy God erected a tribunal for the determination of all controversies, concerning which it is said : That man which will do presumptuously, not hearkening unto the priest that standeth before the Lord to minister there, nor unto the judge, let him die. Then let no man labor to overthrow these decisions lest he incur the ill will, and displeasure of God, who is a God of law and order and not of confusion, since the law of God and reason favor these decisions until some orderly judgment of a like tribunal be given against them, and it is but justice to render thereunto a willing and ready obedience. We have thus attempted to give a brief compendium of the rights, powers and duties of ecclesiastical councils. In the treatment of the subject we have labored under many embarrassments, owing to the want of Baptist authorities upon the subject. These inquiries, however, are not without their value, as they tend to disclose principles, which, while they may not in a very logical way cover the whole subject, yet they may be useful guides in solving the narrower and more immediate problems of ecclesiastical councils, and help others in a more methodical study of the subject. Thus it might OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 277 be expected that in the handling of a subject like this, perhaps more than elsewhere, the functions of the lawyer and commentator almost unavoidably have slidden into that of the legislator. In fact the two functions cannot be wholly kept apart, because it sometimes happens that the existing rule can only be understood by examining its reasons, or even by setting forth in full the controversies amidst which it hardly maintains its existence. Neverthe- less we have tried to separate the legislative function from the strictly legal one, where it was possible ; and this is especially difficult in the treatment of a subject like that of ecclesiastical councils, in which so many strong passions, and generous, though uninformed, instincts, are wont to divorce the discussion of it altogether from a regard to the practical difficulties that sometimes overtake our free and independent form of church government. In one short chapter like this it is impossible to notice the various extra- ecclesiastical councils assembled in the early times of Christianity or what they decided. Suffice it to say that Baptists not believing in their right to convene and pass upon grave questions of faith and practice in the churches and to impose their decisions upon the Christian world, they are not so much concerned about what they did. It is safe to say that the council held at Jerusalem forms the basis or grounds for all the councils which have given to all Pedo-Baptists their federative systems now extant in the world. It is not until the third century that these councils had become standing institutions, and met yearly. From these beginnings have sprung all our modern synods, conferences and assemblies which claim not only legislative and administrative, but judicial powers. It is these bodies that have so deeply left their mark on the doctrine and polity on the constitution of these post-apostolic systems. It is in vain that they seek the prototype of the first council held at Jerusalem as a model for these overgrown in- vented institutions. The last great catholic council, called the Vatican coun- cil which- assembled in 1870, decided that the Pope was infallible, which is as much as to say by all reasonable intendment, at least, that there need never be another council assembled as long as time lasts, for now the Pope can infallibly settle all controversies whether of faith or practice ! There- tofore Ecumenical Councils had had much to do with the settlement of grave questions of church, but the Popes had long before that become restive under the restraints imposed by these bodies, and this council placed in the then Pope's hands unbridled power to rule the whole Catholic church as best pleased himself as the successor to Peter. This was but a reasonable culmi- nation of that religious madness which ecclesiastical power when central- ized never fails to engender. The papacy is to be congratulated, from a worldly standpoint, in arriving at that degree of perfection which makes the head of this monstrous power both divine and infallible. If such a people do not go to other and further extremes, if possible, it will not be because the system of church government to which they belong will not allow them, and really will not lead them on. How blessed ought Baptists to consider themselves to be, because God has marvelously preserved them from such a fate. Kather let them stand fast in that liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. 278 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; CHAPTER X. THE CHURCH UNIVERSAL, NOT A CHURCH PROPER AND CANNOT BE THE SEAT OF INSTITUTED CHURCH GOVERNMENT. IT is claimed by the Papists and all others who believe that councils, con- ferences and general assemblies have authority over the local churches to rule and govern them, that Christ intended to establish, and did establish, but one church, to extend throughout the earth, as an universal church. The Papists believe that the Popes of Rome are successors to Peter, and invested as the vicars and vicegerents of Christ with the supreme legislative, executive, judicial and elective power over the whole church ; that the gov- ernment of the church is not only a monarchy, but an universal monarchy ; and that the Pope is not only absolutely supreme, but infallible. It is said he can judge, but cannot be judged. On the subject of ecclesiastical govern- ment, is is maintained not only by the Papists, but all Protestant sects who have come out of the Papacy and who have learned their lessons from them, that man being necessarily associated, and necessarily governed, church sovereignty and all other powers of church government result directly from the nature and calling of the priesthood and not from the will or consent of the people who compose the churches; that church sovereignty no more results from their will than the church itself does ; and hence the broad con- clusion has been deduced, that the rulers of the church do not depend on the choice, favor or will of the membership, but on the divine will alone exercised by the clergy, who has conferred the power on them on account of the necessity that the church should be governed, and of the inability of the membership to govern themselves. This is the foundation of the doctrine of the legitimacy of the universal church and of the divine right of the priesthood. Every other religious denomination except the Baptists are now living in an age which is the development of ages of successive changes in church polity. There is scarcely a phase of their various systems which is not almost entirely different from what it has ever been before in the experience of those people ; and yet each is the result of innumerable changes in the past which led up naturally to the present condition by a connected series of steps. How could it be othermse when these people have constantly on hand standing committees and legislative bodies charged with the powers and duties of legislating for their respective churches? Hence new laws are being constantly made and unmade. They thus become the unbridled makers and unmakers of their own laws. They thus attack all that is old, and open a path to all that is new. Every feature of their church pohty OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 279 evidences the influence of these changes whether they be good or bad, Scriptural or otherwise. Yet our Baptist churches, and every means by which a religious people improve their condition, change immeasurably, and yet the original form of government once delivered to them by the apostles remains unchanged, and indeed can never be changed by man. Surely it is but reasonable that the apostolic form of church polity should be preserved and held intact ; while all the factors which go to make up the progress and development of the churches should grow and expand without let or hin- drance, evenly and proportionately ; and that all those blessed agencies which aid the spread of the gospel should not be burdened and hampered by any want of elasticity in the government of the churches, but that everji:hing should give way to this great desideratum. It is a mystery as to how this tremendous deposit of power ever became crystallized in one overgrown body called a church. It may have first sprung from the union of church and state ; from the struggles of turbulent factions in the apostoKc churches ; from gradual encroachments on the field of ecclesiastical liberty and independence of the churches ; its tenure may be due to the vast advantage which force and power concentrated has over force dispersed, and the advantages of concentrated action in procuring it. In a rude and turbulent state of society, such as that was in those early days of the churches, with no adequate and organized protection against violence, the mass of men will, by a law of their nature, follow in the wahe, and then fall under the command, of designing leaders who promise them protection ; and by another law of their nature, the leaders in turn become the plunderers of those who placed themselves under their protection, whose sweetest pleasure consists in discovering in themselves quahties that give cauj-e for self-glorification, and for elevating themselves above their kind. The mysterious minghng of audacity on the -part of priests, and submission on the part of the laity, of impertinence and confidence in self, and great awe and reverence inspired by the submission of others, coupled with this always active love of dominion and domination over others, will go far to explain the origin of the Catholic form of church government, by showing how this centralized polity at first became vested in one or a few men, to the exclu- sion of the membership and to the utter overthrow of the churches ; and will show why the natural apostolic order has been inverted, by religious liberty coming down from church government, in the form of ecclesiastical concessions to the churches, instead of going up from the churches in the form of ecclesiastical guaranties. Such is the system of ecclesiastical polity, without one popular feature in it and without any Scripture authority for it, which holds dominion over the minds of millions of the people, the great body of whom seem to be studi- ously kept in profound ignorance that they may be managed and governed the more easily, and that their rulers may think for them and save them the trouble of thinking for themselves. One of the greatest and main abuses of Scripture, and the one to wb'ch almost all the rest are consequent or subservient, is the using of it to 280 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; prove that the Kingdom of God, mentioned so often in Scripture, is the present church, or multitude of Christians now living, or belonging to a cer- tain denomination. The result of this error that the present church is thus composed is another and a greater one, which is that there ought to be some one man, or assembly of men, by whose mouth our Saviour speaks and gives laws and governs his church on earth. Now, let it be remembered that government, whether secular or divine, is and must of necessity be a reasonable thing. And if it be true that Christ never granted supreme eccesiastical power to the local church, but invested the church universal with such power, it is passing strange that Christ should appoint such a government and leave it loosely for the persons who were to rule it, to set it in motion, and never so much as lay down any of the ways and means of that government. In so great a body as that of the universal church on earth, destined to be scattered all over the world, and in so great and intricate a government necessary to set it in operation, there was need to have had the most sure and certain* order distinctly appointed by Christ. The question ought to have presented itself to the great founder of this church as to whether the government should have been Papal, Episcopal or Presbyterian : Whether it should be ruled by a pope, a cardinal, a bishop, a presiding elder or a ruling elder : Whether there should be but one gen- eral assembly to which all controversies should be brought, Hke the Sanhe- drim in Israel, or whether they should be divided up into subordinate cir- cuits with a ruler in each: Whether these assemblies should be constant standing bodies, or chosen every year: Whether in it there should be more of ruling or teaching elders, and how many of them, and by what rules they should be chosen: And what jurisdiction these various assemblies should each have and how much power should be left in the poor little local churches and how divided up between them and the church universal. It is a wonder that Christ set down none of these great things, that he neither appointed one general assembly or conference to which aU appeals should be brought, and if there were to be subordinate bodies one to another he has not so declared it, nor has he assigned how many there should be, nor so much as declared that there should be any such bodies nor that one should be above another in power and dignity. And if the general law of this supposed, imaginary government is that the few should rule the many, and that without their consent, this would be an exceedingly loose and con- fused foundation of a settled government ; and no one ought to be so sacri- legious as to say that Christ did not leave behind him a government both settled and reasonable. Surely in a matter of such importance there should be of necessity a most positive law to determine- at least the outlines of this cumbersome government whereby it could be intelligently executed, or else every one would challenge the right of the other to govern, as it is outside of Baptist church government to-day. Now, Christ never gave an institution which was never brought forth into acts and examples, but such is this pretended institution of a church universal to be the seat of government. Whatever of clearness there is in apostolic OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 281 church government is the result of a thus did the Lord rather than a thus said the Lord. That which Baptists have ever contended for is that the only way we can be assured as to what is a church of Christ is by examples which we meet with in the Scriptures, without which we can know absolutely nothing as to what kind of government is suited to them, for all authority and all power is visionary and in vain, which cannot be brought into the condition of acting We have no account that Christ ever invested this universal church w^ith government, because we have no examples of that kind of a church in the Scriptures. Besides we have no account that the early churches under the immediate supervision of the apostles' ever met or were convened by them to institute this church. Nor that these apostolic churches were ever assembled at a time closely following the apostles time to institute an universal church with ecclesiastical power. Surely Christ did not set up a visionary principle of government with a polity purely speculative. To make the thing plain and reasonable all churches should have disbanded their own organizations, that which Christ instituted, and joined together and formally entered into a covenant one with another to erect this ecclesiastical government, and this uni- versal Christian assembly should have been composed of all interested and should have determined all questions of polity as well as of doctrine, and should have bound all churches thereunto ; because all Christians taken together could not become a Christian body politic, but as they were formed up into a kingdom, which at best could be but a human invention. This could not have been done without doing great violence to Christ's already instituted local churches, for to erect another church including and embracing these bodies there would have been a conflict of jurisdiction, and where Christ in- tended there should be order there would have been confusion and discord. It cannot be that all primary ecclesiastical power fell upon the church universal, for it has none of the reality of a church. For the great object of the institution of a church Avas to have the power to do four things : to assemble, to preach, to baptize, and to administer the Lord's Supper, neither of which is this universal church capable of doing. A regularly instituted local church is inseparably associated and connected with these four great laws of Christ's church. Certainly not since the institution of the first church at Jerusalem have all Christians assembled together to hear their pastor preach the gospel, to baptize a believer, or to partake of the Lord's Supper. These great ordinances were committed to the local churches and as such have ever been confined to these churches and can only be performed by them in their sovereign capacities as assembled churches. There is involved in preaching three things : a preacher, a doctrine, and an assembhj to hear the doctrine preached. If it be said that the universal church can call the preacher and establish the doctrine, it certainly cannot assemble to hear the doctrine preached, to be edified by it and to see whether it bo the true doctrine authorized to be preached. Who then can be the judge of the doc- trine but the local church ? The same may be said of the other two ordi- nances, baptism and the Lord's Supper ; they are not only local church ordinances, but can only be administered in and by these churches. 282 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JURISPRUDENCE; Yv'lien Paul said in his first letter to the church at Corinth : When the xohole church is come together in one place, there are three things mentioned : a church, an assembly, and a place ; showing that this particular church was composed of as many as might eome together in one place and he calls that the whole church which was only the members at Corinth. The same idea is conveyed when the apostle says to this same church, When ye come togethtr therefore in one place ; that is, you come together not only with one mind, but in one place. Yet that could not have been said of the church universal then and especially now, for that mystical body is the redeemed all over the world. Christ did so institute his church and restrict it to such a number as could assemble at one place for the express reason that the end and purpose of such a church was full and entire communion, such as those who should meet together should partake of, being of one mind as they were one body. And then reason teaches, that it can only be such an assembly as can all hear and be edified by the same pastor at the same time and place, and who may glorify God with one mouth and one mind. When the apostle rejoicing beheld the order of the church at Colos?e, he meant the ranking and ordering of all the members into such proper offices according to their several gifts, that all the ordinances might be administered and enjoyed to the use and benefit of the whole. As, therefore, it is called a body, for the identity of the members which are of the same nature, it is also called. The whole body fitly joined together. It is not only fitly joined, together, but rightly placed and disposed of according to the gifts of every member, not for ornament and beauty only of the whole, but for the supply- ing of nourishment to the whole, which under the similitude of a body the apostle so much and so often insists upon. These gifts are various ; so are the members of the body. As the human body is composed of flesh, blood, veins, nerves, arteries and bones, so the members with their divers gifts constitute a whole church instituted by Christ. This unity in the church forming a body is as substantial in church gov- ernment as it is to have officers and laws to guide them. Take any society of men that is organized for government, and if the officers and laws of it are defined, the body itself as well as the bounds of its jurisdiction are defined also. This is true especially of such bodies as hold, from a supreme power, the authority for their government, as all churches hold their authority from Christ the supreme founder. In this case it is every way as essential to have the body of the church formed into unity, and the extent of their jurisdic- tion fixed, as it is to have officers in it and laws by which they are governed. It is as necessary as the setting out the boundary of every man's lands by metes, abutments and landmarks. It is as great abuse of power for a judge to do an act of government out of his jurisdiction as an undue and unlawful act within it. So any act done by a church which reaches beyond its bounds and limits is null and void. If, indeed, church government could be sup- posed to be a matter of that nature, that such limits to the seat of its juris- diction did not exist in it, but might be transacted promiscuously outside of such limits, then there is no such thing as ecclesiastical government in the world and all is chaos and confusion. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL, 283 In that which follows we can but continue to insist that the kingdom of God used in the sense of a church, cannot be a church for government witli- out being instituted upon a rational basis. For an usurpation in church government lies not only in an undue form of government which Christ has not instituted, and in usurping undue acts of power within it, which he never authorized, but it consists especially in a few men assuming to extend a local church so as to spread over and embrace many churches, the examples for which are not found in the Scriptures. So that, ail things considered, the institution of a particular church falls most happily, uniformly and ade- quately upon a local congregation entirely and alone, and upon no other kind of a church at all. It cannot be reasoned that by virtue of the same authority that believers make up a local church, many churches make up one church, and more of those churches may make up a still greater church for legislation, for government and for appeals ; and to say by the same rea- son the universal church comes to be a political body to rule the state. Whereas it is true that Christ has not only instituted a local independent church, but has appointed what the extent and bounds of it should be. The logical conclusion is that if the apostolic churches had all ecclesiasti- cal power in themselves they had no lawful right to divest themselves of that power and invest it in another body. And if these first churches could not surrender their independence and sovereignty, such as claim under them can inherit no power from those that had none, for none can give to any a power which they have not, and none can receive a power from those who have it not ; and, therefore, there can be no divine right in all these extra-ecclesi- astical governments. When men assemble by a human power, that power . that assembles them may also limit the manner of the execution of that power. But when men assemble to build a church of Clu'ist, and take their authority from the law of Christ, it is different ; for what hberty or freedom is due to any man, under the law of the gospel, no inferior power can alter, limit, increase or diminish ; no one man or multitude of men can give away the gospel rights of another, or of themselves. No body of men are obliged to institute a church of Christ, and no man afterwards is obliged to enter a church which the rest may institute ; but if a church of Christ is instituted they are obliged by the laAVS of it ; and if it be one of those laws that all things shall be de- termined by a majority of voices, his assent is afterwards comprehended in the resolutions of that majority. This liberty that every man has of voting his own sentiments, under the laws of the gospel, does not give the liberty to a seditious majority to change and overthrow the form of govern- ment. For sedition implies an unjust and disorderly opposition to that form of church government which is legally established by Christ; and when it is thus made, such as enter into it are obliged to obey the laws of it. And those who so far forget themselves as to erect extraneous societies, and call them churches, act according to their own wills, and not the will of Christ. Those who thus act take not their laws from Christ's institution, and their rights and duties cannot be limited or measured by the Scriptures. And 284 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; whoever thus departs from Christ's teachings violates the most sacred laws of Christ's churches on earth. Therefore we challenge but one example out of all the history of the apostolic churches, where those churches, or a majority of them, did meet, or after the multiplication of the churches they could meet to organize such a church as we now plead against. On the contrary the plain Scripture account shows that they did not, and afterwards could not meet to set up this government, and agree upon the principles of its order, or upon whom the right of ruling should fall. This was a great omission on the part of the apostles, in failing to set up a suitable ecclesiastical polity for these huge bodies for government, and thus laying the churches under the danger and necessity of being afterwards pulled around and lorded over by any that should insolently aspii'e to rule them. Is it not more reasonable and Scriptural, that tliis universal church was never thought of, inasmuch as not a word is said about it in the record ? The silences of the gospel are as obligatory as its utterances. If this be so, how is it possible that any such a polity can be established, and that any one man or a privileged class of men can make themselves lords of the churches to Avhom Christ had given the liberty of governing themselves ? If these great things be not determined by a definite law or example in the Scriptures, is not the invasion of these sacred rights the most outrageous injury that can be done to a divine institution ? The liberty which Baptists contend for in these matters is granted by Christ to every local church in its own proper person, in such a manner as may be useful to the individual in an individual church as was exercised by the primitive churches, and not by the vast multi- tude of Christians as before stated which never did meet since the first church was instituted, and never could meet afterwards to receive the benefits from it. It agrees with all reason that Christ should establish the local church as his greatest prerogative, and that it should be alone the exclusive seat of church power on earth, and should depend alone upon his supreme authority. It is a great honor and distinction to be a freeman in Christ Jesus, and have superadded to this, membership in one of his judicatories on earth, with an equal right, together with that membership, to rule the body and be accountable to none but Christ, its great founder. If it be laudable to re- joice in that liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and it all be his free gift, then to belong to a church with all the privileges thereof, whereby as Christians we come to have a property in this free institution, is also a great prerogative. These churches of freemen are not only the objects of Christ's governments on earth, in respect to the seat of its power, but they are the recipients of the privileges thereof, and unto them, as individuals, the grant was primarily made, and unto them the benefits accrue. As in civil bodies that are the seats of government, the privileges and benefits of having a government respects principally the whole people themselves, and not the officers only ; and therefore the authority for the organization of these bodies are called constitutions of a state, or charters of a town, and not those of the governor, or mayor of those bodies incorporate. OR, THE COMMON? LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 285 While in such a government the main act of incorporation falls upon the local city as the seat of power, it also falls upon the officers named therein, and the power given is in them, and for them alone, by one and the same charter. So correspondingly the Scripture charter falls upon the local church taking in the officers thereof after they shall have been chosen by the people to fill them. The promise of Christ's blessing and presence is made to the local church that is the place of government. I will he present in the midst of you, says Christ. The efficacy of this government depends upon a special blessing, and this promise of a blessing is always the companion of his own local institution. As an institution of Christ is anything set up, or ordained by him that has an efficacy beyond the mere thing itself, so no organization, or act of government, but such as are instituted by Christ, has the promise of a special blessing, nor can it be in the hands of any other than such as Christ has given the promise unto. So all is likewise confined within that seat or jurisdiction he has appointed ; and upon this ground he promises to be specially present with his ministers who act within the lawful bounds of their calling. In settling up this divine institution, it as much belongs to Christ's power and prerogative to set out the jurisdiction, as to the limits thereof, as it was to found the institution itself. Because the greatness and worth of these divine prerogatives does more or less depend upon the extent of this jurisdiction, and these blessings accordingly result to the edification and benefit of the members as these things are definitely settled and ordered. Then again, it is in perfect keeping with the dignity of Christ's church on earth that those who belong to it should owe it to the wisdom and foreordina- tion of Christ himself, as nothing concerns the substance of these privileges more than the satisfaction of knowing that the church be from Christ. Take any profane body, if it be a privilige to have certain rules prescribed, and officers named, and certain acts of government, as they may do, maintained, then it is as much important to have a limit to its jurisdiction among them, as it is to have them incorporated. If this were not done, their incorpora- tion would be no better than a nullity. The benefit and enjoyment of all privileges depend upon the bounds set to them, w^hich left undetermined, as certainly the limits of this supposed church universal was left, the privilege is impaired and destroyed. And if so much depends upon this, should he not appoint aU these great things, who is the author, giver and bestower of this government himself, to whom these bodies should wholly owe it, and not leave it to the discretion of those who have no authority to arrange it ? There is nothing against which men's consciences are so apt to be obsti- nate and rebellious as an undue exercise of a power to which they are not entitled, for men are likely to quarrel at nothing more than the right of authority in those who execute it, and especially to the exercise of ecclesias- tical government. Baptists have ever asked the question: "What authority have you to judge the Christian world unless you can show from Christ the whole world or a part of it, and a definite part, is within the limits of your jurisdiction? Nothing has done more violence to the cause of Christ and has 286 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; brought more darkness and misery into tlie world than this confusion of juris- diction in matters that belong purely and simply to the local churches of Christ. This centralized system of church government has given to Catholics, Epis- copalians, Methodists and Presbyterians an importance which nothing else could give. They themselves often say that an Ecumenical Council, a General Conference or a General Assembly is the church. To them as well as to all others who have departed from Bible church government, and who desire to enjoy, at one round, the glory and grandeur of ecclesiastical establishments, this is, doubtless, very agreeable and a source of much pride. It is brilliant and gaudy, as centralism always is, and naturally flatters the vanity of those belonging to them, because they can see nothing of these systems but these overgrown bodies. Ecclesiastical absolutism and centralism strike the eye and strive to do so ; Baptist church polity is likewise brilliant, but it is brilliant in its long line of history, and must be studied in its historical and scientific development to be appreciated. There is no greater nullity than a deficiency of right, nor a greater defect than that of a want of jurisdiction. Paul writes a severe accusation against the Corinthians on this very account when he says : For what have I to do to judge them also that are without f Doycnot judge them that are within? This was a duty belonging to them, and thus he convinces them of their neglect of duty in that they neglected to discipline an ofiender who was with- in and under their own jurisdiction. And so far as this discipline was not managed by that local church where Christ had placed it, it could not be done at all. And so much of the responsibility and blessing depended upon them, as upon the true form of government that Christ had appointed that was to be administered by the church, and not by one man, or by several men in ofiice. It is certain that Paul laid this duty at the door of the church at Corinth, within whose jurisdiction Christ had placed it, and so had the promise of his presence to accompany that power, provided it was adminis- tered by them. The edge of the sword of discipline becomes dull if placed in hands not designed by Christ to use it ; and there is certainly more power in one excommunication in the primitive times, and in the primitive way, than in all since, by the church universal, because it was not placed in their hands to do it, as having no jurisdiction to execute it. This confusion of ecclesiastical jurisdiction was most forcibly illustrated in the late trial here at the national capital, of the learned Dr. Briggs by what is called The General Assembly of Presbyterians. This gentleman was charged with heresy. Now heresy is said to bear the same relation to the religion and polity of a church that treason does to the sovereign power of a nation. In that celebrated trial the whole contention was as to whether the Synod of New York, that had already passed upon his case, finding him not guilty, had the right to try him or whether this General Assembly had juris- diction, as a high court of appeals. For ten days they debated this grave question, leaving the main fact of heresy, or no heresy, in the background. After the question of jurisdiction had been argued by learned lawyers and still more learned divines, it was decided in favor of the Assembly, which OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 287 found him guilty. It was not so much a question of heresy as it was one of jurisdiction. In fact to a Baptist, as a looker-on, the greatest heresy about the whole matter was that the case should have been taken away from the local body or church of which he was a member, and suffered to be thus thrust upon a whole denomination to shake and disturb it from centre to cir- cumference, and thus make a farce of apostolic church government, by over- leaping the limits set by Christ and his apostles ; forgetting that these gen- eral assemblies cannot meet for acts of government by virtue of any charter given first to the church universal. It is often said by those belonging to other systems of church government that the first churches, though but single congregations having but single pastors in and over them, wliich exercised all acts of government, cannot be taken as patterns for churches of this day, because the first churches out of necessity were compelled to do that which when multiplied they cannot now do. This is not a reasonable argument, nor does it correspond with the facts of the case ; if this be true the apostles should not have organized any of these converted- communities into churches, but have deferred their organiza- tion until they had gotten enough suitable material in the various cities and places to make up a presbytery or conference, and then have gone about forming one of these bodies out of the several local communities. Had this kind of a church been authorized by Christ, the apostles doubtless would have taught the early disciples to have waited until they could thus make up this kind of a church in its fulness at first. To assume that the first church at Jerusalem was the basis of the univer- sal church and an example for aU the rest, and that it was defective as hav- ing been founded upon an extraordinary necessity only, is below the dignity of a divine institution. But if this first church had in itself complete power and within itself constituted a synod or conference it serves as much for Baptists as for others, and indeed for us first ; because this church as one congregation existed first, and they were as much an ordinary church at first as at last, and endowed with the same sufficiency of inherent power. And if it were a model of an ordinary synod or conference, it will not serve our Presbyterian or Methodist friends at all first or last for the ground of their church government ; for by the time the apostles had finished their work and passed off the stage of action they had estabhshed a hundred such churches and all after the same pattern. It is certain that those churches that the apostles left were as perfect churches, as to government, the first day they were instituted, as afterwards they could be supposed to be. Returning to Paul's favorite similitude of a natural body, if nature at first begets a perfect child, with all parts perfect, it may be small and undeveloped and may grow in stature, but all the natural parts it has when a man it had when a child. And although it may grow in stature it does not grow in perfection, nor is it defective in any of its natural powers when a child. And besides if you join a thousand children together they will not make one man, neither by putting that many men together will it make a still larger man. 288 A TREATISE UPOl^ BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; There is no reasonable man who has intelligence enough to examine and understand the form of government cast upon the apostolic churches but will say that their polity was complete in themselves and absolutely had nothing to do with outside churches. The polity of these churches was either entire and perfect, and it is theirs to retain it, or they had liberty to cast it off and to form anew. If they had this liberty then Christ has insti- tuted two forms of church government, and made two seats or subjects of entire church power for men to cast themselves into which they please. That is to say, two ordinary patterns, one of a local church and the other of a synod or conference over many. But that Christ should have left the government of his churches so indefinite cannot be imagined ; not only be- cause it is impossible that one of them could be better than the other, but because the one is vastly different from the other in point of stability and fixedness, and besides the one completely destroys the other. As, however, this unscriptural and uninstitutional multitude has no organism, it is, as has been stated, necessarily led by a few or one man, and thus we meet in eccle- siastical history with the invariable result, that virtually one man rules where absolute power of the membership is believed to exist. And after a short interval that one person openly assumes all power, sometimes, however, observing certain forms by w^hich the power of the membership is believed to have been transferred to him. They have already been familiar wrth the idea of absolute priestly power — they have been accustomed to believe that w^herever ecclesiastical power resides, it is absolute and complete, so that it does not appear strange to them that the new ecclesiastical monarch, whether priest, bishop or pope, should possess the unlimited power which by the law of the gospel actually resided in the local church. With them there is but one step from the church to a ruler of the church. When we admit 'that all local churches that have within themselves a complete government may retain that government within themselves as the first subjects of it as agreeing with the patterns of the apostolic churches what sensible church would subject itself to be governed by a foreign power? If these churches were incomplete to have acted in an arbitrary way and have retained their rights and powers within themselves, as in the primitive times they did, would have been unlawful. Being a new change of govern- ment there must have been examples for it in the Scriptures, and that form of government by synods and conferences should be as clear as the polity of the churches was before the change. It is impossible there should be two rights to the same power, whereof the one is incompatible with the other ; for if the local church can claim that the seat of government rests in them then the synod or conference cannot, for it is impossible that both should exercise it. There may be different powers and interests in the same organic body, but there cannot be a power in one body to be exercised in a certain way, and also the same power in a greater to be exercised in a different way and for a different purpose. It cannot be successfully said that this lumping of many churches together and generating a government suitable to that association is a strengthening OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 289 of the power of the local church to administer its aifairs. That would be the same as to say that the father of a family that ruled as a father before, and had full authority so to do, should have his power committed into the hands of other fathers of families together with himself. Could this be said to be a strengthening of his power as the ruler of his family, or rather would it not be a losing of it? Apply this argument to the presidents of colleges. Would not these learned gentlemen consider that it was a weakening of their gov- ernment, for by this they lose theirs as presidents. Neither would it help the matter by injecting in it a little of the Baptist idea and rule by a majority vote, for in many cases they would utterly lose their power to govern at all, it being thus swallowed up by the greater number against them. So it would be in ecclesiastical matters in case of bishops and ruling elders, the will and power of local churches would be overruled when the votes of the pastors happened to be against the interest or wishes of their own churches. Certainly the government of the churches could not be strengthened by taking the power out of their own hands and doing their own acts for them, thus destroying ^the church's own power to govern itself. If it be said that it makes all churches equal, still this must be admitted, but how does it make them equal ? It makes them all equal in subjection and not in freedom, as they were instituted by Christ. It would be the same kind of equality that incorporated cities that had full powers of government under their respective charters giving up their powers to a combination of incorporated towns together which would be a lowering of their dignity and a surrender of their powers and all be brought into a condition of subjection, but what equahty there could be in it we cannot see. If in the apostolic times when churches began to be thus multiplied, a church that before had full ecclesiastical government entire in itself, began anew to associate with others for government, either this association took up the whole -power and jurisdiction, and left each local church with no part of it, else there was a parting and a dividing of that power with which Christ invested them. If all that power was taken away, let that be affirmed, and a Scriptural authority for it be shown. Let this hierachical church choose and ordain all their ministers and deacons, let them receive and excommuni- cate members, and do all other acts of government. If church power be divided and parted, either it must be arbitrary, and if so, then they arbi- trarily and unlawfully parted with that v/hich was once given them by Christ, or else they should have parted with all as by a command from God. In other words ecclesiastical government should not be entirely destroyed in order to round out a theory. It is very evident that if the local churches had any lawful right and authority in their own local affairs by virtue of the first form of government set up over them, that right and authority was taken away from them and invested in the hierarchical church that is aristocratical in its nature. In a government ruled purely by the local membership if that government be transformed into an aristocracy or an episcopacy we must say that the for- mer government is overthrown and the membership dethroned, and the 19 290 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; episcopacy enthroned, and it will be entirely a new form of polity. Can it be said that a local church that is thus despoiled of its rights by being asso- ciated with others, is not wronged in its rights ? For if at first the charter of the local churches should be that they must be ruled by themselves, and their own officers, whom they themselves had chosen, certainly it would be a new form of government, to surrender that power, and to come under the rule and dominion of other churches. And if there were a family the father thereof who had entire government, and when families increased they all joined in a family combination to rule all private family affairs, when the father ruled, and of divine right ought to rule alone, surely this would be a new system of government that would completely subvert and overthrow the other. Would not colleges think so, though associated into a university ? If colleges should have the privilege of receiving, discipHning and expelhng students invested in their own hands, as certainly it should, to be a good and proper government, if aU the jurisdiction and control which they had when alone, or if a part of it only should be exercised in common ; this would be a change of government, and a ridiculous disfigurement of all educational rule and order. And so it would be in the case of churches. There must, therefore, be a way of proceeding judicially, or extra-judicially in the institution of these overgrown and disjointed systems of church government, or else the divine laws of Christ, and these societies that- should subsist by them, cannot stand, and the ends for which such governments are instituted, together with the governments themselves, should be overthrown, and the good people who are in, and adhere to them, should be induced to return to the simpHcity of the gospel plan of church polity. They are good philosophers and able divines, not well up however in the science of govern, ment, who think that this visionary polity can create a right in those who have it not by a divine right, or that the Scriptures can be used as a justi- fication to those who overthrow the law, and give opportunity of erecting an ecclesiastical judicatory not authorized by the Scriptures. For before any assembly of men can become the formal seat of ecclesiastical government there must be an orderly union under a covenant to obey Christ's laws, for he has in this institution granted the power of the keys only to believers thus united into the state of a local church. If it were the work of the apostles in their missionary tours to organize the churches into diocesan and presbyterian governments, yet none of them at any time wrote to them in such a state. They wrote not to the church of Judea, of Asia, or of Crete, but to the churches, naming them as local organic bodies, thus emphasizing local self-government. Under the old law God set up a church government to suit that of a kingdom, and really suitable to the governments that we now see in nations barring its religious nature. And any religious government under the gospel erected in imitation thereof is diocesan and presbyterian in its nature and therefore called //le elements of the world, unto which the churches under the new law are not to be conformed. Under that form of pohty which our brethren would imitate, there was a wor- ship and rule for the whole nation, and as such it was a government to which OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 291 all could appeal, but there is not a trace of that kind of a polity found in the New Testament. So under the gospel we find no examples where ecclesias- tical government ever fell upon this kind of a church, on the contrary, it is very clear to the reasonable inquirer after truth that all power fell upon the local churches, as we see in every example that local churches exercised that power without let or hindrance, as having been set up by the apostles themselves. This conclusion is evidently so clear that he who would try to prove to the contrary, is forced to resort to the analogies between the Jewish regime and that of the gospel to justify their polity. This is further shown by their efforts to have their systems conformed to the government of cities, taking in the villages, as those who are for episco- pacy contend, and as presbyterians also insist with the exception that they contract the system to the extent of a city within itself, and so make a classical church, or synod. To assert either view is a perversion of apostolic church government, as unavoidable absurdities would follow. To set up such a government would be to make a secular or profane government the pattern of the ecclesiastical; and then the same degrees of officers would arise, those superior and those inferior, that we see in secular govern- ments, would of necessity be the rule, as they would make out the evangelist Titus, in the isle of Crete, with subordinate pastors under him. Now Christ never shaped his spiritual government, under the new law, unto the political, nor the bounds thereof; for Christ has not set material limits to his spiritual rule on earth. The bounds of an apostolic church is limited to so many as can meet in one place, being united under a convenant, into an organic body for worship and the administration of the ordinances and discipline. Politi- cal governments go by the bounds of the soil ; so does the episcopal and presbyterian form of government ; but not so under the apostolic system. It is circumscribed only by the Providence of God. All that live within the limits of such a place, because they are of the soil, fall under the same political government. But what reason is there that they should be under the same spiritual rule ? The doctrine of the old law writers of meum et tuum — mine and thine — has no place in true church government. If the pattern of the churches were to be conformed to the city governments, then as the city sometimes takes in the suburban places, the local residences round about, so the churches should not be conformed to the limits of the city, but extend to the whole province ; as bishops contend for a diocesan church, and if a province why should it not extend and take in the whole world, as we find neither a precept nor an example in the Scriptures to go by. IMiuisters should be content with a little less dominion over the earth than its Maker. If this were an ordinance of God to conform church government to cities then New York would make one church, because it is but one city. And in some places where there are two cities contiguous as New York and Brook- lyn built up together that have the priviliges of cities, the latter place in itself being an immense city, might challenge the right to supremacy, or at least claim an equal right with her somewhat larger sister, and then the 292 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPKUDENCE ; doctrine of meum and tuum would come in and there would arise a conflict of jurisdiction, unless we had an example or precept by which to settle a contest over two separate jurisdictions. And then suppose that these cities or provinces, where these diocesan and other forms of governments are set up, should decay and fall away to so smaU a number of inhabitants that there should be but one local church left. In that case what would become of the diocesan governments of the several cities? What kind of a church and government would be left standing? Nothing more, nor less, than a com- mon, little, ordinary Baptist church round the corner, provided there was a oneness of will, faith and practice among them and that in strict harmony with the Scriptures. No doubt it would be just such a church as Paul, Titus and all the other apostles and evangelists set up in the beginning of the gospel. It is evident that the reason that Paul gave directions to ordain elders in every city, was because the gospel was first preached in the cities, so that they might leaven the country places. And the apostles when they wrote to the local church of the chief city as being more eminent, not because that was the mother church, as our Episcopal friends would say, or a classical church as Presbyterians contend, but because the epistles might be addressed to others. And thus when they wrote to the churches of Syria and Galatia, they wrote especially to Antioch, and when they would give their letters a general significance they say : A7id to all that call upon the name of the Lord. If many churches in a city had been formed into one church they might, and doubtless would have been distinguished by the names of some of the political or corporate rulers, as now many of our churches in the cities are called after the streets upon which they are located, and as John, in his spiritual vision, wrote to the Angel of the church at Ephesus, or as one writing to the Mayor and Aldermen of a corporate city when writing to the whole corporation in their names. If the churches were organic units, and were of one fellowship, it is very reasonable that they should be addressed as one church, as at Colosse and Corinth, and to show their unity and make their worship more solemn and have more of the assistance of the Holy Spirit ; and why strain an argument to make them many churches, when there was no necessity for but one ? The elders at Ephesus lived in, and were identified with the church at that place by way of assistance to the local church in acts of worship, and were over the whole flock. And if churches were multiplied in those cities each church had its separate organi- zation framed after the same pattern that the first church was, having like need of ofiicers with, the same privileges. And besides they are not called elders of Ephesus, but elders of the church at Ephesus. The care and duty of elders that were ordained in a city to evangelize was to be extended even to the right of forming country churches as well as in the cities, otherwise how could the gospel have been spread ? And yet this is one of the episco- pal grounds for a diocesan church, and a reason for the rearing up of episcopal church government. The way of organizing churches under the gospel being uniform, accord- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 293 ing to Christ's institution, both in the country and cities, it is certain that the same uniform patterns were suited to the one as to the other. And, there- fore, a church in the country may as well be made the pattern for the con- stitution of the churches in a city, as a church in a city, for framing one in the country. But Christ being not the author of confusion has framed but one form of church government, and has framed this divine institution in such a way as was uniform and will serve both. And the certain rule for both maybe found in the examples of all the apostolic churches, without one exception, set up by those apostles and evangelists ; and as many as dwelt together, and could conveniently meet in one place, became one church, hav- ing its own officers and was complete in itself. Now we all agree that Christ might have made this kind of church government a pattern to be followed, as he took a family government under the old law, and extended the bounds of the family as they grew, yet that would not be a binding law to the extent that every family should thus extend itself into a governing power, or a nation, thus creating confusion where order was sought. When we apply this visionary and might he argument to church govern- ment, there is no length to which we may not run. If Titus and the other evangelists did become ecclesiastical rulers by virtue of their having power given them to ordain elders in every city and church, ministers who then, and have since assisted in the ordination of elders ought likewise to become rulers ; for if this made Titus bishop of Crete why not allow all pastors whose duty it becomes to assist in the ordination of ministers to become bishops, and ex-officio rulers of cities and provinces according to this episco- pal idea. But if this power to become bishops of whole cities and provinces was given to the apostles by virtue of their apostleships, which Baptists deny, or if after they passed away others usurped a power which they never had inherently in themselves, or derivatively from the apostles, we may fancy that a kingdom and rulership so gotten may, and ought to escheat for w^ant of an heir ; but no doubt our Episcopal friends will conclude that there is no need of seeking lawful heirs or successors to the apostles if usurpation can confer a divine right to succession ; and he who gets the power they claim into his hands ought to be reputed the rightful heir and successor of the apostles, whether they can from the Scriptures prove it or not. We may justly ask how any one or more of those elders, ordained in the primitive times, came to be possessed of more power than their brethren since all must have derived the same power by virtue of their ordination ? They certainly were all called alike by the Holy Spirit, and the churches electing them, as Barnabas and Matthias were elected, and were ordained by the church by the laying on of the hands of the ministry, as the Scriptures tes- tify. But to what purpose is it to inquire which one of them has the most power, or how he came by it, when some of them, less loyal than the rest, in the early ages of the churches, not including, however, the apostolic age, re- belled against the rightful government of the local churches, which Christ set up, and by usurpation got a visionary dominion over some of these local bodies ? But we may certainly conclude that whatever the powers and rights 294 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUKISPEUDENCE ; were that belonged to those early apostles and evangelists they were inherent in them, and could not be conferred on any other by those to whom alone it was given by the Holy Spirit and the local churches ; for it proceeded from that source alone, and there it rested, and so rests to this day. The duty we owe to our parents does not arise from an usurped or delegated power, but from our birth derived from thera. And it is as impossible for any man to usurp, or receive by the grant of another, the right of a father over us, as for him to become, or pretend to be made our father by another, who did not beget us. Likewise it is as much impossible for any minister to usurp, or receive by the pretended right or grant of another the authority of a ruler over the churches, as for him to become a ruler by another who had no such power to confer it, if he can be presumed to have had such power himself. To institute a bishop to rule over a whole city, or a State, is as much non- sense as to institute a father to rule over a family, but if any should be chosen to do the work of a bishop, to such as have none, and are so ignorant and stupid as not to be able to elect their own bishop, none ought to be thrust over them without their own consent, as orphans of a certain age, under the law, are permitted to choose their own guardians, till they come of age. If this right ceases under the free gospel dispensation, why all right ceases, and men have no use for that freedom wherewith Christ has made them free. Would it not be ridiculous to attribute the title and authority of a ruling minister to the word bishop, which has none in it inherently or derivatively, and signifies no more than an ordinary minister of the gospel, whose duty Christ made it to be the shepherd over a little flock, or assembly of believers ? Such men thus instituted cannot be bishops of a whole city unless they be over the whole flock, the black and estray sheep as well as the white and tame ones in the sheepfold ; for a sheep is a sheep although he be wandered away over the mountains cold and bleak. And if any sheep be overtaken by the shepherd he ought to have power to run him down and force him to be of the fold nolens volens. And any meek and well-bred sheep that has been thus saved from the teeth of wild beasts and ravenous wolves, ought to return to the sheepfold and be tame, gentle and obedient; and this, though improperly, may be called an adoption and forced domina- tion of the Lord's flock. Under this aristocratic system of church government the first pastorates are acquired by the favor of the presiding bishops and of successful favoritism of other high church dignitaries, and transmitted by a sort of hereditary right, other ministers of equal or greater merit are reduced to and often kept in lower stations. The severity and shocking extremes of the system may not have been noticed by those living under it, but it is clearly observable by outsiders. But even at the present day, whoever has closely and impartially observed the operations of the two systems in the United States, has not failed to notice, and will not refuse to admit, the greater justice, and the greater worth and merit here claimed for Baptist chur<^h polity. In this fre6 and independent system it is the rule rather than the exception that some of our greatest ministers without any such OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 295 influences achieve the very highest distinctions and the very best pastorates through intrinsic merit alone ; while in the universal church system, it is so organized, and moves so entirely in aristocratic grooves that nine in ten of the really pious and talented ministers are as completely excluded as if laboring under legal disabilities, provided they be not the especial favorites of the bishops. They labor under these drawbacks naturally and cannot help themselves. The result is that there are many of those under this regime who have thrust upon them these highest places of honor and trust, who either could never have entered them under Baptist church govern- ment, or, being once found in them, would be quickly left out of them. It needs hardly to be added that these are, for the most part, the same persons who persistently assert that there is no merit in Baptist church government and no talent among those who are chosen by election to preach the gospel of Christ. This view of the powers and duties of the Christian ministry corresponds exactly with the nature of primitive church government. There is no better way, and indeed there is no other way, to find out the true nature of this ministry in the New Testament than to notice the various examples of those churches in action, or so to speak, in governmental operation, without which it is impossible to discern the will of Christ. These examples of the churches set up by the apostles and put in motion, we may safely take as the com- mands of Christ, as well in matters to be done as to be believed, one step beyond which Baptists are forbidden to go. One of the great subdivisions of the New Testament is called the Aets of the apostles, and the main pur- pose the Holy Spirit had in moving those inspired apostles to record those acts and examples was that they might serve as precepts to us in ascertain- ing the will of Christ, the founder of the churches. And while they do not enter into the minutia of these ministerial functions, and do not give Baptists -an express authority for every indifferent thing we do, yet the general and fundamental rules are discernible which, if Ave can make out, is enough for us. There is no mention of these primitive churches except in allusion to them as independent organic units, in that common-sense way in which the churches constituted by the apostles were distinguished one from another ; and in no one single instance are they ever alluded to as an associational or classical church charged with the power of choosing a minister. In the very first mention of the churches in the gospel they are used in the sense of independent churches, then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified. It was during this rest that Peter took occasion to visit them and passed throughout all quarters, doing, not the work of a ruler of the churches or a pope, but the ordinary work of an evangelist visiting the saints at Lydda. From here the apostle arose and went to Joppa where another local company of converts were assembled. He went up and down where these local churches were scattered, in cities or villages, and are in one uniform respect called churches. For the use of this term wherein the wi iters of the Scriptures involve them all collectively 296 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; is similar, and means the same kind of cliiirclies. Now is it imaginable that throughout all these regions, or quarters, the churches whereof it is spoken could all be organized into conferences or a synod such as we now see among us? If there ever was a time in the history of Christianity, by reason of the fewness, weakness and scattered condition of the churches that such an hierarchical form of government should be extended over them with rulers to govern, it was then. When it is said that these churches had rest and were edified, can it be that the writer could mean these churches as united into an assembly or con- ference of churches such as meet now to make ministers and to appoint ministers over churches without their consent, to exercise discipline and to make laws to govern the churches ? Rather did it not mean that these churches w^ere each enjoying rest in the Hberty of assembling in their respec- tive church capacities, worshipping God according to the dictates of tlieir own consciences and all the other means of edification ? How can an asso- ciational church, if there could be such a thing, edify or be edified ? Can they assemble all at one time and place ? Have they ever so assembled ? They must do so to be edified ; for this is one of the very reasons for the organization of the local churches, it being the greatest and only means by ■which they can be comforted and edified ; and the enjoyment of these bles- sings in rest is that which is the greatest outward mercy and privilege which Christians can enjoy and can only be enjoyed in local independent churches. When in the same connection it is said that the churches were multiplied^ did they multiply in synods and conferences? or in local independent churches, fixed in their own respective governments and worship ? Now as the churches were in those regions round about multiplied where Peter and the other apostles preached, so it must be supposed that these churches were set up in the country as well as in the cities. And is it not visionary as well as silly to think that the early disciples and believers should leave their callings and business to come up to the cities to make confer- ences and general assemblies to elect and ordain ministers to rule them, or that there were only enough converted in the cities as to make these bodies there ? Certainly there could not be classical churches here, but independ- ent local churches, for it is ordaining of elders, or ministers to those churches that is mentioned, and not associating of many churches into one presbytery or conference ; but there is something directly opposite, the organization of independent churches, and ordaining of elders in them apart from any con- sultation with outside churches. It is true there must have been a sufiicient number of separate churches with their respective officers supposed before an associational church could have been made up. But where is there a single example in all these sacred writings or a precept where such a church was organized for ruling purposes even after the multiplication of a great many churches? And we dare not presume it. We dare not go one step bej^ond these examples. If we do, apostolic ecclesiastical government is destroyed. These churches being fixed in their several localities it must be in a congre- gational way that they ordained officers as the Holy Spirit called, and did OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 297 every other act -wbich is annexed to cliurch sovereignty, and lawful to be done, their own entire government being inherent in the local churches. And such were called churches, endowed with their own officers proper unto them, fixed and appointed by Christ and not appointed over them by a for- eign power. Christians ought to have nothing to do with any powder eccle- siastical outside of their own churches. They who at this day live under these hierarchical forms of government have surrendered their Christian lib- erty, and are governed by no other laws than such as their rulers see proper to impose. Baptists know no law to which they owe obedience but that of Christ, and themselves. None is or can be imposed upon us, unless by the gospel and by ourselves. We measure our rights and duties according to our own interpretation of the law, and for our own safety. Our Baptist ancestors were made free by the law of the gospel, and, as the best provision they could make for us, they left us that liberty entire, with the best laws and the best form of church government the world ever saw to defend it. It is no way impaired by the domination of a lordly priesthood. The hap- piness of those who have ever enjoyed this freedom from domination, and the misery they lie under, who have sufiered themselves to be forced or cheated out of it, may persuade us to think nothing too dear to be hazarded in the defence of it. Baptist churches have no dictatorial power over them ; and neither we nor our ancestors have rendered or owed obedience to any human laws but those of the gospel, nor to any other ministry than what we elect to be our pastors. We have a ministry that have a spiritual reign over their churches by law, and not by usurpation. Their reign and rule is from the law that makes them to be ministers, and we can know only from thence what their powders are, and how far we are to go in our obedience to them. Whereas, it is utterly absurd for us to seek which is the best form of church government, or what code of discipline and laws is most conducive to its perfection and permanency ; and they who have written books on ecclesias- tical matters to instruct the Christian w^orld how to govern themselves have either misspent their time, or have impiously been the means to incite the Christian world to rebel against and overthrow the ordinances of Christ. The work of the lover of truth in these matters is to hunt for those precepts and examples found in the Scriptures, as we have little hope of finding it among those who apply themselves chiefly to sophistry, as the best means to support popery, and incidentally the things growing out of popery. That which Baptists maintain, is the cause of Christian liberty which ought never to sufier for the want of some one now and then to review its fundamental principles and to restate the grounds upon which it rests. In so doing we ought to reject w^hatever we find that agrees not with reason, Scripture, or the approved apostolic examples of the first churches. That kind of church government instituted in the beginning of the gospel and ever since maintained by Baptists, is such as has been composed of many free and independent little republics, living cBquojure, on equal terms, every one retaining and exercising a sovereign power within itself. It ought to be a source of rejoicing that there has been a people since those primitive times 298 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPHUDENCE ; that have stood up for the principles underlying this form of polity instituted by Christ. No disputes have ever arisen among them concerning limits and jurisdiction, and the like. But as our enemies have ever attempted to sow dissensions among us, and not having a high court to decide our controversies by its authority, we may sometimes be apt to fall into temporary quarrels, but they have never entered into contention except when some one strikes at the fundamental principles underlying their religious liberty. No church government in the world was ever more free from popular seditions and heresies, and has been more miraculously preserved by the hands of God. Although the freest and most popular government in the religious world, the revolts against it have been the fewest of any other religious sect ever established, and such as have attempted to set up and maintain governments, even similar to ours, have dwindled away and are becoming extinct as reli- gious sects, and the prayer of the Lord that they might be one will yet prevail. Men are subject to errors, and it is the work of the best and wisest to discover and amend such as their ancestors may have committed, or to add perfection to those things which by them were practised. This is so certain, that whatever we enjoy beyond the misery in which our Baptist ancestors lived, is due only to the liberty of correcting what was amiss in their practice, or evolving that which they did not know. Why then shoidd Baptists be reduced to the necessity so much to inquire after that which is most amcient in ecclesiastical government, as that which is best, and most conducive to the good ends to which it was directed ? As ecclesiastical governments were in- stituted for obtaining the truth and the preservation of religious liberty, we ought to seek what government was first, and what best provides for the ob- taining of the truth and the preservation of religious liberty. God who is infinitely wiser than man has ever suited his ecclesiastical government in all ages to the varying conditions and circumstances of the times in which it was to exist, and suited it himself according to what was to be the future . condition of his people. While worship was continued in families and tribes, as under the old law, there was a government and worship suitable to the family and to the tribe. When they grew up to be a nation he settled a new government upon them. When in the wilderness, a tabernacle only ; when fully settled under a kingly power, a temple. But now under the gospel the condition of his followers in nations varying in several ages, he has framed his churches to suit all ages through which they are in his providence to exist. If it be said that therefore when churches should multiply to a nation then all ecclesiastical governments should be suited unto that nation as such. This would be possible, and indeed suitable if whole nations would truly turn Christians, and all were of a oneness of will, faith and practice. But God in his wisdom saw that in time men would differ in regard not only to the religion, but the polity of the churches, and that he would have believers in every nation of different forms of national government, therefore he suited his government to his own designs. If in his providence Christ had foreseen that all nations being converted to him should have an established OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 299 and fixed form of government as the Jews had, he probably wouM have given a church government answerable thereto. Although the church in the wilderness had not grown up to be a kingdom and had no local place to worship at, and had not come to be scattered all over the world, yet God foresaw what he would bring them to, did not give a government that would suit them when they were scattered and the Gentiles should be converted and brought into the fold of God. And if he had intended that there should be an hierarchical form of government with priests and bishops placed over them with power and high sounding titles, he would not have left the churches, as he did, in ignorance of the kind of government he designed them to have, but would have given law^s and examples suitable to such a polity. This institution of local churches, complete in themselves, suits all times from the beginning of the gospel and through the continuance of the gos- pel. It suits all nations, governments, places, the villages as well as the large cities, and there must be the same uniform law for all. It especially suits the condition of believers in Christ beiug scattered all over the world. Whole nations are not fit for church membership, neither those belonging to the universal church, owing to their diverse opinions, for the true follow- ers of Christ are but organic companies redeemed out of all nations. As therefore among the Jews when they were scattered, their government was a synagogue government, being local in its nature, and as that form of gov- ernment suited their scattered condition, so the apostolic form suits best with the scattered condition under the gospel dispensation. This whimsical fancy has caused the building up of a huge ecclesiastical hierarchy, and amuses and entertains the understanding of the superstitious with images and analogies of things never intended, and even intrudes itself into the domain of doctrine. Paul said they were but the shadow of things to come, but the body is of Christ. Now evidently the expression means a shadow in comparison to the churches which were then being set up. He set up for churches organic bodies, and the old Jewish economy was but shadows in comparison to the church which Paul so often compared to the natural body. Now, whenever a law that is made only for a particular reason wholly fails, the law itself fails, and sometimes a nettle springs up in the place of it, and that which was once profitable may become intolerable, and that which was once righteous will not be righteous still, but wholly dif- ferent. The rule in law is, that when a contrary reason arises, there is no doubt but that the law ceases ; and this is to be extended not only to the cases of injustice, but of uselessness ; that is, if the law becomes useless by a change of conditions, it has no longer a binding authority. The Jewish polity, priesthood and economy having been abrogated by Christ, he having set us free from all bondage, even of that law which God himself made and gave to Moses, and having alleviated the burdens of the rites and ceremonies incident to a national form of church government, certainly he would not thus relieve us of the laws of God to impose upon us the laws of man. For there is no such thing as Christian liberty except a comptete and entire free- 300 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JTJEISPrvUDEXCE ; dom from the laws of man in church government and in doctrine set up by man's authority. This is rather a deliverance from bondage than a liberty, a rescue from an evil of another nature. After the abrogation of the Jewish economy the apostolic form of church government did either begin right, or wrong. If right, it was a divine institution and we can only look to the New Testament and take what we find there, and pattern after it and nothing else. That there is no resem- blance between the local churches set up by the apostles, and the associa- tional form of church government, is evident to every candid inquirer who takes the pains to study the question. What though we find in the Old Testament a national church with a priesthood to rule it ; we grant there was then such a church, but the gospel knows no such now. The apostles, though they had from Christ the care of all the churches, and had evidently in their hands a power that no set of ministers since can claim, yet they were but officers in local churches, and never pretended to be a college of bishops, much less the church itself. Many churches became one church to no ecclesiastic, or set of ecclesiastics in the world, but Christ, but this pre- tense of ministers being the church, and having power to rule the church would make many churches one church to a company of ministers, that they may govern them. That form of government is to be wholly rejected which will not endure a comparison with the apostolic churches, but if being thus compared there be no resemblance found, it cannot prevail without doing great violence to Christ's institution, the local churches. There is in this artificial conception of a universal church a destruction not only of local church organization and independence, but of individual identity and personality. Those who have assumed the origin of this kind of a church have regarded its existence as the necessary and formal limita- tion of the individual, and therefore they have assumed that each individual has surrendered his freedom on being enveloped into it, and has therefore acquiesced in the deprivation of his church rights. It is thus always with human associations, as the organization of a sect or party. It is necessarily a restriction of the individual ; but it is not the case in the institution of a church of Christ formed in an organic life, and it is only as the local church is an organic and a moral person, that freedom is realized in it, and may be wrought in, and with it, in its spiritual development. For it is here that each individual is to bring all that is in his individuality to its fresh and free expression. The personality and individuality of each member is to be so left, that each may work after his own conception of what the Scriptures teach him is his duty. All that which is foreign to this must necessarily be coercion from without and should be rejected as destructive of religious freedom and independence. The true element of a church is in the nature of its members, and its development and progress is in their spiritual natures. The primitive con- ception of a church discloses a condition in which there is the recognition of some common relation, and men appear as dependent upon each other and as seeking association with each other. They enter the church from OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 301 a condition of individual isolation, and is to be regarded as a collection of so many units, and the life of each member is involved in every nioment of its existence, and none are exempt from these conditions. It has been received from the fathers and is to be handed down unimpaired to the chil- dren. It is not a confused mass, but nevertheless has an organic unity ; it is determined in an organic law, and constitutes an organic whole. It is shaped by no external force, but by an inner law. It has unity and growth and identity of structure. It is not thrown together in a way that cannot be accounted for — not the aggregation of a mass, but composed of integral parts of a unit, with an identity that pervades the whole. It cannot be torn down, and then from the debris built up again in another shape devised by human wit and wisdom. The local church is not even the continuation of the universal church, nor is it in its form necessarily correspondent to it. How can the plant tran- scend its germ, and absorb other substances ? The church in its widest de- velopment is still the local church and is not necessarily implanted in the universal whole, but it is an organism and has its seed in itself, and the con- dition of its growth is its own organic unity, having a oneness of will, faith and practice peculiar to itself. Between these two systems of church gov- ernment — the local and the universal — there is a gulf as wide as that which separated Lazarus and Dives. Some have attempted to strike a medium and blend the two by bridging the chasm combining a little of the one with a little of the other ; but oil and water will not mix, truth and error will not dwell together in the same house. The church does not have its origin even in the voluntary association of certain separate churches. This only transcends the limits of a local church, and does not attain to the dignity of a church. It does not correspond to the historical narration of the apostolic churches laid down in the Kecord. There -is involved in the conception of a universal church the idea of usurpation, whereas the church of the living God was not born of force. It is so contradictory to the conception of a church that the element of divine law and order disappears and there remains only the mandate of power, and the individuality and sacred personality of the free Christian is lost, and he is transformed into that of the automaton. It paves the way to the develop- ment of an abnormal ecclesiastical power and authority to exercise which requires a horde of place-hunters and priestly hangers-on who must needs be supported at the expense of the Lord's treasury. This has been the founda- tion for the most opposite schemes and speculations upon the church, and has mustered in its support in succeeding periods the most extreme men and parties, serving as the defence of the established order erected by them- selves and for themselves. On the other hand in the beginning of the early planting of the primitive churches they had to pass through a struggle for existence against the combined power of this universal church armed with the sword of secular power; but it has never been the product of violence on the part of those who through all these bloody ages maintained the supremacy of the local apostolical churches. The ligatures of this form of 302 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; churcli government have never been strong enough to regard the weakest and lowliest with indifference, but the weakest and lowliest have ever flocked to its spiritual standard. The common people heard Him gladly can be said now as in the primitive times of the churches. This refusal to extend ecclesiastical powers beyond the limits of the local churches does no violence to ministerial prerogatives ; in Baptist church government they always do what they will, when they will to do nothing but that which is proper under the laws of the gospel, and it is a happy impo- tence in those, who through wantonness, or ignorance of those laws, desire to do evil by usurping authority, not to be able to effect it. By this want of power to erect the churches into an overgrown ecclesiastical monarchy the autonomy of the local church is completely preserved from ruin, the rash- ness of arrogant popes, bishops, presbyters and presiding elders is restrained, their extravagance awed and their lawlessness suppressed. When the gospel provides for these matters and prescribes ways by which they may be ac- complished, every minister who is loyal to the truth, should he have a griev- ance either feigned or real against a brother, the church or the denomina- tion seeks a remedy in a legal way, vents his passions and petty spleens in such a manner as brings no harm or prejudice to the cause. If his com- plaints against the highest church dignitary may be heard at once as well as against laymen, he is satisfied and looks no further for a remedy. But if these lordly church dignitaries will neither judge nor be judged, and there be no power to judge those above the law, and no orderly way to prevent or redress private injuries, those who are the subjects of their displeasure must meekly submit to them. Nothing will preserve an under-minister from the animosity of a jealous bishop who has the power in his hands either to make or unmake him. Wrongs will be done, and when they that do them cannot or will not be judged publicly by any tribunal known to the gospel, the in- jured persons become judges in their own case and executioners of their own sentences. As the Hebrew kings were not instituted by God, but given as a punish- ment for their sins, who despised the government that he instituted, so God permitted the setting up of kingly ecclesiastical governments in imitation of their rebellion. And as those who set up that government in Israel in oppo- sition to the will and command of God, came ultimately to grief, so those who rebelled against the ecclesiastical government of Christ by setting up a kingly system on the basis of the universal church, they thereby brought the Christian world to grief and misery. But waiving the opinions of men, it is good to see what we can learn from the Scriptures, and inquire if there be any precept or example there commanding them- or authorizing them to depart from the gospel plan of government, or anything from whence we may reasonably infer they ought to have done it, all of which, if I mistake not, will be found directly contrary. Bible examples are all against this polity. The apostles had not the name or power of popes, cardinals, or bishops ; they were not of the tribe to which a sceptre of rule and power was promised, and they did not transmit any such power to those who came after OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 303 them, and no such power was continued by any kind of succession. What- ever ministerial power and dignity they have is not inherent in their persons, but conferred upon them by the churches that made them to be ministers ; not conferred that they might rule over an universal church, never erected by the apostles, nor that they might be exalted in glory and as lords para- mount, but that they might be humble ministers of good to the people of one church— to the flock of one sheep-fold. But whatever the dignity and power of ministers made in the apostles' time was, and howsoever they were raised to that office, it certainly differed from that we see popes, bishops and other church dignitaries exercising in this day and generation. Nothing has ever contributed more towards the union of church and state than the building up of a church hierarchy resembling that of the state, thus endowing one denomination with worldly dignity and extraordi- nary privileges, and thereby drawing them into the vortex of politics. When this is done they would have the government ordain what they conceive to be the maxims and doctrines of religion as laws, on the same principle that it makes any other enactments for the regulation of the state. It is impos- sible for any people, however much wedded they may be to this form of church government, to misunderstand the import and bearing of this influ- ence upon state affairs. Ministerial pomp and dignity, and the supersti- tious reverence with which high church officers have ever been clothed, con- stitutes the soul of an established religion. Other things may add lustre to the institution, but it is this superstition and gaudy show which gives it a firm hold and a commanding authority in religion. This monstrous ecclesi- astical hierarchy was at one time adopted in all the original American States, with the honorable exception of Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. This connection between state and church was as strict as in England. But soon after the Revolution, this connection, in the greater part, was entirely dissolved-. No greater blessing could have befallen this land of liberty than this blow that was given to this heresy of heresies, the universal church, and all now acknowledge that it has been productive of great benefit to both church and state. Nothing could have happened more effectively to bring about religious harmony, and consequently a greater degree of political tranquillity, because afterwards there was nothing to puff up and pamper the pride and power of one denomination, and to provoke the hostility of the others. For as long as this union existed by law, those who felt them- selves aggrieved took an active part in all political elections, for the purpose of delivering themselves from the burdens which it entailed. In most of these States the Episcopalians, of course, were elevated to the throne of ecclesiastical power, in others the Congregation alists, and in others the Pres- byterians. But nowhere and at no time in the history of the world, in Amer- ica or elsewhere, have Baptists ever soiled their fair name by suffering them- selves to be led into this unholy alliance and to be led into this cesspool of political corruption. Thus, in Connecticut, where the Congregation alists, who boast of a strict conformity to apostolic examples and models, were the state church, all other denominations, including Episcopalians, Methodists, 304 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; Presbyterians and XJniversalists, united themselves closely together in order to uproot the laws that sanctioned the alliance, and thereby acquired that Christian liberty to which all men are entitled, and wherewith Christ made them free. All this shows that the alliance between separate, free and inde- pendent churches, aU consolidated into a conglomerate universal church, and this united to a secular government, lorded over by a powerful and influen- tial priesthood, enables secular rulers, who have the appointment of the priesthood, to defy public opinion, and do whatever else they please, so long as they please the priesthood. The minds of men, pressed and overawed by the combined weight of superstition, ignorance and authority, are slow to find out anything wrong in a system of church government to which they and their ancestors have been habituated ; and any who are so ignorant as to believe that popes, bishops and cardinals, councils, conferences and synods are infallible, soon persuade themselves that these personages and bodies have the same right to rule the church which God has to rule the world. Hence we conclude that the doctrine of the universal church is the mother of the still more hideous doctrine of the union between church and state. The one begat the other. And were it not for the strong arm of the law which intervenes and declares the marriage an unlawful and an unholy wedlock the union be- tween church and state, even in free America, would again take place; The laws of God are not sufficiently strong to prevent it, so lascivious is the unholy mother that would bring it about. It is very clear that the principles of free institutions and free churches are absolutely necessary to ward off the tenden- cies of the universal church to run into all manner of excesses and absurdities. Indeed, it is doubtful if the ecclesiastical affairs of the world were entirely turned over to the universal church, presided over by an appointed priest- hood, whether the term religious liberty would have any signification, and whether licentiousness, which would soon prevail in the Christian world, involving as it must, both the letter and spirit of religion, would not disable a free people from upholding free institutions, which is the basal rock of reli- gious liberty. For if we were to destroy the free and independent local churches as established by the apostles, and an universal church in their stead set up, men would soon be converted into mere automata, religion into an empty ceremonial, and nothing being left to the natural impulse of the heart, the fountain from which liberty of conscience and freedom of action derive their chief strength, would soon be dried up. That religious liberty which Baptists have always enjoyed in its highest degree, and which they have always advocated, has opened a great volume of experience to the American people, and ultimately it will bring the Christian world to see its beauty and utility. There being no such thing, therefore, according to the law of the gospel, as a divine right of the ministry to the dominion over the churches, or to any part of them ; nor any one of them that can derive to himself a title from the apostles by which he can rightly pretend to be preferred before others to that rule, and none can be derived from nature, or from ecclesiastical usur- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 305 pers who had none in themselves, we may justly spare any further pains of seeking further into that matter. But as things of the highest importance can never be too fully explained, it may not be amiss to observe that if the religious world could be brought to believe that such a right of the dominion of the ministry were by the law of the gospel hereditary, a great number of the most destructive and inextricable controversies must thereupon arise, which the wisdom and goodness of God never can enjoin and never intended. If the apostles planted the local churches and located ecclesiastical govern- ment in them alone, no human constitution can alter it. No length of time can be a defense against it. All church governments that are not conformed to it are vicious and void even in their root, and must be so forever. That which is originally unjust may be justly overthrown and discontinued. It being certain, therefore, that he or they who set up and exercise those huge governments have no right to rule them ; that there is no one man or set of men to whom it belongs, and no one knowing who they are, there is no one man among the ministry who has not as good a title to it as any other. He that has no part in such a government cannot exercise supreme power, for he neither has that which Christ ordained, nor can he show a title to that which he enjoys from the original prerogative of the gospel from whence it can only be derived. Therefore, it is difficult for any man, without the spirit of prophecy, to tell what all this will produce. All these hierarchical forms of church government came out of popery, and their drift is back to the source from whence they sprung. In coming out of this perverted organism, they sought only to reform church government, and by redressing what was amiss, to reduce it to first principles. We are not sure but that they who seem so well pleased with reformed popery, will not ultimately be compelled to submit to popery itself, for it is their tendency to reform backwards and not forwards. It is not improbable that when men, or a majority of them, see there is no medium between religious liberty and ecclesiastical slavery, those inclined towards liberty will seek a free and an independent church, and those inclined to slavery and prefer it to freedom, will drift back into popery from whence they came. This will not be a hard work in those where virtue and loyalty to the truth remain, and quite easy for those to drift back who prefer darkness to the light of God's truth. If love of reli- gious liberty be wanting, freedom of conscience cannot subsist ; but if love of the truth and virtue have the advantage, arbitrary power in church government cannot be perpetuated. Those who boast of their loyalty to the truth and . claim to be in the line of apostolic succession, think they give testimonies of it, when they submit themselves to the rule and will of one man, though contrary to the law from whence those qualities are derived, may consider, that by putting their religious masters upon illegal courses they make them to be veritable lords of Christ's heritage. But they who place the ministry within the powder of the law of the gospel, and make that law to be a guide to them, clothe them with true ministerial dignity. Whereas they who raise them above the law and allow them to acknowledge 20 306 no rule but their own capricious wills, such lose their affections for the people which in a true minister, is their most important treasure. Many and hundreds are the evils which result from the erection of the churches into a body politic for government. Under this system of church government, from time immemorial, religious and political questions were so mixed, that to attempt to separate them was to do violence to both religious and political institutions. At any rate it had a tendency to undermine the authority of secular government, because the minds of men had constantly run in that channel. All this laid the foundation for internal dissensions, which would rend the whole community. Under this state of the case it was thought that the only care to give to religion and to its unity, was to establish it by law, and to exclude all dissenters from the privileges that were enjoyed by the favored sect, and in this way the unity and tranquility of the government was sought to be preserved, and its authority rendered inviolable. This blending of religion with government brought about the inference, that secular government could no more avoid meddling in religious matters, than it could avoid the duty of defending the state against foreign invasion. Under this idea and teaching of the universal church the pope and his clergy, at a very early day, become the most powerful potentates of the old world. Keligious dogmas, of one kind or another, exercised complete dominion over the minds of men ; and other secular rulers and magistrates in order to maintain their authority among their own subjects, believed that it was necessary to add to their power a very large share of ecclesiastical authority also. Through all the ramifications of the church and state, in public and private life, religious and political opinions were so interwoven that it seemed impossible to separate them. Thus religion becomes an engine of government, and from thence followed the universal introduction of religious intolerance. And as religion is thus erected into an affair of state, a further consequence takes place, that ecclesiastics very generally became the statesmen of the land, and moulded both religious and political opinion to suit themselves. The tendency of Baptist church jurisprudence, then, is to distribute and equalize ecclesiastical powers, and to withdraw religion from the arena of politics, to put all sects in the possession of privileges which were formerly usurped by one, so that it shall no longer be necessary, nor even possible, for government to extend its protection and legislation over some, in order to promote their aggrandizement. The freedom of religious thought and liberty of conscience which has grown up everywhere under Baptist teaching and preaching, while at the same time it has disarmed the civil msgistrate of a most dangerous authority, it has likewise created such a multitude of free and independent churches all over the world, that it has rendered it impos- sible to bestow power upon one without oppressing a very large majority of the people. It ought to be a great source of gratification to loveis of reli- gious liberty to know that in England where the incubus of an established religion still curses that fair land, it is in spite of, and not in consequence, the connection between church and state that the seeds of freedom have OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEI* 307 taken root. It has so multiplied the number of dissenters in that country, as that instead of there being only a few Baptists to stem the tide, they stand one-half to about one-half for and against religious liberty. And it is not improbable that the growth of their numbers, joined to the righteousness of their cause and to the superior energy which they possess, may, at some not very distant day, brmg about the same revolution, and by the same means, as was accomplished just after the American revolution. It is clear, then, that the priesthood of either an universal, or established church, in con- sequence of their poAver of influencing those who follow them, may become an engine in the hands of government, capable of being melded as effect- ually as an army or navy. If one were to go into a machine shop and inquire -of a machinist as to the cause of the movements of some complicated machine, and he were to refer it to the divine agency we should certainly derive no satisfaction from the explanation ; and yet, m one sense, the solution would be correct, since the Supreme Being is the author of everything — of the machine as well as the man who made it. But no addition would be made to our knowledge. So it is with regard to church government ; what we want to know, and what we are immediately concerned in knowing, is tlie process, the human instru- mentality which has given rise to the institution. Christ said : Upon this rock I build my church, jet before his death and departure he did not build it, but left human individuals to do the work. If we were satisfied with the sweeping answer, curiosity and inquiry into those secondary laws which de- termine the form of the particular kind of church government that the apos- tles set up under the instruction of the Saviour, would be damped, and we should make very little effort to know .and to improve, and to preserve an institution which was placed so entirely beyond our reach. The advocates of the divine right of church government, at the same time have been the most idolatrous worshipers of the absolute power of church government, and the domination of the priesthood , while the plain and homely understand- ings of those who have rejected it, have set themselves vigorously to work to extend the blessings of rational freedom and liberty of conscience, and to build up a fortress against the encroachments of an universal church and a priestly power and domination. Covenant is the only rational basis upon which church government can stand. And if w^e only but turn our atten- tion to the study of the apostolic forms we will see that Baptists have carried the idea into actual practice, and have preserved the forms to this day. These perverted and iatitudinarian views of the church of Christ and the powers of the ministry and of the universal church are the results of a mis- conception of the true nature of the churches of Christ. This idea became the occasion of error when they assume to define powers as belonging to the churches which have not their source in the consent and organic unity of the local churches, and their development in ihe relation of several churches all united under a spiritual reign and rule of grace alone. When powers eccles- iastical are described as proceeding from an universal church organization it can be truly said they thereby make the church a great secular machine, 308 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and the government a necessary contrivance for making laws for its govern- ment, where one class of ecclesiastics institute the laws and another executes them. The hierarchy of the local churches will not soil itself with this de- based idea of a church, although the pretended successors of Peter may graspingly ask, with longing, for the time of the restoration of the pope to his temporal as well as to his spiritual rule on earth. But thanks to God, our great deliverer, the voice of the prophets have been lifted in exultation at the church's deliverance and emancipation from ecclesiastical domination by those who would overthrow it on earth. Universal ecclesiasticism is dead, but its effigies still fill the seats of power. The temple of sham has been destroyed and the temple of the Lord erected instead thereof. The church of the living God has heretofore been built in the valley of dry bones, shedded over with decay and corruption and rank paganism, but now under the dawn of a new era it is set upon the hill-top of God's eternal sunshine and truth, canopied with Christ's everlasting love. To his liberty-loving children true church polity is no longer a meaningless phrase and a mystery, but a living fact — the source and seat of all ecclesiastical authority on earth. What is heard elsewhere is but the echo of that which is real and true. The day of redemption is at hand ! We have seen the salvation of the Lord ! ! Thus I have endeavored to show that the universal church, or many churches joined together for government, is not and cannot be the seat of ecclesiastical power. They were never thus joined for the purpose of rule by those w^ho set them up in the outset of Christianity, and if we have the spirit of our predecessors we shall keep them independent of extraneous influences and pass oflT the stage leaving them to our successors as free as we received them. I earnestly contend that all ecclesiastical power whatsoever which resides not in a local church and proceeds not from the consent of the members thereof must be de facto, that is, void of all right The question then ought not to be, how an independent local church came to be free and self-governed, but how any man or body of men, outside the church, comes to have authority over it? For, in the early primitive churches we know that they were each sovereign and free, and until the right of dominion over them be proved and justified by those who founded them, their liberty subsists as arising from their nature as organic and instituted bodies under the laws of the gospel. Their liberty, therefore, must continue unless they have a right to forfeit or resign it, which cannot be conceived, for their charters, or church state, were not from men, but from Christ, their supreme head and founder, and no body of men can forfeit or resign their church state to one who can lawfully demand nothing, unless Christ had given them the power to receive it and turn it into something else foreign to its original design. Therefore, whatsoever Baptists have done to preserve this form of church polity has been by a power inherent in themselves to demand that liberty ivherewith Christ has made ih em free. The Scripturalness and super- iority of these free and independent churches over all others might be proved by many other arguments too numerous to mention, but I have con- fined, myself to only a few which I commend to the student of church polity. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. CHAPTER XI. BAPTIST ASSOCIATIONS AND CONVENTIONS ; THEIPw RELATION TO THE CHURCHES. BEFORE entering upon the subject of the powers of Baptist conventions and associations, it will be proper in order to obtain a comprehensive and adequate view of the nature and essence of the powers and duties be- longing to them that we should first inquire into the capacities and adapta- tion of the churches to be influenced by these bodies. The churches indeed owe much to these denominational agencies. They are in a great measure dependent on them for the spread of the gospel at home and in foreign lands, — not only so, but for the contiguity, the unity and purity of the faith. Baptist churches join together in conventions from a sense of their own individual insufficiency to compass these great ends, and from a conscious- ness that they are but units, or elements of the whole denomination. If each church was able to do of itself all that is required, there would be no need to resort to the aid of others. Indeed they only do so now from neces- sity, and in those cases where they cannot effect what they wish by them- selves. This want induces men into churches, churches into associations, and associations into conventions ; until the whole denomination is to some extent at least, knit together into one grand social religious community. And the further that Christian development advances, the more extensive in all respects Avill be this spiritual union ; and the more extensive is this co-operation, the more complete is the confederation thus formed. It is verily believed that the reason why Baptist principles in the olden times of the churches did not advance more rapidly beyond their original condition was the reluctance with which they entered these unions. In considering the churches all thus united together for mutual aid, and governed by laws conducive both to their individual and general welfare, do we find them in their greatest development and perfection. Whatever produces want of opportunities and means to spread the gospel, or occasions the necessity of them, has a tendency to promote Christian development, whether in the church or in the convention, inasmuch as a feeling of want originates at once a stimulus to supply it, and stimulus leads to exertion, exertion to progress and progress to the spread of the gospel. A church that is without wants, remains in a state of passive inaction, from which it is stimulated only by the occurrence of a want, the effort to supply which engages it in undertakings that promotes its well-being and advance- ment. The first ingredient, therefore, which is essential to the spread of the gospel, whether in a church or in these denominational bodies, is the posses- 310 sion of a knowledge of the wants of the destitute who are perishing for the bread of life. Knowledge of these things, nevertheless, does not of itself constitute development, but is only an incipient step in that direction. The next essential step, in a church, or in a convention, after the possession of knowledge, appears to be the possession of a certain degree of moral and social fellowship, by which the mind of each person in the denomination becomes softened and elevated, and the whole membership are united together in one bond of mutual alliance and friendship and brotherly love, the rupture of which is directly inimical to the spread of the gospel. Various other causes and agencies spring out of these, the operation of which together contribute to constitute a complete condition of denomina- tional development ; the ultimate result of the whole, both in the church and in the convention, being the spread of the gospel and the salvation of souls. Until very recent years in the history of Baptist churches, church inde- pendence was the mainspring of their action. But now in this the day of their full development, and henceforward inter-church dependence is, and will be, the established order of their inter- church polity. The independent local church, however important, is not a sufficiently extended development to lead the churches to their great destiny. Churches must live in wider unions and associations ; they have to establish ethical relations and to de- velop doctrinal tenets, which can never be fully obtained in the local church alone. An association and union of a different character is required — it ia called the Denomination. The prevaiUng idea in the local church, that de- termines the character of the intercourse between the members, is mutual attachment and brotherly love depending on personal relations, to which they are first induced by the ties of the Holy Spirit, on kindness and for- bearance. That which renders the local church so admirable, so holy, is brotherly love, and continued forgetfulness of a separate individual interest. The fundamental idea of inter-church-dependence, on the other hand, is the development of the whole denomination — the spread of the gospel — and the ethical relations which exist between church and church. That which ren- ders the association of churches so great and important is that it maintains inter-church rights, protects, and is a continual guard over the doctrines of the Bible ; that it plans for the spread of the gospel at home and abroad in fiilfiUment of the Scriptural injunction. Go preach the gospel to every creature. This labor of preaching the gospel must be divided, as the churches stand in constant need of each other and are inter-dependent upon one another, according as God has given them numbers and wealth to prosecute the good work. The progress of the local church requires the co-operation of all other churches for its development. That which any one church could do itself is obviously exceedingly limited. And even if this were not true, isolated progress could not be traced. The rudest sort of co-operative church gov- ernment, the feeblest associational or conventional government, is so much stronger than isolated churches, that isolated churches not thus affiliated might very easily cease to exist and no great damage be done to the great OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 311 denomination. The first great development of Baptist churches had its be- ginning in co-operative associations and conventions. Until the churches learned their value their progress was slow and tardy ; that unless they make a strong co-operative bond they will be outdone and overshadowed by some other denomination which has such a bond. The co-operation in all such cases depends on a felt union of heart and spirit, not for the purpose of domineering over the churches or the individual members thereof, but for the spread of the cause of Christ ; and this can only be done when there is a great degree of real likeness in mind and feeling, however that likeness may have been attained. But when the superiority and sacredness of the individual local church is not regarded, when it is no longer apprehended as a divine institution, but as devised by men and shaped only by a law of ex- pediency, and subject to the caprice of men, the life of ecclesiastical govern- ment is corrupted in its very sources. The churches have not their origin in the association or convention, but they exist in a necessary correlation with them, and the development of each in this relation must always have a deeper recognition. By joining in conventions and associations, churches are not only brought together as regards their physically associating in one body, but they are spiritually and morally united into one being. A mutual intercourse as regards their ideas and their needs, and an interchange of religious feeling, takes place between all the diiferent members ; and the results thus produced on the character of the whole, are preserved and transmitted from one generation to another, so that the denomination itself never dies, but is one perpetually existing spiritual body or Christian community. The establish- ment of mutual intercourse between churches of the same faith and order, is not only directly calculated to contribute of itself towards their develop- ment, but it also leads them to resort to, and to avail themselves of those other elements of development which have always been considered as essential to their growth and completion, more especially those of an educa- tional and journalistic nature. It may consequently be concluded that how mucli soever a church may be naturally and innately urged on to improve its condition, as an independent church, and which is essential for the attain- ment of its individual development the stimulus to do this is much increased by its entering into associational affiliation with other churches, and becom- ing a social and spiritual community. It is thenceforth led to do both by the example of other churches, as also from a feeling of emulation not to be excelled by them, as well as its own natural desire of improvement. These denominational bodies, moreover, induce each church in them to develop its higher endowments and energies, which alone directly contribute towards the attainment of Christian development. In order to insure the activity of a wholesome emulation conducive to de- nominational development, it is, however, not only necessary that conventions and associations be formed, but that fraternal communication and intellectual intercourse between the different members of them be carried on. And the greater the means of free communication throughout the denomination are 312 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; afforded, tte greater will be tlie progress of development amoDg the churclies. Indeed, the history of the early churches shows that one of the peculiar features observable during those days was that each separate church or sec- tion was not only iudependent of, but often at enmity with each other. Whereas association binds them all into one fraternal union, and converts rivalry into fellowship, and acts of ill will into offices of mutual love and aid. The more free and the more constant is the communication which is carried on between the different churches, the less liable will they be to attempt, or even to desire to establish themselves into distinct rival conventions. By this inter-communion of churches different minds are brought together, ideas are communicated from one to another, varieties of character are exhibited to each, knowledge of several kinds is diffused, and a full acquaintance with the nature and resources of the denomination is acquired by all. Indeed, as regards inter-church communion in general, that which most directly tends to the complete development of a denomination, is the establishment of free and friendly relation and fellowship between the rich and the poor, the learned and the less informed, by which the knowledge of the former is communicated to the latter, and the latter are bound by feelings of brotherly love and gratitude to the former. In many respects the effects of this inter- course is beneficial to both parties, as not merely do the rich and learned learn many lessons of practical wisdom from the lips of the poor ; but'the exercise of acts of charity and benevolence has a high moral influence and brings those who thus act, its own precious reward. As denominational intercourse is the most perfect condition of Baptist churches, so universal peace among them will be one of the most precious moral fruits resulting therefrom. Among the main causes of the progress cf the gospel when the churches are all at peace with one another, it cannot be doubted that the existence of mutual intercourse between them certainly is one of the most powerful As no great benefit is without its correspond- ing bane, so with this inter-church communion errors are scattered and dif- fused, if any, among the churches with which it takes place ; the correct principles of one church may be vitiated or degenerated by the errors and lax principles of the churches with which it holds intercourse. The best security, indeed, the only safe guarantee against the corruption of doctrine by this means, is the instability of sound and correct principles on those subjects, concerning which there is the most danger of their being unsettled. And the more completely this is effected, the more perfect will be the con- dition of their progress and development. This unity of faith and doctrine serves as a kind of chain to bind together the churches, that all may acknowledge one common standard of truth. This tends to prevent dis- orders and disruptions, just as the recognition of the same laws binds together the various subjects of the same country, and the acknowledgment of the same faith and practice unites all Christians of like order into one common brotherhood. On the other hand, it must be remembered that this independence of the churches is greatly endangered by interfering with the internal affairs of other churches. This interference need not necessarily OR, THE COMMOIT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 313 proceed from the government of another church. Petitions and remon- strances, affecting the domestic affairs of a sister church coming from asso- ciations, conventions, committees and self-constituted councils concerning what has transpired in a church, which, sad to say, often happens, are rep- rehensible in the highest degree, and should never be indulged in. I do not discuss here whether it is not salutary at times and under some circum- stances, but inasmuch as it is an abridgment of the independence of the churches, it has no place in a well-ordered system of Baptist church juris- prudence. In the formation of Baptist conventions and associations, it is not the purpose to rule and reign over the churches, to bind them together as with bands of steel, or in any way to interfere with their rights and powers. The object and end of these bodies is the entire development of the energies and resources of the denomination at large, and the advancing them to that state where all those energies and resources will be fully matured, and which must, doubtless, be their most perfect, if not, indeed, their most natural condition also, being that to which they were both adapted and intended ultimately to attain. The end of these associational bodies is therefore, in reality, no less than the perfection of the churches, coDsidering this in its largest, most extensive and most complete sense, as that wherein all their most valuable qualities and properties will attain their amplest development. And as this development consists, as regards its essence, in rendering the higher endowments predominant over those which are lower ; so, as regards its end, this is fully attained when all the most valuable resources and powers of the churches are completely matured and brought to perfection. It takes something else besides ecclesiastical government to do this, especially among a people thoroughly imbued with the principles of religious liberty, and whose religion is all based on the same fundamental doctrines, who belong to churches free and independent of one another, and who follow the same practice, and who all profess to be seeking the same object. It is, therefore, essential that care should be taken in the framing of a system of inter- church communion which is intended to ensure full freedom to the churches, that this is not so far done as that the churches do not degenerate into subjection to these extra-ecclesiastical bodies. The object of a conventional form of government is to ensure the establishment of such a system of rules, as will secure to each church entire freedom from all restraint, without encroaching upon the liberty of other churches. The utmost extent of ecclesiastical liberty, which any church has a right to enjoy, amounts to this : That it be allowed to follow the dic- tates of its own will, so far as its doing so does not encroach upon, abridge, or interfere with the liberty or well-being of other churches. In the matter of church government they who let the apostles choose their plan for them have no need of any other faculty than that of following the form laid down by them religiously and conscientiously. But they who would set up extra or quasi ecclesiastical forms of government such as a Bap- tist convention or association for themselves, must employ their own faculties. 314 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Thej must use observation to see how it shall be constructed, reason and judgment to foresee how it shall work, activity to gather materials to work into the fabric, and when they have put them together, firmness and self-con- trol to hold that government in check to keep it from usurping powers not conferred upon it. But as for a church they should remember, that, Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. This house is not a structure to be built after our own fancy out of materials heaped together by others, but a divine something which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides according to the divine builder's specifications, and the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing. But as to conventions and associations they are to be regarded as wholly an afiair of invention and contrivance. Being made by man, it is assumed that man has the choice either to make them or not, and how and on what pattern they shall be made. A body, according to this conception, is a problem to be worked like any other question of business. But a church of the living God is quite another thing. The will of man has had no part in its formation. It is an organic growth, based upon the life and nature of God's own peculiar people. In every other system except the Baptist form of church government there is necessarily established in these extra-ecclesiastical bodies a centralized authority to regulate their common affairs, to prescribe to each church and to each individual the conduct they shall observe with a view to the denomi- national welfare, and to possess the means of procuring obedience thereto. This authority they contend belongs to the denomination, or to the church universal ; but it may be exercised in a variety of ways, and every such de- nomination feels itself at perfect liberty to choose that mode which suits it best. Not so with Baptists. They have never accorded to these bodies any ecclesiastical power whatever, but all such power is necessarily resident in the churches. The fundamental regulation that determines the manner in which denominational authority is to be executed, is what forms the con- stitution of these bodies. In this is seen the form in which they propose to act, after the fashion of a body politic — how and by whom they are to be governed — and what are the rights and duties of the governed, and of the governors. The most fundamental regulation in these Baptist constitutions and the one to which all the others are subordinate, is that these bodies shall have and exercise no ecclesiastical power and authority over the churches. If space permitted it would be rendering the churches an important service to show from ecclesiastical history, so called, how some churches have thus lost their sovereignty and entirely changed their nature, and surrendered their orig- inal constitution. This ought to awaken the attention of the religious world ; seeing the influence of these first departures, they would no longer shut their eyes against innovations which, though at first may be inconsiderable in themselves, never fail to serve as steps to mount to higher and more perni- cious departures. Now, although the denominational necessity has established a general conventional union between the churches, by creating them subject to such OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 315 wants as render the assistance of one another indispensably necessary to enable them to keep pure the doctrine, and besides in all things to live in a manner suitable to the churches of Christ, yet this has not imposed on them any particular obligation to unite in a body politic. On the other hand, it is easy to perceive when we study the nature of these churches that this association is very far from being necessary between the churches to make them fit depositories for ecclesiastical government. We cannot, therefore, say fiecessity equally recommends it, much less that the Scripture prescribes it. These churches, nevertheless, have powerful motives for carrying on a communication and association with each other, and it is even their duty to do so, under proper guarantees, and securities, since no church without good reasons can refuse assistance to another church. It is therefore sufficient that churches should conform to what is required of them by the laws of brotherly love and fellowship established between all churches of the same faith and order. Whatever laws there may have been evolved from this associa- tion are deducible from the naturalliberty and independence of the churches, from the attention due to their common safety, from the nature of their mutual correspondence, their reciprocal duties, and the distinction of their various rights and duties, internal and external, perfect and imperfect. The common law of the gospel, therefore, has established this union of the churches, whose great end is the common good and advantage of them all ; and the means of attaining that end constitute the rules that each church is bound to observe in its whole conduct. Baptists having, therefore, been presented with a better system of church government than our wisdom would ever have devised, let them not fail to realize its beauty and utility, because of the ignorance of the principles on which it depends. Hitherto we have considered each local church as a separate and inde- pendent whole, being the depository of all the ecclesiastical power on earth. In the early ages of the churches inter-church law had scarcely any existence, but more recently there has sprung up an important branch of Baptist church jurisprudence from the necessities of denominational intercourse one with another. Heretofore Baptists have been so jealous of the independency of the churches that they have been slow to enter into associations and general conventions. But the churches w^hich formerly admitted of no ecclesiastical union, having no law to guide them in their intercourse, except their own capricious wills, are now anxious and willing to regard themselves as obedient to certain rules, the observance of which is expedient and edify- ing to them ail. Denominational inter-church common law may be defined to be that system of unwritten rules which governs, or ought to govern, the conduct of churches in their intercourse one with another. It is a rule of conduct deriving its obligation alone from the consent of the churches, and binding only on those churches that voluntarily enter these bodies. The churches, being independent of each other, acknowledge no common sovereign from whom they can receive a law. The relative duties between churches result from usage and custom, to neither of which can the term law in its judicial 316 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; sense be applied. These rules of comity arid communion are not such as are ecclesiastical laws generated, or prescribed by superiors to persons in a state of subjection to their authority. It is not a positive law ; for every positive law is prescribed by a given superior or sovereign to a person or tribunal in a state of subjection to its author. These rules concerning the conduct of churches, considered as related to. each other, are termed laws by analogy to positive laws, being imposed upon churches, not by the positive command of a superior authority, but by opinions generally current among churches, their authority not being secured by the fiat of a personal lawgiver. The duties wliich it imposes are enforced by moral sanctions, and by apprehen- sions on the part of churches, of provoking general disapprobation, and incurring the displeasure of sister churches, in case they should violate eccle- siastical usages, customs and maxims so generally received and established. When a collection of Baptists unite into an organic unit for the purpose of forming a local church, they may, indeed, enter into particular covenants toward those with whom they thus associate themselves ; but they still remain bound to the performance of a duty they owe to the rest of the de- nomination. There must necessarily be a oneness of faith and practice between them, else there could be no denomination, and when an universal conviction becomes so powerful as to bind all the churches, then it is that an inter- church customary or common law is called into existence. These cus- toms are purely conventional in their nature, and are observable by each church only in so far as they are intrinsically Scriptural and just, there being no ecclesiastical power outside of the churches to enforce their observ- ance. All these things could not be regulated but by some sort of rules which are nothing more than the laws of brotherly love and fellowship, which the members of different churches are to use towards one another under all circumstances. The difference between the laws which govern the local churches in themselves, and inter-church laws, are such as mtist prevail in a church, and such as ought to govern between church and church. While we cannot say that the Scriptures command the association of churches, yet we are certain that nowhere is it forbidden. Individual churches are so constituted, and capable of doing so little by themselves, that they cannot subsist and fulfill the measure of their usefulness without the aid of inter-church communion. But so soon as a considerable number of them have united under the same association or convention whether large or small, they become able to do a great work they individually could not, for want of strength and means, hope to accomplish without this union, it being effected for the purpose of promoting their mutual usefulness, by the joint efforts of their combined strength. The offices of brotherly love and assistance being no less obligatory on churches than on individuals, churches owe in their way, the same to one another. They are obliged by this law of brotherly love reciprocally to cultivate it and to observe toward each other all the duties which the safety and advantage of the denomination require. The nature and necessities of the denomination, which without the assistance of all the churches, being unable to supply all its wants, to pre- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 817 serve itself and to render itself perfect, plainly shows us that it is the com- mon duty of all churches to live in a constant association one with another, in the interchange of mutual aid. The surest method of succeeding in this aim, is, that each individual should exert his efforts first for his own church, and then for his denomination, which includes all sister churches. Hence it follows that whatever we owe to our own church we likewise owe to the denomination, so far as it stands in need of our assistance, and we can grant it without neglecting our own church. Such is the eternal and immutable law of brotherly love between the churches — not knit together by legislative bonds by thews and sinews, but linked in a bond of Christian union, all worshipping one God, all professing one religion, all believing one doctrine, and all practicing one form of church government. They have a right to ask for all these kind offices, but not to demand them. Every church being free and the sole arbiter of its own actions, it belongs to each to consider whether it is warranted in asking or granting anything in this hue. Elsewhere we have seen what power custom has to evolve and control rules of church law ; let us now examine whether there are not some ecclesias- tical usages over which long custom has no power. To determine this it is necessary first to observe, that there are some rights belonging to every church which consist in a single exercise of its sovereign power — rights of mere ability. They are such in their ow^n nature that a church may use them or not, as it thinks proper, being absolutely free from all external restraint in this respect. So that the actions that relate to the exercise of these rights, are acts of mere free will, that may be done, or left undone according to pleasure. It is manifest that rights of this kind cannot be con- sidered as being irrevocable on account of their long exercise, since such acts are only voluntary in their nature. If a church possesses a privilege which is of such a nature that it may, or may not be exercised, as it deems proper, it cannot be presumed from the fact that a church, having long used, or for- borne to use it, that this usage forever afterwards binds the church to that line of action. All writers upon Baptist church jurisprudence agree that, any church, for any cause, satisfactory to itself, is justified in withdrawing from the associa- tion. The causes w^hich will authorize so violent a departure from the settled order of things are not enumerated, and need not be defined. The idea of a council to sit in judgment upon the controversies which may lead to with- drawal, is not to be entertained, but is directly repudiated. The great desideratum then is to be able to contrive some expedient which will exempt us from this stern necessity, which will substitute peaceable, in the place of violent withdrawals. The monarchical or universal form of church govern- ment does not admit of this remedy ; the Baptist polity does. Instead of forcible resistance of the conventional authority while the church is within it, that church is at liberty quietly to withdraw, while others may retain their position in the convention. This is one of the most important attri- butes of Baptist church government. Secession is the instrument, happily substituted in the place of open hostility to the convention, thus leaving it 318 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; alone to work out its destiDy as best it may. The great risk whicli will be incurred by the seceding church, the disadvantageous position in which it will be placed before the denomination, standing alone in the midst of a compact convention of churches, will operate as a powerful check upon its conduct, and will prevent recourse to such extreme measures, unless it can be justified before the bar of public opinion. At the same time the open recognition of the right to withdraw will render it disgraceful to embark in auy scheme of concerted resistance to the usages and customs of the conven- tion while the church continues a member of it. The explicit recognition of the right to withdraw will also operate as a salutary restraint upon the con- vention. If a number of churches threatened to withdraw, the convention would be in danger of being deprived of so much strength and importance, and doubtless every measure which prudence and calm judgment could sug- gest would be adopted to avert so great a calamity. The public councils would be marked by more reflection, when a moral agency was substituted in the place of coercion. Instances, therefore, of withdrawals of a church from a well-ordered convention are accordingly very rare. To apply these principles, let us suppose that a certain church has co-operated with a particular associational body for a long space of time, say for a century it has continued to seek that avenue of usefulness. As the church has done in this respect what it thought proper, and at first was not bound to do, it is not to be presumed from this long co-operation that it meant thereby to surrender its independency and deprive itself of the right of withdrawing therefrom, and co-operating with any other body of a like nature ; and consequently its rights cannot be lost by the custom ; this right being that of ability or power to do so, and long custom has no binding authority. The simple permission a church gives to its members to cor- respond with these religious bodies gives no right to these bodies to demand such co-operation. They cannot claim that acquiescence has taken place from long custom, otherwise there might be erected an ecclesiastical hier- archy that would soon assume dominion over the churches, and overawe them in the free exercise of their sovereign rights. Such bodies may make use of the permission and condescension of the churches as long as it lasts, but nothing can prevent a church from changing its will. Baptists have ever considered these bodies as extra-ecclesiastical and not expressly provided for in the Scriptures. They have no ecclesiastical power in themselves, neither can they exercise any over the churches. Much less can the churches exercise any control over these bodies, and in no sense of the word, by this union is there generated any organic union between them such as can exercise any ecclesiastical power whatever, nor are the churches in the least responsible for anything they do. Individuals may by their covenants enter into a perfect obligation with respect to each other in things lawful to be done where there is imposed a perfect obligation. But churches, as such, being charged by Christ with doing certain things, have no Scrip- tural right to delegate its authority to another body, for it being a divine trust reposed in the churches, it cannot be assigned to a non-Scriptural body OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 319 not known to Christ and his apostles, or if known might not have been selected for such a purpose. These denominational bodies are composed of messengers chosen from such churches as are willing to co-operate with them. In ascertaining what powers they have it is obviously proper that we should look only to the purposes for which they are appointed. If they are anything they can be nothing more than the agents of the churches. An agent can claim nothing for himself, and on his own account. These bodies are voluntary unions, and the parties to the union are the churches only through their messengers. The entire sovereignty of each church is in the members thereof when united into an organic body. When they thus voluntarily join themselves together in a convention, they part with no portion of their sovereignty, but merely determine what portion thereof shall lie dormant, what portion they will exercise, and in v>^hat modes, and by what agencies they will exercise it. "Whatever power this quasi government may possess is still the power of the messengers of the local churches who are only permitted to assemble by the churches condescension, and the sovereignty of the churches remain the same. By the exercise and employment of any government in this extra ecclesias- tical body there is no power taken from the churches, the messengers from which make the government. The question is not so much as to what powers are granted, but more especially what powers are denied. But it is fair to presume that churches absolutely sovereign and having an unlimited right to govern themselves as they please, would not deny to themselves the exercise of any auxiliary necessary to their prosperity and development, otherwise some agency necessary to the denominational weal might lie useless. Strictly speaking the churches have no express warrant of Scripture to form these bodies and are not bound to do so. But when formed there is no original grant of powers except for deliberation and advisement. They can- not legislate, nor pass any obligatory law, by virtue of any inherent authority in themselves, as derived from the churches. When they adjourn they become dissolved and are functus officio, and the authority given them has ceased to exist ; when they convene they are a new body, and anything which they might undertake to do after adjournment would be without any other right or authority than what was derived from the mere consent and acquiescence of the several churches by whose condescension they were permitted to convene. If it takes any action it must advise or resolve ; it may recommend, not to the churches, but to the denomination, whatever it believes to be for their advantage, but it can command nothing. To erect these bodies and attempt to organize them by covenants into a politic union for government would be rank treason against the ecclesiastical government of God, an act of open rebellion, and would at once sever all the ties which bound them together. Notwithstanding these denominational bodies have no ecclesiastical power they are, nevertheless, valuable for many purposes. They render the churches stronger and more able to preserve themselves from false doctrines, which will be treated of in its proper place. They facilitate the spread of 320 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the gospel and thus attracts them one to another, cements them in the bonds of brotherly love, and gives them advantages which they could not enjoy without this association. In fact, the glory of the churches is intimately con- nected with these bodies, and it becomes one of the most important duties of every church to join them. But if these associations, or the messengers com- posiDg them, attempt to force rules relative to matters in which the social compact cannot oblige every messenger to submission, those who are averse to these rules have a right to quit the association and go elsewhere. For they cannot be supposed to have subjected themselves to the authority of men who have no power over them ; and if the association suffers, or is weakened by their departure from Baptist principles, the blame, if any, must be imputed to the intolerant party who attempts to force others to obedi- ence. They have, however, some rights incident to their very organization, without which they could not subsist as Baptist bodies. They must be per- mitted to judge of the qualification of their own members, and prescribe by- laws for their own government. No Baptist convention that regards the denominational tranquillity as worth preserving, can afford to lay down rules that all churches cannot heartily endorse and hold inviolable. Everything of selfishness and self-aggrandizement should be eliminated. Far from seek- ing to do anything to disturb the denominational tranquillity, they ought to respect and maintain the dignity and independence of the churches. If they are inspired by virtue more than pride, and have sufiicient discernment to distinguish their own interest, they will pursue a policy dictated by the most consummate wisdom and piety. The more cautious they are to avoid offend- ing the humblest member and the weakest church, the greater esteem they will testify for them, and the more they will revere that association or con- vention whose care for them is displayed only by the conferring of favors and assisting them to attain the fullness of their perfection. This inter-church communion manifested in conventions is to be observed because it unites all churches one with another in a multitude of mutual religious duties which helps to preserve sister churches from running into heresies and other erroneous practices, besides it serves to extend the gospel of our Saviour abroad in destitute lands. These general bodies charged with this work are what may be termed companies of messengers, representatives of local churches, assembled by the condescension of the churches to delib- erate concerning matters of common interest to them all. They are mystical bodies, so to speak, as compared with the local churches, which are veritable organic assemblies by institution formed into local tribunals under covenants to obey the laws and ordinances of the gospel. The local churches are visi- ble bodies, because their members, when assembled, constitute the churches and can be seen and conversed with; they can deliberate and take resolutions in common, and are, therefore, clothed with ecclesiastical power. One is the church actual, and the other is the representative of the church mystical, thereby begetting a twofold communion and intercourse which Baptists owe to one another. The one is exercised as occasionally they meet in conven- tions ; the other is exercised as they are formed up into several organic OR, THE COMMON LAW OF TH 3PEU 321 bodies by Christ's institution, and exercises ecc tical powers by way of authority and jurisdiction. Conventions do whatever it is lawful for them to do by way of custom and usage, and are not linked together by any ecclesiastical bonds. They have not, nor can they exercise the powers of all churches there represented ; if they have such power they must be a church. Such representatives when met in convention are nowhere in the Scriptures called a church. They are not a body to Christ ; but every church is such a body, and in no instance is there an example in the Record where Christ is said to have a representative body of his bodj^ They are, it is true, an assembly having a oneness of will, faith and practice, that is, a company of believers personally gathered, but a representative church having ecclesias- tical powers, they are not, and cannot be. Such a body to be a church must be an assembly organized after some example laid down in the Scriptures, otherwise they have not, nor can they claim the power of all the churches within the bounds of a given territory, nor otherwise do their acts and decrees oblige them to subjection. The divine efficacy of all religious bodies, including the church itself, depends first upon Christ's blessing on them, and this certainly depends upon Christ's having specifically instituted them. This being the case no body of Christian men should ever set up an extra- ecclesiastical body, and attempt to endow it with ecclesiastical powers unless Christ has instituted and appointed it. The true relations that exist between churches and conventions may be exemplified by the social relations that exist between man and man as they are made of one blood and one nativity. In such relations there are duties and obligations that thence arise, and as it is the law of nature, which rules them as they are men, there is a communion and a duty which every man owes to every other man, and likewise a duty w^hich every man owes to many men ; and therefore there is the law of nature which reigns over all the world and men are subject thereto, and cannot escape therefrom if they would. If men be cast into several nations, there is the law of nations, or international law, common to nations as they are nations, which binds them to duties one toward another, which, though it be a natural and voluntary communion of those nations one with another, yet there arises out of these relations no organic government and authority over one another, but corre- sponds with that intercourse which men have one with another as men. In like manner there is an intercourse which is carried through all churches of the same faith and order, as it were by the common law of the gospel, as they are formed up into several gospel churches. The same communion and intercourse holds between church and church that would hold between man- kind as organized into several nations, and there arises out of these relations duties and obligations for mutual help, for mutual strength and edification. Hence a Baptist convention or association may be defined to be a com- bination of separate individuals, or rather churches represented by indi- viduals, who enter into a voluntary agreement, and in the arrangement which they have formed is the source of whatever government they are per- mitted to exercise. The object of the organization is mainly to devise ways 21 322 A THEATIH >0K BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE: I and means for the spij of the gospel at home and abroad, and their exis- tence is assumed to be merely artificial, as formed through an association of men in a certain co-partnership of interest and as only the aggregate of those who, before living separately, entered it voluntarily. The churches are formed in the development of the historical life of baptized believers in the faith of the gospel, and are foreordained to live always, while conven- tions are temporary arrangments which are formed in pursuance of certain separate and secular ends. The churches in their being and existence have their origin only in the divine will, while the convention exists in the act of those who separately or collectively enter it. The churches have their work by divine appointment, and of this cannot divest themselves, as if it were an external thing, nor alienate, nor transfer it to another. The con- vention is a device of a transient expediency, in conformance to certain abstract formulas, as the exposition of a device to accomplish certain things which the churches for want of members and means and organization could not accomplish. The churches exist in an organic and judicial relation to their members, and between them and their respective members no power on earth can intervene. The convention has not the promise of the guidance of the Holy Spirit as the churches have, for their structure is formed after their own device, and out of the material which Christ has heaped together. They make and prepare their own brick and mortar which he has accumulated, although the materials be as old as the first Catholic council or Presbyterian synod ever convened on earth. Churches thus associated can enter into no league, nor alliance, nor form any government touching the autonomy of the churches. To attempt to lay a feather's weight upon these organic churches would be rank treason against these sacred institutions and a vio- lation of the law of the gospel. Conventions, synods and conferences are men's creatures, but churches are Christ's judicatories, living, continuous and perpetual bodies, clothed with a power that comes down from above. If church sovereignty and ecclesiastical power be not vested here, and does not subsist in the organic church, it is impossible to tell where it is to be found, and all inquiry concerning it is vain and visionary. The local churches will concede to these extra-ecclesiastical bodies no spiritual life or powers, no real freedom, no fulfillment of a divine vocation in conscious obedience to a divine will. They assume to themselves under, not only the positive, but common law of the gospel, the working out the divine will and energy, and the fulfillment of the divine purpose in themselves alone. For through the churches alone is exercised all the ecclesiastical power on earth, and that exercised by any other body is but ecclesiastical usurpation, and is a baseless structure. Except the Lord build the houses they labor in vain that build it. And un- less they who build the house recognize this truism in ecclesiastical govern- ment, they shall succeed in their undertaking no better than the babbling builders of Babel. In the building of huge councils, synods and confer- .jenees and in investing them with ecclesiastical powers, the wills of the many OR, THE CO:.IMOX LAW OF THE GOSI ./ 323 have no expression in them, and there is substituted in its steaa tne -will of the individual or that of a class, to whom alone action and rule is allowed- The government is not that of the membership of the churches as in the apostles' times, but it is apart from the people. They are the subjects of it, whether good or bad, but not participants in it, and have no place in its positive determinations. These systems allow no real expression of the will of the membership, but only to the individual, or class of individuals, who usurp the authority to rule them. Thus, these governments become repres- sive, and tend to efface the conscious spiritual life of the churches, and the people to which they belong. The rulers are not even members of the churches which they rule, but they are governors in some way, and after some fashion of the churches in general. There is no law and no power beyond their capricious wills ; there is no voice except their individual pro- clamation, and no rights which need be respected beyond their decrees, but the sole authority is the private judgment of those who assume to rule the whole denomination, being nothing more or less than a necessary absolutism. In this system there is in the membership no evocation of a moral spirit^ and no education of an individual character in them. The capacity of each member is not called forth, and his individual powers are not awakened ; he is in no immediate relation to the ruling power, he cannot realize in it his own purpose, nor strive for the embodiment of his own moral aims. The life of the local church is withdrawn from him and the conduct of its affairs, although he lives in it and is a part of it ; for it is all kept a secret from him ; he cannot comprehend it, as in his individual existence he is not com- prehended in it, nor by it. There is, therefore, no development of the indi- vidual personality, no spiritual life in the church. The tendency of this ecclesiastical imperialism is not only to undermine the spiritual life of the membership in its immediate action in the subversion of the personality and individuality, but to build up and foster a church aristocracy, and aims at the grandeur and permanence of a church dynasty, the like of which can nowhere be seen in the Holy Scriptures. To destroy the free and indepen- dent local churches and transfer the ecclesiastical authority, with which the gospel invests them, to any other body, the churches themselves would be destroyed, these marvelous organizations would be broken up, and the energy which had moulded and pervaded their action would be undermined, with no creative force to renew it, and no recuperative strength to overcome its decay. The body to be erected upon the ruins of the churches thus destroyed could only be done by an arbitrary institution of many men assem- bled together without law and without order, which is like a creation of nothing out of nothing, by human wit and human ingenuity, and is a fiction, and that a most pernicious one, and equally opposed to the teachings of God, as to the principles of religious liberty. Baptist conventions and associations, erected as they are, without ecclesi- astical power and control over the churches, stand opposite to modern coun- cils, conferences and synods charged with authority to govern the churches. This monstrous latter-day ecclesiasticism is the building not of apostolical 324 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH .TUEISPRUDENCE ; church government, but of a pandemonium ; it makes the churches the con- fusion of strange tongues, and the Babel of incoherent and unmeaning voices. It is not the assertion of the sovereignty of the churches, but the negation of ecclesiastical sovereignty. Its exclusion by Baptists is no violation of the law of the democracy of the churches, but on the other hand it is necessary to the assertion of that democracy which characterized every church founded by the apostles. Baptists challenge one instance, or one example, in the Scriptures of many churches having met together by representation, or other- wise, after the fashion of post-apostolic systems, which put together will rise up to a platform of rule and government over the churches with the com- mand, As ye have therefore received, so walk. So that all churches then, as having received from the apostles the form of church government, it was not left to their power, to their arbitrament to innovate, or alter the same, but to continue to walk as they had begun in matters of church order. The planting and ordering of the churches of the living God requires another manner and a higher order of skill than the wit and wisdom of men. The apostles and evangelists whose office it was to plant and perfect the govern- ment, discipline and doctrine of the churches received extraordinary gifts to that end, which exceeds the combined wisdom and spirit of all presbyters, elders, bishops, cardinals and popes in aU the world, but all are tied- down to the directions of the apostles who were guided infallibly by the Holy Spirit, that they might be guided by them to mould ecclesiastical govern- ment accordingly. Paul, who had a supernatural power above any minister of this day, gave his directions to Timothy, My own son in the faith: That though mayest hiow how to behave thyself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth. This is a skill, then, which depends upon apostolic revelation. It had been foretold : That in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils ; speaking lies in hypocrisy, having their con' sciences seared with a hot-iron. So these church examples and patterns were given, that we might in after ages have a rule to go by, and be able to restore all things to the primitive condition again. For this cause left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldst set in order the things that are wanting. Therefore as it is the house of God, so God must be the master-builder, for it is writ- ten, Except the Lord build the house they labor in vain who build it. As therefore the apostles in the establishment of ecclesiastical government did not set up a constant court or judicatory out of particular persons as ministers and bishops, so ministers and bishops are not to set up conventions, conferences and synods out of particular churches and appoint themselves rulers over them. There is a vast difference between the knitting together and union of an organic church and all other Christian bodies The union of the whole church universal is voluntary, and is simply by the communi- cation of the Spirit, and by the communion of those of the same faith and love, having the same spirit in them that dwells in Christ, and all his mem- bers called the communion of faith, being interested in the same benefits, and in the common salvation of the whole world. To form this union there OK, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 325 is required no formal bonds and links, except those of love and Christian fellowsliip with all that in every place call upon the name of the Lord Jesus Christ our Lord. Of such a body Paul never said, that he rejoiced behold- ing their order, and that they were a body not only joined together, but fitly joined together. And as one false string out of tune makes a discord, there must be agreement in principles and doctrines to fit men and churches for fellowship even in this body, and as men who agree in the fundamental I laws of a kingdom are only fit to be loyal subjects in that kingdom, so only those who are fit subjects of this spiritual kingdom with a oneness of will, faith and practice are to be received, not turned away. This, however, is not the exercise of ecclesiastical power, as every seculur society has power to judge of the fitness and qualifications of its own members upon the principle announced by Solomon that one sinner will destroy much good. But this rejection relates not to the existence of the church, or its church state, but extends only to its right to a seat in the convention or association. For every such body has a right to refuse admission to a church into its society, when that church cannot enter it without exposing the convention to discord, or doing it a manifest injury. What it owes to itself, the care of its own safety, gives it this right in virtue of its natural liberty, even without a Scriptural rule, to judge whether its circumstances will justify the admission of a new church. It is on the same principle, and even for a stronger reason, that a church may refuse to affiliate with an association or conven- tion, or once having entered one may withdraw itself with impunity, for if either of the parties do not observe its engagements, the other is no longer bound by any law, as the contract is mutual. By so doing they have no perils to fear, no ecclesiastical bulls to dread, and no injuries to avenge, and are armed with no sword with which to avenge them, Neither has the body from which they secede any chains with which to shackle them. And this Is that religious liberty wherewith Christ has made us free, and for which he paid a price, even to the giving up of his life. Anything else in church government has its root and spring in popery, and is grounded in the worst kind of despotisms — the absolutism of a multitude, and not the gov- ernment of free gospel churches of Christ — a rabble of men which is called to the expression of the will and thought and purpose of Christian men and and women. It is a formless waste, out of which the determination of the faith and order of the churches is sought, and is the necessary degradation of the whole fabric of ecclesiastical government. Such a government falls under the influence of parties, and sects, and classes, to be used for their special ends, and becomes subservient to those who will and have employed it for the accomplishment of selfish schemes, or the furtherance of their own ulterior interests. Its subjection is to the domination of those who can rule masses, but cannot rule those whom the priceless liberty of the gospel has made free, and has become the instrument of a priestly hierarchy as dangerous to civil liberty as it is to religious liberty, freedom and independ- ence. Every Baptist church in virtue of its sovereign power is absolutely free 326 ^ TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; from the dominion of conventions and associations and may freely exercise all its prerogatives in any manner not inconsistent with the equal rights of other churches. The very fact of its sovereignty implies its independence of the control of any foreign body, and may therefore exercise all the preroga- tives incident to its sovereignty, as a separate, independent church. These rights and obligations are limited only by the laws of the gospel and the existence of similar rights in sister churches. These rights to which the church is entitled, as a distinct organization, are classed as absolute rights, and those to which the church is entitled under particular circumstances in its relation to other churches are considered as conventional rights. There can be no doubt but that all the errors which have arisen concerning church government, and led so many of the Christian world astray in regard to the true plan of church polity have sprung from this main heresy : That there is on earth such an universal church, or ecclesiastical power outside and above the local churches that all Christians of the same faith are bound to obey. Whereas there is nowhere in the history of the apostolic churches any account or example where they transferred their sovereign authority to any other body of men and invested them with aU the functions of ecclesiastical government,, thus destroying their independence, and building up an hier- archy to lord it over them. During the lives of the apostles there Were Christians and churches scattered over a great part of the world, but those churches were absolutely free one of another and those who belonged to them as members were exclusively and wholly subject to those churches alone. A church, such an one as is capable of commanding, judging or doing any other act, is nothing more than an independent local church ; for where there is no express covenant relation growing out of the express law of the gospel exist- ing between the body to be ruled and the ruling power, and no power erected to hear and to judge, can there be any power to give sentence. There can be no such power transferred to a convention or association because of the limits marked in the Scriptures from whence this power can be derived. Any body of believers possessing any portion of power ought to be strongly impressed with the idea that they act in trust, and that they are to account for their use and abuse of that trust to the great author and founder of the churches A man full of wit and wisdom and warm speculative benevolence, may wish the churches otherwise constituted than he finds them in the record, but a conscientious Baptist, a loyal lover and follower of the truth always considers how to make the most of the existing materials out of which he finds the churches already constructed, and refrain from working the debris of other systems into this divine structure, remembering that a disposition to preserve and an ability to improve, taken together, should be made the watchword of every lover of the Lord charged with keeping house for him. Everything else in church government is ruinous in conception and perilous in the execu- tion. When we cut loose from the moorings of God's word and enter upon the broad field of speculation and theory, in order to round out a system there is no telling to what lengths we may go, for it is the nature of man to gradu- ally usurp powers to which he is not entitled. With Baptists themselves — 327 the most loyal people on earth to the truth — it has ever been a strong struggle to preserve possession of what they have found committed to them — a free local church — and have ever cherished it as one of the greatest blesshigs that God has committed to them as a security against injustice and ecclesiastical despotism. Those systems which have gone in search of grandeur, power and splendor have always fallen a sacrifice to, and been the victims of their own folly. In erecting these huge bodies politic they have departed from the apostolic plan and established that legislative despotism found in all of them, which has led them further and still further away from the truth, and established that legislative omnipotence in these sacred affairs which has been the fund- amental principle of despotism in all ages of the churches. They have suf- fered themselves to be too much attached to the splendors of a great central- ized church, and being dazzled by this gaudy show they lose sight of the more useful, yet less ostentatious, purposes of the free and independent churches, and seem to be unconscious of the fact that in building up these huge temples of ecclesiastical power, they necessarily destroy those less pretending structures of church government, from which alone they derive all their Christian life, protection and safety. This is the false glare which has so often deceived the unthoughtfuland betrayed them into the slough of eccle- siastical despotism. As he who thinks it is better to belong to powerful, splendid and showy government than to a free and happy one, naturally seeks to surround the institution with a gaudy pageantry which belongs to mon- archical systems, so he who, not content to let the churches of Christ remain simple, free and independent, seeks to divest them of their sovereignty and to consolidate them into one huge temporal body. In such a church gov- ernment thus surrounded by all the pomp and splendor, the strugle is for the exercise of those incidental honors and powers from which avarice may expect its gratification. It is thus that distinctions are created among those who should be the humble servants of the churches, and classes are united in supporting the usurped powers of a centralized church, and an interest is thus created strong enough to carry all measures and sustain all abuses of ecclesiastical authority. Sovereign Baptist churches, being free and independent of each other, and likewise free from the dominion and control of conventions and associations, and considered as so many free persons living together in a church, are naturally equal and inherit from their respective organizations the same obligations and rights. Power or weakness does not, in this respect, produce any difference. The smallest church, situated in the remotest corner of Christendom, is as much a church as the largest one located in the greatest city in the world. By a necessary consequence of that equality, whatever is lawful for one to do is equally lawful for the other ; and whatever is unjusti- fiable in one, under its covenant obligations, is equally so in the other. Conse- quently none can naturally lay claim to any superior prerogative^for whatever prerogative any one of them derives from their sovereignty, the other equally derives the same from the same source. And since the precedency or pre- 328 A TPvEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPHUDENCE ; eminence of rank is a prerogative no cliurcli can naturally claim it as a right. Hence a Baptist church has a right to treat every foreign power as disturbers of the denominational tranquillity that attempts to interfere in any way with her internal affairs otherwise than by their good offices. Church sovereignty subsists entire when none of the rights of v/hich it is constituted is conveyed or transferred to any man, or body of men, whether in or out- side of the church, or is otherwise hindered in the full exercise of its religious liberties. Baptist church government is degraded, nay, verily, destroyed when any of its prerogatives are ceded to or usurped by any other power, or if the free use of them is rendered dependent on the will of any one else; for, as to all the subjects of the internal workings of the churches, there is no necessity that there should be any ecclesiastical power beyond the bounds of such local church. They are all such powers as the churches are per- fectly competent to manage ; and the most competent because each church is the best and only judge of what is necessary to its own temporal and spir- itual development. There can be no room to complain of any want of power to do whatever the interest of the churches requires to be done. But we should not forget that in our system of jurisprudence the local church stands not alone, although it stands independent of all others. There is among all Baptist churches a oneness of will, faith and practice, because they are instituted under the same covenant, and founded by the same great head of the church, and hence are but a part of the denomination, and have their part of the work to perform, and coupled with the combined strength of all those of the same faith and order, make the perfect work. Hence it is necessary in order that there should be no centralization of ecclesiastical powers in a foreign tribunal, that the churches should natu- rally in themselves monopolize every species of authority and influence. The government of these different conventions and associations have been as remarkable for their weakness and inefficiency in respect to polity as that of the churches is for their vigor and capacity; and yet these general bodies contain certain novel principles which exercise a most important influence, although they do not at once strike the casual observer. These bodies, for a common object, while they agree to assume no ecclesiastical functions, they reserve to themselves the right to set on foot and foster every denomina- tional enterprise w^hich conduces to the spread of the gospel at home or abroad. Not only so, but they especially feel themselves called upon to guard the denominational doctrines of the churches in order to make them stable and uniform. Not that they assume the privilege of changing the doctrines of the churches, but to overlook them by a most marvelous influ- ence, to keep them pure and Scriptural. Should a departure from doctrine arise in their bounds, which is a palpable violation of the faith of the gos- pel, they ought by a formal declaration to express an opinion, by way of admonition, only as to what the true doctrine is, and to put the seal of con- demnation upon any departure therefrom, especially when it can be done without spreading further dissensions among the churches. While there is not, nor ought there to be anything binding in such declarations, yet it is a OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 329 duty they owe to themselves and to the denomination to keep a conserva- tive oversight over those matters, so vital to themselves, and to the denomi- nation at large. As every one as an individual, or as a community of indi- viduals, have the right to consider and condemn anything he deems amiss in the community in which they live, and of which they are a part, so these associations of churches likewise ought to have the right to voice their opinions when abuses arise that tend to degrade the denomination. If it were not so how could the denominational doctrines be kept pure and unde- filed, and how else could they be kept from conniving at such abuses? "Whatever authority is exercised, acts only upon those present and extends no further, for this is not an ecclesiastical government, but a weak and incomplete government clothed with the privilege of advising the churches, but denying to themselves the right to control. While they are jealous of the doctrine of the denomination the main purpose of these bodies is the spread of the gospel and to look to every detail that has for its object the evangelization of the world by the diffusion of the truth, of Christian educa- tion and the spread of spiritual enlightenment. In vain does the law of the gospel prescribe to the churches, as well as to individuals the care of spread- ing a pure gospel and preserving it free from heresy, if it does not give them the right to protect themselves from everything that might render this care ineffectual. I am aware that I am treading upon holy ground when I speak of the right and duty of these denominational bodies to keep a strict over- sight over doctrine. But this right is nothing more than a moral power of advising and admonishing, that is, the power of doing what is proper and conformable to our duties. We have, then, in general a right to do what- ever is necessary to the discharge of our duties. Every convention and asso- ciation, as well as every member of a Baptist church, has, therefore, a right to use moral suasion and all proper admonition to prevent if possible other churches and individuals from obstructing the spread of a pure gospel, its preservation and perfection ; that is, to preserve the denomination from all heresies and errors of what kind soever that would destroy the unity of the doctrine; and this right is a perfect one, since it is given under the injunc-, tion to contend earnestly for the faith, and is also given to satisfy a spiritual and indispensable obligation. For when Baptists cannot use the influence of the denominational name in order to cause the doctrines of the churches to be respected, their rights are very uncertain. This right to preserve them- selves from all doctrinal impurity may be called the right of denominational security, and is a right inalienable. Amongst Baptists it is only by associations and conventions, or through tliis medium, that the resistance of the churches to any line of policy, or to any known errors or discords can, ever display itself; hence those in error, or the disturbers of the denominational tranquillity, always look with ill- favor on those associations or conventions which are not in their own power; and it is well worthy of remark that those in error or disorder generally entertain against these bodies a secret feeling of fear and jealousy, which prevents them from carrying out any denominational policy deemed most to 330 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; their own interest. The power and influence of these quasi-ecclesiastical bodies, in view of the weakness of our form of church government, often astonish and alarm our people ; and the free use which each of these bodies make of its powers is regarded almost as a dangerous privilege. All these bodies which have sprung up in Baptist church jurisprudence so recently are new quasi-ecclesiastical pOAvers, not mentioned in the Scriptures, and whose rights to govern the churches have not been sanctioned by custom ; they came into existence at a time long subsequent to the apostolic age, and when inter-church law was weak and not well understood, and when the poAver of local church government was, as it is now, unbounded ; hence it is not surprising that these extraneous bodies lost their rights to govern the churches at their birth. These great denominational bodies, as I view them, are the custodians of the interests of the churches, and it is certainly performing a very bad office to the denomination, and doing it an essential injury, to suffer a church or individual members, under the auspices of a Baptist church, to spread a false and dangerous doctrine broadcast over the land. It is certain that Baptist conventions cannot, in opposition to the will of a church, interfere in her religious concerns by way of authority and jurisdiction, without violating her rights, and doing her an injury, but by way of a loving rebuke or admo- nition, they can do much to rectify the errors complained of, especially when the erring church by affiliation is a member of the convention. If, then, there is anywhere a church or an iu dividual member of a church of a rest- less and mischievous disposition, ever ready to injure the denomination by preaching a false doctrine, and to excite internal divisions and disturbances in its bounds, it is not to be doubted that a convention has a right to advise and to admonish in order to let it be known that they do not indorse and are not responsible for the docrine taught. For a convention, or an associ- ation, has a right to everything that can help to ward off" imminent danger, and to keep at a distance whatever is capable of causing disturbances and divisions. If conventions and associations are obliged to preserve them- selves from errors and false teachings, they are no less obliged carefully to preserve all the churches that go to make them up. These denominational bodies owe this to themselves, since the loss even of one of their members weakens them, and is injurious to their preservation. For those who com- pose these bodies, are united for their defense and common advantage ; and none can be justly deprived of this union and of the advantages he expects to derive from it while he fulfills or is willing to fulfill the conditions. But as before stated, this cannot be done by way of authority, for the doctrine which it is attempted to suppress by authority may possibly be true. Those who desire to suppress it of course deny its truth ; but they are not infal- lible. Conventions have no authority to decide the question for all the churches, and exclude every other person from the means of judging. To refuse a hearing to an individual or to a church, because they are sure it is false, is to assume that their certainty of its falseness is the same thing as an absolute certamty. All silencing of discussion without a hearing is an OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 331 assumption of infallibility. The offending churches and individuals may then be admonished by denominational public opinion, though not by law. One of the great uses of conventions aside from the spread of the gospel is that there are denominational enterprises that cannot be carried on without an energy that requires considerable work and funds which surpasses the ability and inclination of a few individuals. These enterprises would soon become ruinous were they left alone and not undertaken by the combined energies of a great number of individuals with one regular spirit and according to well-supported customs. They usually are either educational, journalistic or eleemosynary. These laudable enterprises are sometimes owned and con- trolled by these bodies, or by the whole denomination ; but most usually by private individuals. Whether owned by the one or the other, experience has taught that the general course to be pursued towards them is the same. As an association or convention in common with individuals is bound to labor for its own preservation and protection, it has a right to every auxiliary to build it up, and to further its interests. Denominational schools and papers are powerful aids to this end, and these enterprises should be encouraged in their respective fields and spheres of labor. But it cannot be denied that the policy sometimes pursued by these denominational bodies towards these enterprises not infrequently render them the fruitful source of jarring dis- cords and ruinous divisions. That which was originally intended for good turns out sometimes to be the greatest source of annoyance. The denominational press is the more important when we consider that under a proper management it is a component part of the machinery of Baptist church polity. Not so in other systems where they feel themselves at liberty to formulate written creeds and a complete code of written rules of procedure. In church government to these sources they must confine themselves, for to them it is their law and their gospel. But in Baptist church jurisprudence the religious press is the organ of denominational public opinion, and the great ofl&ce which it performs is to criticise men and measures, doctrines and practice, and to effect a distribution of ecclesias- tical power throughout the denomination. This purpose is accomplished by distributing knowledge, and diffusing a common sympathy among the great mass of the churches and membership. In this day of religious enlighten- ment if we could suppose the denominational press to be suddenly annihi- hilated, our denominational enterprises and institutions would not long preserve their character. As there would be no superintending control anywhere, and no acquaintance with what was transacted in the denomina- tion, the affairs of the churches would soon be involved in the deepest mystery. The churches would soon be a scene of confusion, and as ignor- ance is the mother of oppression and priestly domination, the contest would terminate in the consolidation of ecclesiastical power. What is meant by the religious press being the organ of denominational opinion, is not the opinion of any one set of men, or any particular faction to the exclusion of all others. The mixture of so many opinions, causing light to be shed upon each, contributes to moderate the tone of that factional spirit which is so apt to disturb the denominational tranquillity. 832 A TBEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; It were better that there be but few denominational papers located in the same conventional bounds. The intelligence and influence of the religious press are disseminated through all parts of these local bodies, and instead of radiating from a common center, they cross each other in every direction. "When there is a multiplicity of papers it is impossible for them all to see alike and agree upon a line of policy to be pursued, and neither discipline nor unity of action can be established among so many moulders of public opinion. The facility with which newspapers can be established in these days produces a multitude of them, and as competition prevents any consid- erable profits, our ablest writers are rarely led to engage in these undertak- ings ; and even though it were a source of wealth our very ablest brethren rarely ever could be found to direct them all. Many such able brethren even abstain from writing for the religious press, for want of time, or through an aversion to being seen in the public prints. But nevertheless it is very evident that there is a necessity for both denominational schools and news- papers. This necessity may be pressing, and to supply it in a certain sense is to accomplish a denominational good, but it is not such a benefit for which alone denominational bodies are organized. In Baptist churches, in matters non-essential, all do not see alike because there is a diversity of interests and opinions. In the act of association by virtue of which a large number of Baptists form together a denominational body, for religious work, each individual has entered into the engagement with the whole body to promote the general welfare of the whole denomination, and the whole body likewise enters into the engagement with each individual, to facilitate for him the means of gratifying his peculiar notions, as near as may be, of what is the best policy to be pursued to advance the general denominational welfare. Hence prudence dictates, that where there are several fields of missionary labor, or several denominational enterprises thought well of and fostered by the same body, each individual should be left at liberty to cul- tivate whichever he pleases, and to throw the weight of his individual influence in that direction. This is the only basis of the tranquillity of these organizations in this regard, for both the body and the individuals who compose it reciprocally engage to advance the common denominational wel- fare, and as far as possible to promote the advantages and peculiar views of each member. These bodies therefore ought to prevent and carefully avoid whatever may hinder its own peace and the perfection of its own members, as whatever retards the progress of the one is equally injurious to the other. If it once be conceded that one denominational enterprise is to be pen- sioned at the denominational expense, it would prove difficult for the body to select which one is the most deserving and to deal with the subject with entire impartiahty ; the majority of the convention might regard these enter- prises only as useful and deserving of encouragement with which they were most in sympathy and those that inculcated their views, while the minority might be of a different opinion, thus giving rise to dissensions. We ought to remember that many of our worthy and struggling enterprises are started by private enterprise and capital, and those at the head of them might with OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 333 some degree of justice think it wrong that their enterprises should be ignored and these bodies used to encourage the upbuilding of other similar under- takings. Every prudent and well-meaning denominational enterprise is honorable, as being beneficial to the denomination, and deserves encourage- ment. The more successful we can make it, the better it subserves the denominational good. It is not the business of these bodies to make dis- criminations in favor of one against another and thereby compel the churches to thus support and encourage them whether or not. The denomination can afford to have no favorites among deserving enterprises where they are all 3qually striving to build up the common cause. Its business is to see that equal justice is meted out to each. It cannot compel an unwilling minority to submit to these discriminations among private enterprises. It is an invasion of that equality of rights and privileges which is a fundamen- tal maxim of Baptist church goverment. When the door is once opened to it, there is no line at which we can stop and say with confidence that thus far we may go with safety and propriety, but no farther. When the denom- ination once enters upon the business of pensions we shall not fail to discover that the strong and powerful enterprises are those most likely to control these bodies, and that the interest of the weaker will be subordinated to that of the stronger. Wholesome rivalry between denominational enterprises producing emula- tion, conduces to the welfare of each ; and it is one of the glories of a con- vention to promote this feeling. A course of conduct which has an opposite effect is injurious to all alike and only retards their progress. The common interest of the denomination, which every loyal Baptist must regard above all other considerations, should serve in these cases to cement a community of interests among all rival enterprises. And, indeed, as belonging alike to the denomination, each of these interests is concerned indirectly and ulti- mately in the success of each other. The different enterprises in the same denomination, between whom the utmost desire exists for each other's welfare, may be to a certain extent competing, but ought never to be hostile aspirants in the same pursuit. AVhile the friendly and laudable competitor seeks only to outstrip by honorable means, and thereby increase the speed of him against whom he runs ; but the envious rival endeavors not merely to over- take, but to overthrow his opponent. This spirit has proved fatal to the prosperity of many denominational bodies and the interests they sought to foster. Some conventions and interests appear to be quite as intent on the injury of one. another, as on promoting the welfare of themselves. This, however, is a most dangerous and, indeed, a destructive policy. As im- possible is it to do good to one part of the body by injuring another part, as it is to advance one interest in a denomination by ruining another. The real foundation of the strength and vitality of the denomination is the mutual union and co-operation of all its varied interests. A balance between its contending interests should, moreover, be maintained as far as possible in every convention, and is as essential to preserve peace among the churches, as it is to maintain the balance of power and influence among rival enter- 334 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE; prises. And in each case, the strict preservation of this balance is the surest means of promoting harmony, and of preventing suspicion and jealousy, which mainly operate to hinder these rivals from becoming benefactors to each other. The writer once lived in the bounds of a certain convention in which there were two rival denominational papers about equally patronized by the members of the convention. So fierce was the competition and rivalry between them that they kept the convention in a constant turmoil and confusion. The churches, likewise caught the infection and were divided over them, and they elected delegates to the convention with a view to the formal endorsement of the one or the other, until finally the better judgment of the convention asserted itself, and a clause was ingrafted in the constitution that no endorsement of any papers should be allowed. Hence conventions and associations should be very careful about interfering with the quarrels of churches, or of rival denominational enterprises, unless they have the most urgent reasons for such intervention. For their own credit and for the sake of the cause, they should never do anything to provoke them. Whoever meddles in a quarrel of this nature, at once makes himself a party to it, unless he is invited by the contending parties so to do, and not then except in cases where this interposition is likely to have the result of putting an end to the disagreement, and restoring the blessings of peace. Such interference should be conducted in the most conciliatory and equitable manner towards both of the contending parties ; and a reference of these matters to a judicious council, appears to be the fairest mode of terminating the quarrel. As in the case of rival interests existing in the same convention, so also among difierent fields of missionary operations, it is desirable to maintain exact and equal justice, by Avhich suspicions and jealousies of one another become banished, and they are converted into mutual friends and promoters of the denominational welfare. The fear of this, whether apparent or real, is the surest cause of the destruction of that harmony which ought ever to subsist between destitute communities which hold intercourse one with another. The greater the ability of any convention to help these various fields of missionary labor, the greater is the necessity for the equal distribu- tion of such help as it can afford. Capacity of antagonism and aggression, which is most pernicious in a neighboring field, may be harmless in one which is a long distance from us. In regard to the preservation of the peace among these rival enterprises, it should be borne in mind that there are interests fostered by our conventions as well as forces which can be set off* and balanced one against the other, and which may operate both to unite various enterprises together, and also to contribute to the pacific and har- monious carrying on of operations in each particular locality. As much as possible, too, corresponding also with the case of the various rival interests in a convention, the several interests existing in different localities should be made to contribute according to their means to the mutual welfare of one another. All these various agencies and enterprises will thus serve to fuse into one another, and into one great family not only the different people of the same land, but those of like faith in foreign lands. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 335 We do not question the right and propriety of Baptists, through the instrumentality of educational, or journalistic conventions, organized for the purpose of fostering these enterprises, to open the door to such discrimina- tions, but in Baptist associations and conventions proper, such as the churches lend their assistance to organize, having the spread of the gospel for their main object, such a policy is foreign to the genius of the churches, and if they would preserve the denominational tranquillity they will not authorize any departure from this policy. When a separate convention is organized to foster a particular enterprise, none need enter except such as are in full sympathy with the objects proposed. But in our regular bodies, organized solely for the purpose of spreading the gospel, unless all are in harmony and sympathy with the enterprise, it requires more prudence and wisdom than ordinarily falls to the lot of deliberative bodies to steer clear of the divisions arising from the unskillful handling of these delicate interests. Every pru- dently managed denominational enterprise deserves consideration and re- spect, because it makes an immediate figure in the grand total of all the agencies that makes us a great people. There is a perfect equality of rights between them. Consequently, none can naturally lay claim to any superior prerogative ; for whatever privileges any one of them claim from any con- sideration whatever, the other equally derives the same from the same source. However, as a large and extensive enterprise is more considerable in the denomination than a small one, it is reasonable that the latter should yield to the former, on occasions where one must necessarily yield to the other, as in our general assemblies, and should pay those mere ceremo- nial deferences which do not destroy their equality, and only shows a superi- ority of order, a first place among equals, taking into consideration the antiquity of the enterprise and length of service ; as it would be imprudent for the young to claim exaltation over the aged. As individuals, however, we can and will naturally assign the first place to the most meritorious, but when there is a diversity of opinions in an association or convention that has any regard for justice and the rules of propriety, we could not be induced to do so. We ought carefully to ward off imminent danger, to keep at a distance whatever is capable of causing its ruin. Hence the only proper rule dedu- cible from these general principles is, that, where there is danger of divi- sions, associations and conventions should never engage in any other work, and should never be organized for any other purpose than the spread of the gospel, in which all the churches can engage heartily, and in which there can be no dissensions and divisions. This course is especially preferable when dissensions and divisions arise in the denomination over the conduct of these enterprises. But in a great denomination, like that of the Baptists, in which religious training, a free church and free institutions are sought to be perpetuated, there is presented a strong case for the interposition of the denomination to take hold of every laudible enterprise which concerns the denominational well-being, and no narrow-minded selfishness ought to stand in the way of the accomplishment of these ends. The number of denomi- national schools established and endowed by any church is a sure index to 336 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; the intelligence of its commmunicants, and their management should be characterized by the most consummate wisdom and prudence, by our denomi- national bodies. When we consider the unparalleled growth and spread of Baptist principles and what they have done for the world, the benefits resulting from a thoroughly diffused denominational education are incalculable, and the clumsy and awkward handling of our denominational institutions of learning by our conventions and associations ought not to be a drawback to the good work. The zeal of the denomination to make the best, better, to the entire exclusion of the humbler institutions ought not to create such a prejudice as will cripple the cause of education in general, and incidentally the spread of the gospel. It is the maintenance and upbuilding of all our Baptist institu- tions and enterprises, in all parts of our favored land, that has broken down the barriers which have heretofore divided and separated our people and made them one. The intelligence of the cities and the more cultivated districts was quickly diffused among all, when all, through the medium of the denominational press, were enabled to understand each other and their needs and wants. Nothing has contributed to the upbuilding of our Baptist cause so much as the placing of every church, every member, whether minister or layman, every enterprise, and every section of our land upon an equality ; and nothing so much to the maintenance of free institutions, and the general spread of the gospel, as the equal diffusion of education among the Baptist masses. Other denominations place much stress upon religious education, but they do not carry the thought much further than to suggest the practicability of a system of education which inures principally to the benefit of the ministry. It would be an achievement of infinitely greater importance to the cause of Christ, to found and endow many institutions, equally distributed, to educate our young men and women generally in the distinctive doctrine and practice of the churches. The broader the good seeds are cast the greater will be the harvest. This is what will render the denomination more solid, more easily governed, more coherent, and our prin- ciples better understood. Among Baptists small and insignificant beginnings often give rise to important consequences, and influence the destiny of genera- tions, through long courses of time. The few and poorly endowed Baptist schools which originated with our Baptist forefathers when our people were but a mere handful, have spread over every state in the Union, and have con- tributed more than any other cause to preserve the unity and identity of Baptist principles, the cause of religious and political liberty, and the spread of the gospel of the Son of Man. If any should be faint-hearted and need encouragement, let him imagine what American Baptists will be, under the blessings of God, an hundred years from to-day. It will present a spectacle from which the religious world will be able to derive instruction and edification. It must not be supposed that conventions have nothing to do with the found- ing of Baptist institutions of learning. It is an affair which concerns them particularly and falls within the province of their care. In Baptist church OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 337 jurisprudence there is no precise line that can be drawn between those interests which affect the denominational weal, and those which have a rela- tion to private persons only. For as no system of ecclesiastical government can avoid interfering to some extent with the interests of individuals, so there is no denominational enterprise of a private nature but what may affect the whole denomination. It is not because there is any definite dis- tinction between the two classes of public and private, that conventions are bound to interfere in one instance, and yet to abstain in another. It depends upon who can most effectually and most advantageously for both the denomination and private parties, preside over and conduct the one and the other. Conventions, in many instances, originated colleges and other institutions of learning. So did these bodies first set on foot newspapers. By anticipating the usefulness of these helps to the gospel, the time was hastened when the people appropriated them to their own use. There were many interests which fell under the superintendence of conventions and associations in the early stages of our development, which cease to belong to it since we have become so strong. And there are others, where the care exercised by the denomination becomes more intense, in proportion as Baptist principles take root and spring up. There is one sure test which may be applied to all such questions ; one, however, which is not capable of being employed in any but Baptist church government. This test is af- forded by the rule of the majority; not the majority of a convention, promiscuously called together; not the majority of to-day or to-morrow,, but the majority of the whole denomination interested for a considerable series of years. We may be quite sure that if the denomination itself agrees. that a convention shall undertake the management of a particular interest, and adheres to this agreement after long experience of its effects, the arrangement is a wise and salutary one. Thus in this way some of our oldest and best institutions have grown up under the management of con- ventions and have become part and parcel of the denomination itself. Thus we have endeavored to lay down some of the maxims which underlie and grow out of Baptist conventions and associations. Liberty of action, thought and conscience is the basis of the whole system. We have seen that liberty consists, indeed, not in securing to each church and to each indi- vidual what is best for it and for him, but what they will and determine to be best for themselves. A church is not free that is compelled against its will to do what is most conducive to its own interest. But a church is free -that is allowed even to do that which is injurious to itself in so far as its actions do not interfere with the well-being of another church ; although, in this case, from inability to use that freedom aright, it may prove a bane in- stead of a blessing. It is, nevertheless, freedom still. It must not be for- gotten that liberty is not only the most perfect, but the most natural condi- tion of the churches, and if a church refuses to join in these associations, or being once united with one sees fit to withdraw therefrom, it cannot be inter- fered with. It is not merely that state which affords the fullest opportunity for the complete display of all its powers and energies ; but it is that in 22 838 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; which it was originally placed and left by the apostles, and in which it should always remain unless it sees fit voluntarily to change its condition. Eccle- siastical usurpation and despotism, on the other hand, consists in the exer- cise of authority and dominion over the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ, so as to prevent the churches from acting according to the impulse of their own will or determination, so as to act contrary to that liberty wherewith Christ has made them free. There is, indeed, a great and essential difference between subjection by consent and subjection by compulsion. In the one case, the churches obey a fixed and reasonable law in common with sister churches, to which they voluntarily consent, and in order to secure the common good, and the com- mon liberty of all. In the other case, they obey an uncertain and arbitrary rule imposed by a foreign power without authority of the gospel, which exists only for the good of the ruler, and to the injury and injustice of the churches obliged to submit to it. Among Baptists obedience to all law and rule outside of the local church is voluntary ; to be compelled to obey any other law is slavery and compulsion. Outside of his own church every Bap- tist subjects himself to legitimate rule in the discipline which he imposes on his own conduct. Every one resists and abhors ecclesiastical slavery, and recoils from it as injurious alike to his church and to his denomination, and to his own individual interests. In this sense, therefore, every Baptist and every Baptist church is free. In the other, every church and every mem- ber is in bonds. The good seed sown by Baptists are beginning to take root and spring up everywhere, and these will continue, in the same direction, as heretofore, changes in church government. That fostering of individuality which ac- companies the teaching of Baptist principles, must cause an increase of local church independence in all religious organizations. And along with the acquirement of complete autonomy by each religious body, there is likely to be a complete loss of priestly authority by any one who plays the unscrip- tural part of a church ruler. That relinquishment of priestly authority which has already gone far among protestants and dissenters, will ultimately become entire. Indeed all the divisions and dissensions that have occurred since the days of the apostles may be traced immediately to priestly rule and domination over the churches. The first departure was by the Catho- lics in the second or third century. Then sprang up the Noetians, Nova- tians, Meletians, Aerians, Donatists, Joannites, Haesitanes, Timotheans and Athingani. Then later, some time about the twelfth century, sprang up the Arnoldites in Italy, the Pretrobrusians and Caputiati in France, and later the Stedingers in Germany and the Apostolicalsin Italy; all characterized by the assertion of ecclesiastical freedom in both faith and practice. Then came the Lollards in England ; the Fraticelli in Italy ; the Taborites, Bohe- mian Brethren, Moravians and Hussites, in Bohemia ; all rebelling against priestly authority and church discipline. Then all are acquainted with the rebellion of Luther in Germany, the Zwinglians and Calvinists in Switzer- land, the Huguenots in France, the Presbj^terians in England — all chafing OR, THE COMMON LAAV OF THE GOSPEL. 339 under church sacerdotolism as tyranical as it was ruinous to the cause of Christianity. Possibly, however, the most notable revolt against the priestly hierarchy was that inaugurated in the reign of Henry VIII. by the Epis- copalians. While it was a warfare by the episcopacy against the papacy, it was a step towards freedom of judgment and practice in religious matters, accompanied by a denial of the right of one man to rule the religious world. Yet it was but one step in the right direction. They still cling to the uni- versal church idea which hovered over the whole people forgetting that where there is a universal church government erected there must be a uni- versal church ruler who in time becomes as despotic as the one against whom they rebel. This church, though backed up by the secular arm of the British government is split in twain. I refer to its divisions into high and low, and broad and narrow ; all showing more or less the spirit inhe- rent in the nature of man to throw off the yoke of ministerial domination. The strange anomily among them is, while asserting priestly authority, they are themselves seeking to perpetuate priestly authority. They forget the Scriptural injunction. Come out from among them, oh my people. The same can be said of the great flimily of Methodist churches which have for the same reason sprung from the Episcopal establishment. They erect the same overshadowing power from which they were forced to rebel. It shows us the re-growth of a coercive priestly rule similar in kind and allied to that against Avhich there had been rebellion. A Methodist bishop is a complete pope in miniature, ruling the church with an iron hand. Calvin was a pope comparable with any who issued bulls from the Vatican. The Presbyterians allied themselves with the State and their discipline was as despotic, as rigorous and as relentless as any which the Catholics had enforced. The otherwise Godly Puritans of Kew England were as severe in their persecu- tions, as were the ecclesiastics of the churches they left behind. And our dear good Methodist brethren have developed organizations scarcely less priestly, and in some respects more coercive, than the church from which they spring. Thus, it is seen, how assiduously our churches have warded off the en- croachments of associations and conventions, and how steadfastly they have maintained their sovereignty and independence. Churches can be churches without associations and conventions, but the latter cannot exist without the churches. They have never been inveigled into the snare of conferring power and jurisdiction upon these extra-ecclesiastical bodies, knowing that it is the inherent quality of power to increase and become uncontrollable. They know who Caesar i?, and how to keep out of his clutches, and what is due to him ; for, with the utmost vigilance, they stand ready to defend both their civil and religious rights against all the powers of earth, who, by force and usurpation, have endeavored to destroy them. In church government, all belongs to God and nothing to Csesar. When Christ said. Render wit9 CiBsar that which belongs io Ccesar, he did not mean that all was his. Any power outside of a local church is magisterial, and not ministerial, secular, and not spirtual, human, and not divine. 340 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; CHAPTER XII. ECCLESIASTICAL CREEDS; HOW THEY ARE GENERATED, AND THEIR USE AND ABUSE IN CHURCH GOVERNMENT. THE churclies of our Lord Jesus Christ are denominated the ground and pillar of the truth. Hence as such it becomes their duty to guard well the doctrine of the gospel, and to keep it pure and undefiled. For it is by the preaching of false doctrines that errors have come into the world and Christian communities led astray, not only from the truth as it is in our Lord and Saviour, but hkewise from the true form of church government. As under the Bible system of church government, councils have much to do with questions of heresy it comes appropriately within the purview of this treatise to lay down a few of the maxims relating thereto. In the outset it is safe to lay this down as a true proposition, that after the apostles had finished the work assigned them, had done preaching the gospel, and laid the foundations for the churches, and shaped their polity, the faith and practice of the gospel was entire. It was so, long before they died, but after their death the doctrine and polity of the churches were sealed and ratified by the churches, and there could be nothing added to, or taken from it, but our obedience and consent. As it was in the beginning, so it is now. If it was Christ's and the apostles' faith, it is and must be ours, and ours it ought not to be, if it was not theirs. Whatever the apostles taught we must equally believe, if we equally know it. But all that the apostles taught is not equally necessary to be taught ; only so much as upon the knowledge and belief of which our salvation depends. Whatsoever is in the Scriptures is alike true, but whatsoever is there is not alike necessary to salvation, nor alike useful, nor alike easy to be understood. But whatever the Scriptures teach to be true of God, that we must believe, and we cannot disbelieve it without disowning God. For the saving faith of every Christian is not made up of every true proposition found in the Scriptures, but of those things which are the foundation of our belief in Christ, which said foundation is the necessary belief, without which nothing can subsist either in religion or church polity. There are two precepts which concern the virtue of fiiith, or our obligation to believe divine truths. The one is affirmative, whereby we are obliged to have a specific and positively explicit belief of some chief articles of the Christian faith. The other is termed negative, which strictly binds us not to disbelieve ; that is, not to believe the contrary of any one point sufiiciently represented to our understanding, as revealed in the written word of God. These afiirmative precepts enjoin some acts to be performed, but not at all OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 341 times or places, nor does it equally bind all sorts of persons m respect to all things to be believed. For as to things to be believed, it is very evident that some are more necessary to be explicitly believed than others ; either be- cause they are in themselves greater and more weighty, or because they in- struct us in some necessary duty towards God, or the organic church of which we are members. As to persons, no doubt but some are obliged to know and believe more than others, by reason of their office, vocation, J capacity or the like. No church member can be innocently ignorant of that which all churches have ever believed and publicly professed, and about which there has never been any dispute. Especially no Christian can be innocently ignorant of that which all churches teach to be necessary to salvation. Because every Baptist who unites with the church is supposed to know it is necessary that he learn something, or another, in order to his salvation, and if he has learned anything experimentally, then it is certainly that which is necessary to his own salvation ; and nothing can teach us so readily those necessary things as the whole denomination ; for if these things are so indisputably true as that all the churches teach these universal doctrines as necessary, then it is taught everywhere and at all times, and, therefore, to be ignorant of such things can never be supposed innocent. What God has made necessary to be known, he has given sufficient means by which it can be known. Hence there should never be any violent disputations and disbelief allowed over things necessary to salvation ; for by disputing men often make more intrigues, but seldom manifestations of what is obscure and uncertain. To keep this doctrine immaculate and incorrupted, without mixture of error, has been the care and glory of Baptists in all ages of the world. One of the greatest agencies in its preservation has been to separate doctrine from dis^cipline, faith from practice, and to put down nothing as law con- cerning doctrine that is the device of the brain of man. Hence, Baptists have no authoritatively written creed. For such is the condition and con- stitution of Baptist churches that nothing in the way of a formulated creed can be so perfectly framed as not to give some testimony of human error, and frequently to stand in need of reparation and amendment. Many things are unknown to the wisest, and the best men can never wholly divest themselves of their passions and affection, and by this means the best and wisest are sometimes led into error, and stand in need of successors like themselves, who may find remedies for the errors they have committed, and nothing can or ought to be permanent, in the way of a church creed, but that which is perfect. No natural body was ever so well tempered and organ- ized as not to be subject to diseases, wounds, or other accidents, and to need medicines and other occasional helps, as well as nourishment and exercise; and the denomination which, under the fear of innovation, would deprive itself of improvement by reducing its creed to human formulas, condemns itself to perish by the defects of its own foundations. Baptists observing this have ever refrained from formulating a creed, and have felt a necessity of leaving the tenets of their faith to the integrity of Scriptural principles, 842 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; tlius examining whether those principles be orthodox or heterodox, or so orthodox that nothing can be added to it; and this being so, those who will admit of no change would render errors perpetual, and depriving themselves of the benefits of wisdom and experience, would oblige all to continue in the interpretations of their ancestors without the pains and the responsibility of examining for themselves, whether the doctrine be Scriptural or not. Thus a true creed, in this and other respects, is self-adjusting and self- balancing. Its centrifugal and its centripetal forces are necessarily in cor- respondence, because the one generates the other. And so we find that the forms of both religion and governmental rule — faith and practice — follow the same law. Organic as this relationship is in its origin, no artificial inter- ference, in the way of creed manufacturing, can permanently affect it. Whatever changes an external agency may seem to produce, they are soon neutralized in fact, if not in appearance. For the church of Christ to undertake to reduce the Scriptures to written formulas and to attempt to seal them as divine verities, is but to detract from the inspired record that authority and reverence which belongs to it as the veritable word of God, although the doctrine to be believed be of itself neither material nor necessary to salvation ; because the quantity or greatness of the sin of human creed-making is not measured so much -by the thing which is affirmed as by the measure and authority whereby it is sought to be vouched for and verified, and by the insult and injury that is thereby offered to God in attempting to apply the church's seal and testimony Xo that which may be a falsehood, and inducing and obliging the Christian world to do the same. For whatever is proved must be verified by some- thing more evident than itself. It is as injurious to God's truth to disbe- lieve things by him revealed, as it is also to formulate in another creed as revealed truths things not revealed ; as in commonwealths it is as heinous an offense to coin money either by counterfeiting the metal as it is to counter- feit the stainps, or to apply the great seal of state to a writing that is a for- gery, although the contents of the writing might be true; for the Holy Spirit has said ; If any shall add to these things God will add unto him the plagues which are written in this book. Salvation cannot be hoped for with- out true faith. Now faith, according to those who put their trust in written creeds, depends, in a large measure upon the creed itself, and human creeds depend on the skill and knowledge of the men who write them, in whom nothing is more certain than a most certain possibility to err. Hence Bap- tists have ever held that in matters necessary to salvation the Scriptures are so clear that all such necessary truths are either manifestly contained therein or may be deduced therefrom, and need not the authority of any church or council to authoritatively pronounce upon them to give them force and verity. They who sit down to formulate a creed often take their desire that a doc- trine should be so, for a sufficient reason that it is so, and in looking upon the Scriptures through such spectacles as these, they are apt to appear to us of that color which pleases our fancies best, and will seem to say in many OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 343 respects not what they do say, but what you would have them say ; as if we might say that the same kind of food, prepared in the same way, has in every man's mouth that very taste which was most agreeable to his palate. The presumptions imposing of human creeds upon the consciences of men, and putting of the senses of men upon the word of Gcd ; the vain conceit that we can speak of the doctrines of God better than they are spoken of in the word of God itself; the sacrilegious deifying of our own interpretations and imposing them upon others ; the restraining of the word of God from that latitude, and the understanding of men from that liberty, wherein Christ and the apostles left them is now, and has ever been the only found- ation of all the schisms of the church and that which makes divisions per- petual. Take away these walls of separation and put the pure and unde- filed word of God in the hands of the people, and all Christendom will soon be one. Tear down all church heirarchy which is the devil's means to sup- port and perpetuate errors, and restore all believers to their just and full liberty of adjusting their own understandings to the Scripture only, and soon all men would be reduced to unity and to the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, as the rivers when they have free passage all flow to the ocean. Neither can churches or councils by the formulation of a written creed make that a truth or falsehood which before was not so ; so neither can they make or declare that to be an article of faith, or a heresy which before was not so. If either a church or council have a commission at large from Christ to make a creed and teach it for doctrine and call it the gospel of Christ let the letters patent from heaven be produced for it. Shall the yoke of Christ which he said was easy, be thus made heavier and the narrow way be made narrower than he left it by adding new articles to the faith of the gospel? If this may be done why did our Saviour reprove the Pharisees so sharplv for binding heavy burdens and laying them on men's shoulders, teaching for doctrine men's traditions ? If the Scriptures be sufficient to inform us what the true faith is, it must be of necessity sufficient to teach us what heresy is ; seeing that heresy is nothing but a manifest deviation from and an opposition to the faith of the gospel as the crooked line deviates from the straight and the one cannot but manifest the other. If one whose calling it is to interpret and preach the Scriptures should obstin- ately contradict the truth of anything therein laid down ; who does not see that every one who knows and believes the Scriptures has a sufficient means to discover and condemn and avoid such heresy without a formulated human creed by which to measure the truth or falsity of what is taught. That which is necessary to salvation is so plain that it needs no interpretation ; that in non-essentials, to believe this or that to be the true sense of them, and to avoid the false it is not necessary either to faith or salvation for it cannot be in keeping with reason that if God would have had his meaning in these places certainly known he would not have spoken so obscurely. And how can man know certainly the meaning of these words and truths which he himself has not revealed ? Hence those who feel authorized to formulate a creed to be believed by the churches should produce their Scriptural 344 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; authority from the King of heaven and to show why they take upon them- selves to reduce to written formulas the verities of the Scriptures. Baptists without a written creed and credal statements as a denomination have maintained a steadfast adherence to evangelical belief, and are, as a people, all at unity about matters of faith, which unity is a conclusive assurance that those necessary and essential things, upon which they are so agreed, come from some common fountain, and that fountain is no other than the Holy Scriptures. This great denomination has never taught them- selves to say that it is so, because the creed says so, but rather God, speaking through the Scriptures, says so, therefore, it is true. When many churches of all ages and different times and places unanimously affirm the same thing, for truth, this ought to be ascribed to an universal cause, which, in such questions as these, can be nothing else than either a right deduction from the principles of the Scriptures, or else some common agree- ment, which must rest on the foundation of the truth, as it is in Christ. If God has not commanded us to believe a doctrine, no human or ecclesiastical power can command us to profess to believe it. Effete formulas of faith are, in practice, what a syllogism is without truth- fulness. They cannot be so complete as to need no addition, and so evident as to need no interpretation. Now when we consider the inspiration of the writers of the Holy Scripture, we conclude that these writers are capable of both of these perfections. No church council or synod can set down in writing so perfect a rule of faith, and add to it the verities of what was laid down by the inspired writers of the Bible ; neither can there be set down such infallible interpretations of that which we consider the obscurities in the faith, as shall need no further interpretations. That is not a true and a self-evident interpretation, which needs again to be interpreted. There may be a reckless use of words, and a false process of reasoning, by the use of which, the creed-maker finds himself entangled in absurdities, as a man in the quicksand, the more he struggles, the deeper he sinks. For the errors of words illy chosen multiply themselves, and lead men into absurdi- ties, which at last they see, but cannot avoid, without recanting all they have said, and begin to reckon anew from the begining, in which lies the foundation of all their errors. From whence it follows, that they which trust to ready-made creeds, do as they who cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not ; and at last finding the error in the addition, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not how to rectify their mistake. And in wrong or no definitions, lies the first error, from which proceed all false and sense- less tenets. This m.akes those denominations, that take their ideas of doctrine from ready-made creeds, and authors, and not from the text of the Scriptures, to be as much below the condition of ignorant men, as men endowed with a love of the truth are above it. For between the truth and erroneous doctrine, ignorance is in the middle. So he, who takes up con- clusions on the trust of others, and does not deduce them from the fountain of all truth, does not know anything, but only believes he knows something. 845 Ignorance of the signification of words, which is nothing more than a want of understanding, disposes men to take on trust, not only the truth they know not, but also the errors, and nonsense of those they trust, for neither error nor nonsense can, without a perfect understanding of words, be detected. Oftener than otherwise, those who undertake to formulate a written creed become manifest aud common perverters and corrupters of the Scriptures. There is dauger of addition, substraction and alteration of the divine text, altogether different from the mind of the Holy Spirit. In matters of faith man cannot be obliged by the church, but to what, either formally or virtually, he is obliged by God ; for all just power in ecclesiastical matters is from God, and he is the only infallible judge of controversies, between man and man, and between church and church. He has not set up any one man, or set of men to be judge of doctrine and controversies about doctrine. Neither has he set up the Scriptures to be a judge of such controversies, but has explicitly laid it down as an infallible rule by which to judge them, and has established the local church to be that judge. She it is, to whom, in doubts concerning faith and religion all Baptists must have recourse. Her rulings, her decrees, and her adjudications, are not claimed to be infallible, but to her Christ has ascribed ecclesiastical judicature. A marked distinction must be made between the Scriptures as a rule, and the church as a judge. Because a church is the sole judge of controversies is no sign that it is infallible ; for we have many judges and courts in the land giving judgment in matters not to be appealed from, yet none of them are infallible. And again every man in our churches is a judge for himself what religion is truest ; and yet no one will contend that every man is infallible. The nature and properties of a judge cannot in common reason agree to any mere writing, although it be God's word, for a writing is deaf, dumb and inanimate. On the other hand by a judge, we understand a person imbued with life and reason, able to hear, to examine, to declare his mind to the disagreeing parties, in such a way as that each one may know whether the sentence be in favor of his cause or against his pretence. A church can do all this, as the diversity of controversies, persons, occasions and circumstances may require. This the Scriptures cannot do, although it may furnish the rule, by which it can be done, and it alone can do no more. There must be some effectual means to beget, and conserve the faith of the gospel, to maintain unity, to discover and condemn heresies, to appease and reduce them, and to determine all controversies in religion. A human creed, being but a fallible guide, conceived by the brain of man, is not the rule by which it can l^e done. For without the Scriptures, as a rule, the church would not be furnished with an infallible guide, sufficient to maintain and perpetuate the truth, nor could it be considered that God had offered sufficient means to attain that end to which he has ordained the churches. That the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments contain the whole and perfect will and law of God, is affirmed by Baptists and all Baptist churches; that the Scriptures are not a perfect rule of faith and practice, but that, not only a written creed and a formulated code of laws are to be added to 846 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JTJRISPEUDENCE ; make it a full repository of tlie divine will, is at least the logical affirma- tion of those who depend upon such helps to supplement the law of God. Baptists have never delivered so much as the least thing of the holy mys- teries of faith, without the affirmative declaration of the Divine Scriptures. They take no credit for what is spoken or written, unless it be demonstrated by the Scriptures, for that is not the security of our faith, which is deposited in written formularies, creeds and books of discipline, but from the demon- stration of the Scriptures ; for this holy record must be the sole rule of all faith and all religion, and therefore sufficient to reprove all vice and every heresy. He who is an heretic, two to one, is not such from a faithful read- ing and study of the Scriptures, but made such by the study of heretical writers and creed makers, who believe not that the Scriptures alone contain all the will and word of God ; for the Scriptures lead us to God, and open to us the knowledge of God, and constitute a complete bar to the entrance of heretics, and like a strong gate, are sufficient to keep out heresies. What- soever is of the word of God, whatsoever ought to be known or preached of the doctrine, is so contained in the Scriptures that, besides this sacred text, there is nothing that may be believed or preached ; which we must so firmly believe that, besides this, it is not lawful for us to hear, either man or angel; and, indeed, it were not to be imagined how the Scriptures could be a^anon or rule of faith to Christians if it were so imperfect that it did not alone contain the full and complete measure of faith and practice. For Christ, speaking through the Scriptures, is the author and finisher of our faith, which the churches are to preach and believe, not to enlarge or shorten, not to alter or diversify, by attempting to reduce it to written formulas, for which there is no authority in the Scriptures ; which being delivered by Christ and his apostles is not to be written with paper and ink, but in the fleshy tables of our hearts. In the earliest centuries of the churches, written creeds and formulas of worship were unknown among Christians. Not until the full establishment of the Episcopal hierarchy, in the reign of Constantino, overthrowing the apostolic form of church government, have we any account of written form- ulas of faith. It is very certain that they did not orginate with the apostles ; that neither they nor the early Evangelists supplied the churches with a written creed, aside from the word of God, otherwise it would have been added to the canon of the Scriptures, and would have been preserved as carefully and with as little alteration as the gospels themselves, and certainly would have been cited and referred to in the contests with heretics and schis- matics. That if the churches had used such formulas for the two or three hundred years after they were founded, it is incredible that no ecclesiastical writer should neither mention, cite, or even allude to them during that long period. Indeed, so plain, and so easy to be understood, and so simple were the doctrines of the gospel, that the first churches no more needed written formulas to guide them than Baptist churches now do, which at this day keep the peace in the bonds of unity without such helps. If anything be added to, or taken from the gospel, and pretended to be necessary, it cannot OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 347 be entertained, unless they that add it and impose it be infallible in their judgment and competent in their authority ; they must have authority equal to that of Christ, and wisdom equal to that of the apostles. For the apostles in the summaries of faith, laid down in the Scriptures, declared all that was, at that time, necessary, and if any man else makes a new neces- sity, he must claim Christ's power, for he only is our law-giver. Baptists have ever held that it is infinitely necessary, that for the matter of faith, we rest our behef upon the Scriptures, and go no further. For if there can be any new necessities then they may forever increase, and no man could be sure that his faith shall not be condemned by the pretended discovery and addition of new articles of faith, until we all shall be in dan- ger and doubt and scruple, and there shall be neither peace of mind, nor tranquillity of the churches, as we see at this day in the sad divisions of Christendom ; and every man, from the standpoint of his own written creed, condemns all but his own sect, who have subscribed thereto, and no man can tell who is in the right, by a perusal of these man-made formularies, for- getting, the fact that nothing can make anything to be of divine faith, but our blessed Lord himself, who is, therefore, called the author and finisher of our faith ; he began it, and made an end of it, in the Holy Scriptures. The apostles themselves could not do it, they were only stewards and dispensers of the mysteries of God. They did rightly divide the word of life, separat- ing the necessary from that which was not so ; no man, no council, or society of men, could do this but themselves, for none but they could tell what was a true article of faith ; they were to lay the foundation, and they did so, and they built wisely upon it by reducing to writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, the necessary doctrine in a form of words, and consigned it to all the churches, commanding them that they should keep the foundation. While we emphasize the fact that Baptists have no authoritatively writ- ten creed, yet it must not be understood that there is among us no standard of belief, which the churches feel bound to uphold and contend for. A creed is a necessity for man. Condemned already is he who believes noth- ing. There is no nothingness in the Christian religion, nothing does not exist, nothing is nothing. Man is emphatically a creature of belief. It is his bread of life By belief he lives, by disbelief he dies. Believe and live, disbelieve and die, is the language of holy writ. It is true many of our churches use printed articles of faith, for the convenience of reference, and especially for the instruction of those coming into the communion of the churches. But they are in no sense authoritative, and there is no uni- formity, either as to the use of such articles, or as to their phrasing, and they do not constitute for any Baptist a standard of belief or faith. These arti- cles of faith are not the result of any preconceived design on the part of any one man or set of men, to formulate them for the use and adoption of all churches, but they are the result of a consensus of opinion, which not being authoritatively written, was preserved only by a uniform interpretation and a continuous use, which have given these matters of belief the sanction of articles of faith, which aU Baptist churches have agreed to and stand ready 348 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJUCH JURISPEUDENCE ; to defend. When many churches of different times and places thus unani- mously affirm the same thing for truth, this is to be ascribed to an universal cause, which in such questions as these can be nothing else than a right deduction from the principles of the Scriptures, and derives its authority from the unanimous approbation and concurrent testimony of all churches of the same faith and order. Its proofs and its sources are the same with, and are analagous to, the civil and common law, as practiced in secular gov- ernments, and the unwritten customary law of the churches, heretofore de- scribed, and is evidenced by the unanimous testimony of a long line of men, skilled and learned in the law of the churches. For that which all men have at all times learned, and believed, the Holy Spirit must have taught, as doctrines learned and preserved by all the churches, and lasting many ages must rest on the foundation of the truth. Many eyes see more than one. The collected vnsdom of a people much surpasses that of a single per- son ; and though he should truly seek that which is true, it is not probable he would so easily find it as the whole body of the denomination who have studied the truth and have come to a consensus of opinion concerning it. All that Baptists have ever contended for in reference to articles of faith, is that they ought to spring from an historical basis of gradual development, and not come full-grown from the head of some ecclesiastical legislator^ that there ought always in church jurisprudence to be a continued chain of con- nection between the past and the future, through the medium of the present. Articles of faith proper are developed by the spontaneous and unconscious action of thedenominationalmind, and arethenatural and undesigned offspring of a certain peculiar belief; while a ready-made creed is the conscious inven- tion of a single mind, formed upon a preconceived plan, for a definite pur- pose, that is to say, to round out a theory, and to shape a system. This organic creation — a ready-made creed — may be contrasted with the forma- ^ tion of a government, or an institution by a single act of legislation at one sitting, as a metal statue is cast in a foundry. If you were in doubt as to what is here meant see what twisted and distorted exegesis results from the attempt to interpret the whole field of revelation — doctrine as well as prac- tice — through formulas ; this, we may judge from a Methodist book of dis- cipline, a Presbyterian digest of overtures, or a collection of Pontificial bulls. If faith and doctrine were a subject upon which all men were agreed, or, if there were any one living authority on religious questions, to which they were willing to defer, if religious opinions were not a matter, among Bap- tists, of conscious conviction, and maintained from a sense of moral obliga- tion — if they looked upon religion as an article to be procured at the cheapest cost, and for which they would make no spiritual sacrifice — then the influence of ready-made creeds in propagating the peculiar religious opinions of the creed maker, would and ought to be decisive. In the very nature of things, Baptists have no authoritatively formulated creed. That is to say, there is no verbal statement of belief that has ever been voted upon and adopted by the denomination. There are no articles of faith to which a member must specifically assent before he becomes a OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 349 memuer of a Baptist church, and hence they have no articles binding upon all the members of the church. For a creed is simply a belief, though it may never have been written down upon paper. The faith which a man clings to and positively believes is really his creed. While, therefore, Bap- tists differ among themselves, as the members of all churches do, yet there are certain fundamental points on which they are all agreed. No creed is to be regarded as a final statement of the truth. If instead of considering it simply a statement of present belief, it should be looked upon as a humanly perfect and entire epitome of doctrine ; if it should be imagined that it con- tains not merely the truth stated, but the whole truth and nothing but the truth, so that nothing can be added to it or taken from it, then it becomes, or at least is apt to become, a snare to our feet and an injury to our souls. It will so enslave us that we will no longer stand fast in the liberty where- with Christ has made us free — the liberty of ranging unchallenged through the whole domain of truth. We do not, therefore, regard the best creed as perfect, final and complete, although it were lawful to reduce it to \vrit- ing. Baptists look for new truths and new statements of old ones. No man or church can set bounds to the progress of religious truth, and say to the inquiring spirit : " Thus far and no further shalt thou go." To the law and to the testimony is the language of Baptists. If the creed agrees not with these, it is because there is no light in it. Every Baptist believer has, there- fore, the right, and is under the obligation to study, discern, promulgate and defend the truths of the gospel. For these ends he is to go himself to the Scriptures and form his views of divine truth, untrammeled by creeds and unterrified by suspicions of not being in strict harmony therewith. This attitude towards creeds puts pre-eminence and honor on the Scriptures, but does not dishonor the creed. Thus we see that a creed, or rather the manner of evolving one, from a Baptist standpoint, is quite difierent from a creed in the ordinary acceptation of the term. It is not a form of words, which any church or council feel authorized to formulate authoritatively, and to impose upon the churches nolens volens, but it is rather an instrument which every Baptist feels himself authorized to regard, not as the work of a single enhghtened man, a church, or council, but as something drawn out and adopted by the wisdom of all the churches, and of aU the ages, not because it is a written creed formulated by any human authority, but because it was first tested, tried and adapted before it was written. Such a document draws its force, in truth, not from its scant and often irrelevant language, but from its stamping, in visible and lasting forms forever, the essential parts of the ecclesiastical consciousness of the whole Baptist family of the earth expressing themselves in the interpretation of God's word. It is by a long series of such material proofs that the ecclesiastical sentiment and belief of Baptists are framed, and it is far more the strength of this sentiment itself than the mere words of such a document, interpreted like any other written law, that constitutes its ecclesiastical efficacy. These doctrines and truths, so evolved out of the Scriptures and laid down by Baptists, have been translated into written law and into articles of faith, S50 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; which have been wrought out by slow degrees and faithful effort, by a faith- ful people and is a part of their ecclesiastical heritage, to be handed down to their followers. Thus it becomes the medium of transmitting to posterity a knowledge of what is believed by the church of Christ at particular times, in behalf of the truth as it is in Christ, and is a precious legacy to be trans- mitted to those who come after us, in the succeeding ages, bearing its testi- mony in support of the true doctrine of the gospel. We resort to all the pious writings of all the most eminent Baptist divines, and authors, in all ages, who have had for their object to elucidate and shed light upon the word of God, in order to find out what is the true interpretation of the cardinal principles of the Holy Scriptures. This is infinitely safer than to depend upon the wisdom of one man, or a council of men, who sit down ostensibly to reduce the Scriptures to the formulas of faith, with the presumed, and pretended, authority to impose them upon the churches of Christ. For, as has been observed before, it cannot be said that the words of the common creed maker are the words of the Holy Spirit, and for that reason true. In this way the churches may effectually erect a standard of belief by which discords may be banished and the doctrine of the churches kept pure and the whole denomination kept peaceful, without an odious array of written creeds and confessions of faith. For what matter is it whether a creed or a standard of doctrine be reduced to writing, or be registered only in the minds of the membership, and applied by them as a body ? It is no less a creed although it be nuncupative, and as long as such a test is faith- fully applied the churches cannot fail of being, in a good degree, united and harmonious, and it most effectually operates as a bond of union and a barrier against the encroachments of heresy. Baptists ought to be considered then as having all the security that the nature of the case admits of, as much so as those whose church manuals are loaded down with written creeds, and confessions of faith. What other denominations accomplish by written creeds and confessions of faith. Baptists attempt and accomplish more effectu- ally by denominational common, or customary law, by which new doctrines must be tried and tested before adopted, new practices proved before being wholly approved; The old doctrines are not always the best, but the old is safer than the new, until we have better ones. And we have no way of knowing whether the new be better than the old, until time, long usage, and experience shall prove their efficacy and orthodoxy. As to polity the churches need rules ; and the Scriptures give but few. Nor has any church, a council or any convention any authority to formulate a code of laws, and thrust them upon the denomination. These principles, whether of doctrine or practice, do not spring up suddenly. They arise very slowly, and are but the conserving, and preserving of the united judgment, and experience of the whole denomination, and with equal slowness do they depart from this doctrine and practice, based upon this long experience, without a rational, and an experimental ground of departure. The Scripture says. How can two walk together unless they be agreed f If every one undertook to form all his own opinions, and to seek for truth in OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 351 isolated paths blazed out by himself alone, it would follow that no consider- able number of even Baptists would ever unite in any common belief. This is illustrated by reference to our Christian brethren — who have not even yet been able to agree upon a suitable name for their church. Scarcely any two of them agree upon any one cardinal doctrine to be taught by the church for want of a consensus of opinion upon the subject. But obviously without such common belief no church can prosper, nay, rather, no church can exist ; for without doctrines held in common by a denomination, there is no common action, and without common action there may still be Christians, but there can be no churches. In order, therefore, that churches and denomi- nations should exist, and that they should prosper in unity and fraternity, it is required that all the members of those churches should be rallied, and held together by certain predominant religious ideas ; and how can this be done unless each member sometimes draws his opinions from the common source, and contents himself to accept certain matters of belief already formed ? If a man were forced to demonstrate for himself all the truths of ■which he makes daily use, his task would never end. He would exhaust his strength in preparatory demonstrations, without ever advancing beyond them. Hence it is absolutely necessary that a large body of Christians all worshipping together should have a creed, for a church without a creed is a church without a belief, and a church without a belief is a church without a religion. If a church have not a uniform, and specific belief, it is not easy to see how they can maintain unity among themselves. If there were no denomination there would be no need of a uniform system of belief, to which all should be required to conform. With the Bible in his hand, each Chris- tian would have all that was necessary for his guidance and edification. But he is not alone. He is united with others into an organic church, and they form one body in Christy and all who compose it become, mefunhers one of another— one not only in name, theoretically united, but one commanded to Speak the same thing, and to Stand fast in one spirit, with one mind. Can Baptists, Methodists, Presbyterians, Episcopalians and Catholics, all worship and preach and commune together to the edification of the spirit, and each retain the doctrine appropriate to his denomination ? Rather would not the House of God, where such worship was carried on, be worse than a miser- able Babel ? AVould it not be worse than mockery to sit together at the same communion table ? How could any church preserve itself from dis- cord and heresy, when it is composed of such heterogeneous materials? Paul said of such in his day, that they did preach another gospel, and charged those to whom he wrote to hold them as accursed, and denounced their teachings as damnable, the advocates of which they were admonished not to receive into their houses, or to bid them God speed. The adoption of a uniform system of belief does not militate against the freedom of religious opinion. Because when an honest man changes his mind, as he has a right to do, on the subject of religion, he will always hold himself in readiness to change his church afiiliations, and go where the promulgations of his sentiments will not produce schism and disco.rd. The 352 A TP.EATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEIJDENCE ; first object, and one of the principal advantages of articles of faith, is to furnish to each of these fundamental questions a solution which is at once clear, precise and intelligible to the mass of the members of the church, and lasting. There may be many things included in the formulas not intrinsi- cally true, but it may be affirmed that any articles of faith, which are few in number and fundamental in character, imposes a salutary restraint on the religious mind, and it must be admitted that, if they are not infallibly true, they are at least very helpful in church government and conducive to unity in faith and practice, without which every member would accustom himself to have only confused and changing notions on the subject of the cardinal doctrines of the churches. His opinions would be ill-defended and easily abandoned, and indeed could never hope to solve by himself the hard problems in theology and thus put himself in unison with the churches. His once having covenanted to stand to, and abide by the creed of the church, interposes no obstacle in the way of his afterwards deserting that denomination, and uniting himself with another, if it be a matter of con- science with him. So that no honest man will, by reason of his former covenant, labor under any temptation to resist light as it bursts in upon his soul, and to remain where he is, and in so doing ought never to be embar- rassed by his former steps, but to look at present duty, and to go forward, leaving the past and the future with God. All that Baptists have ever insisted upon is fidelity to one's church and creed, as long as a member pro- fesses to be a Baptist. Let no minister flatter himself that he is to be accounted zealous for the truth if he persistently preaches that for doctrine to which all the churches cannot subscribe, after it is thoroughly understood, and which disturbs the tranquillity of the churches. Far better will it be for him to silence himself than to wait for the church to silence him, by the exercise of its sovereign authority. They should never become so orthodox in their own opinion as that by the preaching of another gospel they thereby disturb the churches of Christ. It is true that many instances have been afforded of men who were v/illing to incur, not only reproach, but also im- prisonment, and even death itself, rather than abandon the truth and preach a doctrine which they could not adopt. On the other hand not a few in- stances have occurred of unprincipled ministers, after full investigation, giv- ing their voluntary assent to an orthodox creed, afterwards disregarding their covenant, and pertinaciously opposing the same, and still persist in retaining their church relations, with no compunctions of conscience, at the same time almost every form of heresy has lurked under their indorsement of the church's orthodox creed. Any systems of church government, and any forms of belief, are but failures, and cannot possibly answer one princi- pal purpose for which they are formed, if they fail to guard the churches from the intrusion and teaching of ministers, who, though they are other- wise pious and useful, yet, who do not fail to disturb the peace of the churches, and never fail to mar the edification of the more correct, and sound part of the denomination, who stand always ready to contend for the faith. While it behooves the churches to watch over the truth and to guard it OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 353 from violence, yet it is often noticed that those who profess to "be zealous for the truth's sake, their feet are not shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and are like Diotrephese of a contentious spirit, putting all their self- conceited opinions into the creed, thereby swelling it all into foundation, with nothing left for superstructure, forgetting that men should in many things, non-essential, be left in their own liberty of believing whatsoever does not undermine either faith or practice. And it is certain that whatever admonition it is necessary to administer to such brethren, it ought to be done with much sweetness of temper and modesty, which is better than to do it rashly, frequently and furiously, and thereby create more disturbance in the churches than the preaching of the error itself was wont to cause. There is no place for that which is uncharitable in any creed, and thereby so to make it become an article of faith. A malicious person, in his error, be- comes heretical, when a good and pious man in the same error may have all the rewards of faith, should he take no pains to spread his errors to the dis- turbance of the churches. For whatever a common disturber of the denomi- national tranquillity believes, if he believes it because it serves his own ends, he has an heretical mind, for to serve his own ends his mind is prepared to believe a lie. But a pious man that believes, what according to his light is deducible from the creed of the church, whether he falls upon the right or not in matters non-essential to salvation, is, therefore, acceptable to God, and should be to the church if he take no pains to disseminate his belief, to the disturbance of the church in which he lives and worships. Let all errors be as much and as zealously suppressed as may be, but let it be done by such means as are proper instruments of their suppression, that is, by preach- ing and disputation and by the religious press, by charity, by exhortation and by admonition, so that neither of them breed a disturbance of the de- nominational tranquillity. Men should not be hasty in calling every opin- ion, which they dislike, by the name of heresy, but should they believe that a doctrine, not in harmony with the creed of the church, has been promul- gated, let them use the erring person like a brother, and not vex him by harsh accusations as though he were no Christian, although he lives a good life and believes the creed in all its fundamental and essential doctrines, and takes no pains to press his views upon others. Hence it is very plain to be seen that articles of faith should be few in number and easy to understand. The question arises, which of the two is a schismatic, he who makes numerous, unnecessary and inconvenient articles of faith, or he who disobeys them, because he cannot, without doing violence to his conscience, believe them ? He who is forced to part communion, be- cause, without sin, he could not believe every article of faith, or they who have made it necessary for him to separate from the church, by requiring such conditions, which to no man are necessary. As few errors are damna- ble or destructive to church government it is reasonable as few should sub- ject one to ecclesiastical discipline. There are few articles of faith in the Christian religion, of which the Saviour has said : Se that helieveih not shall he damned. Such articles are happily few in number, and are to be regarded 23 354 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPKUDEXCE ; only as fundamental, and necessary to Christian faith and essential to his salvation. Now Baptists have ever contended that in things necessary to one's salvation the Scriptures are plain and perfect, and men are obliged, under pain of damnation, to seek the true sense of it, and not to wrest it to their preconceived fancies. As to matters non-essential, the Scripture stands in need of some watchful and unerring eye to guard it, by means of whose assured vigilance we may keep it pure and undefiled, but because no new article of faith is warrantable, but what the apostles taught, no necessity is to be pretended, but what they imposed. No creed ought ever to pretend to go into the details of belief, because it is not certain that every such detail is right, and that every interpretation is well deduced ; or if it be certain to one it may not be so to another; and besides it is more an instrument of schism than of peace, it can divide more than it can instruct, and it is plainly a falling away from the simplicity of the Christian faith, by which simplicity both the learned and the ignorant are the more safe. But when we come to have the pure word of God pass through the hands of the curious creed- maker, where interest, and fancy, and error, and ignorance, and passion are intermingled, nothing can be so certain, though they may fall upon some things very true. In the simplicity of the faith of the church the brethren can rest, here they can find peace ; that faith which saves the soul,-and is the ground and pillar of the truth is simple, easy and intelligible, free from temptation and free from intrigues and strained constructions ; it is war- ranted by Scripture, composed and delivered by the apostles and entertained by all the churches. In these things do all agree, but in nothing else but this, and their fountain, the plain words of the Holy Scriptures. We are commanded, If it he possible, as much as lieth in us, to live peace- ably with all men. But it is not possible to live at peace with some men. We should not be at peace with those whose duty it is to know what the truth is, and to preach it with fidelity to the church which Commissioned them so to do, if they do it not. We must not be at peace with those who, through ignorance or wantonness, preach errors, though they be ever so small, to the disturbance of the churches. The faith of the gospel would be a prey to every heresy, if the laws of the gospel did not make it our duty to oppose them to the utmost of our ability and at our peril. And if in the discharge of our duty the peace of the church is, for a time, disturbed, the sin lies at the door of those who render the conflict necessary. That would be a pitiable condition of a church of Christ, equally divided on a point of doctrine ; ministers, as well as private members, constantly difiering among themselves, each being conscientiously persuaded that the others were wrong upon a doctrine, concerning which there can be no compromise, and each endeavoring to make proselytes to his own principles and practices. Would not such a church rather resemble the builders of Babel, when their speech was confounded, than a united family walking together in the fear of the Lord and in the consolations of the Holy Spirit, and edifying one another in love. Hence, it matters not how non-essential the point of difference is, he who would preach it to the disturbance of the churches, subjects himself to the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 355 discipline of his church. How much soever we might othfrwise deprecate the multiplication of articles of faith in the creed of the churches, the sum- mary of truths must of necessity contain articles, not strictly speaking funda- mental and necessary to salvation. If they do not, they cannot possibly answer one principal purpose for which they were formed — that is, guarding the churches from the intrusion of teachers, who, though they may be pious, yet could not fail to disturb the peace of the denomination by the preach- ing of errors, to which the churches cannot subscribe, and which is calcu- lated to break their unity. For it is hard to tell what is necessary and what is not, when we come to look at the matter from the standpoint of the good of the church, because there are so many false teachers in the world who have their own loose way of interpreting the Scriptures, every one of whom bring a new word and a new doctrine to light in their preaching. The apostles did not only foresee, but foretold that these would be, but did live to see and feel the effect of the heresies, and the false doctrines obtruded upon the churches. Yet, against all this, they did not try to provide a specific remedy by going into detail, but left it to the good sense and reason of those to whom they committed the churches, at their death and departure, to throw around the gospel all the safeguards necessary to its protection and purity. As for these inspired men, they took the instructions of the Master and their own teachings as a summary of faith, which was a sufficient declaration of all necessary truth, and a complete reproof of all heresies, that should arise in their day. This much is certain, that, in our inquiries concerning faith, no man's conscience can be pressed with any authority, but by Christ enjoin- ing it, and the apostles' declaration of what is necessary, all of which must be deducible from their express teachings ; for heretics make disputes and disputes make heretics, but faith makes none. While every minister is by virtue of his office bound to know the truth, and to preach it with fidelity, yet if any church should be supposed to order any doctrine to be preached, as necessary to salvation, which the preacher is satisfied, in his conscience, was apparently contrary to the gospel, he is thereby nevertheless obliged to reject such doctrine, and for so doing, he has the authority of the Holy Spirit, who has shared in his divine call to the ministry, and entrusted him with his high office. In consequence of which, the ministry must be allowed to have the right to put their own construction upon the creed of the church, and to judge for themselves of the doctrine they preach ; being accountable to the churches for the abuse of their authority, as the entrusting them with so much care must also invest them with so much authority, as shall be necessary to that purpose. This ad- monishes them to take care that in their preaching that nothing be omitted, or wanting, which the gospel has made necessary to salvation. Likewise that nothing be added, either in faith or practice, as necessary and essential, but what the word of God has made so. And in this case although the ministry have no power in themselves to bind any doctrine upon the con- sciences of the churches, yet as ministers of Christ they are supposed to have all the qualifications that fit them for a right judgment in these matters of 356 faith, as persons set apart for tlie consideration of these spiritual things, and should very properly be consulted on such occasions, and a dutiful regard should be paid to their judgment. But in matters of faith they are not to lord it over God's heritage, being only shepherds and guides ; so he has no power to bind the consciences of men by requiring anything as necessary to salvation which the Scriptures have not made so. Baptists do not, nor have they ever opposed ecclesiastical creeds, only creed-making, and the authoritative imposing of them upon the consciences of men, is what they denounce. Not the creed itself, but the manner of evolving it, is what they oppose. It is far better to have the creed written in the minds, hearts and consciences of men, than to have it recorded upon paper. It thereby becomes a part of their very nature and being, as then especially does it thereby become their veritable belief, or their creed. In the same way that the English constitution is an unwritten instrument, and in the same sense that the common law is non scripta, so is the creed of a Baptist church unwritten. This is done by carefully ascertaining how the churches, and how those whom she suspects of being in error, understand and interpret the Bible ; that is by evolving certain doctrinal principles or articles of faith from the Scriptures, according to her understanding of them, and comparing these articles with the professed belief of those whom she supposes to be heretics. Before the church can detect heresies and cast them out of her bosom, before she can raise her voice against prevailing errors, she must be agreed what is truth, they must have some accredited source to resort to in order to know what they have agreed to consider as truth. The Bible, to Baptists, is the form of sound words, which they have voluntarily adopted and pledged themselves to holdfast to. Confessions of faith are but the in- terpretation of the holy record, and the only thing to be found out, is how the churches have uniformily construed the Bible, and if there be a difference of opinion the only way left is to ascertain the generally received opinion which must be taken as true. It is well enough to have this interpretation reduced to writing in the form of articles, or confessions of faith, if there be any one possessed of sufficient wisdom and spiritual accuraen to do so, for the guidance and assistance of the churches ; not that all churches would be bound to follow them, but that all churches would, in time, learn to follow them in proportion as they might be intrinsically correct and Scriptural- And this is the way and the only one why Baptists have a written confession of faith. He, or they, who wrote them never designed that they should be- come standards of belief, or that they should become so universally adopted among Baptist churches, and but for the fact of their orthodoxy, they never would have become so universally favored. This was the creed of the church long before it was reduced to writing, and in a truer sense would it still be the creed of the church, were the writing destroyed. This gradual adop- tion of a written creed, by the universal consent of the churches, is but a tribute to that truth and candor, which every sister church owes to every other church, and to the world around her, so that they may know what em- phasis they put upon a particular doctrine of the Bible. For it is not OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 357 always sufficient to say that one believes the Bible, as if all who profess to receive the Bible were standing upon equally solid and safe ground. Has not the experience of all convinced them that it is impossible to bring an heretic to punishment as long as he is permitted to intrench himself behind a mere general profession of a belief in the Bible. This is nothing more than the bitterest enemies of the truth proclaim busily and even clamorously every day, when charged with infidelity to that truth. That heretics should oppose creeds, as standards of belief, is just as natural as that a criminal, arraigned before a civil tribunal, should equally dislike the law, its judges and its punishments. Baptists at no period in the history of the world have ever bowed to the authority of human creed-makers without examining, understanding and reproducing the reason that actuates them, and whenever they have done so the less merit do they see in these man-made instruments. As for Bap- tists, they have not learned the divine art of enacting laws for God, which requires a higher knowledge than they, with all their wisdom, have ever attained. The best they can do is to try and properly interpret ,those already made by divine authority. As a truth-loving people they can- not be charged with a tame and sluggish acquiescence in the conclu- sions of him who sits down and, with premeditated deliberation, undertakes to say what their followers shall in advance believe. The error in the modern creed-maker consists in the attempt to formulate articles of faith — that which falls but little below the Scriptures themselves— and in reasoning deductively from propositions, whose truth and verity had not been estab- lished by proper preliminary processes. Those who believe in them receive them as the sum total of a perfect ecclesiastical system, not as the provisional researches of a progressive development, but as a metal statue cast in a mould of iron. When ready finished they receive them as if they were the responses of an oracle ; while Baptists receive their creed as being something handed down from the old and experienced to the young and inexperienced, upon the principle that an old man is wiser and more experienced than the young, and, therefore, more and the better able to judge than a young man ; so a remote generation being nearer the apostolic age was in a condition better to know the truth than the existing one, thereby furnishing the pres- ent generation with a most ample stock of experience and observation. Each successive generation enjoys the benefit of the experience and knowl- edge of its predecessors, together with its own, in knowing and perfecting a true creed for the churches, and if gospel truth be, like other things around us, in a progressive state, the faith and purity of the most recent generation ought to be the maturest and best, as we are admonished to grow in grace. Hence a true church creed is the daughter of time rather than that of eccle- siastical authority, made beforehand and imposed by man. In a spiritually progressive church orthodox opinions gradually, in the long run, prevail over errors and heresies ; for if they were not thus predominant, under the benign influence of the Holy Spirit, Baptist churches would cease to be progressive and have no way of preserving the truth. With respect to a ready-made 358 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and written creed the fact of its having been formally reduced to writing, as such, raises no presumption in its favor ; it does not thereby prove that it is suited to the present wants of the churches. But a Baptist church creed stands upon a different footing. Being the unwritten law of the churches as to doctrine, either with few or no intervals or suspensions, it has been tried by a long experience, and has by a gradual and intelligent, though an almost insensible process, been adapted to the interests, habits and spiritual feelings of the churches. Their good parts have thus been developed ; their bad parts eliminated or counteracted ; usage and custom have reconciled people to their defects, if any, and with which the denomination have be- come familiar. On the other hand, a written creed is something lying be- yond the range of our experience, and may be handed down, through a series of generations, with implicit faith, but without undergoing any process of examination or verification, and consequently without acquiring any confir- mation of its truth. It follows, therefore, from these considerations that there is in Baptist church jurisprudence no one body of persons who are competent judges of doctrine, and who are qualified to guide the churches in all sorts of opinions, and no high court of appeals to say what men shall believe and practice save the churches themselves ; that there is no intellectual or spiritual aristocracy, separate from the rest of the churches whose authority in these sacred matters predominates over them indiscriminately. Now in the sciences, as it is a secular affair and relates not to the consciences of men, they have their own pecu- liar set of competent judges, and he who is not skilled therein ought to know the bounds of his information, and not venture to pronounce an authorita- tive and independent opinion on questions lying out of his proper province. Upon questions of this sort a man ought to defer to the opinions of others, who may be wholly unacquainted with his own subject, and who, and with respect to that subject, ought to receive his teachings from others ; but in mat- ters of faith and doctrine, no man can stand between him and Christ, whom he must take in, through faith, and that by his own faith, and not that .of another. As the finding of an article of faith in a written creed does not afford presumptive evidence of its truth, unless it be first tried before adop- tion, and universally agreed to, by all Baptists, without any dissent of opin- ion, before its incorporation into the creed. New-fangled, present and preva- lent opinions, may have sprung from the most impure sources. Mere unau- thorized opinions, imperfect and unverified theories, hasty and illogical generalizations from single facts in a lump thrown together, to round out a theory, and to establish a methodical system of doctrine and church govern- ment, uncorrected by any analytical process, with no resemblance to the apostolical formulas, are often the originating cause of wide-spread opinions, which said opinions are embodied in the creed of the church. These errors thus become deeply rooted in the popular conviction of the denomination, and once they become crystallized into a creed, they become fixed and stable, and descend from generation to generation. When we come to examine these modern man-made creeds we find that many of the false and unfounded OR, THE COMMOIT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 359 errors have been entertained by these denominations without question for ages. Not only has this been the case with respect to false religions, but we find the same thing with respect to facts in statute law and in the sciences, which admitted of being verified by easy and simple experiments, it is found afterwards to be hard to break away from these conclusions, and certainly they stand in the way of reform and spiritual development. That the exten- sive diffusion of any well-rounded belief, and its reception among the people, does not prove that all those who adhere to it have examined the creed upon its merits, and have founded their conclusions upon an independent investi- gation of the evidence of others. An opinion, on the behalf of a church, may be held by the whole denomination, but they may all have been misled by some erroneous authority ; they all may have mechanically followed the same blind guide, some company or order of priests, who presume to say what others shall believe. Hence Baptists, as a denomination, can be considered in the light of a body of witnesses to the truth and verity of their articles of faith, and this concurrence of witnesses is of weight in the establishment of a uniform belief. This unanimous concurrence of, and uniformity in, belief is likewise conscientious and sincere, and they thus obtain that guarantee of truth which is afforded by sincerity and candor. Accordingly the judgment of Baptists is more correct on questions of morality and individual behavior, conduct and practice, than on questions of theory and speculative abstract creeds. Their opinions are entitled to greater weight with respect to existing errors, than with respect to their remedies — ^with respect to what the belief of the church is, than what it ought to be. They can, by their own feelings and individual observation, discover the existence of errors and heresies; but what are the proper remedies for these evils, or how they may be remedied by the ecclesiastical power of the governmental machinery of the church, they are in general less able to form a correct opinion. Whereas in other systems where the rulers are once satisfied that the existence of what they term an error is admitted, they sit down and formulate a new article of faith to denounce the error, while Baptists never defer to the authority of any man, or set of men, with respect to the choice of an immediate remedy, but wait until time and denomina- tional public opinion uproots the heresy, and casts it away. This denomina- tional popular opinion is a wonderful thing, but is more to be relied on in reference to complaints against, and attacks upon, old doctrines and land- marks, than against new ones sought to be set up by "oracles not well inspired." With respect to the former. Baptists judge, in general, from experience and observed facts ; against the latter they are prejudiced by a few interested or passionate leaders and agitators, before the new has been established by custom and usage in such a manner as to be fairly judged by its results, and a popular clamor is thus excited against new doctrines and innovations. The whole Baptist denomination on guard and on the lookout for heresies can observe better than a privileged class of men " in orders " can, for every Baptist, how humble soever he may be, is a high-priest before the altar, and is accountable to God alone, and along with others, go to 860 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; make up the denomination. So far as faith is concerned there may be a defect of knowledge in the members of a church, considered as separate individuals, but though each person's share of knowledge and good sense is small, yet, where these separate amounts, being supplied by their aggregate number, are added together, it makes a large quantity, and in this manner the faith and wisdom of the whole denomination, in the aggregate, exceed that of the so-called wise few. So, in our Baptist churches, in judging of doctrine and generating the common law of the churches, the unskilled many may be, and is, equal or superior to the skilled few; for different persons will judge of different phases of doctrine, and the judgments of the many, when put together, will exhaust the entire subject and thus form a consensus of denominational public opinion which elevates itself to the dignity of a standard of belief upon which it is safe to act. While they have never ^vritten and authoritatively promulgated by the churches, as an ecclesiastical instrument, their importance has been recognized, as represent- ing and concentrating the interpretation, and the experience of the whole denomination, and even of all the generations since the days and times of the apostles ; as being the brief and pointed epitome and expression of the inferences and deductions which the popular denominational observation and sagacity have collected from the long life of the churches themselves. The only form in which the consensus of denominational opinion; voice and sentiment, with reference to doctrine, embodies itself, is in articles of faith or doctrinal axims, whose authority is, derived from their popular recep- tion. I do not know that Baptists agree as to who wrote and formulated our present articles of faith, but they certainly embody the acumen of one learned man, whoever he may be, and the wisdom and experience of the whole denomination upon the cardinal questions of doctrine. Every Baptist church possesses its collection of articles of faith, some written and others unwritten, many of which are with the necessary changes of expression and form common to all, and have a general currency, by what lawyers would call a sort of jus gentium. Among Baptists, articles of faith being doctrinal maxims, in the nature, either of observation or precept, are accredited by the tacit verification which they have undergone in their transmission from one individual and one generation to another. And hence they may be con- sidered the true basis of all ecclesiastical union. Without this uniformity of doctrine. Baptist churches, far from being otherwise an intercourse of brotherly love, and the ground and pillar of the truth, would be no longer anything but a vast scene of chaos and confusion. If their truth or soundness had not been recognized by those who use them and handed them on, they Avould soon have gone into disuse or oblivion. In general, articles of faith embrace only those founded upon the experiment or experience of the denomination ; that is to say, being generalizations from practical experi- ence, they are only true within certain limits, and subject to certain condi- tions, and hence they are not to be implicitly received as infallible, as we receive the inspired word. Before, therefore, a popular article of faith can be safely used for doctrinal purposes as evidence of a general truth, it must, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 361 for a long space of time, undergo a process of analysis and comparison with the divine text, from which it is supposed to be derived. It must be limited according to the spiritual tendencies which it involves and the purposes for which it is apphcable. In this manner articles of faith, which are appar- ently contradictory, may be reconciled, and the partial truth which they contain will be extracted, retained and rendered profitable. Hence, these observations of past experience, these concise expressions of theological truth, cannot be used and substituted for the Scriptures ; nor can they take their place in a system of accurate Scriptural knowledge, without under- going a process of correction from time to time, so as to conform to the truth as it is in the Scriptures. Regarded as a standard of truth, articles of faith, whether right or wrong, must, nevertheless, always be important and neces- sary, since there are many things in which the consensus of opinion necessa- rily exercises a decisive influence in church government. By internal con- cord a small denomination may become powerful, while by internal discord, a large one is sure to be rendered weak. Although the theory of the social compact, in civil governments, is visionary and groundless, yet Baptist church government rests largely, as to doctrine, on a tacit agreement for a common end. It exists by a voluntary obedience of the majority of the people belonging to the churches, and armed with that support, they enforce their laws as to doctrine against each individual who successively violates it. Matters of faith being a subject on which each Baptist is required to act for himself, he cannot procure what he wants by exchange from others, and receive his articles of faith ready-made, as a suit of clothes from a tailor. Then it is important that they go to the fountain head — the Scriptures — to know of the doctrine, in order that they may be able to guide their own judgment by a trustworthy authority. This is certainly the case with most of the opinions by which they steer their course both in private and public life. In ail cases where men are called upon to act, or to decide, he ought to have such a store of those opinions which are useful to be put in practice as will enable him to direct his own course with intelligence and safety. In all matters relating to his soul's salvation he ought not to trust wholly to others to dish out ready-made opinions as to doctrine, but be able to dive down into the very bowels of the word of God for himself to learn what the Lord requires of him lest in the last day he may be charged with having followed the blind. When this is the case the evidence of the truth in the light of experience, the Scriptures would be more uniformly consulted ; reason would be more in the ascendant, and intelligent discussion of all sorts would at once be more free, more tolerant, and more fruitful of results. As a consequence of refusing to drink in the belief of others, upon these questions of hfe and death, religious opinions would be more enlightened, more con- scientious, and more wary, and less prone to deception and the ruin of the soul. Christian men and women would be less puerile and more manly. To say the least, whatever deference we should show to our religious guides, to whose authority we would bow, they ought to be regarded rather as advisers and counsellors, than as dictators and masters. A too ready resort to the 362 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; opinions of others and to articles of faith, handed down from a former age and received among Baptists, may check the freedom of investigation, per- petuate error, prevent originality of thought, and the discovery of new lights and new truths, and maintain Baptist church jurisprudence in a stationary and unimproved state. Let it be understood by every young convert joining a Baptist church that he owes to his spiritual guides, and pastors, and to articles of faith, only a temporary belief, and a temporary suspension of their own judgment, until he be fully instructed by, and for himself, and not an absolute resignation, or perpetual captivity. Whatever deference is justly due to articles of faith, and spiritual guides, they are not to be considered as infallible — as high courts of theological wisdom from which there is no appeal. Humble Baptists, who came after the great discoverers of truth, and those who have evolved and perfected Baptist church jurisprudence-, may, though endowed with inferior intellectual gifts, re-tread the same ground, may toil along the same lines, they are called upon by usage to verify what is correct and true, and by disuse to reject what is doubtful or heretical. They may remove subordinate defects, and complete parts which have been left imper- fect in systems which they could not have conceived. Although they could not have designed the plan of Baptist church government, or laid out the foundations, it is their great privilege to assist in bringing the edifice to com- pletion. The generation which makes plain a new truth had no better means of judgment on the subject than ourselves ; on the other hand, we have not only their knowledge, but the experience of subsequent years and of our own time to guide us. Thus we see very plainly how it is possible, through a long course of time, to unify one great denomination upon the cardinal doctrines of the Bible and to keep them pure ; but how to unify and make one the whole Christian world is an unsolved problem, but, nevertheless, is one that deserves the ma- turest judgment of our wisest theologians. Upon this subject the world has no experience derived either from practice or observation to guide them. Thus we know that the various sects and creeds into which the world is divided continue to exist side by side with one another, and show no ten- dency to coalesce into a common belief, or to recognize a common authority in religious truth. These different sects continue to exist and have run on for centuries in parallel lines, without converging to a common central focus of agreement. In other matters of opinions, although they spring from dif- ferent sources, and follow for a time in distinct courses, at last flow together into one main stream ; whereas the distinctive tenets of the religious w^orld not only spring from different sources, but continue to run in widely different channels. Will this always continue thus ? Nay, verily, for the Lord, the great founder of the churches, prayed that his people might be one — one in doctrine and in manners. It shows a want of faith in the efficacy of the prayer of our Saviour to say that those whom he has redeemed will never get together upon a common basis of the truth. Suffice it to say that Baptists have demonstrated to the world in their system of church govern- ment that religious truth and doctrine, when embodied in a free and inde- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 363 pendent churcli, unshackled by ecclesiastical legislation and priestly domina- tion, follow a certain law of progression and progressive development, that tends to unify and does make one those who adhere to it. That under this divine system, while error is gradually diminished, truth is established by a continually enlarging consensus, like the successive circles made upon the surface of the ocean by the dropping in of a pebble. With all these shackles of ecclesiasticism which bind down the people of the world, the truth can but oscillate backwards and forwards, but does not tend, by a joint action, to a common center. All this diversity of religious belief exists not only in spite of the attempts which have been made to produce a oneness of will, faith and practice in doctrine, but mainly in consequence of them. Both churches and governments have attempted to extinguish errors and heresies by disci- pline and even persecutions, and, on the other hand, to favor what they con- ceived to be the truth by linking church and state together, the better to fos- ter and endow the truth ; and as they have formulated and adopted different creeds, that which was considered religious error by one was considered reli- gious truth by the other. They forget the fact there is but one faith, one Lord, and one baptism, and that truth comes as a matter of necessity, born not of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God, and has continued ever since the same, unchanged and unchangeable, in one continuous undying body, and that men cannot be welded together in religious matters by ecclesiastical bonds and legislative enactments, but by love. Whatever views we may have upon the subject of Christian unity and how much soever we may be inclined to speculate upon the subject we are constrained to believe that it can never be accomplished at least organically except upon the principles of orthodoxy. Now orthodoxy is a relative term, as we have seen heretofore. But as all sects admit that orthodoxy is the right belief, and that right belief is that one truly taught in the Scrip- tures, then the Scripture is the only true basis upon which this union can be effected. Since Holy Scripture is the only repository of divine truth and the great rule of faith to which all sects of Christians do profess to appeal for proof of their several opinions, then let all men believe the Scripture and that only, and endeavor to believe it in the true sense, and require no more of others, and they shall find this not only a better, but the only means to suppress heresy and restore that unity which was the glory of the. primitive churches set up by the apostles. For he who cuts himself loose from man- made creeds and humanly devised systems and believes the Scripture sin- cerely, and endeavors to believe it in the true sense cannot possibly be an heretic. Let the Christian world set aside and ignore priest- craft and priestly domination over the churches by which the apostolic plan of church government has been overthrown and subverted, then all churches and all Christians will begin to assimilate towards one another and begin to see the truth alike. And if no more than this were required of any man to make him capable of Christian union and ecclesiastical communion, then all men, though they were somewhat different in opinion in matters not essentially fundamental, notwithstanding any such difference, must be of necessity one 364 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; in love and one in communion. This can never be done by building up a huge ecclesiastical hierarchy, but by cutting the bonds of a false and forced union which the more it has been tested and tried the wider have the sects been drifting asunder. For ecclesiastical history teaches us that this attempted union born of force and bred of compulsion, instead of bringing all Christians together in unity and fellowship, has made the way to heaven narrower, the yoke of Christ heavier, the differences of faith greater and the conditions of ecclesiastical communion harder and stricter than they were made at the beginning by Christ and his apostles. If ever the union of all Christians is effected it must be done upon the basis of the truth, and must grow out of that Christian charity which was made manifest in the person and work of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ establishing itself in the hearts of his followers. The external communication of thought and will must be from the inner unity of the Spirit. As it is now the intercourse of all Christian communities can never be more, and ought never to be less, than a faithful and wise expression of brotherly love and fellowship of soul. As every act, in Baptist church polity, between churches, being nothing more than to express brotherly love, is a valid communion of churches, so no act between all churches which is not intended and adapted to express brotherly love can be the basis of Christian unity and fellowship. To speak of Christian unity otherwise than as a means of manifesting love and fellow- ship for each other is to utter a manifest absurdity. To enter into any act of so-called organic unity without being moved thereto by love of the truth is to enter upon an unchristian act ; such an unity is likely to lead to an out- rage upon true church polity, and a disgrace of the Christian name. Thus we have in this place endeavored to lay down a few of the maxims concerning ecclesiastical creeds in the short space allotted to the subject, but we do not flatter ourselves that we have exhausted the subject, or that all the rules here laid dow^n are infallible. The differences of opinion in the world concerning faith are wide and divergent, and even among Baptist dif- ferent shades of belief must be allowed. All efforts to force and enforce a perfect unity of faith is but a part of the fire that is attempted to be quenched, so far is it from extinguishing any part of the flames. Nearly all churches of the different denominations look to ecclesiastical creeds as a means of union. But supposing all the world has agreed to a creed upon which all might stand, yet the different interpretations of it would be so- full of variety, this also would be a cause for divisions. It must, therefore, be again insisted that so long as men have such a variety of faiths, such differ- ent ecclesiastical constitutions, education, hopes, interests, weaknesses and degrees of light, it is impossible for all to be of one mind. And, therefore, although variety of opinions is impossible to be cured under a variety of creeds made by men of different minds, yet this bane of the Christian religion might possibly be cured, not by attempting to unite their beliefs, for that is to be disposed of, but by destroying that which has caused all these mis- chiefs and divisions — that is to say, destroy all the men-made creeds in the world and then to plant ourselves upon the immutable word of God and let it alone be our man of counsel. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 365 CHAPTER XIII. OF THE NATURE OF ECCLESIASTICAL HERESY, AND HOW IT SHOULD BE TREATED IN CHURCH GOVERNMENT. BAPTISTS have always considered that the protection of the churches against heresy is within the province of ecclesiastical government, and should be within the first sanctions of disciplinary laws. The preservation of the churches from the great sin of heresy becomes the primary object and care of the whole denomination. And thus it is that the reciprocal duties of protection and allegiance form the foundation and support of all ecclesiasti- cal government. The general welfare, peace and concord of the denomina- tion is blended in the security of the churches from this withering curse. Nor can Baptist churches fall a sacrifice to heresy, sown broadcast among them, without involving the whole denomination. Hence it follows that heresy, which in every instance strikes ultimately at the well-being of true church government, is the worst offence that can be committed by one pro- fessing to be a Baptist ; because it is of all offences the most audacious in its nature, and most extensively pernicious in its consequences, being a most fatal and entire renunciation of faith, duty and allegiance to the churches of our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ. While uniformity iu opinions cannot be the result of force, or discipline, nor general orthodoxy be the creature of mandatory rules, yet it falls within the duty and prerogative of every church to preserve itself from error and destruction, and the end certainly justifies the means. If the Saviour's prediction has been verified, of which there can be no doubt, that the gates of hell shall not prevail against the church, we must conclude that there has always been a never-interrupted succession of men from the apostles' time, believing and professing the true faith of the gosj^el, and practicing the true polity of the apostolic churches. Hence we con- clude that there has been, by divine providence, founded and preserved in the world, churches which have held all things precisely and indispensably necessary to salvation, and nothing destructive of it. It is equally true, as Paul says, there have been those who changed the tru*h of God into a lie. No organic body of believers can claim to be the true church of Christ that can- not thus produce a perpetual succession of professors, being of a oneness of will, faith and practice, which in all essential and fundamental points of be- lief, have agreed one w^ith another, and disagreeing in nothing fundamental. It is certain that a church remaining a true church cannot fall into funda- mental errors, because when it does so it is no longer a church, its candle- stick, or church state, being thereby removed. However, the want of a sue- Z66 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; cession of ministers or people holding always the same doctrine, is not always the surest sign of orthodoxy, but the want of truth, and holding of error, can make or prove any man or church heretical ; for, in the very nature of things, it may be impossible to prove satisfactorily such a succession of be- lievers. It is natural for the mind and soul of man to long for and feast upon the truth, as much so as it is for the appetite to relish wholesome food. On the other hand, heresy is as distasteful to the soul as bitter food is nau- seating to the stomach. It is the very essence of every true church to be the maintainor and teacher of all necessary truth, and certainly no organic body of men can no more be a church without the truth, than anything can be a man and have no life in him. Heresy bears the same relation to the religion and polity of the churches that treason does to the sovereign power of a nation. In national govern- ments treason has always been considered the highest and most atrocious crime of which a citizen can be guilty. It is the offence of attempting to overthrow the government of the nation to which the offender owes alle- giance, and betraying it into the hands of a foreign power. Hence it follows that whosoever does not adhere to the free and independent form of church government, as set up and practiced by the apostles, is no less a heretic than if he should deny a point resting and sounding in belief and faith alone, for God has methods as well as principles. A church that should attempt to undermine, subvert and overthrow the apostolic form of church government, would meet with as summary condemnation at the hands of Baptists as if they were to deny some point of faith considered essential to the Christian religion. For the church is the ground and pillar of the truth, and if the foundation be destroyed there is nothing upon which the truth can rest and nothing to support the superstructure, which is nothing less than the truth of God. Men living under the same form of government may differ about the proper construction to be placed upon the organic law under which they live, and yet be loyal citizens, so long as they do not unlawfully attempt to change the framework of the government — to put a construction upon the law which subverts the government itself. There is as much in the church of Christ that relates to practice and to polity, as to doctrine, so much so that Baptists make the due administration of the government to be as neces- sary and essential to constitute a true church as matters of belief ; as the chiefest part of Christian perfection consists more in action than in barren speculation, in doing than knowing Heresy is defined to be an ecclesiastical offence, committed by a Baptist, consisting in holding of a false opinion repugnant to, and subversive of. Bap- tist church government, concerning some point of doctrine clearly revealed in the Scriptures, and absolutely essential to one's salvation, or else of most high importance to the Christian religion and polity of the churches, which is contrary to the recognized standards of belief in the denomination, the promulgation of which disturbs the peace and harmony of the churches. It is not an easy thing to lay down definite rules by which to determine whether a doctrine taught be a heresy or not. One thing is evident, we cannot single 367 out any point of doctrine, so great or small, that the denial thereof will make a man an heretic if it be not found in the Scriptures, and sufficiently pro- mulgated as a divine truth. In its broadest sense heresy is a voluntary error against that which God has revealed as truth. It does not matter whether the error concerns points, in themselves, great or small, fundamental or not fundamental. Any and all truth, although, ever so small, must be believed and taken in by faith, as soon as we know that it is a part of divine reve- lation. In the treatment of offences against the laws of the land, crimes have been divided into two kinds, to wit, felonies and misdemeanors ; felonies being of the gravest and most heinous kind, for the commission of which the law visits the severest penalties ; while misdemeanors are those of a less degree of guilt, and for which a milder punishment is meted out. Following this analogy ecclesiastical offences may be very properly divided into heresies and errors ; heresies being those graver crimes against the peace and dignity of the churches, which strike at the eternal life of the believer, and at the very existence of the churches of Christ ; while errors are those sins against the true faith of the gospel which tend to disturb and to divide the unity of the churches. Baptists have doctrines fundamental to Christian faith and church government, to destroy either is to destroy the church itself. They relate to religion and to church pohty. Those that relate to rehgion are such as are essential to salvation, grounded on the direction of the Holy Spirit. Those relating to polity are such as are repugnant to, and subversive of Baptist church government, and to that peace and unity which is the rightful heri- tage of the same. It is very evident that in the primitive times of the churches, heresies were most prolific. In those early times those governments, wherein Christianity first took root, were full of philosophers holding vain theories concerning both church polity and religion, many of whom were converted to the faith of the gospel, some really and others feignedly. Doubtless many of those early pastors of the primitive churches were chosen from among these philosophers, because they were esteemed learned in disputation and oratory, and thereby the better able to defend and propagate the gospel. Some of these pastors doubtless still retained many of the false doctrines which they had taken up by the authority of their former masters, whom they still held in reverence, and each in his interpretation of the Scriptures drew them to his own heresy, and with a bias to their former philosophy. As to church polity, they were not sufficiently skilled in it to know the utility of guarded opinions in keeping pure their form of church government. And thus at first entered heresy into the churches. But heresy exists in the world, and has always existed, not- withstanding the human mind is made for the truth. While aU orthodox Baptists believe that the Bible is true in its verbal and formal statement, yet they do not hold this reverential opinion of their articles of faith. And when it is asserted that articles of faith, widely held and long retained, whether written or unwritten, have Scriptural truth in them, we mean only substantial truth. Without substantial truth there 368 A TREATISE UPOiT BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; would be notliing in tliem to feed the mind upon, and thej would not be retained ; and if they were not more or less erroneous in form and statement, it would simply imply infallibility on the part of those who gave them form, which nothing has save the Bible itself. The Bible from which the creed of the church is supposed to be taken is infallible and free from error, but there is a possibility that articles of faith may not contain the very essence of the truth. Articles of faith being the formulas of the church as to doctrine, it ought to be sufficient if a man in his teaching cling to the substance, knowing that the vital truth lies there. It is different when we come to consider the Bible, for we are bound to teach that the essence of the truth not only lies in that holy text, but likewise in its verbal statement, and therefore, we are bound to cling to the minutest syllable as an infallible guide in life and doc- trine—the Bible itself being the truth, and articles of faith are to be con- sidered as the truth stated, which being held by all Baptists everywhere, and at all times, are held as standards and must be substantially true. Some doctrines are so necessary to the salvation of man, and are such that their rectitude is so perfect, their holiness so entire, their usefulness so uni- versal, that a church of Christ cannot subsist, nor a man be a Christian, without an unqualified belief in them. They are such which no man can alter, and which no man can ignore, and no minister can refuse to preach. If he does, he undermines the very foundations upon which rests the churches of Christ. Happily for Christianity these fundamental articles of faith necessary to salvation are few in number, and easily understood. If we ob- serve these necessary symbols of belief in the Scriptures, we shall find them very short. Repent ye, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand ; lord, I be- lieve that thou art the Christ, the Son of God ; Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God; We believe, and are sure that thou art Christ, the Son of the liv- ing God ; This is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent ; That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. The substance of all of which is : Repentance towards God, and faith in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, coupled with a good and pious life as evidence of the faith professed. These are some of the more pronounced doctrines necessary and just in themselves, mutually believed by all churches, and which all may consecrate and enforce by their manners and customs. There are other doctrines of a more indifferent nature, respecting which the churches are equally agreed upon, especially those relating to ecclesiastical polity. We call them neces- sary doctrines because the churches are absolutely bound to observe them. They are no less binding upon individuals as upon churches, and all arc alike answerable to God for any disbelief in them, under whatever relation they act. Orthodoxy consists in the true doctrines concerning the Deity, and the things of another life, and in the worship appointed to the honor and glory of Christ our Saviour. So far as it is seated in the heart, it is an affair of the conscience, in which every one ought to be directed by his own enlight- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 369 ened understanding ; but so far as it is external it is an affair of tlie cliurclies. Man is essentially and necessarily free to make use of his own choice in mat- ters of faith and religion. Plis belief is not to be commanded. It must then be concluded that liberty of conscience is a natural and inviolable right. But he should take care not to extend this liberty beyond its just bounds. In ecclesiastical affairs, a believer having once entered a church, has only a right to be free from compulsion, but not by any means claim that of openly doing and saying what he pleases, without regard to the con- sequences it may produce on the churches. Seeing that a church has been defined to be a body of baptized believers, having a oneness of will, faith and practice, it ought to exhibit to God but one public doctrine, -svhich the churches have, when it authorizes it, and nothing else to be taught by its authorized ministers in a public way. And that is a public doctrine, the preaching of which is uniform. For those doc- trines that are taught differently by different ministers, cannot be said to be a uniform doctrine. And, therefore, when many sorts of doctrines, both of which may, and one must be false, are allowed, proceeding from the different opinions of men, it cannot be said that there is any uniform doctrine, nor that the churches have any standard of doctrine at all. And because the Scripture from whence all doctrine is drawn has its interpretations by long custom of the churches, that doctrine is to be taken as standard, public and authoritative which the churches shall erect, and that alone taught and used for such by the public ministers of religion. The whole denomination is a party to this uniform interpretation, and, therefore, all the churches are bound by the decision. In the uniform interpretation of the Scriptures, as to doctrine, there is no contrariety of beliefs, or belief in contradictories, for both parts of a contradiction cannot possibly be true. There is but one doctrine in God's word, and every church then was, and now is, bound to use its utmost endeavor to discern the true from the false. And every convert entering a Baptist church ought to know and consider that in this system of church government the church is Christ's representa- tive on earth, and has next to him the authority of ruling his people and should observe for a rule that doctrine, which that church, in the name of Christ, has commanded to be taught ; and, therefore, to examine and try the truth of those doctrines which pretended false teachers shall at any time ad- vance, and if they find it contrary to that standard established by the cus- tomary law of the churches, to do as they did to those that came to Moses, and complained that there were some who prophesied in the camp, whose authority to do so they doubted, and leave to the church, as they did to Moses, to uphold or silence them ; and if the church that gave them au- thority to preach and teach, should silence them, then no more to recognize them, or if the church should uphold them, then obey them as ministers, whom God has given a part of His Spirit, calling them into the ministry. For when we are not willing to take the standards erected by the churches of Christ, we must take our private opinions for the doctrine w^e mean to be governed by, otherwise we must be led about by every wind of doctrine that 24 370 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUIIISPRUDE2TCE ; can bewitcli us into treason against primitive cliurcli government, and into rebellion against Christ, and by this means reduce everything sacred in religion to discord and disunion. Before any man can enter the Baptist ministry he has to be a member of a Baptist church, and the church intending to clothe him with ministerial functions customarily calls a presbytery of ministers, from sister churches, ■which has power, not to force and obhge him to preach a certain doctrine' but to make known to him the doctrines of the church, and inquire of Lim if he be content and willing to preach that doctrine, and in case of refusal, tbe church may deny him ordination. To force him to accept opinions Avhich in conscience he cannot preach, is against both the law of God and nature, and especially would be rej^rehensible in Baptists — that people who have ever boasted of liberty of conscience. Hence there is no violence done the con- science of him who seeks to enter this ministry. He knowingly and volun- tarily accepts the teachings of the church as true, and divests himself of any private opinion he may have entertained, contrary to those teachings. He subordinates his will to that of Christ, to that of the church and becomes her minister to teach her doctrine. Should he violate this solemn covenant by teaching a doctrine subversive of either the received religion, or polity of the churches, he violates his most solemn trust, and does himself and the churches a great injury, It would be impossible to have an orthodox ministry and a denomination, unless there were some common ground on which all ministers and all churches could agree, and so far as there is a common belief, just so far they have a creed or covenant. If Baptists were to ignore tliis standard of doctrine, and allow it to mean one thing to one man, and something else to another, having authority to preach, soon we would be at large in the bound- less field of speculation and heresy, and the landmarks of Baptist church government would soon be removed, and the churches plunged into chaos and confusion. Religion is no further an affair of the church than as it is exterior, and publicly professed, provided, he who professes it shows liimself to be a regen- erate man ; religion of the heart can only depend on the conscience. The church has no right to discipline regenerate persons who are otherwise pious for their private opinions, when those persons either take no pains to divulge them, nor to obtain followers. For really men are not heretics because they oppose divers truths supposed to be embraced in the articles of faith of the church, but only such a truth as is an essential part of the gospel of Christ. But for the sake of the peace and order of the churches many errors, though they be not damnable or fundamental, are to be included in the category of heresies to be suppressed by the churches. It is the diversity of opinions contrary to the standards of the churches that produce disorders, and fatal dissensions in the churches, that are reprehensible, and for this reason the churches ought to allow but one and the same doctrine publicly preached. Public worship is appointed for the edification of the church in glorifying God ; but any worship counteracts that end and ceases to be laudable on 4;hose occasions when it only produces disturbances, and gives offence to the OE, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 371 denomination. If any minister who feels himself called to preach the gospel, believes it absolutely necessary to preach another doctrine contrary to the denominational standards, let him first quit the church, ^vhere, for the sake of unity and uniformity, he is not allowed to perform his duty according to the dictates of his own conscience ; common decency dictates that he should withdraw from the church and go and join those who profess the same reli- gious views with himself. 'No man in this free country, even after he has en- dorsed a creed and joined a church, is bound by any human or ecclesiastical authority to adhere to the creed or the church a single day longer than he pleases. He is at perfect liberty to withdraw at any moment, and that with or without giving a reason for his conduct, as he thinks proper. But what becomes of the liberty of the church in which he thus seeks to remain, con- trary to its wishes and comfort, and to its real injury ? The great sin of heresy with wliich he is chargeable pales into insignificance as compared with the offence of remaining in the, communion of a church whose doctrines he has maligned and traduced, to the disturbance of the peace of the whole de- nomination. He has no more right to insist on remaining in the church, and being permitted publicly to oppose what he has solemnly vowed to receive and support, than a member of any voluntary association which he entered under certain engagements, but with which he no longer agrees, has a right obstinately to retain his connection with it, and to avail himself of the influ- ence which his connection gives him to tear it in pieces. Ecclesiastical heresy, then, is notliing more or less than a private opinion obstinately maintained by those entrusted with guidance in matters of religion and polity, that is contrary to the Scriptures, which the church has authorized to be taught. It does not consist in a total denial of Christianity, but of some of its principle doctrines, publicly and obstinately avowed. It is the right sys- tem of belief. It is a hard tiling to define, except \dewed from the stand- point of ecclesiastical government, for it is a relative term, and what is taken as heresy in a Baptist church might be orthodoxy held by those outside its pale. Viewed except from this standpoint it means nothing, for in many essential particulars no two denominations believe alike. Neither do we understand that orthodoxy is the belief of the majority of a church, other- wise truth would change as majorities change. Neither does orthodoxy mean the oldest doctrine held by the church, for many doctrines generally held in the early churches are universally rejected now. The oldest doctrine is cer- tainly not the truest, neither is a lie any better because it is an old one. But if orthodoxy dees not mean the system held by the majority, nor the oldest docti-ine of the church, it certainly means the essential fundamental truths of the Bible held by the whole Baptist denomination in all ages and times, or that which has been believed always by all Baptists and everywhere. Any attempt to define orthodoxy except from a denominational standpoint de- stroys it. But looked at from the standpoint of the churches, we find that there are certain great convictions underlying a church creed which are fundamental, to believe which a man is to be esteemed orthodox, and to deny which he is to be adjudged an heretic. 372 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Orthodoxy are those doctrines which have had a deep and an abiding hold upon the denominational mind over broad spaces and through long periods. Heresy is transient and effervescent ; orthodoxy only is permanent. Men do not adhere to heresy for its own sake, for it is sickening, but for the sake of something with which it is connected. After a while, under the scrutiny of the ever-watchful denominational eye, errors are eschewed and the truth retained. The substance of what a man believes is the fact inwardly held by the mind ; often the error consists in the verbal statement of what it con- ceives to be the truth. And in trying a man for heresy we ought always to be able to make this distinction, for there may be in the preaching and teaching of a man substantial truth, yet formal error ; that is to say, he may have an erroneous way of stating the truth. Many errors are mere blunders of phraseology, and the contentions about them are over words and their meaning rather than principles. The accused may not, through defects of mind and training, be able to distinguish between the spirit and the letter of the text. The profound problems of religion, the obscurity of the language by which they are revealed, the differences in minds, and the influences of education are among the things that tend to errors, but not always to here- sies. Simple errors may be no more than mistakes of the intellect. Heresy poisons and corrupts that which it professes to love and revere; error mis- leads, it is true, but it is not tainted with treason against Christ and the church. Heresy involves a voluntary and a persistent perversion of the truth. Heresy comes in conflict with fundamentals, while error has to do with non-essentials. Heresy differs from schism in that schismatics volun- tarily leave the church, while heretics have to be cast out and driven awaj. Hence to be an heretic a man must adhere to his error, though he knows that the church will condemn him. It involves a conscientious knowledge of his error, and a pertinacious wish to err. If an heretic preaches good things, as some do, among his errors, it matters not, it is not always lawful to hear him, unless when we are out of danger of his abuses also. We might listen to truth from the devil, if we were out of his danger; but because the devil is so deceptive and always tells the truth, and even quotes the Scriptures, for evil purposes, it is not safe to hear him. Besides, although it is lawful to believe a truth which an heretic tells us, yet it is not lavv'ful to go to school to one, to sit at his feet to learn of him, be- cause he that does so, makes him his master and thus surrenders himself to God's enemy. For faith and heresy, truth and error stand as the two great opposites in the religion of the gospel of Christ. Man is united to him by truth and faith, while error and heresy are those things which separate him from the Saviour. It is an essential element in every heresy that the heretic must contradict some fundamental doctrine of the Scriptures, which has been clearly stated, and become a part of the defined faith of the church. In making a statement of the doctrine of the Bible we may mistake the truth fmd say what is absolutely false ; it may be a contradiction, and in two con- tradictory statements both cannot be true. Errors of understanding and of insight are to be considered as defects ; but the errors of statement may be OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 373 positive heresy, when uttered dehberately, and they are tenaciously adhered to. But there may be formal error, or error of statement, even where there is substantial truth ; for truth may be overstated, or understated, or mis- stated, and a false expression given to a true observation. After all the faith of the church becomes the touchstone, or test, of heresy, although it must be allowed to every heretic on trial to appeal from the formulas of faith to the Scriptures, but not from the Scriptures to the formulas of faith ; for articles of faith while they are the standards of belief, yet they are not an infallible epitome of the Scriptures, and therefore heresy is not to be tested alone by them. Ministers are but Christ's deputies and the churches ministering officials in His name and by its authority to preach the gospel and that alone. He? etics busy themselves with disputes, and disputes make heretics, but he who in Christ's name preaches the fundamental doctrine of repentance towards God and faith in Christ, and launches not out in the wide field of metaphysics, and philosophy, is truly orthodox, and neither becomes a heretic himself nor makes any by his teaching. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men. A church, or a council, in trying a case of heresy, ought to be able to distinguish between the minister who preaches an heretical doctrine through these vain deceits, and seeks to spread the same and obtain followers, and a layman, who might entertain the same views with no purpose to utter and disseminate them, although, really, to be an heretic in belief and conscience, is a sin, though it never appears in act, word or deed ; for God who sees the thoughts of man can lay it at his charge, but till it appear in something done, or said, it is not heresy proper. In- ward intentions which never appear by any outward act, have no place for human accusation, and hence the church can take no jurisdiction, for the church cannot judge of doctrine but by outward actions and utterances. Hence to laymen, the church grants them a fuller enjoyment of liberty of conscience and religious belief, if they be Christians, and are otherwise pious and orderly members of the church. The church ought to be slow to exclude all such private members who may err from the true and intended sense of some obscure and ambiguous text of Scripture, because if they desire and en- deavor to find the truth, and seek not to spread their views, no church ought to be swift to discipline them for errors who desire and endeavor to find the truth. Therefore, they who would seek to arraign a private member, who is a regenerate man, for every failure to believe everything taught by the church, are not therefore to be accounted zealous of the faith, their strife, being but carnal, for they are not questions so much of faith, wherein men seek such mastery over one another. But as a matter of obedience, and out of fidelity to his covenant obligations, every Baptist ought to accept the whole teachings of the church, and he is as much bound not to publicly and pertinaciously oppose those doctrines, as a regularly ordained minister ; if he should do so, they are both to be judged by the same rules. But when a minister has once by covenant transferred his right of judg- ing of doctrine to the chui'ch, those opinions, which the church demands that 374 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDE:S-CE ; he shall preach, are no less his own opinions, than those of the church. There must be on earth some judicatory to apply the square, the plumb and the level to all teaching, to see whether what is taught be really the doctrine. While the Scriptures are a rule by which to decide all cases of heresy, yet they cannot be said to submit themselves to this alone ; if they do they pro- pose no more than to submit themselves to their own, or some other private interpretation thereof, or else why should there be any church government at all instituted, if Scripture itself could do the office of a judge in contro- versies of heresy? So when we see any one suspected of heresy unwilling to submit the same to the arbitrament of the church, it may be concluded that they seek not alone the liberty of conscience, but liberty of action ; not only so, but a further liberty of persuading others to his opinions, which if allowed, is destructive of the very essence of Baptist church government. So to maintain doctrines contrary to the teaching oi the Scriptures is a greater heresy in an ordained minister than in a private person. It is likewise a greater heresy in a professor of theology, in our seminaries, to maintain and teach any principle contrary to true doctrine than the same fact in another man ; also in a man that has such reputation for wisdom as that his counsels are followed, or his actions imitated. So in active evangelists their doctrines are the more hurtful if heresies than local ministers, for they corrupt but one body, while evangelists sow the seeds of discord broadcast, and should there- fore be the more promptly silenced. The church ought to be slow to take every fresh interpretation of the Scriptures from those who are reputed to be wise. A minister ought not to think that his skill in Latin, Greek or Hebrew, if he have any, gives him a privilege to impose upon his brethren in his own sense, every obscure place in Scripture ; nor ought he as often as he has imagined some fine interpreta- tion, not before thought of by others, to think he had it by inspiration, for he cannot be assured that his interpretation is true. As most of these curi- ous questions in divinity are first started in our schools of divinity, those trusted men, standing at their head, ought to bend and direct their efforts towards teaching the old doctrines and following the old land-marks rather than wrangling about new interpretations of the Scriptures, for they are not always the best to interpret the Scriptures to the rest, nor ought the rest every time to take untried their new interpretation of the word of God. For whatever is fundamental in religious doctrine, or polity, the church has long since interpreted and needs no further interpretation. All else is but the study of the curious and the cause of heresy. It all has a tendency to make the plainer sort of ministers, upon whose shoulders the Lord has placed the greater burden of preaching the gospel, whom the Scriptures have taught belief in Christ, love towards God and love for man, to forget their fidehty to the simple teachings of the gospel, and to place their belief in the disput- able doctrines of those who are often w^ise above that which is written. There is a certain sense in which the teachings of those standing at the head of our theological seminaries may be said to be the oracles of God, and there is another sense in which they must be regarded often as the conceits of fal- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 375 lible and short-sighted men ; and it is no wonder that their value will be very often estimated according as they are regarded from one or the other point of view. I have the greatest respect for the piety and learning of these great and good men ; but, as it seems to me, the truth is in safer hands when confided to those who do not make such pretensions to learning, and in the hands of those who have not been so engrossed in teaching philosophy and metaphysics as often to overleap the truth and substitute these vagaries in the place thereof. It is very evident from the New Testament that in the primitive churches, not merely from the necessity of their condition, but from principle, the means of correcting heresy were more moral than coercive. From Titus we learn that it was not until admonition, reproof and instruction were ex- hausted, did the church resort to excommunication. A man luho is an heretic after the first and second admonition, reject. But to reject in this place does not always necessarily mean to excommunicate, but to give over admonish- ing him, to let him alone, as one to be convinced by himself. ■ Peter and Paul, though their controversy was great, yet they did not cast one another out of the church. But in those early times there were other pastors who were not so charitable as Diotrephes who would cast out of the church such as John himself, for it is said out of pride he took the pre-eminence, so early had am- bition entered the churches. All churches in dealing with heresy ought to remember that heresy of the heart is at least as bad and reprehensible as heresy of the head. Often we see two members of the same church, one of whom thoroughly believes in every part of the Bible — perfectly orthodox, but lives such a life that every one calls him justly a mean man. The other possibly is not so orthodox, but lives thoroughly up to all the principles of the church and the commands of God, and makes use of his belief to disturb the peace of the churches ; which, on general principles, ought to be excommunicated ? A great deal of bad theology is sometimes mixed up with good living, and a great of bad living is often mingled with good theology. Of course this could not be adopted as a rule in the trial of heresy, but certainly it ought to have its weight. Hence we might conclude that a false creed, whether written or unwritten, is not always the germ from which springs a false life. The most deadly heresy, and the one which does the most harm is the heresy, that one can he a Christian without living a Christian. If a man love me, he ivill keep my words. Inasmuch as ye did it not unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye did it not unto me. It is the design of the devil to make us in love with our own opinions and he makes us to call them faith and religion, that we may be proud of our own superior knowledge and understanding; but why is not any vicious habit in a church member as bad, or worse than a false opinion ? Why are we sometimes so zealous against those we call heretics, and yet great friends of drunkards, and fornicators, swearers and idle persons in the Lord's vine- yard ? Is it because we are commanded by the apostles to reject a heretic, after the first and second admonition, and not to bid such an one God-speed ? 376 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ,* Has not tlie apostle spoken as fiercely against communion with fornicators, and all practical disorders, as against communion with heretics ? If any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner^ with such man do not eat. These practices are contrary to the will of God, and those who practice them live as contrary to the laws of Christianity as a heretic. Besides we know what a drunkard is, and what it is to live an immoral life, but sometimes it is not so easy to ascertain what heresy is, in all the doubtful questions that agitate the wise and curious. Now ought we not to turn the tables and be as zealous for a good life as we are to look after heretics, who are themselves to be suppressed and avoided ? If a man be not a public teacher, whose busi- ness it is made to instruct and make disciples, and who otherwise lives a pious life, should fall into error, ought we not to be as compassionate to him and not add affliction to his error, and not destroy him, but to bear with him meekly, which is a precept of charity ? In all the animadversions against errors, made by the apostles, no pious person was ever condemned, but something that was seductive and had a tendency to disturb the peace of the churches, and when to their error they added impiety. So long as the error was entertained with charity and with- out human ends and secular interests, all was well, but when the errorist was a public minister, and became pertinacious in the maintenance of such error, to the disturbance of the peace of the churches, and with this design taught the same doctrine which private members might in the simplicity of their hearts, then he turned heretic, then all such were termed by the apostle, Seducers of minds, who seduce whole houses, teaching things they ought not, for filthy lucre^s sake. These indeed were not to be endured, but to be silenced, and severely rebuked and avoided. When any grevious error is voluntarily chosen, contrary to the known standards of the churches, and preached with the design to stir up strife, or if it has that effect, whether in- tended or not, and if it be a design of ambition, and the making of a faction, or if it be of pride and love of pre-eminence, as it was in Diotrephese, or out of eccentricity and peevishness of disposition, or out of a contentious spirit ; in all these cases he who preaches such errors is to be treated as an heretic and a common seducer of men's minds. If his opinions did commence upon pride, or is nourished by jealousy, or covetousness, or continues through stupid carelessness, or is increased by pertinacity, or is confirmed by obstinacy, then innocency of the error is dissipated, his innocency is changed into an offence, and merits its own punishment and is self-condemnatory. But in many of the quarrels over questions of heresy it is often perceiv- able that it is not so much a difference of opinion that is the cause of the ruptures and upheavals incident to church government, but a want of charity ; it is not the variety of understandings, but the jealousies and dis- union of the wills and affections of those who engage in them. Often opinions commence, and are upheld according as our terms are served and our several interests are preserved, and there is no cure for us but piety and more of the grace of God. An orthodox life with a happy admixture of OR, TEE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 377 charity will make our belief orthodox, and not only so, but it will often make the belief of our brother unobjectionable. If we consult not humanity with all its petty hatreds, jealousies and imperfections in the choice of opinions, but search for truth without designs, and then be as careful to have charity for the opinions of others, we are sure we should find out more truth in our brother by this means, and thereby avoid many of the heartaches arising from what we now conceive to be heresy in him. There is a wide difference between ignorance and knowledge, and those who discuss a subject without explaining or proving anything with distinctness, making coufusion worse confounded, owe a great part of their obscurity and in conclusiveness to a neglect of definitions, and to an inaccurate use of language, forgetting how much ideas depend on words. Improper terms are chains which bind men to unreasonable utterances and practices. Errors and heresies are never so difficult to be destroyed, as when they have their root in language. Every improper term contains the germ of fallacious propositions ; it forms a cloud, which conceals the nature of the thing, and presents a frequently invincible obstacle to the discovery and understanding of the truth. Such errors cloud the minds of both the author and his readers, of the teacher and his disciples, of the preacher and his audience ; and from their very minuteness, and seeming insignificance, are only the more difficult to discover, and the less wiUingly acknowledged ; as people are indignant at being supposed hable to be duped by a trick apparently so inartificial, or to be groping in the dark, or to be eagerly searching at a distance for that which lies at their feet. From this source come heresies, schisms and divisions, and partings of com- munions, and sometimes persecutions and the dissolutions of all charity and fellowship in churches. Notice it, and you will find that nearly all our church troubles proceed from this, that all men are not of one mind and cannot see things alike, for that is neither necessary nor possible. But when every opinion is made an article of faith in order to denounce some supposed error in our brother, then every article is a good ground for a quarrel, and every quarrel makes a faction, and in the course of time every faction makes a schism. When things come to this posture in church afiairs we think we do not God's service, except we oppose our brother. By this want of charity it is to be hoped we preserve the body, if not the soul of religion, or being cold in charity, which is the greatest of ah the Christian virtues, we lose the reward of faith. But we would not be considered an apologist for errors or heresy, only we plead for charity ; for it cannot be denied that heresy is a very grievous crime— a calling of God's veracity in question, and imputing to him false things, and a destruction also of a good hfe and manners ; because upon the truth of, and faith in the creed of the church, obedience is built, for, after all, truth and faith are the moral causes of obedience. Heresy, therefore is a great sin, and he who is guilty of it is a great criminal against God, and in his sight, and every Christian should be as zealous against it as he can and employ every spiritual weapon against it. It has its degrees of malignity, and is as much more sinful than any act of personal vice as the soul is more 378 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JURISPRUDENCE; noble titan the body, and a false doctrine is greater in dimension and extent than a single act of impunity. A single act of sin debauches the individual, but heresy is an unholy warfare against God and the church, and stands in the same relation to the church as treason does to the government. It wages an unrighteous war against the truth, and slays its thousands, and is like digging down or undermining the foundation of a house, and all the superstructure of hope and charity falls with it. Of all crimes against the church, it is the least excusable, for the true faith is the most easily kept, "svith the least trouble, of any grace in the world. There can be no pleasure in heresy, but when a man, by racking his brain, conjures up some strange metaphysical opinion and preaches it to the disturbance of the churches, it carries with it its own punishment. It is like stepping out of one's way to pick a quarrel with a friend, or sowing seeds of discord in one's o^YJl fam- ily. He who does it can have but one satisfaction, if satisfaction can be taken in such things, and that is, he can look over the wreck he has wrought and truly say. Behold ! what havoc I have made of the churches. In every system of theology, and especially church government, it is of as great importance to know the nature of heresy, what it is, and how it should be treated, as to know the nature and integrity of faith. Faith and heresy stand opposite to each other. He who takes faith for a purely intellectual habit, and forgets that it is the gift of God, has so little room, and so narrow a capacity, that he cannot lodge all those self-made opinions which they pre- tend are of her family. If faith can be thus received and considered, it comes not from God, but from the evil one. For although it be necessary for us to believe whatever we know to be revealed of God, yet it is not neces- sary, concerning many things, to know that God has revealed them ; that is, we ma;y be ignorant of, or doubt concerning many things, and indifferently maintain either view, when the question is not concerning God's veracity, or we do not impute to him false things. That which is of the foundation of faith, or is so closely annexed thereto, that it endangers the foundation, that only is necessary. All else is to be considered non-essential, in respect to the constitution of faith and need not be drav/n out, but may remain in the bowels of the fundamental truths, without danger to any person, unless some other accident or .circumstance, makes it then necessary and claims an explicit belief in the same way that the fundamental truths must be be- lieved, without which neither could the thing be acted, nor the proposition understood. For instance, if we believe in Christ, and have a saving knowl- edge and faith in his blood, there is annexed to this faith a like belief in his miraculous conception, his birth, crucifixtion, death, burial, resurrection and ascension, besides many other beliefs growing out of these fundamental truths, which qualify Christ for our Saviour, as well as makes us his faith- ful and obedient servants. Whatsoever is deducible from these articles of fundamental truths is necessary to be believed explicitly, especially by preachers and public teachers whose duty it is made, by reason of their call- ing, to know the truth, and to promulgate it, as it was taught by Christ and his apostles ; but it is not certain that every private member of the church OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 379 shall be able to deduce whatsoever is either immediately or certainly deduci- ble from these premises ; and since salvation is promised to the explicit belief of these fundamental truths, it cannot be seen how any church can justify the making the way to heaven narrower than Christ has made it, by exacting of every one a definite and precise belief in all matters not neces- sary, the way to heaven being already so narrow that there are few that find it. For Christ and his apostles concealed nothing that was necessary to the integrity of Christian faith, or the salvation of our souls. Christ declared all the will of our Father, and the apostles were stewards and dispensers of the mysteries and concealed nothing, but taught the whole doctrine of Christ. If they had not, the term heresy could not now be applied to any teacher who might attempt to make up that faith entire, which the apostles left imperfect. But he who imagines that these holy men overlooked some doctrine necessary to be believed, and sets his wits to work to evolve that so- called doctrine, and forces it upon men's consciences, sets a snare to entrap his brother. The rule of Baptists has ever been, that nothing is necessary either to be believed, or done, unless it be in the Scriptures laid down. For if the Scrip- tures be the entire rule of faith and practice, that is, of the whole service and worship of God, then nothing is an article of faith, nothing can be taken as an example in church government, that is not wholly set down in the Scrip- tures. That which was the faith at first is contained in the Scriptures, and the same was then, is now, and shall ever be the same. As it was in the beginning, is the watchword of every Baptist. For to what purpose was the Scriptures furnished, if in all questions of faith and new springs of error we should not be permitted to go to the teachings of our Saviour, and the writings of those inspired men he set apart to give the law of the church? For no divine truth is warrantable, but what they taught and no necessity is to be pretended but what they imposed. Whatever they taught is our creed. There can be nothing added to it, no, not even for the purpose of condemn- ing what we may conceive to be a new heresy. Whatever was against this was against the faith. Anything else may be reproved, if it be false, but it ought not to be so reproved by adding to the creed new articles for that purpose. There is no heresy, it matters not how infamous or slight, but this creed is sufficient for its condemnation. There is no need of a Mcene council to propound it, nor any Thirty-Nine articles to explain it. The symbols of our faith and of our hope, which, being delivered by the apostles, is not written with paper and ink, but in the fleshy tables of our hearts, by the finger of him who is the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. It often happens that truth and falsehood are so tempered in a heretic, that truth may lose much of its reputation by its mixture with error, and the error may become more plausible by reason of its being joined with the truth. And since errors are sins when they are contrary to charity and the Scriptures, although thus mixed mth truth, that interpretation is the truest and most innocent that best promotes the cause of truth. Matters of heresy are equally punishable by the church, whether they be mixed with truth or 380 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; not, and if an heretic could escape the censures of the church by pretend- ing to innocency, by persuading himself that what he preaches is mixed with gospel truth, there were as great a gate opened to all disorders as will seduce all the churches in the land. And therefore the apostles made no scruple of condemning such persons as heretics, who dogmatized errors under the pretense that there was some truth mixed with them, and that they were preached for the good of their charges. The truth is, some men are so wedded to, and in love with their own fancies and whimsical opinions, as to think they need give no heed to the standards of truth and belief erected by the churches, and by them authorized to be taught, but that the whole fabric of theology depends upon the preaching of their own metaphy- sical and philosophical vagaries, and whosoever does not believe like them- selves, are to be considered as enemies to the truth, and are to be won over to their way of thinking, although in so doing the churches are rent in twain. If the false things they preach be against faith, that is, a destruction of any part of the foundation, it is with zeal to be resisted, and we have for it an apostolic warrant, Contend earnestly for the faith. But as the doctrine recedes further from the foundation, our contention should become less earnest, for the necessity is not so great ; the lightness of an article should be considered with the weight of the precept of charity. And therefare there are some errors to be reproved rather by a private friend than a public cen- sure, and the persons not avoided but admonished in the tenderness of brotherly love, and their doctrine rejected, but not their communion. For there is no heresy in the Scriptures called damnable, for which we ought to condemn a man, but what is impious, or directly destructive of the faith of the gospel, or the body of Christianity, such of which Peter speaks. But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. Such as these are truly heresies, and such as these are certainly damnable. But there are no degrees either of the truth, or falsehood, every true proposition being alike true. But that an error is more or less to be condemned and cen- surable, is not told us in the Scriptures, but is left to be determined by the person, and his manners, by the position he holds in the church, by his education, his influence, by the pertinacity with which he preaches the error, and especially the discord it occasions. Now because some doctrines are absolutely necessary, and some are clearly not necessary, the church enjoins the preaching of those necessary, and in those indifferent a greater liberty is allowed and left to men indifferently, and in the preaching of them, we are to take into consideration the men who preach them, as well as the doctrines they preach, and the evil they do. But heresy being a work of the flesh, and all heretics being traitors to ecclesiastical government, whose pernicious errors have a demoralizing influ- ence upon the churches, the church of which the heretic is a member, is to do its duty in restraining those mischiefs which may happen by their preach- ing. If it be a false doctrine in any sense, and disturbs the peace of the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 881 churches, those who preach it must first be admonished, and, if possible, be conviuced by sound doctrine, and put to silence by spiritual evidence. Should this fail to reclaim him, he should be restrained by ecclesiastical authority, and his license to preach, for and in the name of the church, taken from him. But as the church may proceed thus far, yet the church ought not to pursue him farther than to pass these spiritual censures, and should the delinquent meekly submit to these ecclesiastical reproofs, his status as a church member should not be meddled with. For if any severer judgment be passed upon the person erring, if he be unjustly excommunicated, noth- ing will answer and make compensation for such an injury, when he is will- ing to be silent as to the false doctrine taught. It is otherwise when he does not willingly submit to these admonitions. If he persists in preaching the false doctrine, the peace of the churches and the unity of the doctrine is best conserved by his peremptory exclusion from the church. For if, under such circumstances, there is pertinacity in preaching a doctrine, for which he has been admonished, there should be an equal pertinacity in judgment on the part of the church. The general result, therefore, at which we arrive is, that although the pro- motion of religious truth and the suppression of religious error, in a free and independent church like that of the Baptists, are universally admitted to be desirable objects ; yet the churches are not able, owing to the nature of our pohty, to compass them effectually, except through moral suasion, rather than through coercion and compulsion. For it sometimes happens that the fruitless efforts made by the churches to forcibly uproot heresies, are not only so much labor wasted and thrown away, but they aggravate and embitter the existing dissensions and animosities of the rival factions and create new causes of discord, which would not otherwise have existed. This result, however, which establishes the practical doctrine that the churches are to be neutral at first, and, for a time, in questions involving religious truth and error, startles many not of our faith and practice. It seems to them to involve the consequence that, by being neutral, or not putting in force and operation some ecclesiastical machinery to suppress these disorders, the churches declare their indifference to the truth. They think that the churches, by their omission to take a part in the controversy, implies an opinion that the question at issue is unimportant. The obstinance of the the churches, not immediately interested in the quarrel, from identifying themselves with one of the rival parties, appears to them in the light of a sinful neglect of religious duty. But experience has proved that the churches are not fit for the office of promoting the truth and repressing error, when they arrogantly assume the role of judges in these matters in a divided church, but that they are better performed when left to the exclu- sive care of the church immediately involved, which, in Baptist church economy, is the one to which the delinquent belongs. There is nothing in the constitution or essence of sister-churches which is inconsistent with their being judges of religious truth, but they always discharge their duty illy, and never fail thereby to sow the seeds of discord in their own midst. They 382 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUKISPKUDENCE ; are capable of doing work of tliis kind ; but the work is and can be better done by the local charcli or a prudent council without their assistauce. Sis- ter churches ought to abstain from the assumption of a partisan character, and from undertaking to decide on disputed questions of religious truth, for the same reason that a man ought to abstain from taking part in family- quarrels. Sister churches are capable of acting the part of a theologian, but in church quarrels, over theological questions, it is a bad theologian. There is a constant tendency of those not acquainted with Baptist church jurisprudence to over-estimate the province and capabilities of apostolic church government; to assume that it can exercise a greater influence over the churches than it really possesses, and to forget that it can only act within a sphere determined by certain conditions, and is endowed with eccle- siastical omnipotence in no other sense than that its powers have no lawful limits. If the practical province of ecclesiastical government, in matters involving truth and error, had been considered with greater attention to the apostolic models — if facts, and not ideas and theories, had been consulted, it would not have been supposed to be invested with a character which is unsuited to it, and been loaded with so many moral obligations and duties, to which it is not properly subject. It is by the endowment of denominational universities, colleges, academies and seminaries of learning that the best provision for the promotion of the truth and the suppression of error can be attained. Where the government seeks to aid in the diffusion of knowledge it ought to avoid predetermining any set of opinions to be adopted by the teacher, or other object of its patron- age. It ought to abstain from stereotyping any modes or formulas of thought ; from imposing any test, or requiring an adhesion to any party or sect. But where the denomination endows an institution of learning it is legitimate for it to compass these ends, and to teach and propagate the dis- tinctive doctrines of that people, and to indoctrinate the young in the pecu- liar tenets of the denomination upon whose bounty it is founded. In the establishment of these institutions of learning, it is incumbent on the denomi- nation to establish a standard of sound opinions and doctrines, and to use all its best endeavors and powers for the purpose of maintaining and diffusing the truth and the suppression of heresy. By founding universities and theo- logical seminaries, by endowing professorships and lectureships, it has, in- deed, contributed powerfully to the diffusion of the true doctrines of the gospel, and fitted many young men for the work of maintaining them. Not only so, but it has not left it, in general, to the several professors and teachers, the liberty of forming their own judgment as to the opinions and doctrines which they would inculcate, but has sought to induce them to make the matter of their teaching come up to the standard laid down by the denomination. Every denominational institution of learning, worthy of the name, ought to be organically connected with, and under the control of, the denomina- tion, so that whatever doctrine and principles are therein taught ma}'' be overlooked by the denomination in whose name they profess to teach. Bad OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 383 doctrines and errors taught by our great universities and seminaries are almost invariably followed to a greater or less extent by those who are taught therein. And, on the other hand, good and sound principles, in respect either of conduct or opinion, on the part of such institution, never fail to produce a beneficial and wholsesome effect. In the way of example, by the encouragement of merit, and the bestowment of honors and degrees a de- nominational institution can do much to propagate and countenance sound doctrines, to establish a high and correct standard of denominational con- duct, and to encourage the preaching of a pure and genuine gospel standard of truth. If by teaching principles to which the denomination could not give its indorsement, the probability is that the endowment, thus perverted or misapplied, would be either withdrawn or merely wasted ; and that the doctrines taught would gain little or no acceptance among the denomination if it was known that they were still maintained, by the institution, merely through the influence of its endowed chairs. Hence the denomination holds a sort of a censorship over its institutions of learning, and of necessity is bound to do so, if it would propagate and keep pure the doctrine, otherwise it would render itself responsible for the errors which it permitted to be pro- pagated through these religious institutions. A denomination may likewise countenance sound opinions and eliminate heresies by patronizing and upholding religious journals and newspapers wliich promulgate those opinions and are founded upon them. A sound and judicious religious press, with learned and orthodox men at its head, when governed by sound principles, thus contributes materially to the establishment of not only a good code of morals, but of orthodoxy for the guidance of the denomination. Unlike denominational schools, experience has proved that the denomination cannot advantageously discharge the office of censorship of public discussion in matters of religious opinion, but that the denomination makes more progress towards the discovery and recogni- tion of truth when it is unassisted by the well-meant, though often ill-directed efforts of a denominational ownership and control of its religious journals. In those denominations that own and control the religious press, it has been noticed that there is really but little freedom of discussion, and but little search after the truth except as it is viewed from the standpoint of those who stand at the head of the press, and presume to say who shall speak for the denomination, and what they shall say, and how they shall say it. The practical abandonment of this plan in a free system of church government, and the general discredit into which it has fallen, affords a strong ground for believing that the denomination is incapable by this means of discharging the duty of controlling religious opinions with success, and that the accumula- tion of experience is adverse to the system, and that there is a radical defect in the theory which extends the control of the denomination over the press and its field of speculative truth. ISlnch. truth is eliminated from error, and much error is suppressed by un- trammeled discussion through the medium of the press, and unless freedom is allowed, often error will triumph over the truth. Truth never suffers by 384 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JUr.ISPRUDENCE ; agitation, but always shines the brighter and comes out victorious. The only censorship over its columns should be exercised by those who stand at the head of the press, to see that absolute fairness be done to all who enter the arena and to see that all discussion be conducted in the proper spirit, and for the proper ends. Thus they themselves undertake the invidious office of public censors over public opinions and become monitors and castigators of men and measures. From the relation in which religious papers stand to the denomination, being dependent on their sale for their existence, it is natural that they should seek to render their opinions and conduct accept- able to the whole denomination, and thus they often follow, as well as lead denominational opinion. We see, therefore, that by its continuity of charac- ter, by becoming a denominational organ, and by sometimes following, as well as leading, religious opinion, a paper obtains a considerable authority, independently of the force of its reasoning, and is largely responsible for any false doctrine that may creep into our system of jurisprudence, by reason of a want of watchfulness in detecting it. By inserting communications and documents on both sides of a question, it contributes to furnish materials for a fair judgment, and to eliminate errors and heresies which otherwise might arise. Whenever a member has been ill-treated or anything has gone wrong in the practice of the churches there is only one method of defence in our system, — an appeal may be made to the whole denomination, and the only means of making this appeal is by the denominational press. Thus the liberty of, and the free access to the use of the press is infinitely more valu- able amongst Baptists than amongst all others ; it is the only cure for some of the evils which our free system may produce. The absolute equality of Baptists sets them apart and weakens them ; but our Baptist press places a powerful weapon within every member's reach, which the weakest and the strongest of them may use. Thus it becomes one of the chief instruments of religious liberty, as it is also one of the best correctives. The great body of the Baptists of this country are determined to have the liberty of expressing their opinions. K religious thought is free, liberty of discussion should be free, and if they cannot have it one way it will mani- fest itself in another. Should people suffer and not complain ? How could existing errors and abuses be made evident to the denomination at large if they were not exposed, and how can they be so exposed unless through the denominational press? How could the machinery of church government be improved and the doctrine kept pure if a perpetual bar was to be put on free and untrammeled criticism ? And so the people will strive for free speech. If they are denied a hearing in the regularly constituted organs of communication, others will be started, "if for no other purpose than to be heard. If a denominational paper is run in the interest of the whole people and not for a party or faction, a respectful hearing should be given to all sides. All the people should be allowed to discuss what they please, subject only to those moderate restraints of ordinary journalistic courtesy which cannot be considered as interfering with freedom of discussion. The history of the life of the denominational press brings out, too, into OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 385 clear light, its various functions, and shows when they began to operate and exert their most powerful influences. The earliest, and at the same time the great fundamental function of the press, was what may be called the expres- sive function, as it was first used by the denomination for the purpose of describing their religious condition, or circumstances, or expressing their religious feelings. Not only so, but when any abuses existed or any errors appeared, their first natural instinct was to seek redress through the denomi- national press. If this was denied, especially in the ruder states of the denomination, or by the less informed, redress was ordinarily sought by separating into factions and church divisions. But since our denomination has progressed towards universal education, and those who control our great denominational journals have become more liberal in their management of the press and have learned something of the true theory of church government, the people have learned to seek redress through the medium of the religious press, by formulating their complaints and informing the denomination of those things of which they complain. The denominational press was thus, in its first and earliest function, an informing voice so to speak, admonishing the denomination of any abuses in doctrine or practice ; for the worst evils in faith or practice are in a fair way for removal, in our Baptist economy, when they are discovered and protruded on the denominational gaze. If the great discussions, which sometimes agitate the denomination, did not take place freely in our denomi- national press, then there would be much cause to lament that the older practice of rival speakers addressing a meeting, and of the meeting being more strictly deliberative and consultative was not continued ; but no great discussion now takes place which is not carried on at full length in almost every first-class denominational paper in the United States. Thus discus- sion is as thorough as if it took place at a meeting, and thus thousands of readers are given the materials for forming an opinion on the points at issue The same may be said of the deliberations of our conventions and associations, for if these deliberations were not reported in the religious press, a vast amount of the influence of such bodies would be gone, for a very small proportion of the denomination would catch the inspiration. The suitability of the religious press for the moulding of opinions is indeed so manifest, and is now so generally acknowledged, that I need not dwell further on this function of it. If the need for the denominational press as a moulder of religious opinion was felt in the dark days of persecution centuries ago, how manifestly greater becomes the necessity for its functions as years have passed, when now Bap- tists are just beginning to enlarge their borders, and to multiply their needs as they have doubled and trebled their numbers an hundred, yea a thousand fold, and as they are fast becoming the leading denomination of the world. Moreover, the experience of its advantages and utility has ingrained or interwoven it into the very fibre of the religious life of the denomination. That it is here, and here to stay, therefore there can be no question. Whether we like it, or deplore it, whether it voices our peculiar sentiments or not, 25 386 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; whether we approve or disapprove of it, whether we admire its power or tremble at the dangers involved in its use and abuse, the religious press is an unavoidable, inevitable necessity. Just as the ministry is necessary to the preaching of the gospel ; just as language is necessary for in- dividual intercourse, so is the press necessary for general ecclesiastical inter- course'. Furthermore, it is to be borne in mind that the denomination, though happily widely tolerant of the freedom of its press, and giving the fullest latitude that even an enthusiast for religious discussion could desire, is very hostile to it if it pass beyond well-defined limits. Such abuses of the press should be zealously guarded against by the editors themselves, who stand at the head of these journals, and who are responsible for their con- duct. For great as is the liberty of the press in this free country, there are checks and limits beyond which it is not permitted, or rather if those limits are passed, the transgressor lays himself open to denominational censure as well as the penalties of the law. It being the prerogative of the denomination to use all its powers for furthering all the good ends to which its powers are capable, the establish- ment of denominational publishing houses is another powerful agency for the promulgation of the truth and the suppression of error. It is to be doubted whether there be any other one agency, aside from the actual preaching of the gospel, that has done so much good for the spread of the truth^ and the suppression of error as the publication and circulation of pure Baptist litera- ture. To be able to say whether it be pure or false, it must come from a press whose endorsement gives it authority and authenticity, vouched for by its admission into the collection of its publications. These institutions, founded and patronized by the bounty of the denomination, ought to be so cautious in their censorship over those authors who submit their productions for publication, that unless their works sparkle and bristle with the truth of the gospel, and be so in harmony therewith, that when they put the seal of their approval upon books issuing from these houses, it ought to be all the advertisement needed to give them currency among the denomination. It is not the province of these institutions to say what men shall write for the press, or how they shall write it ; but it is peculiarly their duty to pass upon the orthodoxy of what they have written, and to say whether it comes up to the high standard of the denomination for whose use it is intended and whose sponsors they are, so as to receive their endorsement and the seal of their ap- proval. When it is generally understood that denominational publishing houses will give their indorsement to no production except such as are ortho- dox, and reject such as are wanting in religious merit, there is erected a de- clared standard in religious truth which is safe to follow, and thus it becomes authoritative. But doubtless the greatest safeguard thrown around the truth is exercised by the churches, or by presbyters appointed by them, invested with a dele- gated power, in ascertaining the fitness of candidates for the Christian ministry to preach the gospel, for and in the name of the churches, and in stamping them with the public character of the sacred calling. The OR, THE COMMOIT LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 387 importance of the selection thus made by the churches, mainly depends on the judicious exercise of the discretion confided to the ordaining presbytery, and on the qualifications which it guarantees. Thus these ordaining presby- teries stand at the very threshold of the Christian ministry, and become the representatives of the churches, charged with the solemn duty of seeing that no unregeuerate, no unfit, unsound or unsuitable person enters upon this sacred office. If ever the truth is to be conserved and presei'ved among Baptists, it must be mainly done by the ministry whom the churches license and ordain to preach it. The churches should exercise a rigid censorship over the truth, and necessarily over those whose business it is made to preach it. To be indifferent, whether we embrace falsehood or truth, is the great road to error. Men do not know the truth by intuition. Of course as to the truth of ones own conversion and regeneration, we ought to have some experimental knowledge of the truth of that fact. But as to other truths of the Christian religion, ministers, as well as others, must learn them. In order, therefore, to determine whether a man entering the Baptist ministry is competent to proclaim the truth, there must be a substantial agreement between him and the denomination, on both doctrine and practice. If all the denomination have diligently sought out and found the truth and re- mained steadfast in it, and all concur therein, if this consent extends over many generations the same, a candidate for the ministry should not hesitate to embrace it, and to preach it with fidelity to the church. Complete assent to the truths taught in the word of God as fundamental to salvation, as understood by Baptists, must be made the condition precedent to the entry upon this ministry, and required of every Baptist minister. By all means the pastor of a church should be sound in the faith of the gospel. As no body can be sound when the head, or any vital member, is violently affected, or subject to disease, so no church can be in a healthy condition when its pastor is unsound in the faith, depraved, weak or disordered. Be assured the membership will be very apt to copy the failings as well as the virtues of their pastor, or at any rate to palliate their own by reference to those of their pastor. In determining what truths are so fundamental as to make assent to them requisite, each ordaining council in each case, must use its best judgment under the guidance of the Holy Spirit. There is no room here for private judgment, contrary to the uniform teaching of the churches : Knowing this first, that no prophecy ^of the Scripture is of any private inter- pretation. The truth is not one thing to-day, and another thing to-morrow — not one thing preached by one man, and another preached by another — but it is the same thing at all times, and everywhere. It is error that is changeable — one thing to-day and another thing to-morrow — and can be warped and twisted to suit all creeds and all purposes. Will the candidate preach the doctrine, and preach it with fervor and fidelity ? is the burning question that should concern every ordaining council? If he will not, or if he cannot, it would be a flagrant act of injustice to the great denomination, to ordain him. Will he preach the gospel of truth, as it is in Christ Jesus, or will he preach philosophy and metaphysics and nonsense and trash ? If 388 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; he preaches the former he is worthy to be inducted into this sacred office ; if he preaches the latter it is doubtful whether the Lord ever accounted him worthy putting him into the ministry. It is exceedingly important that Baptists should study these principles, for they belong to that denomination whose duty it is made to spread the truth over the globe, because wherever this boon is found there we find a free church and an open Bible, and all other blessings accompany it. We belong to that religious community whose obvious task it is, among other proud and sacred tasks, to rear and spread ecclesiastical and civil liberty over regions in every part of the earth, at home and abroad. We belong to that peculiar people which alone have the words self-government and soul- liherty inscribed upon our banners. We belong to that system of churches, the models of which are found alone in the sacred Scriptures, and whose great lot it is to be placed with the full inheritance of freedom, on the noblest and richest soil in the world, a nation favored of God and peopled with more Baptists than any other country in the world. This is the period when they should arige in all their strength and battle manfully for the truth, as it is in Christ Jesus, and these are the reasons why it is incumbent upon them again and again to present to their minds the value of these principles, to themselves and to the world, how we must guard and .maintain them, and why, if they neglect them, the world, especially the religious world, may again be steeped in error and in darkness. If there is a class of men, upon whom it would be more binding to be sound in the faith, able men, good men and true Christian gentlemen, that class are our denominational editors. To all thinking men, the calling of an edi- tor of a religious paper seems a very grave one, and should never be entered without a full knowledge of the responsibility it carries with it, and hence it becomes the more necessary to consider the ethical obligations of the con- ductors of these organs of public opinion. In no case whatever can an edi- tor of, or contributor to, a religious paper be allowed to utter a known or suspected falsehood, or to promulgate a pernicious error, or to assert any- thing against the reputation of individuals or the churches. It is of no avail to say that the assertion, if false, will be contradicted. A religious paper ought ever to keep in mind that it acts in a most unfair and ungentle- manly manner by using that advantage which it weekly has over a private individual, of uttering, to many hearers, whatever it pleases. If to preach a false doctrine is highly reprehensible in a minister of the gospel, it is, on this account, far more so in a religious paper. Unsound denominational papers should be frowned down and lose all support ; sound and good ones ought to meet with all possible encouragement and support. While our editors have the right to act as censors over their contributors, their readers likewise have corresponding rights, and cannot dispense with the censorial principle any more than they can, but will hold them to a strict accounta- bility for a breach of good faith on their part. Besides, a religious news- paper has, in fnct, in the present day, to live under the scrutinizing gaze of its readers, and be in doctrinal touch with them, otherwise it will become a OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 389 paper without readers. Thus the denominational press, as an educating medium and the moulders of orthodox opinion, is supplemented by a never- ceasing control over it, and the power of its intelligent readers becomes un- ceasingly elective. They in turn have a moral force, which is sufficient and so powerful that no denominational paper could venture to defy it for any length of time. Indeed, so far from religious papers endeavoring to survive in defiance to the opinions and wishes of the bulk of their readers, hundreds of instances have occurred of papers signally failing for want of patronage, in consequence of what they considered vital differences in doctrine between them and their readers. Thus the restraint is mutual and wholesome. But I do not flatter myself that I have handled the subject of heresy in all its phases. It is a great field in itself, and would require a volume to treat it in all its relations to church government. Much precious blood has been shed in the early ages of Christianity and even subsequently by the fury of men under an inquisitorial system of church polity that blackens the annals of the times in which it occurred. Let the reader, if he can, imagine the sad fate of a people living in those dark ages holding to and preaching principles held by the Baptists of the world at this day, how they were hated and persecuted, impaled, emboweled, beheaded and burned at the stake ! But, finally, the patience of the Lord became exhausted, and that hydra-headed monster, the hierachical church, was temporally overthrown, and the light of religious and political liberty began to shed its effulgent light over a benighted world, and the true church which, in all those years, had been hid away in the caves and mountains of God's Providence, came forth as from the fire, purified and clothed in the habiliments of His power, the possessors of a free church, a free gospel and an open Bible. Oh ! the many crimes that have been committed in the name of religion. But his- tory has in no place recorded an instance where the Baptists ever persecuted any one for their leligious belief, but have invariably been persecuted for opinion's sake, and have freely offered up their lives at the stake rather than forsake their principles. But, doubtless, all this was ordained and foreor- dained of God as a school to prepare a people on earth to receive and pre- serve the true faith of the gospel. They receive and preserve this faith by a succession, more of gospel laws and Scriptural principles, in the shape of an unwritten and unwritable creed, than by a pretended succession of popes and bishops which cannot be traced back to Christ, the founder of the churches, and which if they could, would not be efficacious if they held not the law and the, truth taught by Christ. It has not been our intention in this short chapter to discuss the character and tendency of heresy as a theological question, nor to give an account of the several forms of belief which have, from time to time, been denounced by Baptists as heresies. It has not been touched upon as applied to persons not of the Baptist faith, or those persons professing a different religion, as Meth- odists, Presbyterians or Episcopalians. It has been treated of as an ofifence of those who, professing to be Baptists, use the right of private judgment, and choose their own form of doctrine, instead of conforming to the declared will of Baptist churches. 390 A, TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDEXCE J CHAPTER XIV. THE/ CHRISTIAN MI^ISTEY ; THEIR CALL, ORDINATION, POWERS AND DUTIES. ""^TO greater controversy ever engaged the attention of the religious world -JLM than that of the call, ordination, powers and duties of the Christian ministry. It is proposed in this place to study the subject from the stand- point of Baptist church jurisprudence as it bears upon church polity. There is, no doubt, but that these controversies have arisen from not properly understanding the true nature of church government. The authority we now see exercised by pseudo-ecclesiastics is but the result of a false develop- ment of primitive church polity, and is neither sanctioned by the Scriptures nor the necessities of the times in which it originated. And as all the various modes of church government profess to imitate the apostolic models and claim to be founded on and agreeable to the Scriptures, it would be well to study this subject in the light of what is reflected in the record itself. The purity, the marvelous growth and the spirtual development of Baptist churches, may be, in a great measure, attributed to the obedience of their ministry to local church authority and supremacy. To the error that the ministry is entitled thereby, as ministers, to the right of governing the churches, may be attributed all the ecclesiastical darkness that has come over the religious world. Much of the distortion of, and departure from, primitive church government may also be attributed to the error that the Jewish , economy is a pattern or rule for the modeling of the churches of Christ under the gospel dispensation. We shall, therefore, labor to show that the ministry have no authority, ex-qffido, to govern the churches, but were by the Saviour commissioned only to declare the will of Christ con- cerning the church, and then all were left to their natural rights and liber- ties in constituting and framing themselves into churches according to their own prudential rules and constitutions, under the laws and precepts of the gospel. The Christian ministry is a divine institution, having a divine power and efficacy in: it, above and beyond the act of ordination itself. This ordina- tion has. a two-fold significance. First : It is the authoritative act of the church in investing those whom the Holy Spirit has called and the church ordained, with pastoral authority over a local church. Secondly : The act of the church in conferring upon those in like manner called and ordained, the authority of a minister of the gospel, without the charge of a church. One is a regularly ordained minister, with full authority, as such, while the latter is a licensed minister with limited authority. It is evident that although the church ordains its ministers and invests them with ecclesiasti- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 391 cal authority, tlie Holy Spirit calls them, for we read that, The Holy Ghost said, separate Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunio I have called them. From which also we learn that God does not wait for men to enter the min- istry, but he calls them by his Spirit. The service rendered God is regulated by two sorts of engagements : those which are voluntary and those which do not depend on the will of man. For seeing man is in many things left in his liberty of choice, there are call- ings unto which he enters willingly, and seeing he has a dependence on the Divine Providence there are some engagements under which God puts him without his own free choice. In God's own way he ranges every one of his servants in his churches, where he assigns every one his own proper place, that he may point out to him the relation which ties him to others, and the duties that are peculiar to the rank which he holds, and in proportion to the gifts with which God has endowed him ; and he places every one in his proper calliug and rank by his education and inclinations, which assigns and disposes men in their proper places. This involuntary call of a minister is such as God puts men under without their own choice, at the same time im- buing them with his Holy Spirit to make them sufficient unto the great work, and such as are called are obliged to execute it, and cannot avoid doing it, unless they have reasonable excuses in the sight of God. But the callings which have only for their cause the Divine Providence, and which are dependent on man's will, such as the putting of one into the ministry, are divine institutions, and have nothing in them that is unjust. For it is the hand of God by which they are formed, that points out to man what is the duty he owes to God and his fellow-man. Thus the great- est part of men being called to the ministry looking on this holy engagement as painfid and unprofitable in this world, as being only a grievous and heavy yoke, contrary to their personal interest and inclinations, shake them off, as much as they can, with impunity. They ought, on the contrary, to reverence in it that order of God which is in a special and peculiar manner allowed to them, and execute it with that fidelity and earnestness which they owe to whatever he commands. The customary law of Baptist churches has established the practice of first licensing those whom the Holy Spirit has called to the ministry. As the church is the custodian of the truth, and the vehicle of the gospel, no one has the right to preach that gospel, for and in the name of the church, except he be especially authorized so to do by the church, for to church sovereignty is annexed the right of teaching, who shall teach and what shall be taught. It is equally to the benefit of religion and church polity that those who propose to preach the gospel shall be put upon trial, to see whether they be really called to the work of the ministry, as well as to their fitness for the work. It is not ground enough to be assured by the licentiate of the truth of his call, that his piety and integrity in the church is well known. For the most pious, intelligent and sincere persons may have been deceived by others, and themselves be mistaken, it is always highly prudent for the church to consider well the genuineness of the call, even of those who 892 A TREATISE JTPO:S BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE ; are the most to be credited, to see whether they agree with the other clear and certain proofs that may be had of the truth of their divine call to the ministry. Their rights and duties extend only to preaching and teaching wherever occasion presents itself, and not to the administration of the ordi- nances of the church. From which we see that a licensed minister is not properly speaking a minister of the church, notwithstanding he receives his authority to preach from the church. For the right of doing anything is called authority, and by authority is always understood the right of doing any act, and any act done by authority is done by license from him whose right it is to do it. Therefore, the church being charged with the duty of preaching, has the right to license others to do it for them, and when the licentiate is limited in what, and how far he shall act for the church, the church wiU own nothing beyond his license to act. The custom of setting a man apart to the full work of the ministry is both impressive and significant. Now a regular minister is one who, in the prov- id^ce of God, may be called as pastor to any Baptist church. Hence all Baptist churches have a common interest in all ministers. If at any time a minister may be called by a church as pastor, such church has a right to know of his spiritual fitness and to inquire of the opinions he entertains of the doctrine and polity of the churches. Every church is inseparately con- nected with the whole denomination, in which there must be a oneness of faith and practice, as the end of the institution of the churches is the peace and security of the whole ; and whosoever has a right to the end has a right to the means. All churches being thus interested in the ordination of a minister, a presbytery or council consisting, customarily, of ministers of sister churches is convened, whose duty it is made to judge whether the doctrine and opinions of the candidate be Scriptural and in harmony with the faith of the church and denomination, so that there may be peace and concord among them all. For the actions of men proceed from their opin- ions, and in the government of opinions consist the well-governing of men's actions, in order to their peace and unity. For it cannot be denied that by and through the unskillful ness, or perversity of the ministry, false doctrines are often in time received. Without this right of inquiry into the private belief of those entering the ministry there Vf ould be no protection against errors. Hence the church has a right to judge, or constitute judges of opinions by these presbyteries as necessary to the peace and security of the churches. The imposition of the hands of a presbytery upon the minister to be or- dained was a most ancient public ceremony among the apostles, by which was designated and made certain the person ordained to the work of the ministry. They laid their hands on the candidates and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy Spirit, as a religious designation to the pastoral office. So the apostles prayed and laid their hands on the seven deacons in order to set them apart to that office. Paul advised Timothy to lay hand suddenly on no man ; that is, designate no man rashly to the office of a pastor. The use of this solemn ceremony was to designate and OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 393 set apart the person whom the Roly Spirit had called and to whom the church had given authority to preach the gospel. Henco we learn that those elevated to this high ofSce were given, not only the right to preach the gospel, but also the right of exercising pastoral functions. It is reasonable therefore to conclude that a regularly ordained minister receives his author- ity to exercise pastoral functions not alone in Christ's right, but there must be an union of the divine and hnman call, and he may be discharged from that office when the church of which he is a member, for the good of the cause, shall think necessary, so they do it in all good conscience, of which the church must be the judge. All ordained ministers are equal in office and authority when called to the pastorate of a church, their functions being ministerial, and not magisterial. There is but one ministerial office in the church, that of pastor; besides this, we read in the New Testament of no other. For by the name of an evange- list is not signified an office, but several gifts by which the gospel is preached, where no churches are constituted, and by which men are made useful and profitable to the churches. But none of these gifts make an office in a church save only the due calling and election to the charge of guidance of the church by their doctrine and advice as pastors. The great office of a minister is to preach. This is evident by the great commission, Go into all the ivorld and preach the gospel to every creature. Preaching in the original is that act by which a cryer, or herald, used to do publicly in proclaiming a king. Now a herald has no right to command any man. Our Saviour tells his disciples, who sought priority and supremacy, that their office was to minister, even as the Son of Man came, not to he ministered unto, but to min- ister. To preach the gospel, is not meant thereby that men are bound after they believe and accept it to obey those in acts of government who preached that gospel. Hence by virtue of the office of a minister they have no power in and of themselves, much less has one minister a supremacy over another. Episcopacy is destitute of all apostolic sanction and authority, and we can safely assert that there is not a trace of it in the Scriptures. Neither the Acts nor the Epistles contain the slightest hint of any such priestly hierarchy being made before our Saviour's ascension, or any direct revelation to that eflTect subsequent to that event, binding on the churches. As my Father sent me, so I send you, said Christ to his apostles ; with humility, with meekness, without fortune, in poverty, with fullness of the Spirit and excellency of wisdom. The end was the preaching of the gospel, the redemption of man, the institution of the churches and the baptising of believers. This was the entire purpose and manner in which Christ was sent into the world by the Father. And since his apostles and their suc- cessors were to pursue the same ends and no other, they were furnished with the same power and no more. Christ gave them the Holy Spirit, and gave them commandment and power to. Teach all nations, and to baptise them, to administer the Supper, to exhort, to admonish, and to reprove. This is the sum of all the commissions and commandments they have from Christ. This power, and these commissions were wholly ministerial without 394 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUBCH JURISPRUDENCE; domination, without proper jurisdiction, that is, without coercion ; it being wholly against the design of the gospel and the religion of tlie gospel, that it should be forced. And, therefore, one of the requisites of a minister is. He shall he no striker. He had no arms put into his hands for that purpose ; the ministerial state being furnished with authority, but no power, that is, an authority to persuade and to rebuke, but no power to command or to govern, as the word is used in the sense of secular dominion. Having only the care of souls, which cannot be governed by force, they are to govern as souls can only be governed, that is, by arguments and reason, by fear and by hope, by preaching of rewards and punishments, and by all the ways of the noblest government, that is, by wisdom and the ways of Christ. They are to look to the inward man. It is the church that rules the outward man. There are weak and feeble hands that hang down and starving souls that are to be strengthened ; which to do is the pastor's office. The jurisdiction of the ministry is ministerial and not magisterial. This appears in Paul's description of their office and power. To us is committed the word of reconciliation. We are not lords over the flock. Christ has set them over the household, not to rule with a rod, but to give them their meat in due season, to administer the food of God's word and ordinances to the members of the family. They have nothing of dominion and not anything except the ministry of service. Is it not honor enough to serve such a prince as Christ, to wait at such a table, to be a steward of such a family ? Christ says, He that is greatest among you let him he your minister. Obey them that have the rule over you, says Paul. Those over whom our pastors and elders have a rule are not domestics, they are not properly subjects. They have their obedience in their own power, the ministry is to feed and not to rule with a rod the churches of Christ ; that is, they are not to rule by empire, but by persuasion. If these rulers had a power of coercion, they could quickly make them willing and obedient. We heseech you, brethren, to admonish them that are unruly. That is, you must help us in our government, we are over you to admonish you, for we are over you not by empire, not by compulsion, not by laws, but by exhortation. It is a rule over the wills of men and not over their bodies. We cannot set up any precedents of government under the Jewish dis- pensation against this spiritual rule of the ministry. He who did not obey the word of the high priest was subjected to the severest penalties, for they had an actual jurisdiction given them by God. Theirs was a mixed govern- ment blending church and state, and the Jewish priesthood was a great and powerful establishment and included in it a rule, over things both human and divine, being judges of controversies, and by the law had power to inflict punishment upon criminals. Neither can we take as precedents all the acts of the apostles as patterns for us. Peter gave sentence of death against Ananias and Sapphira, as did Paul inflict blindness upon Ely mas the sorcerer; and even the lovable and beloved John threatened Diotrephes. But these were miracles and immediate divine judgments, and not acts of ordinary apostolic authority. It was a miraculous verification of their divine OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 395 missiou seldom by them used. So did Paul threaten some delinquents in the church at Corinth, that if he did come, he vjould not spare them. But they had undervalued his ministry and looked for a sign and proof of Christ's authority on earth. These were all acts of divine power and cannot be imitated by ministers in this day, for it is not their work ; they are called into the ministry for other purposes and entrusted with other powers. AVhatever power Christ has entrusted to the ministry is but the image and similtudes of jurisdiction in their spiritual government over the churches. The soul cannot be subject to any jurisdiction but that of God. For juris- diction is the result of legislation, and is the power of hearing and deter- mining controversies between man and man ; which can belong to none but some organic body that has power to prescribe the rules of right and wrong, and the power to compel men to obey its decisions, which none can have but a local sovereign church. Now, none can give laws to souls but God ; he only is Lord of men's wills, and therefore none can give judgment or re. straint to souls but God. But as by preaching and teaching Christ's minis- ters imitate and supply the legislation of God, so by the power of the keys they imitate his jurisdiction. For it is to be observed that by and in the sermons preached in the gospels, those who preached them gave laws to the churches, that is, they declared the laws and will of God. For as the churches can make no laws of divine authority, of faith or manners, but what they have received from Christ and his apostles, so neither can minis- ters, who are but the under-shepherds of the churches, exercise any acts of government but the spiritual rule of Christ. Christ's ministers have no ruling power as derived and given to them as from the churches, but such as they have is given to them in the churches, and they are but the instruments made use of by the churches to do that which the churches cannot do as a body ; yet what they do is virtually done in and by the churches, the promise being made to them as a church. Neither are they the church's representatives as having a power absent and abstracted from the church. Nothing can be represented that is present, for the church is the seat or place of the minister's theatre of action where their rule is exercised, as the body is moved by its principal members. As, there- fore, the ruling power of a minister is in the name of Christ, so as to have the presence and prayers of the church to put force and efficacy into it. As in the ordination of a minister by a presbytery of ministers, it was always done in the local churches in the apostolic times by the apostles, with prayer and fasting, for these acts abstracted from the church have no efficacy in them, as when the body of the church, including both the church and pres- bytery, are joined together. This is reasonable, because Christ will have the assistance of the churches in their prayers, which have as much and infi- nitely more efficacy in them to prevail with him for a divine blessing as those of a body of ministers who might resolve themselves into a high court for that purpose. Now, in a Baptist church, if there be no rule there is no government. In fact, in all systems of government there are some traces of absolute power 396 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUSCH JTJUISPRUDENCE ; to be found at their basis. In the obedience to government and law consists the fundamental principle of a church of Christ. In the absence of these principles no church government can be properly said to exist, but in the rule peculiar to the ministry, through the medium of their preaching and exhortation, it is a rule without power and dominion. When the keys were by the Saviour given to Peter, they were not given to rule the church, but to rule the kingdom of Heaven. And I will give unto thee the keys of the hingdom of Heaven. This is nothing more nor less than the power to preach, to teach, to exhort and to admonish. Now he that is preached to, exhorted and admonished, is not thereby bound to obey him who is thus authorized to speak. It being a doctrinal precept, it has in it no other em- pire, but that it is a commanding in the name of God. To command in the name of God implies an institution, an institution being but a setting up of something with a promise ; it has a blessing in it beyond the efficacy of the thing itself. While Christ has given his ministers no power over those to W'hom they preach, yet if they "will not give heed to the ministry, Christ, who gave them the keys or authority, thus to speak, in his name, has a juris- diction and power over them. This is as far as the ministerial power ex- tends, this is their jurisdiction and the limits of their coercion. Their power and authority, therefore, must be grounded aJone on the consent" of the church and their willingness to obey them. Whatever power is given to or assumed by ministers beyond this is magis- terial and not ministerial. Whenever a company of ministers bind them- selves together to do acts of government they thereby resolve themselves into a court of magistrates to take into their hands carnal weapons. Paul says. For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, hut mighty through God to the pulling doivn of strongholds. For though I should boast somewhat more of our authority f which the Lord hath given us for our edification. All matters of church government having been committed to the church by divine ap- pointment cannot be transferred to others. We cannot transfer ecclesiasti- cal power to the ministry even, and say that it is after all but the power of the church committed to them. We should remember that these matters are all divine creations and appointments. If this divine order be destroyed, Vv'hatever may be the kind of government set up by men in its stead, is but a human creation and has no divine efficacy in, nor beyond it, and is no less than treason against the commonwealth of Christ. It is not strange then that our Baptist ministry has always been consid- ered so commonplace and so wanting in show and ostentation, inheriting no reverence which is not born of humility, and made holy by no religion not born from above. Such an institution, far from being so august as to spread reverence around it, is too lowly and inartificial to get reverence for itself. In a denomination where people do not care for outward show, where the genius of the people is untheatrical, they regard the substance of things, and all this outward pomp and splendor is trifling. As no such things were seen in the days of the apostles— among God's first ministers — no such thing is now seen among the true niinisters of this day. A church filled with OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 397 unostentatious ministers does not care at all how the externals of religious life is managed. He who does not care about the circus is not concerned about the showman. An humble circuit rider, an able village preacher preaches the gospel twenty long years and is nobody ; he is made bishop, and before he is " consecrated " he all of a sudden becomes somebody. The bishop is made the head and front of the church, of all intercourse and all religious life ; everybody pays allegiance and reverence to the bishop, and everybody ranges themselves round the bishop. The idea that the bishop is not only at the head of the government, but is the government itself, is so fixed in the ideas of the adherents to this system that only the well-informed regard it as unscriptural and anti-apostolical, thou'j:h when the matter is ex- amined in the light of God's word, that conclusion is certain and even obvi- ous. The church of Christ does not naturally need an earthly head at all. Its constitution, if left to itself, is not monarchical nor aristocratical, but purely democratical. Much of the distortion of ministerial power and primitive church govern- ment may be attributed to the error that the Jewish economy is a pattern or rule for modeling of the church of Christ under the gospel dispensation. But when we come to set up Christ's churches all the measures of good and evil must be taken upon evangelical lines. Nothing is to be conformed to the Jewish economy except where the resemblance is warranted by the like- ness itself. Nothing is to be condemned which the apostles permit, and nothing is to be permitted which they condemn. For this is the great pre- rogative, perfection and superiority of the apostolic church above that of Moses. Some things by Moses were permitted for necessity, and because of the hardness of their hearts. But when Christ came he abrogated the old and gave perfect laws and still more perfect graces. Under the old law the priestly office was inherited. Men were set apart, and by tribal relations came to fill these offices by a prerogative from God himself. Not so now. Every man whom the Tloly Spirit calls and the church elects and ordains is a high priest before God, and sufficient for the work whereunto he has been called. The models of the Jewish synagogues are not a competent pattern for our imitation, and not everything done in the Old Testament is a war- rant for us in church government. No wonder that those who have derived their warranties of ministerial authority from the examples of the Jewish economy, in the Old Testament, have gone so far astray. Things done in the Old Testament, though by the command of God, do not warrant us, or become justifiable precedents in church government without such an express command as they had. If the command to them was special, limited and personal, the obedience was just as limited, and certainly could not pass down to us and become obligatory under the gospel dispensation. It is a well-known rule of interpretation among lawyers that when a law is changed the examples which acted in proportion to that law, lose all manner of influence and cannot produce a just imitation, and are, therefore, not binding. While there are many things that the Jews were commanded to do which are now obligatory upon us as Christians, yet there are many things which 898 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; •were rules and laws to them, which are not so to us. But Paul in his letter to the Hebrews says : For the priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change of law; for that after the similitude of Melchisedec there ariseih another priest, who is not made after the law of a carnal commandment. This old priesthood being changed there is a necessity of a change of the law, and so of the law of government which depends uj)on Christ's priestly office Having a new high priest over the house of God we have a new order in this house. So then the old law which depends upon Moses's regulations was changed, and a new law and a new order of things is to come in the room of it ; and therefore in the same letter the apostle calls it the reformation. The Jewish form of government is called the elements of the world ; and therefore the apostle bids us under the gospel, not to be conformed neither in worship nor government to the elements of the world. So in Galatians he says, they were under tutors and governors until the time appointed of the Father. The gospel being a more spiritual reign, the frame of government and the institutions of it are not conformed to the worldly way of govern- ments like that of nations and of kingdoms, as that was then, to an outward carnal glory, as their worship also was. As God had chosen the preaching of the word which is said to be foolishness, so he has chosen many of those things which are in the eyes of many considered a common, contemptible and a foolish form of government, in comparison of what was then. And this is what confounds and deceives the world, that Christ should come and set up simple, plain little local churches all over the world with no show, no ostentation, no glory, and no great overgrown top-heavy and distorted power. For the gospel is a mystery throughout and will continue so to be to the end of the world. The Jewish economy was wholly civil, or it was a part of their religion. If it was wholly civil it went away with that commonwealth to whom it was given ; if it was part of the religion, it passed away with the temple, with the priesthood, with the covenant of works, with the revelation and reign of Christ ; and though it might be a good guide in framing a commonwealth, yet in church government it is wholly without obligation. It is a great mistake to suppose that all the rites of Moses' law were types and figures of something in the Christian dispensation, and that some mystery of ours must correspond to some rite of theirs. Christ would have his ministers labor not as natural agents do in imita- tion of the priesthood and priestcraft because his promise to accompany their ministry is in a liberty not circumscribed by carnal things as under the Jewish dispensation. The great commission to preach the gospel should not be mixed and mingled with the secular government of the universal church, but should be left wl>ere Christ has placed it by special institution. The supernatural administration of preaching is limited to the ministry as the government of the churches is limited to the churches themselves ; as the power is from Christ, so in whom each of these powers should be, is also from Christ, and is by his appointment. The local churches are the vice- OK, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 399 gerents of Christ on earth, and if their government be consigned to other hands than Christ has appointed, and by institution placed it, surely that government is overthrown and his churches, as such, destroyed. And though ministers are by Christ's appointment, yet he has not promised to bless and be with them in their administration of the things for which he ordained them, if they assume a power that they have not, no more so than the judge who would assume a jurisdiction the law gives him not. To teach and to preach is the exercise of a gift for edification, and they whom Christ and the churches have put into the ministry to preach and feed the flock, may perform all that ministers can do with their gifts, but the act of govern- ment of the churches is an act of divine authority, which Christ has not committed to them, and is a nullity, for want of commission in those who do it. Though ministers have no formal power abstractly from the church, yet they contribute their share of authority as officers of the churches, and have a virtual power as such from the presence of the church, in respect to the execution of their office, especially in such acts as by their calling and min- istry they do for the church, which concerns the church as acts of jurisdic- tion. Yet in all ministerial acts of jurisdiction that belong to a church, as an organic body, they have a virtual rule from the presence and concurrence of the church, doing all this by their authority, and in their presence. Even our Catholic friends who have gone so far astray, seem to acknowledge this principle. When the pope speaks infallibly, as a pope, he must not be alone, but in the Cathedra, in the chair, surrounded by his cardinals. Now under the apostolic form of church government, though it were admitted that all power to rule was committed to the ministry, yet not as abstracted from the presence of the church. No act of the High Priest was lawful in sacred things, if done outside the Temple. Christ has now chosen a better temple for ministers to exercise their jurisdiction, in temples not made with hands, living stones, that is, churches consisting of living souls, from the presence and concurrence of whose prayers and assistance the acts done by ministers in the churches receive their strength. But our Presbyterian brethren deduce much of their system from the mention of elders and ruling elders in the Scripture. Therefore let us examine what is truly meant by the use of these terms so often mentioned in connection wdth the churches. These brethren contend that while these first and primary institutions, the churches, were thus planted, yet the keys of the churches were given to the officers, and not to them and to the mem- bership of a local church jointly. They contend that when Paul said to Titus, That thou shouldst ordain elders in every city, as I had appointed thee, he meant ruling elders, and not pastors in a local church. It is a well-known rule, in the interpretation of the Scriptures, that an inference drawn from the Scriptures must evidently and apparently be con- tained in the law before it can be extracted out of it, otherwise it cannot be intended by the law-giver. Whatsoever is not in the letter of the law, and whatever we do not have a divine authority for in matters of church polity, 400 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JTTEISPRUDENCE ; when it is not drawn from thence by a prime and immediate consequence, but in which there is a violence or artificial chains of speculations, or the devices of the wit and ingenuity of man, we are wholly to reject as the teaching for doctrine the traditions of men. For inferences and laws, drawn from tne Scriptures, ought to be few, and that people in the world, that multiplies them without apparent necessity and clear proofs of intendment, lays simres and nets for their own feet. The Scriptures warrant us to go no further than in sight of them. If we go one step from the words of the text we are within the call of its voice, and our obedience can well be exacted when it can be well proved. But if we go beyond the letter of the law, there are so many intrigues of fancy in the disputer, and so many sin- ister motives in the hearer, that we will thereby be apt to strain a point to round out a theory, and will be led astray and lose sight of the law and our reverence therefor. Logic and fancy are but ill law-givers in matters of church government. Obey them that have the rule over you, is a plain commandment, but if we infer therefrom that our ministers have a complete power and rule over us, and that we are to obey them in all they do and say, we deny the authority of the church in matters of government, and deny our own reason. Cer- tainly this follows not because we are commanded to obey them only in such things where they ought to rule over us, but it does not mean that they are thereby invested with ecclesiastical power in matters over which the church alone is ruler. Those pastors whom Christ has sent, and the church has called, are our spiritual and authorized guides ; they have power to teach and to exhort, they are to administer the ordinances and to do anything that can inform us and invite us to do good ; and we must follow them in all ways that lead us to God, and what they do and teach we are to obey and believe, until wc have reason to do and believe to the contrary ; because the Scriptures neither say or mean anything beyond these measures. Now, in order to ascertain the true limits and functions of the power of the ministry over the churches, we are to deal with the subject not as it ought to be, but as it really is in the Scriptures. Our aim should be to make clear, by discussion and definitions, what we find there recorded, and allow no speculation, but reject all theories that are not borne out either by a thus said, or a thus did the Lord. Our primary duty should be to apply the law as it is, not to make it what we think it ought to be, and the more conscientiously and skillfully we fulfill our duty, the more will our power of determining the true status of ministerial power be limited to the principles laid down in the New Testament already determined for us. Ministerial power of ruling in the widest sense in which we are here con- cerned with its definition, is, in the sense of the Scriptures, exercised by the ministry whose teachings and counsels are habitually carried out by the churches of which they are pastors ; and in case these ministers are preach- ing evangelists their directions are obeyed by those to whom they preach. Now ecclesiastical power is quite a different thing but nevertheless it is clearly a species of this kind of rule. Thus a leading educator of the young OK, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 401 may be said to exercise power wlien his recommendation to buy and read certain books is widely carried out by his pupils, and other cultivated mem- bers of his community, but he cannot be said to exercise political power ; and this is not because education and literary taste has not its influence upon political government. If some contagious disease were prevalent in a neighborhood and a physician's direction to parents in general to observe some sanitary regulation were widely obeyed from a general confidence in his medical skill, he might be said to exercise power, but it still would not be considered political power ; though if the legislature issued the same orders, and obtained similar obedience, it would be exercising political power for the legislature would have power to enforce obedience by physical violence. In other words, he who is said to exercise power proper must be in a condition that if his direction be not obeyed, the requisite amount of force must be at hand to compel obedience. And if by such means a minister induces his church to act in conformity to his ministerial dictation, we must agree that he exercises power, ecclesiastical in its effects, if not in its nature. And, generally, if a church, otherwise clearly supreme, habitually conforms to the direction of its pastor from the love and venera- tion it has for liim, it seems clear that the ultimate power of produing eccle- siastical effects has temporarily passed from the church to the pastor. At the same time I do not think that we should affirm a transfer of sovereignty from the church to the pastor, and it would not prevent the church from exercising supreme power unimpaired, if it made up its mind so to do. Beyond this, no minister has any power in the government of a church. Beyond this, the apostles themselves never exercised ecclesiastical authority over the church. And beyond this it is certain Christ himself, the great founder and Prime Minister of Christianity, never ventured ; thus leaving his disciples and churches to govern themselves as best suited their own ideas of propriety. In the exercise of church government physical force has no place, but there must be a corresponding authority placed somewhere to enforce obedience to such regulations as come under the province of church govern- ment. Now, there is a sense in which the ministry may be said to have a ruling power over the churches. Their power may be said to be that of the schoolmaster with no rod in his hand to punish. In case there was placed in the hands of the ministry a power to rule and govern the churches, inde- pendently of the aid and assistance of the membership, this would be illegal and unscriptural and anti-ecclesiastical. If the influence and counsel belong- ing properly to the ministry were to be backed by the membership of a church regardless of the share that belongs to them in ruling to the extent as the directions of a political government, we would recognize that the power belonging to ecclesiastical government had been transferred to the ministry in an unscriptural way. Hence in considering where the supreme ecclesias- tical power resides in a church that is based upon the apostolic models, we must assume that no other person's commands and rule can be obeyed from fear of being disciplined for disobedience, except those issued by or under 26 402 - A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJIICH JUEISPRUDENCE ; the authority of the local church. In other words, such rule as the ministry has the right to exercise over the churches must take effect through the church as the basis of all government. The ruling authority of the ministry over their churches may be more properly termed influence than power, strictly so called, that is exercised. Hence, strictly speaking, it is inaccurate to say that the ministry, in them- selves have any ruling power over the churches. While they can, by moral influences, by the use of all the methods of persuasion which bind the con- sciences of men, influence their churches over which they are pastors to carry out their wishes, yet, so long as there are no penalties, other than social or moral ones, attached to a refusal to obey them, it cannot be correctly asserted that any ecclesiastical power to rule resides with them. Suppose that a church habitually obeys its pastor, not from fear of discipline threatened by the latter, nor from admonitions given, but from the reverence and respect they have for him, and from the love they bear him as their spiritual guide, we must say that even then he cannot be said to exercise ecclesiastical power. But if their influence over their churches were so strong that the majority would unquestionably obey their directions, it would hardly be denied that they, as ministers, had a ruling power, and nominally they were, in spiritual matters at least, the ruliug spirits in the .churches. They thus have the ability to influence, without that of compelling. But the two swords, the secular and spiritual, cannot be wielded in, and by the same hand. The one is incompatible with the other. The spiritual rule belongs to the ministry, while ecclesiastical government belongs solely to the local church. There Christ has placed them both ; the one is heavenly, the other earthly ; the one is divine, the other is secular, and in this order they must ever remain. Now it is especially the duty of a minister, in the way herein pointed out, to rule the church by their wise and prudent counsel, by their watching over men's lives in their orderly walk and conversation. To rule over the out- ward man, to amend and correct their infirmities is their duty, as likewise they should have a care over the inward man principally to guide them spiritually, to correct their errors, to remove their temptations, to allay their doubts and scruples, and to pluck up such heresies and other poisonous Aveeds as are contrary to sound doctrine. As a good and faithful shepherd leads his sheep whithersoever he would have them go, so the wise and pious pastor has power given him from above to lead his flock into green pastures, and into all the paths of righteousness and peace. Paul in his first letter to Timothy, his son in the faith, says : Let the elders that rule well, he counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the luord and doctrine. Now, he did not say that they were to be accounted worthy of double honor because they were good rulers over the church, a sjmod, a conference or a bishopric, but because they labored well in w^ord and doctrine. It is evident, therefore, that their principal oflice and work is to attend to the ministry of the word, although by virtue of their calling they Jiave much else to do as becometh good stewards of the household of God. OR, THE C0MM02T LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 403 As, to open and shut the doors of the church of Christ, by admission and dismission of members, by ordination of other ministers and deacons, to see that none do not live in the church without exercising their respective gifts and callings, to prevent and heal offences, whether in life or doctrine, that might corrupt their own churches, or other churches also, if their counsel be required ; to prepare matters of business for the churches' consideration, and to moderate their deliberations, and see that order and decorum is observed, as it is also his office to visit and pray with the sick of his church. There is a corresponding ruling power that belongs to evangelists who have not the charge of churches. These are ministers to whom Christ in his time, and the churches since his ascension, gives power to preach the gospel in all parts of the world, to whom it was given to be evangelists. The Christianity of Christ, in the beginning, was mainly evangelical and has remained so to this day. The heralds of the cross go hither and thither to preach, but like pastors the credentials they carry are from the churches, and like them they are ministers ; ministers, in that they do it not by their own authority and calling, but by that of the church of which they are mem- hers. They are the shepherds over the scattered members of the flock. They are scattered members who have become loosened and cut off ona from another while they remain non-affiliated "with the church. The office of an evangelist is to preach the gospel and bring all these scattered members into the right place in the body of Christ. They are such as Christ has chosen before the foundation of the world to be saints. They are called Christ's sheep : And other sheep I have ivhich are not of this fold ; sheep not yet brought into the fold. I have much people in this city, yet to he called. These evangelists are appointed by Christ to be in their ministry the means of con- verting men, and to gather them into one body, and to set each elect saint in his right seat in the body. It is called adding to the church such as are saved, as Peter did on the day of Pentecost. Hence no one can deny but that the work of an evangelist is a great work of rule, for it is but the means of setting up and organizing church govern- ments on earth, but not to rule them afterwards by any divine or human right inherent in themselves as ministers of the churches. They preach as ministers, and Christ looks upon them as men set apart to the spread of the gospel, and he accompanies them with the blessing of a minister, and makes use of them rather than others to turn men to God more generally and more frequently. And though they have not the obligation of watching, or power of censure and admonition, yet they have the power to preach and to gather men into organic bodies to be instituted into churches after the custom of the denomination, Paul as an apostle, had not the power of censure over those that were without the church. What have I to do to judge them that are without f Yet to preach to them as an apostle he had the power. We cannot say that they are ministers in preaching to other congregations that hear them, that, therefore, they may in and of themselves erect a power of government over many churches, to lord It over Christ's heritage. As an evangelist he has power to rebuke and to admonish, and if any hear him not 404 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPIIUDENCE ; then it is liis duty as God's embassador to induce the church to exclude and cut them off that by regeneration and a good life are not of the flock. They have nothing to do to judge those that are without the church, but those that are joined to the church by covenant only. They dare not administer any ordinance of Christ to such as offer not themselves to enter into cove- nant v.ith the church. Neither must he obtrude himself upon any church ; if they call him not to be their minister he may not dispense any censure or act of power over them. Ministers have no power as ministers but when they are called as such, and they are not to be called but where there are a willing people who want to hear them. They are ministers and servants of the church : We preach ourselves your servants. Not by any means are they called ruling elders. They come to the churches' call. Come into Macedonia and help us. Hence Christ has ordained the church to call her own officers, for when called they come in the churches' name, they go upon the churches' errand. It is our Saviour's rule, Se that is sent is 7iot greater than he that sends. So then herein lies their service, they come when the church calls them and go when the church sends them. Paul himself says he was sent by the church, and the church chose another to go with him. This is the duty and service of the ministers of the church. Now, the word elder as used in the Scriptures is synonymous' with the term pastor, as understood by Baptists. It may be defined to be a person who, on account of his calling and age, performs the functions of a ruler ; hence any pastor, or minister, who belongs to a church occupying any posi- tion appropriate to such as have age, experience and dignity is an elder, as the elders of Israel, the elders of the Synagogue, or the elders of the apos- tolic churches. In Baptist churches all ministers are elders, and when specially authorized by the churches, when assembled to examine and ordain a man to the ministry, they are called presbyters or a presbytery. The church, whereof the pastor, and other ministers, may be a part, is an organic body to which they belong united together in one particular em- ployment, which no other society is competent to do. A natural body con- sists in a variety of members, and every member has its particular use. If the ivhole body were an eye, where were the hearing f There is no living body but consists of a variety of members ; so it is with the church, the members have several offices, and every member has his different gifts, and by the use of these several members with their several gifts they are able to rule a church and administer spiritual things as well as government and discipline to the whole church. Christ is the head of it, and is above all the members in place and joower. As the body receives from the head motion and rea- son, so have we all our spiritual life and motion from Christ as our head. As the head guides the body at its will, and the body is ready at its com- mand, so every member of the body of Christ's church is ready to move at his appointment and command. As the church in the Scriptures is so often compared to a body, there must be some distinction, as much as there is a distinction in the natural body. An hundred hands will not make a body, therefore it takes a membership, a pastor and other Scriptural officers to make a perfect church. OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 405 « Now, in the twelfth chapter of his letter to the Romans, Paul speaks of sev- eral kinds of members of the church, and among them he mentions, He that ruleth, and says that he should do so luith diligence. What kind of rule is this ? To answer this question, it is necessary to say that it is often declared in the Scriptures that the kingdom of Christ is not of this world, but his is a spiritual reign and rule ; from which it follows that the rule commanded here to a ruling elder is not a worldly rule, nor one such as will enable him to do any act of governmeut in a church. As Christ's kingdom is not of this world, but embraces the whole invisible, universal church, both on earth and in Heaven, the rule of it is not a worldly rule, because it never did meet, and never can meet, as an organic body, and he who would rule or at- tempt to rule it, must make use of a spiritual rule likened unto the king- dom in which he is called to rule. It is needless to say that it is not an organic body, as his visible church on earth is, and all ministers of whatever degree or calliug are rulers therein, and are called to be ruling elders therein by their preaching, teaching, admonitions and counsel, but they carry no ecclesiastical power in their hands or offices. So we see here ground laid for the power and duty of a ruling elder, whether he be a pastor or other minister of the gospel ; it is neither after a worldly manner, nor does he rule with any authority, as a ruler with power, to carry out and enforce his teachings, not by the sword, except the sword of the Spirit : they are to teach whatsoever Christ has commanded them, not only as pastors, but as evangelists everywhere, and whenever occasion pre- sents itself. Now, there is an empire and rule in preaching and teaching, for he who would pretend to teach men would thereby pretend to govern them. What kind of rule is this? Is it not a ministerial rule, dispensing the will of Christ ? It is then to attend to the ministry of the word. This kind of a rule is the work commended to the pastors, evangelists and teach- ers, as Christ has given them their several gifts. These things speak and ex- hort and rebuke with all authoriiy. It is by speaking and exhorting that they are to rule, not only their churches, but it is by this same means they are to rule those to whom they speak, and those whom they exhort. If a wise and discreet pastor pursuades his flock to follow his advice and preach- ing, he certainly thereby becomes their ruler as effectively as if Christ had given him the power directly to rule, and in thus ruling he becomes, in the sense of the Scriptures, a ruling elder. If, therefore, we would inquire what the duties of a ruling elder are, we answer that whatever Christ has not committed immediately to a pastor, as the shepherd of the flock, he has committed to ruling elders by reason of their calling — that is, to preach as an assistant pastor, if called by the church so to do, to evangelize, to exhort and to rebuke — all of which he may and ought to do, though he have no connection with the church as an under-shepherd, and, in so doing, thereby becomes a ruling elder. A gospel minister, or elder, is a bishop of a local church, who acts not by any inherent authority in himself, but whatever he does he acts under the authority of the church. The word minister, in its broader meanino-, in- 406 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; eludes all ordained preachers of the gospel, such as evangelists and mission- aries. Of the original ministers of the Christian religion, the apostles were the first, of which there were in the beginning but twelve, chosen and con- stituted by Christ himself. Their office was not only to preach, teach, to baptise, to institute churches under Christ's immediate teaching, but also to be witnesses of our Saviour's ministry and resurrection. This power Christ had himself, and gave the same to his apostles, and though they were made apostles immediately by Christ, without any relation to a particular church, yet we learn from the first chapter of the Acts that Matthias was numbered among the apostles by the choice of the church. And Paul and Barnabas, though made apostles immediately by Christ, yet received their ordination in the local church at Antioch. They did not set up a high court, unto which churches were to come to ordain ruling and presiding elders, but they rather came themselves, and visited churches, and ordained elders in every church with fasting and prayer in the churches, and in and of themselves they exercised no power of jurisdiction, though by their preaching and advice directed the churches so to do. And if there might be cases wherein the apostles, as ruling elders, did excommunicate alone, yet they were very extraordinary, and these cases can in no way be imitated by us, as their miracles are not. As, therefore, the apostles did not set up an hierarchy in themselves, or a court, out of particular presbyteries, so presbyteries are not to set up a high court of particular churches. Now, from the examples laid down in the Scriptures, the Holy Spirit first designates a man for the ministry, the church, of which he is a member, calls him, and then it is left for a presbytery of elders, under the supervision of the church, to ordain him to the full work of the ministry, by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, which by representation is the hands of the church. And it is the duty of the ministry to watch over their minis- terial brethren, and that the churches be not scandalized with notoriously corrupt ministers, and in that sense they are guides and rulers in the denom- ination. John the Re velator writing to the angel, or pastor of the church at Ephesus, says in the second chapter, twelfth verse. But I have a few things against thee, because thou hast there them that hold the doctrine of Balaam. There he reproves the pastors of the churches for tolerating a doctrine con- trary to the Christian religion, thus holding them responsible for suffering the churches to allow such things. That these elders and apostles even in the very first churches had no actual ruling authority over the churches, is evident from the fact that when the church at Antioch was troubled about the necessity of circumcision, to salvation, they could not be satisfied, but sent to the church at Jerusalem, and to the apostles and elders there, and they met with the church assembly, and there debated the question among them. If they had divine authority to order and rule them, what need was there of disputation ? The word of one apostle would have settled the whole controversy, but they send to the church, and it is an example and precedent for other churches, and there- fore, in that the elders are named, it is their care and duty to look to such OB, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 407 errors as arise in other churches, if they, as in this case, be required, and in like manner it is also their duty according to the rule of Christ to go to other churches to deliver their opinions when asked so to do. Such is the care of elders, and one church over another, they ought to do, by their advice and good counsel, what they can for the repressing of errors among them, and send chosen men, or elders unto the churches, as to answer by word of mouth, what has been agreed upon as to doctrine. It is, therefore, the care of elders, or ministers, who are officers in churches, to be ready to help other churches, by their advice and counsel, if they require them ; and if they do not require them, yet by all means, to do what they can to help them, and reform what is amiss amongst them. And in so doing they become ruling elders, and nothing more, according to the apostolic teachings and examples. It might be said that the office, as above described, of ruling elders is visionary, and that if Christ has given such ministers to the churches, and to the denomination, he would have set limits to their duties and powers. He who has no kingdom on earth, or that which is equivalent hereto, has no coercive power. Christ said : As my Father sent me, so I send you. He was sent to establish and proclaim the gospel of peace on earth and goodwill to men, and not to reign in majesty and power ; by all of which compulsion is excluded, their mission being exhortation and evangelization. It was the power of the keys given not to Peter alone, but to all ministers alike, to open and shut the doors to God's house, and to keep its worship and doctrine pure. This is such a rule as is no small help to those who labor in doctrin^. and discipline, and no small help to the whole church of Christ, which, if we were to do away with, many evils and much confusion would spring up and grow without possibility of redress. As Christ rules in the hearts of his followers, and thus sways the church of the living God without compulsion, so do his fninisters rule and guide his churches by the power of the sword of the Spirit alone. It is true that whatever is an act of rule in the church, they must have a hand in it, but the whole church must join with them. From which it will follow that the rule of the ministry is not a worldly rule, not with state and pomp, but a rule that is spiritual. As Christ's kingdom is not of this world, so is neither the rule of his ministry. For as my Father sent me, so I send you. This was the primitive way of estimating the power of the ministry, and it is still the Scriptural way of doing it ; and Baptists are the only people in the world who have, since those primitive times, practiced it in strict imita- tion of these examples, and if they have in anything departed from the teachings and precepts of the apostles, they desire now to amend anything they may have practiced amiss. The Apostle Paul, the great spiritual ruler, in the planting and training of these early churches, left Titus not an apostle, but an evangelist, not a bishop, but an ordinary minister, whose proper office it was, as appears from his epistle, to ordain elders in every city, where any sufficient number of believers were to make a church, and when suitable men for ministers might be found for the churches as pastors. 408 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; Luke, in Acts, calls it ordaining elders in every church, while Paul calls it ordainiiig elders in every city, and the one interprets the other. And Paul's practice, in these instances, is here turned into a divine command or direc- tion as given to Titus, which, therefore, as it bound him, will bind Baptists and all others loyal to the truth, to the end of the world. Now no man is so simple as to say that elders were to be ordained in these cities, as it was a city, or body politic of men ; for elders and churches are relative terms, as shepherd and ilock, and therefore these officers were not ordained but to local churches ; but to say that he ordained elders in the city, neces- sarily pre-supposes a church extant in that city in which these ministers were ordained ; and, therefore, the ordination was in such cities only where a church was, and a competent number of believers to make a church. And it is reasonable to believe this was the cause why Paul did not cast and mould these people, who became believers in Crete, into churches with pas- tors as they became believers. And he being called away, left Titus behind him to mould these believers into churches at fit and proper times. Those who try to bolster up the episcopal form of church government use the fifth verse of this first chapter of Paul's letter to Titus, where he uses this language. And ordain elders in every city as I had appointed thee. Not hav- ing any examples in the New Testament of where any one of the apostles ever acted as a bishop over many churches, and not having any other or better evidence, they make use of this place to show that, in the apostolic times, they planted churches only in cities. So that they make the episco- pacy, or the apostolic institution, to depend upon the heaping together of all the believers and people in a city and the villages about it, and to make out of this conglomerated mass what they are pleased to call a bishopric or dio- cesan form of government, and hence it became necessary to have a big elder, larger and grander than the rest, to rule over them ; and that Titus himself was the first bishop, because Paul said. As I apjyoiiited thee ; that is to say, over these cities and the churches therein ; and therefore he, as one man, was a bishop appointed for that purpose. And, likewise, our Presby- terian friends make use of this same place to prove the Presbyterian form of church government, and that all churches in a city, when multiplied, were by apostolic institution to be one church, for government, as well as at first, when they were but one congregation ; and that all these smaller pastors were still to continue to be under-shepherds. Now, in all candor, is not this a strained construction, and does it not do great violence to the Scripture accounts of these churches taken together ? For this appointment was given to Titus, in the first beginniug of the gospel in Crete, for Paul having just been there with him, and having con- verted many in the island, he left Titus behind, to ordain them elders. So we see that here was the first erection of churches, and the election of pastors in them by the churches ; and, therefore, it was in the beginning of the gospel, at which time all the believers in each city were but as many as might make but one church. And certainly it was the duty of these Chris- tians, that all those living together should join in one church, rather than in OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 409 divers churclies for worship, support and the edification, one of another, for the sake of unity and strength. And certainly they did and ought to remain one church, and continue one, till absolute necessity would cause a division into many. Because in the times when Titus was there, in fact, there were doubtless so many in these cities, as would make but one church. And when the word city is used it is not meant literally the extent of the whole city, but it is put metaphorically for the church, then extant in any city, and does not mean the extent and jurisdiction of church government ; and they were not to be elders to that city, and the surrounding churches, if there were any, but to the churches in that city, if there should be more than one. So that now, in this day, in the isle of Crete, according to Episcopalians, doubtless there is a pretended bishop there who comes down to us by succes- sion from Titus, by the laying on of the holy digits, not by authority of the local churches, as Paul, Barnabas, Matthias and Titus himself were set apart to the work of the ministry, but of bishops. In other words, it is bishops making bishops, and giving them power to rule and govern the churches — not to do as Titus was appointed to do, that is, to organize the churches, and to help them select pastors — ^but to organize these scattered churches into one church and to rule over them. He is not the ruler of the churches who assumes to appropriate to him- self the title of pope, bishop or ruling elder, or is set up to be one by a college of these ecclesiastics ; but he is a true minister of the gospel, who was made one, after the examples in which Paul, Barnabas, Matthias and Titus were made such. The Scriptures are a nullity if ministers and rulers of the churches could be made without a gospel law, or an apostolic example, and the intervention and authority of the churches useless, if a body of ministers defado could have given authority to their own acts independently of the churches. But if these pseudo-high-churchmen could make him to be a minister and a ruler, who were not made so by the laws of the gospel, and give force and efficacy to the acts of one who is, they must have a power of making a minister to be one who is not so ; that is to say, all depends entirely upon their authority. If any allow such to be ministers, who are not lawfully made, they must confess that power to be Scriptural which makes them so, when they have no right in themselves. The vanity of these whimsies will further appear, if it be considered that real ministers are ministers made such by the law of the gospel, and the ministerial examples therein set out for our guidance, and that ruHng elders, presiding elders, bishops and popes are such by overthrowing the laws of the gospel in such cases made and provided. It is not more ridiculous to set him above the law, who is what he is by the law, than to expect the observation of these laws, from one who by usurpation makes himself master of all, that he may be restrained by no law, and is what he is by subverting all law. Besides if the safety and stability of apostolic church government and the ministerial office be the supreme law of the gospel, and this safety and stability extends to, and consists in the preservation of the churches of Christ in their original integrity, that law must necessarily be the root and beginning, as well as 410 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the end and limit of all ministerial powers and all ecclesiastical laws must be fcubservient and subordinate thereto. Sometimes we see this love of power and of rule spring up in our free Baptist churches in a limited sense. If, then, this love of supremacy is seen in independent local churches, formed of men who have inherited powers of asserting their ecclesiastical independence, w^hat will be the supremacy of an aristocratic ministry in long-established bodies, in bodies which have grown vast and highly organized after the fashion of the nations of the earth, and in bodies which, instead of controlling a few people, control the whole religious state or nation ? In the primitive times of the churches, even during the very lives of the apostles, who were by Christ given all power over the churches, they never met as a college of bishops, nor as ministers claiming authority to call and ordain a minister in their own name and by their own authority. This power was left to the churches, and all ministers, so far as the record shows, were elected and ordained by them as Matthias, Paul and Barnabas were. There was, therefore, power in the churches to elect and make ministers before these the very first ministers were made such, or there never could have been any, for no apostle, or they as a body, ever made a minister, or claimed the right to make one. Matthias, Paul and Barnabas never could have been ministers had not the local churches of which they were members elected and ordained them, which they could not have done if they had not had the power of making them so. There were churches before there were ministers, barring the apostles who were not ministers in the sense here used. These churches, although they had been planted by the apostles, had a power, such a power as the apostles themselves never dared to assume ; for no number of men, banded together under a covenant, can be without authority ; nay, these churches had the power of making these ministers to be what they were, or they never could have been ministers. They could not be ministers by succession, for the Scriptures show them to have been the very first thus made by the call and ordination of the churches. There can be no continuance of succession when there was no beginning to succeed. They were not apostles by the choice and call of Christ as the twelve were, for they were made apostles by a higher power than by the churches. That which calls, and ordains, must be stronger than those called and ordained, and is prior to them both in point of time and authority. They had, there- fore, nothing but what the Holy Spirit and the church gave them ; their greatness and power must be from the local church that made them to be ministers of the gospel. Matthias was elected by the church. That he may take part of this ministry and apostleship. He certainly could have had no part in this ministry had not the church elected him to be a minister, and hence the laws and liberties of the church could not be from him or those like him, but the churches*^ laws and liberties were naturally inherent in tliemselves, and the laws by which ministers were made are the product of the churches. We conclude, therefore, that there was a local church that made Matthias, Paul and Barnabas ministers. They were the first of their kind, and serve OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 411 as perpetual examples for all the rest. They did not make or constitute the churches, by which they were made ministers, by any inherent right in themselves. But it is certain there was vested in the churches a law and authority, by the great founder of the churches, to make and ordain minis- ters. This law was not, therefore, from the ministry, nor by the ministry, but the ministry was chosen and made by the churches, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, according to and in pursuance of the liberty they had by the law of the gospel. Baptists are descended from those early disciples, who, under their respective covenants, were banded together in local sover- eign churches and under the laws of the gospel in and of themselves, being directed by the Spirit, made both apostles and ministers, and looked to no higher authority than that inherent in themselves for so doing. They have always been asserters of these privileges and liberties, acknowledging no laws other than those of the gospel, and receive no ministry nor countenance any but such as they themselves have made, and depose those already made who do not well and faithfully perform their covenant obligations. All of which is to be taken to be a manner of proceeding that agrees with that liberty wherewith Christ has made them free, making laws for themselves and ministers to serve the churches, rather than receive such as are made and imposed upon them by others. Hence, neither can bishops, by their episcopal power alone, nor presbyters, without the authority and assistance of the church, take upon themselves to ordain ministers, but it is a direct violation of apostolic church government, and is arrogantly assuming a power in Christ's name, which, by the divine law of the gospel, never was committed to them. When Titus visited the Isle of Crete he went under the direction of Paul, who appointed him to ordain elders in every church. Now, if Titus ordained elders in any other way than Paul was ordained himself — that is, by and through the instrumentality of the churches — to say the least of it he was not a good Baptist, for to them the acts and examples of the churches are laws of the highest authority, upon the divinity of which the certain truth and divine authority of church government stands, and is the authentic charter of the churches and the divine warrant of their institution. It must be so, or else church government carries no binding obligation at all in it. Until these first examples were laid down by the churches, it was un- certain how the apostles intended that ministers should be ordained. These examples, doubtless, were known to Titus before his departure to Crete, and but for them he would not have known how to ordain a minister, and unless he, as a good disciple, followed these divine examples, it is not known to this day how he ordained suitable men to become ministers to the churches in Crete, for the record is as silent as death as to how he did it. If he did it otherwise than Matthias, Paul and Barnabas were inducted into the min- istry, he established a precedent wholly different from the one we know was laid down before, which does not comport with the dignity and divinity of church government. The Christian world, all but Baptists, have ignored these examples of the election and ordination of the ministry, and have fol- 412 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; lowed after Titus, and presumed that he, in and of himself, ordained minis- ters without the assistance and help of the churches ; thus placing the Chris- tian ministry, after this vague presumption, wholly upon another footing, ordained in another way, and deriving their authority and power from another channel in which the churches were not consulted, thus destroying that which is certain and following after that which has no foundation in fact. Ecclesiastical axioms in church government are not properly grounded upon Scripture examples, but examples are to be judged according to axioms. The certain is not proved by the uncertain, but the uncertain by the certain ; and everything is to be esteemed uncertain until it be proved to be certain. Axioms or self-evident propositions in church jurisprudence, as in mathematics, are evident to common sense ; and nothing is to be taken for an axiom that is not so. Baptists do not prove their ecclesiastical axioms by their propositions, but their propositions, which are abstruse, by such axioms as are evident to all, being plainly laid down in the law of the gospel itself. The principles of their law do not receive their authority from the ecclesiastical legislator and commentator, but they deserve praise for evolving none but such as are undeniably true. Now in secular societies they who have a right inherent in themselves, may resign it to others ; and they who can give a power to others may exercise it themselves, unless they secede from it by their own act ; for it is only a matter of convenience, of which they alone can be the judges, because it is for themselves only they judge. But of a church Paul says : Ye are God's household; ye are God's huildiyig, being built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone, in whom all the building fitly framed together, groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord. Such an institution is of divine origin, and the power it exercises in the call and ordination of the ministry is a divine power, and cannot be transferred to any minister or set of ministers, and has never been so trans- ferred. If each church, therefore, had not a power to elect and ordain, at any time, a minister which they had not before, none could have been created at all, for no ministry is eternal, or perpetual, by succession, as some would pretend. But in the present case, no transfer of authority from one man to another to ordain a minister is pretended, for Paul himself never had any authority to ordain any minister ; the right he had not, or at least never was known to exercise, his successor, if he had any, could not inherit, and consequently could not have had it, or could not have had any better title to it than that of usurpation. Therefore, Baptists have never suffered a self-constituted ministry to get a trick of empire over them, by imposing their sometimes false, and always unnecessary sentences and regulations upon them, wherein the faith and practice of the churches will depend upon the loose opinions of the officious, and then their belief and government will be like a rumor spread from a few unto the ears of the whole denomination, who, although they all tell the same story, yet are no more credible for the truth of what they teach than the first originators were for their authority. In all systems of church OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 413 government, foreign to the apostolic, men dare not speak what they think, and dare not believe in anything except their man-made systems, and dare not give countenance, or even inquire into what the Scriptures really teach. They are bound down in it by their religious rulers and governors ; the church by the priests, the priests by the bishops, the bishops by the arch- bishops, the archbishops by the cardinals, the cardinals by the propaganda, and the propaganda by his supreme majesty — the pope. And that is the catholic church in all its hideousness and deformity, without one trace of it found in the Scriptures. Besides, in the apostolic form of church government it is difficult to see how the doctrine of apostolic succession can have any place at all, for when one minister dies the election of another in his stead belongs to the local church, to which belongs the choosing of all ministers under the direction of the Holy Spirit. And though the church may convene a presbytery to ordain a minister, yet it is still by its authority that the ordination is made. When Judas died the church at Antioch elected Barnabas to the ministry, there being need of one to take his place to supply the need of the churches. The apostles had no authority to make this calling and election in and of themselves, otherwise they would have done so independent of the church. The authority and function of a minister, though he be an apostle, is limited to his natural life. None of the apostles had. power to elect or name their successors. If they had power to name their successors they would be no more elective, but hereditary. If they had no power to elect or name their successors then some other power, which, after their death, must elect them, or else the office of the ministry would become extinct, and dissolve with the death of their predecessors. It must have been directed by Christ, and his apostles, that this right to constitute a minister be confined to the local church. For none have a right to give that which they have not the right to possess. But if there be none that can make a minister, after the decease of him that was before elected, except the church, then the church is obliged by the very nature of the case, as the church at Antioch was obliged, to provide by election his successor, to keep the office of the ministry in per- petual existence — not to keep the Vfiinister in perpetual existence, but the office. Ecclesiastical sovereignty was from the beginning always in that assembly which had the power to elect and ordain a minister. Therefore, it is manifest by the institution of a church, the question as to what minister shall succeed another has no place in church polity, but the election of a minister to fiU his own place in the church is always left to the church itself. And if this monarchical form of church government, with its pretended divine sanction, be still insisted upon, I desire to know which class or order of the early ministry were inferior to the bishops if all were alike ministers made so by the appointment of the apostles ? Under this apostolic appoint- ment one had as much right to be bishop as another. If there could be so many bishops where could the bishoprics be ? Could Titus and Timothy be singled out and called bishops and the others be inferior to them in rank when all received their appointment from the same hands? All of them had 414 A TREATISE VFO:S BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; an equal part in the gift or inheritance, and, therefore, did not all of them by virtue of the appointment become bishops ? This being the case why is not the same eternally sub-divided to as many ministers as there are now in the world who are also bishops by the same right that Titus and Timothy were made bishops? This being the natural condition of them all how comes it to be altered when they imbishoped themselves to set up one or more to have a power over them all, and why should they divest themselves of their natural rights to the office of bishop to set one above themselves when all in the days of the apostles were equal ? and by virtue' of what law did they do it ? Which power, one above another, not being granted by any peculiar concession or institution, the same belongs to all ministers in equal propor- tion and dignity. Such a system of choosing the ministry may give to one exalted fame, and to the other oblivion. Such a government, w^hether the power be in an individual, or a few, turns on different principles from our own, and are subject to consequences corresponding with their principles. When distinct orders of the clergy exist, as among the Methodists, an arrangement, by which the people form one consolidated church government, must always have been an affair of compromise, and on their part, of compulsion. Originally numbers and power being on their side, they could never have consented, voluntarily, to elevate any class above themselves, or any minister above his ministerial brethren. Compromise in such cases must have been the result of conflicts, in which each party obtained all that it could, and the preponderance was given to either, according to its good or bad fortune. In the formation of such a government, the example of the apostolic churches could not have been followed, nor can the example of such a government, either in its career or fate, be considered as applicable to Baptist church government. The strongest propensity of church dignitaries in all episcopal forms of government is to gather power into the hands of the bishops and other church officers. This begets a propensity to usurp the power of the churches for the sake of getting power into their own hands. This form of govern- ment has the strongest tendency of any conceivable human institution of depriving others of that power which legitimately belongs to them for their own benefit, both by the magnitude of the temptation, and the mode of reaching it. These forms of government are, therefore, founded in the evil moral qualities of man, and it is unnatural that evil moral qualities should produce good moral effects ; for it consists in a degree of power capable of exciting evil moral qualities, craving self-gratification at the expense of the churches of Christ. Nothing can prevent this unscriptural deformity but a removal of the power of the priesthood, and if the power is removed, the principle of episcopacy is destroyed, though the name should remain; because they would want the degree of power necessary to excite and bring into action the evil moral qualities of a privileged order of the ministry. Christ alone is head of the church, and. all his ministers are equal in power and authority. If any other were equal to him in wisdom, power and OE, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 415 goodness to us, he might challenge the same duty from us. If it were lawful uuder the laws of the gospel to create a ruler over the churches, receiving existence from no other soiurce than the authority of the law, we were, offered the protection of a wisdom subject to no error and was indeed infallible, a goodness that could never fail, and a power that nothing could resist, it were reasonable for us to enter into a covenant, submit ourselves to him, and with all the faculties of our minds and hearts to devote ourselves to his service. But if there be no such man found, there is no other head over the church but Christ. And all right-thinking Christian men lay severe censures upon those, who, not thus qualified, take upon themselves to govern the Lord's freemen equal to, or better, than themselves ; and judges the assumption of such powers by persons not qualified for the administration of them, as veritable usurpations which no law of the gospel can justify. This shows, that such as deny that the ministry should be set up by, and in accordance with, the gospel, and that laws may be imposed upon them, do equally set themselves against the opinions of the wisest men, and the word of God. And if it should be held that religious liberty should make Chris- tians a little disorderly and schismatic, we may reasonably doubt that pure reli- gion may make others worse ; so that none will be fit subjects of this boasted government, but those who have neither religion nor religious liberty ; and that it cannot be introduced until both be extinguished. The strength of a church is not in the minister, but the strength of the minister is in the church. The wisdom, prudence and piety of a minister may add power and strength to the church, but the foundation of its greatness and spirituality will be in itself. It is contrary to the genius of the gospel to put the ministry either before or aboVe the church, and they who do it invert the order of God's law. No minister can be before or above the church unless he be superior to the whole church ; and he cannot be superior to the church, who is not so by the consent of the church, nor to any other purpose than the church consents to. This cannot be the case of a church of Christ, which can have no equal or superior within itself A church of Jesus Christ cannot recede from its own sovereignty and right, as a private man from the knowledge of his own weakness and inability to defend himself must come under the protection of a greater power than his own. The local church being the only true ecclesiastical body on earth can have no superior. If no such thing as elevating one minister above another was ever known in apostolic times, or could have no effect if it had been done afterwards, it is most absurd to impose it upon the churches now. The free disciples of Christ, therefore, cannot be deprived of their natural rights upon a frivolous pretence to that which never was and never can be. They who elect and ordain ministers of the gospel and give to them such name, form and power under the laws of the gospel as they think fit, know whether the end for which they were created, be performed or not. They who give a being to the power which had none, can only judge whether it be employed to their welfare, or turned to their injury. They do not ordain one, or a few men, that they and their pretended successors may live in pomp and splendor, 416 A TREATISE UPOI^ BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; but that the gospel maybe preached in its purity and the ordinances of God's house may be administered. No wise man need think that this can be done if those who set themselves to overthrow the law of the gospel, are to betheir own judges. The true disciples of Christ who have felt the smart of the follies of those who have wandered away from the true plan of church government, know what remedies are most fit to be applied, as well as the best time of applying them. They found the effects of extreme corruption in church government to be so desperately pernicious that true Christianity will greatly suffer, unless it be corrected and the churches reduced to their first principles. Hence any one who takes the pains to study these underlying principles will at once see that the hierarchical form of church government resembles not the apostolic in either form or practice ; that the beginning and con- tinuance of the papal system was contrary to, and inconsistent with, the apostolical. That in the distribution of the authority of the Christian min- istry no one of them had any other right than what was common to all, ex- cept it were that the pastors in charge of churches were authorized to per- form some duties that did not devolve upon evangelists in the general spread of the gospel in destitute places. This kind of a ministry had its root and beginning in the wisdom of the apostles, and these kind of churches were first erected by them, and are the lawful kingdoms and commonwealths of Christ ; and the rules by which they are governed are alone the laws of the gospel. These church governments have ever been the nurses of Christian freedom and liberty of conscience, and the churches living under them have flourished in spiritual peace and happiness ; whereas the other sort, spring- ing from usurpation and wrong, have ever gone under the name of the uni- versal church with its concomitant idea of priest-craft, and by foment- ing vices, like to those from whence they grew, have brought all the dark- ness and misery into the Christian world, and disgrace upon ecclesiastical government. Men, and especially ministers of the latitudinarian school, have ever had a strange propensity to run into all manner of excesses, even in so sacred a matter as that of church government, when plenty of means invite, and there is no power to deter them ; of which the adherents of popery and priest- craft took advantage, and knowing that their subsistence depended upon it, they thought themselves obliged by interest as well as inclination to make church honors, dignities and preferments the rewards of vice and corrup- tion. Though in the beginning some were so good that they could not be perverted, and others so bad that they could be corrupted ; yet great num- bers always follow the cause that is favored and rewarded by those who assume to govern the churches, and hand out church livings and dignities. The Christian world was not without papists even as early as the second and third centuries, but as the churches receded from the apostolic age, they thrived the more, and the further they departed from the faith and practice of the gospel, the deeper they steeped the world in crime and misery. And as a religious people can only be judged by their deeds and practices, he that OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 417 would know whether this papal form of church government, or the apostolic economy most foment, or punish ecclesiastical corruption, ought to examine the principleo of both in the light of the Scriptures and ecclesiastical history and compare them one with the other. It was the very fundamental principle of the polity of the churches of Christ, that all power should be equally distributed and divided up between all ministers and churches alike. A duly accredited ministry after the laws and forms of the gospel, governing the churches with their assistance and consent, can have no interest distinct, the one from the other, or have any desire to diminish the strength of one another, or to lessen the authority of the churches of which they are members, and by which they have their ministerial subsistence. On the other hand, the pope who governs the church for himself, and seeks his own self-aggrandizement and that of his clergy, looks upon his subjects as the root of his greatest danger, and desires and does render them so ignorant and blind, that they may neither dare or attempt the breaking of the yoke he lays upon them, nor trust one another in any design for the recovery of their religious liberty. So that the same corruption which preserves such a system, if it were introduced into free and independent Baptist churches, would not only weaken, but utterly de- stroy them. The one fattens and thrives on that which would destroy the other. All things have their beginning and continuance from a principle in nature suitable to their original. All tyrannies, either in church or state, have had their beginning from corruption. The history of all ages show and that all those who made themselves tyrants did it by the help of the worse the slaughter of the best. Men could not be made subservient to their lusts and greed of power while they continued in their integrity and maintained their Christian consciences. Hence the wholesale slaughter of those who have held to Baptist principles in all ages since the erection of this terrible machine called the Koman church. As their business was to destroy those who would not be corrupted, and they must, therefore, endeavor to maintain or increase the corruption by which they attained their greatness ; and in their palmiest days, when they enjoyed both temporal and spiritual rule on earth. Baptists were accustomed to look upon them as they do upon thunder and lightning, and every man wished it might not strike his person. When they were thus hunted down as wolves, they had neither strength nor incli- nation to defend themselves, nor could they be forced to forsake their faith, nor to fight for their would-be religious masters, and least of all, in a public way to increase their own influence, which the more it was spread and be- came known was the more destructive to themselves. This was the fate of the humble people who, since the apostles' times, adhered to the form of church government erected by them, and believing in the equal distribution of ecclesiastical powers among all ministers and churches alike, lest it might develop itself into an engine of ^oppression and destroy the very principles which they were instituted by Christ to maintain. That which has made Baptist church government so stable and kept it so 27 418 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; faitliful to the primitive models and examples, is a strict adherence to the principle that the church which elects and ordains its ministers makes them to be what they are. They have ever contended that it is absurd to say that the churches have more power than what we see the apostolic churches exercised under the supervision of the apostles, and that a minister that has nothing but what was given, he who has been made a minister by the churches can have no more authority than is given ; that is to say, they cannot assume a power if they have it not. It is equally absurd to say that the churches have been invested by Christ with authority to do any and everything they please. They are as much hedged in and obliged by the laws of the gospel as are ministers. If there was but one local church in the world, it would be as complete in itself as if there were millions of them, and the pas- tor and other officers of that church would have authority to exercise all the authority that Christ intended ministers should exercise on earth, and no more. These are the views which Baptists have ever held concerning the powers and duties of the Christian ministry. And no doubt that these distinguishing principles have had advocates in every age, and that among those who are universally regarded as the defenders and preservers of primitive Christianity during the dark ages in which they were the main recipients of the papal persecutions. The most distinguishing feature of these defenders of the faith was, that they were baptizers by immersion, and to make thefr offence the more deserving of censure they were denominated re-baptizers of such as came over to them from the Catholics. The question then is whether there is such a similarity of principles between the primitive churches' doctrine and practices as compared with Baptist churches of this day, that will entitle them to claim succession from those apostolic institutions. Not a succession of ministers, particularly, but a succession of churches, ministers and persons, at times numerous, at other times scattered by persecution and hidden, holding substantially the same order of church government, doctrine and principles which Baptists hold to-day. The true rule of succession is a substantial oneness of faith and practice under the laws of the gospel. It is not the ministry that makes these laws, but the laws that make the ministry. They are under the laws of the gospel and not the laws under them. It is to these laws the ministry owe obedience as well as the humblest member of the church. They have no superior but Christ and the laws that make them to be what they are. He that is sent, is not greater than he that sends. They come when the church calls them, and they go when the church sends them, for it is a point of service to come when a minister is called. We preach ourselves your servants. Who, therefore, is sufficient for these things f Lastly, I conceive that herein I have as best I could set out the true nature of the call, ordination and powers of the Christian ministry, from which we see that there are several eminently different opinions concerning this great institution. Let every man study closely this momentous ques- tion and determine for himself of the source from whence the ministry derive their power and the nature of the tenure by which they hold their X)ffice, and the duties God has laid upon them as such. OK, THE COMMOX LAW OF THE GOSPEL, 419 CHAPTER XV. EQUALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY ASSERTED. WITHOUT any disposition to be accounted among those wlio love to speak evil of high church dignitaries, I wish to take up the subject as to whether one minister has more power than another, and whether there be any distinction between them. This subject has a relation to church gov- ernment and polity, that is very important to understand. In the first place no minister can be a true minister whose church is not a true church, no more than a magistrate can be a lawful magistrate who is not made so by the terms of the law. This is a proposition to which all will agree. A true minister is one thing, and a good one trying to do the work of a minister, is quite another. The former respects only their having duly and regularly obtained the rights and authority of their office ; the other relates to the faithful and conscientious discharge of it. The general proposition concerning the superiority of one minister over another, cannot be proved by a single example where one minister in the Scriptures exercised such power, no not even among the apostles who had all power given them. Besides if there be a general power everywhere in the text forbidding ministers to assume authority one over another, they can do it no where, and at no time, aU receiving their authority and appointment from the same source. It is to no purpose to say that the primitive churches being weak- and few in number had no need for presiding elders, presbyters, bishops and popes to rule them. For, if the general thesis be true, and if apostolic church government is based upon principle they must have had them ; and if they had them not, and no trace in the Scriptures can be seen of them, none are now obliged to have them, without the charge of betray- ing their trust. Other denominations who have their religious communities in their own right, may do as they please ; but Baptists must follow such orders as they receive from the law of the gospel. If others do not enjoy that exemption from priestly domination that Baptists do, they must have been deprived of it, either by some unjustifiable means, or by their own con- sent. But thanks to the Saviour of the world, who came and founded these wonderful churches, we know no people who have a better right to religious liberty, or have better defended it than Baptists. And if we do not degen- erate from the virtue of our Baptist ancestors we may hope to transmit it entire to the saved whom the Lord will in the future add to the churches. It is but absurd to say that our Saviour gave any supremacy to any one of his apostles above another. This is evident from many places in the Scriptures, notably this from Luke's Gospel, And there was also a strife among 420 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; thtin, which of them should he accounted the greatest. And he said unto them, The kings of the gentiles exercise lordship over them, hut ye shall not he so. Any one who reads this passage in connection with that which goes before and follows it, will find that there is no place in the whole Scriptures that makes more against the supremacy of one minister over another than this one. Bear in mind that the priests and scribes were seeking to kill our Saviour at the passover ; that Judas was possessed with the determination to betray him, and the day of celebrating the passover was come, and our Saviour celebrated the supper with his apostles, which he would do no more till the kingdom of God was come ; and then announced to them that one of them would betray him ; and the question was asked which one it would be. They then entered into a contention who should be the greatest man in that kingdom ; whereupon our Saviour told them that the kings of the nations had dominion over their subjects, but it should not be so to them, and that they should endeavor to serve one another, and that the greatest among them should be the servant of them all. He told them that he would ordain them a kingdom, but it would be such an one as his Father had ordained for him, a kingdom that he was soon to purchase with his blood, and they would not possess till his second coming. They should then eat and drink at his table, and sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes- of Israel. And, addressing himself to Peter, he says : Simon, Simon, Satan hath de- sired you, that he might sift you as wheat ; hut I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not ; and when thou art converted strengthen thy brethren. That is to say, that Satan by suggesting a present supremacy and dominion seeks to weaken your faith of the future; but he had prayed for him, that his faith should not fail ; and that when he was converted, or convinced of his error, he would understand that Christ's kingdom was of another world, and then he would confirm the faith of his brethren. To which impulsive Peter answered, as one who no longer expected any supremacy in this world, Lord, I am ready to go ivith thee, not only to prison, hut to death. Whereby it is manifest that this minister had no supremacy, and no superior power or jurisdiction given him in this world over his fellows, over the church, but on the contrary a charge was given him to teach all the other apostles that they should have none. Now, in the Gospel by Matthew, Christ uses this language : Thou art Peter, and upon this roch I will huild my church. , . . And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven. The term kingdom of heaven is never used to mean the visible local church, as the church at Jerusalem, at Corinth or at Colosse, but it means nothing more than the spiritual reign of Christ, as was confessed by Peter in the same connection. In the pas- sage just quoted is the first mention made by Christ of the building of his church, which was to be moulded and built anew by him after his ascension. The keys of knowledge having been before in the hands of high priests and Levites, but now as the church was to be of a new frame, the keys were new, so he declares a new use of them to other persons than those in whose hands they were formerly placed. For Christ, being come, shows his pre- OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 421 rogative by declaring the old regime to be done away, saying : I will build my church, and I will give unto thee the keys. The term keys was a figurative expression, well known in Jewish litera- ture, and Christ here used it emblematically, as the Jews used to deliver to those upon whom the degree of doctor was conferred, the key to the receptacle in the temple where the sacred books were kept, signifying that he was given authority to teach and explain the Scriptures to the peo- ple. Now, here stood before the great Teacher a new disciple, and inasmuch as he was to build a new house, and as he had the keys thereof to di-pose of anew, he delivered them to Peter in a representative respect. He first addressed him as Simon Bar-Jonas, the name under which he had been called to be an apostle, but now he changes his name, and says, Thou art Peter, and vpon this rock I build my church. It would be well to remem- ber that God, therefore, in first delivering his promises and grand charters, singled out some one man in whose name the same should run. So Adam was first fixed upon when God, in his name, gave the earth to the rest of the sons of men. So Abraham was singled out as the father of the faithful, especially to represent the Jews, who were his children to whom God gave the promises of the land of Canaan, not in a legal sense, but representa- tively. For the promise that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham or to his seed through the law, but through the righteousness of faith. And no more was the magistracy of the church given to Peter and his so- called successors through the law, but through the righteousness of faiths. Christ fii'st blessed Peter as Simon, and then changed his name to Peter, and so intrusted his charter of the keys to him as the representative of all the faithful in all ages to whom the grant was made, as well as to himself. For Peter was more forward than all the rest to utter his faith that Christ was the son of God. Elsewhere, Peter makes this same confession in the name of all' the apostles : And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the son of the living God. But here this grant of the keys is first uttered singly in his name, and on this occasion, Christ honors this great confessor of him as the man in whose name this great charter to preach the gospel and to build churches should run, he bearing therein the persons of them all that were to have any portion of ecclesiastical power, whether of his apostles or of the churches of believers, that they were commissioned to build. And Peter is singled out as the legislature singles out one man or several men, in whose name the corporate government of a city is to be first organized, and then run. And as this honor was peculiarly his, and he is singled out to be the first charter member of his churches, and the common representative of all the other apostles under the New Testament, which honor he has to this day, even as Abraham and Moses had the like honor under the old law. It is evident that this is so, for the reason that Christ, in a special manner, honored Peter to be the beginner of the apostolic churches, when he, through the Spirit, was the means of convertmg a whole multitude at one sermon on the day of Pentecost. Neither is it to be understood that these keys were given to Peter to con- 422 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; vey them to others derivatively, but he takes them representatively. There- fore, it was not necessary that all power should be in Peter's person, or in his office as an apostle, for he did not say that he would build his church upon Peter, as if he had received all power from the church to rule over her, as a king or lord does, but it was only a typical representation ; that is, he received that power which the churches and the ministry should receive in themselves afterwards, and which he received in a representative capacity both for himself and the churches, as a common person standing for and spoken to for all the rest. Besides, Christ did not say that he would give him the keys of the church, but the keys of the kingdom of heaven, which is quite another thing. Besides, again, he did not say / give, which if he had said to him only as an apostle, constituting him a magistrate or high priest at present, but he said I will give, in the future, because the churches were not yet set up, and the power was afterwards to be given when he should be pleased to declare it by himself or by his apostles. But if there be doubt as to what all this means, the best criterion to be governed by is to note the actions and the examples of the apostles, and see whether the one or the other exercised any supremacy above another ; and in all their conduct and teaching we cannot find any trace of such a supremacy. We admit there might be primacy in Peter, but nowhere can it be found that he exercised a supremacy. When we say that all the civil power is in a state, it is meant that the governor has one part, the legislature another, and the judiciary still another; and likewise the church and its respective officers, all combined, have all ecclesiastical power, and at first was given to Peter, as bearing the person of them all, as nowhere can we find that Peter ever exercised all these functions at once, or set up any claim, or right to supremacy. And it is evident that afterwards in those apostolic times, all churches, all ministers alike, and all believers in the several churches thus set up, claimed and exercised a. personal share in the exercise of ecclesiastical power ; and not a word is recorded of Peter's interference, or complaint that they had usurped his rights to the keys, which Christ had given him, as the supreme pontiff of the church. What a timid apostle Peter was ! that he should in his own life- time allow the keys to be taken from him without a murmur, and that to the complete overthrow of the whole order of Christ's government on earth ; that is according to the belief of some. The occasion of this promise was Peter's confessing, that Christ was the Son of God, which cannot be confined to ministers alone, but unto believers also, and the promise is here suited to the occasion. Then again the name Peter by which Christ designated this apostle, and which he here anew gives him, with the reason annexed, that is : Upon this rock, in an allusion to Petra, signifying one built on the rock, and so of the same name and nature of the rock, shows this to have been Christ's meaning in promising him the keys. He, however, did not say, Thou shall he called Peter, but Thou art Peter ; that is thou art a stone, and built on a rock in the confession you have just made. Peter himself in his first letter applies this very expression OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 423 to all believers, Ye are also as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house ; as if he had said. It is not I, only, that am Peter, that Christ intended ; it was not so spoken to me only, but unto you all. And he opens his second letter, thus, To them that have obtained a like precious faith with us. As much as to say : You have all received like faith and like powers with me. Showing conclusively that the keys were given primarily to the faithful, and not to any one man, or set of men, exclusive of others. Seeing then that our Saviour has denied that his kingdom is of this world, and seeing he has said, he came not to judge, but to save the world, he has not subjected us to the rule of the clergy, except as humble pastors of local churches, feeding their respective flocks, and leading them into green pastures, and pointing them to the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world. They had no commission to make laws, but to teach obedience to laws already made. Their teachings were nothing but counsel and advice, and not laws in the true sense of that word. The question then narrows itself down to this : Does the usurpation of ecclesiastical powers by popes, bishops, or presbyters confer the same right to govern the churches as the divine rights under the apostolic system ? Are we to look upon the power, and not the ways by which it is obtained ? Is the possession and exercise of these extra-ecclesiastical functions only to be taken as proof of the right ; and must men venerate the present power, as set up by Christ though gained by usurpation, and not as coming from the authority of the great Founder of the churches? Men must not impose laws upon the churches of Christ without a thus sayeth the Lord. With Baptists this is the greatest reason in the world, God hath said it, therefore it is true. If this be allowed it would be a spur sufficient to lead them to the greatest lengths in church government, and be a poison that would fill the spirits of the gentlest ecclesiastic with the wildest vagaries. If all men should believe this, there would hardly be a minister left w^ho would not give himself up to overthrow and subvert the churches of our blessed Lord for the sake of the good livings they might get in the scramble. Nothing more is required to fill the Christian world, as it has done, with chaos and confusion and darkness than the general reception of these precepts. None but the ignorant and superstitious can look upon that as a sin against Christ's government, which shall render the person of one man sacred and exalted above his brethren ; nor fear to attempt that which shall make him God's vicegerent on earth. And Baptists doubt, whether the wickedness of filling men's hearts with such notions was ever equalled, unless by him who said, Ye shall not die, but be as gods. When we cut ourselves loose from the Scriptures, the sacred law and un- alterable charter of Christ's churches, we drift out upon the wide sea of speculation, without chart or compass, to be blown about by every wind and doctrine. For we must know that ecclesiastical power cannot independ- ently of the local church be conferred upon the ministry, but must forever follow the rule of nature, as any other profane society. The character of a true minister of Christ constituted and ordained after the laws and precepts 424 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPKUDENCE ; of Christ's teachings, is divine, indelible and incommunicable. It cannot be transferred to another, swelling and puffing itself up and developing into something beyond its real nature, and claim a divine efficacy in itself beyond what Christ intended. The institution of tbe ministry remains the same for- ever. The minister himself may, and must die, and when he passes off' the ministerial stage of action, his functions cease and cannot be transmitted ; but Christ raises up another in his place to fill his own functions in the churches. For these reasons we see that popes, bishops and presbyters can- not confer the power to rule the churches, for they cannot give that which they have not themselves. They who have nothing can give nothing. They who are only usurpers cannot make another real, and the vague whimsy of popes, bishops and presbyters making ministers to be rulers and gov- ernors of the churches, and these men conferring that right on others comes to naught, and falls to the ground. It is plainly taught in the Scriptures that no one man or set of men, out- side the local churches, can give ecclesiastical power to others, unless the authority be expressly given him in the New Testament, but that he receives his ministerial rights from the call of the Holy Spirit, and the election of the church of which he is a member, as Paul, Barnabas and Matthias, for examples, were made ministers ; first by the Holy Spirit and then confirmed or sealed by the churches to which they belonged. It cannot be palmed off* upon us that, that which is from those who assume to be the chief men of the churches, is from the church itself. It cannot be said that a minister who is so selected can claim his right from the church as a donative right, and, therefore, it is from God alone. Had God so intended it he would not have laid down those examples of the apostles just named, which prove to the contrary. In other words, while God calls by his Spirit, yet he would have the local churches to ordain and set apart ; thus blending the divine with the human call as he has wrought all his wondrous works through human means, promising his blessing upon the institution. A man cannot thus claim a royal charter from God, and say that the act of a college of bishops, or ruling elders conferring the power on him independently of the local churches, was the act of God, and, therefore, those who are thus made ministers rule by a divine right ; in other words, whatever is pretended to be done in the matter of church government, by a set of ecclesiastics inde- pendently of the churches, cannot be imputed to Christ, and that now, since the ministry attempts to do what Christ and the local church alone can do, that, therefore, that Christ and the church does what they do. Baptists cannot see and comprehend why the act of the churches, as in the case of Paul, Barnabas and Matthias, and all other apostolic ministers, without so much as one exception, should not have a thousand-fold more virtue and efficacy in it, and be equally attributed to Christ, who through his apostles instituted that way of calling a minister. Upon the same grounds we may conclude, that no extra privilege is pecu- liarly annexed to any form of church government ; that all officers are equally the ministers of Christ, who perform the work for which they were insti- OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 425 tuted by Christ, under the laws of the gospel ; and that the local clmrches, who made them ministers, may proportion, regulate and determine their power, as to time, measure and number of persons, as was done in the apos- tolic times, which can be nothing more than their own good, and the good of the cause. Then why should a free and independent church of the living God have any person to rule over them to whom they owe nothing, that he might live in pomp and pleasure ? This shows the work of all ministers to be always and everywhere the same, even the preaching of the gospel, feeding their own flocks, and shielding them from the wolves that would devour them. He therefore is a minister of Christ, and he only, who is made a minister after the primitive precepts and examples of the New Testament, and does the work of Christ, in the manner, and after the exact teachings of the apostles, who are better guides than ministers created by latter-day saints not well inspired. The order of this divine institution is inverted and the ministerial office vacated, if the power be turned into channels not warranted in the law. And they who are the authors of all this confusion and darkness, cannot but be the ministers of him who sets himself up against God ; because it is impossible that he could have been the author of two forms of church gov- ernment, the one diametrically opposite and antagonistic to the other. For there is no sort of resemblance between the gospel, or Baptist form of church government, and that set up and practiced by post-apostolic sects Truth and falsehood can not proceed from the same root. It is folly in those who set up such a perverted system of polity, and call those bodies, wherein such power is attempted to be exercised, churches of Christ. Oar Saviour said, Ij ye were Abraham's children, ye would do the work of Abraham. If these bodies were the churches of Christ, they ought to be modeled after the divine patterns, and do alone the work of those churches ; and nowhere in the world can the rule be found to go by, except in the study of these models in action. That is to say, no minister can execute the office and work of a minister to the benefit, and in the true spirit of the gospel of Christ, and the spread of his true religion according to the examples of those servants, the apostles of Christ, without sin, and disobedience, unless he have a precise word par- ticularly directed to him for it in the Scriptures, as Abraham and Moses had in the old law. The Lord may sufier it, as he suffered the rebellious tribes to choose a king, after the manner of the nations of the earth, but he has not promised to bless those who do it ; neither has that kind of govern- ment any divine efficacy in it, beyond the naked organization itse'f. So that whatever can be said of these hierarchical forms of church government they are but visionary, and without divine warrant ; and although there be some of the best and wisest men in them, and zealous, but as surely as the Lord brought to naught the folly of the rebellious tribes, he will as surely bring these good people back from their wanderings to the simplicity of the gospel plan of church polity. The Lord is not a latitudinarian, but has ever been a strict constructionist of his government on earth, and will ulti- 426 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; mately bring his own back to a perfect allegiance to his government. But since the time when first our Protestant brethren took upon themselves this form of government, while they cut loose from, and refused to practice many of the traditional doctrines of the church of Eome, yet this one, which is the root of all the rest, that the kingdom of Christ is already come, and was set up at the resurrection of our Saviour, is still retained ; and, therefore, there is need of a ruler, or rulers, to take charge of that government. Whereas, when that kingdom comes Christ has promised that he himself, shall be king of it, and that his apostles shall sit upon twelve thrones, and shall be the judges. They have anticipated the kingdom and have endea- vored to set it up in advance. But cui bono ? What profit do they expect from it ? The same that his highness the pope expects from it : that is, to have sovereign poAver over the people, especially Christ's elect, and to keep them from setting up Christ's ecclesiastical judicatories, the local churches, after the primitive models, and to usurp and continue unlawful ecclesiastical power over their brethren. The authors of all this darkness and confusion are the papists and those who, in a lesser and milder degree, but in imitation of them, claim a right to rule this mythical kingdom on earth. For who is it that being so blind and ignorant as to believe that the pope is infallible, and cannot err, will not readily obey him in whatsoever he commands ? Therefore, true church government is neither Judaism nor the ghost of the long since deceased Roman Empire sitting crowned upon the grave thereof, but it is a new creation divinely appointed. While the world is its diocese, it is not conceived to be a kingdom which in any way needs a temporal or spiritual ruler, to be compared to the nations of the earth. While it is the vehicle of all ecclesiastical power on earth, it forces none to an unwilling obedience. While it is the custodian of the truth, it formulates no creeds, nor pretends to infallibility. While it has a standard of truth, it confers not upon its ministry, gr any other privileged class, the sole authority to interpret the Scriptures, and to regulate ecclesiastical discipline. Its power and sovereignty cannot be transferred to another. It cannot forfeit it, is the sole judge of its polity and religion, makes the Scriptures for itself its own canonical rules, is supreme judge of controversies arising in its own bosom, inflicts its own discipline, chooses its own ministers and other ofiicers, and does whatever else is necessary to its complete government. While its ministry is stripped of all power as rulers, yet to them is due the honor of the grand achievement of preserving pure and undefiled, as the apostles left them, Christ's churches on earth. It is, therefore, absurd for one to pretend to be a minister, who has not received his appointment and credentials from the local church and whose acts as a minister are not valid, for the essence of a minister consists in the validity of his acts. For he is not a minister de facto who calls himself so and assumes the title to himself, but he who is by the consent of the local church possessed of ministerial power. Now the whole protestant world revolts at the idea of a papal form of church government. But how can our protestant friends be against the papists, and be right, when they built their ecclesiastical structures upon OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 427 this fouudation ? They have taken their stand upon the lofty pinnacle erected by the papacy ; they first went astray, and as willing subjects pro- testantism followed in their footsteps. Upon this foundation they built their structure without even brushing away the rubbish. For, be it understood, that episcopacy is no more defensible in church government than the papacy. The one has been developed out of the other. They have either been blind, or they have given heed to the things that were far from them, having taken their stand upon the lofty height erected by their catholic fathers But there has ever been a peculiar people in the world, since the days of John the Baptist, who have not stood upon so high a pinnacle, that they overlook the law, but standing on the ground they see that which those upon the higher eminence overlook. The great and learned men of the world, such as Wesley, Calvin and others, who have erected post-apostolic churches, mis- took the very principle and foundation of primitive church government. This misfortune befell them because they went not back to the New Testa- ment, with earnest and prayerful hearts, and studied what Christ would have them do and believe, but learned lessons from papal schoolmen to round out a theory, and to bolster up a power wrong in the pope, but right in themselves. Hence, an argument against the papacy, is an argument against the epis- copacy, both being rooted in and sprung from the same soil. No impartial reader and student of ecclesiastical government, in all ages of the world, in- cluding especially the apostolic age, as we find it recorded in the New Testa- ment, but will say that the Baptists stand at one end of the line and the papists are planted at the other. There is no intermediate ground. He that is not for me is against me, says our Saviour. But if the catholic form of church government be obnoxious to those who would take all ecclesiasti- cal power out of the hands of one man and place it in the hands of a few choice spirits, such as bishops, or ruling elders, because grounded on the dominion of the pope, with whom there had been no former covenant, why should church government be more defensible in the hands of a few than in the hands of one man, since the Scriptures warrant neither ? If Christ con- ferred the right upon Peter to govern the church, nowhere in the Scrip- tures can it be shown that Peter ever exercised the power ; and much more difiicult is it to show that the apostles, as a college of bishops, or a synod of elders, ever banded themselves together, and either claimed, or exercised the right to rule the churches in faith or practice. No impartial reader of the New Testament, searching for the truth as it is, and not what it ought to be, can find in it a trace of either papacy or episcopacy ; but of the two forms of government the papist can lay the better claim, gathered out of those allu- sions to the keys having been delivered to Peter, admitting the fact, for the sake of argument, that it means what they say it does. But taking out those figurative references to the keys, and Christ having built his church upon Petra, signifying one built on the rock, then there is more ground for believing that Paul was the ruler of the apostolic churches, from the very prominent part Peter suffered him to take in the government of the churches, 428 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; and that without ever raisiog his voice or using his apostolic pen against it. Showing that all true ministers must have inherited the rights and powers to which every one has an equal title, and that which is supremacy, if in one, when it is equally divided among all, is that universal liberty which Baptists assert and say is the true rule of the gospel. For he who is not in his own power and is not the equal of others cannot have a part in the government of others. If the power of popedom was conferred upon Peter, and not upon him and his successors, and not naming how his successors should be chosen, who knows upon whom the power fell at the death of that apostle ? It would be a poor frame of government that did not set out to whom the right to govern belonged, specifically setting out who should succeed one another in the line of government. If the law provided that a governor should be set apart to govern, without prescribing who should succeed him, when and how he should be chosen, the government would, upon the death of the first governor, come to an end, and afterwards all would be chaos and confusion. Those who adhere to these whimsical absurdities ought to be able to prove that there had been a man somewhere in the world wlio had the right to succeed Peter in himself, and telling who he was, and show how this 1-ight might be transmitted from generation to generation, that we might know where and how to seek Peter's successor. Before Baptists could be accused of ignorance in not knowing these things without explanation, they ought to inform us how it may be possible to know him, or what it would it avail us if we did know him, for it is in vain to know to whom belongs a right that never was, never will be, and never can be exercised or executed. But like our Catholic, Episcopal and Presbyterian friends, we may assume that as this great pontifical office must have been in Peter, or in a chosen body of bishops or elders, if any, who never executed it in apostolic times, as they exercise ecclesiastical power in this, the nineteenth century ; and the greater belief — the one in harmony with the Scriptures — is, that there never was such a power conferred by the gospel but that it has been usurped and continued over a people in religious affairs, contrary to the laws of Christ and against both reason and nature. Besides, if ecclesiastical government be in the Pope, it must be in him only. It cannot be at the same time in the pope and in the bishops and elders without the pope, and be called a divine institution ; or, as to that matter, an intelligent ordinance of man. God is not the author of confu- sion ; he does nothing in vain. He never gave a power or a right that is so much confused and absurd that it could not be executed. No man can govern that which he does not so much as know what it is, where it came from, or how it is to be executed. No pope or body of ministers ever knew the world, or could govern it. The position of the pope is the more con- sistent in assuming to usurp the religious government of the whole world, if he has any right at all, than those who assume the right to carve up the Lord's heritage into bishoprics, conferences and synods, putting an ecclesi- astic over each, without a divine warrant therefor in God's word. Is there OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 429 any record where the apostles divided up the churches into conferences or synods after they were multiplied, and organizing or attempting to organize them into governments ? Was not one apostle pastor over one local church, as at Jerusalem, and one over another, as at Corinth ? When or where did one of them ever undertake to rule over them all, except those of them being divinely inspired to write to the churches, giving them laws and wholesome advice ? Did not Paul say. What have I to do to judge them that ar3 ivithout f It were a shame for poor, weak, short-sighted man to set up a human contrivance, disjointed and all out of proportion, and void of order, and without a covenant or the consent of those to be governed, and at the same time being guilty of the blasphemy of imputing to Christ such a form of government as would be a reproach to his gospel and bring confusion into the Christian world. All such governments strive to make all ecclesiastical power dependent upon and to emanate from the ministry. While all essen- tial, practical religious liberty, like the gospel itself, loves the light of com- mon sense and plain, practical experience. All ecclesiastical absolutism loves mystery — the mystery of some divine right. Popes, cardinals and bishops wrap themselves in it. But there is no mystery about the govern- ment of a local church by its own members. The membership of a local church means an aggregate of human beings, to each of whom is denied any diviue right, and to each of whom w^e justly inscribe frailties, and the possi- bility of subordinating their judgment to passion and sometimes malice. Each one of them separately stands in need of moderating and protecting laws, and all of them unitedly as much as the individual. But, say our protestant friends, depose the pope, Peter's pretended suc- cessor, and divide up his power into diocesan bishoprics, conferences and general assemblies, and give us that power that is but an usurped dominion in the pope, and we ourselves will dominate the churches of Christ. They contend that if Peter was made pope, Christ forgot to leave any instructions as to who his successor should be, and how he was to be known and chosen ; besides, they say that it is foolishness to seek for that which cannot be found. But how are these lordly Episcopalians, Methodists and Presbyterians going to find out their rights to govern and rule, since the Scriptures are as silent as to how their rulers should be selected, as it is as to how the pope should rule ? Our Catholic friends say that the Scriptures are quite clear ; that the cardinals assembled at Kome have the right to elect Peter's succes- sors, and that it is likev/ise clear from the same law as to how they shall be invested with supreme power to rule. But where in the holy record have they any authority to divide up the pope's power, and do the business of a pope at a different stand and in a little different way ? When they prove that their rights in themselves are clearly deducible from the law of the gos- pel, and that each ruler is entitled to the parcel of the pope's power he enjoys, then they can lay some claim to ecclesiastical government. Let them search the Scriptures to see whether the inspired apostles ever met and fixed, by pre- cept or example, the exact amount of power each ruler should exert, and how the Christian world should be divided up, and how each ruler should be seated 430 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; in his ecclesiastical chair. Nay, verily, it were better to let the pope alone set up this absurd claim, and they all be no longer protestants, but return to the simplicity of the gospel plan of church government ; since it is no less ridiculous to try to deduce a right from the pope that has none, than to expect pure and wholesome waters from a polluted and poisonous fountain. If this pretended right to govern the churches be divided up and placed elsewhere than in the local churches, it concerns us to know by whom, when, how, and to "whom Christ gave it ; for the division cannot be of any value, and has no divine sanction, unless it be ordered by Christ originally, or by his apostles, in settiug up and putting in action the apostolic churches, and that they did exercise this right in making the division ; and that the ecclesiastical parcels into which the Christian world is divided are according to the allotment that the apostles made, and that the persons claiming them, by virtue of a divine law, are the true personages to whom they were first granted. But if the dominion of the whole Christian world cannot belong to any one man, or to a set of ecclesiastics, and every one of Christ's freemen have an equal title in him who has a right to give it ; or, if it did belong to one, or to a few, it is certain from the Scriptures, no one man, as Peter, or set of men, as the apostles, ever exercised it in governing or in dividing it ; or if they divided it, no man knows how, when, or to ivhom. So that they who lay claim to any parcel of it can give no better title to it than the pope who claims the whole lump, to whom he says it was granted at first ; and that we have neither a word, nor a promise of a word, from Christ or his apostles to decide the controversies arising between these protestants and papists concerning the seat of ecclesiastical power. We may then justly conclude that Christ having never given the whole Christian world to be governed by one man, nor prescribed any rule for dividing it, nor declared where the right of dividing, or sub-dividing should begin, or terminate, we may safely afiirm that the w^hole matter of ecclesias- tical government is left where we see it in the apostolic churches ; that is to say, in the local church. That all believers may enter, form and continue in greater or lesser organic local churches, as best suits and pleases ourselves. The right to dominate the churches we cannot say, is at an end, because it never commenced by any one who had a right to institute a permanent government over them all. And as it is impossible to transmit these rights by inheritance or succession, so it is impossible to transfer the benefits arising from them. The words of the apostle. If we are children, ive are therefore heirs, and co-heirs with Christ, are alike the voice of God and nature ; and as the universal law of God and nature is always the same, every one of us who belong to the church of Christ have the same right in the government of his churches. And that supreme right which was not devolved to any one of them, but inherited by us all by virtue of our discipleship, is also inherited by every one of us that are believers. But if that which could be inherited was inherited by all, and it is impossible that a right of government over the churches can be due to every one, then all that is, or can be, inherited by every one is, that exemption from the dominion of another which Baptists OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 431 call religious liberty, wMch is the gift of God. Such an organization of the church is hostile to independent ministerial princely power. It tends to subject the minister, and ministerial authority to the church. It makes ministerial power an office, instead of resolving it into a sovereignty retaining in its grasp the supreme power of the church, thus furnishing the objective reality upon which ecclesiastical science can rest in the construction of a truly scientific ecclesiastical system. All other forms contain the germ of a priestly despotism, which, instead of being a blessing to the world, has been its greatest curse. For under the old law we could not, yet now we may exercise that freedom wherewith Christ has made us free. For to submit the conscience in faith or practice to the power of a privileged class of ecclesiastics, is to betray our Christian liberty. Christ having set us free from all the bondage of the law which God himself made and gave to Moses, would not take off, and relieve us from the laws of God and the dominion of the Jewish priesthood and impose upon us the laws of men. It is certain that we ought not to speak lightly of so divine an institution as that of the ministry without great care and deliberation, for we might lay down that for the law of the gospel which the Scriptures might not warrant. But this much may be said of an institution of Christ. When a thing is instituted by Christ it does not thereby equal an universal commandment, but obtains the force of a precept, according to the subject matter, and its apparent relations. Thus when Christ instituted the office of a Christian minister he did not by that institution oblige every man to enter upon its duties. Baptist church jurisprudence requires that ecclesiastical government shall not form an order of the clergy permanently and essentially separate from the membership ; all modern systems of church polity have resorted to a number of distinctions, such as high-sounding titles, orders, red caps, white gowns, black gowns, uniforms, or whatever other means of separating individuals from the membership at large may seem expedient. True church government spurns, and has a peculiar dislike of all such distinctions. The law of the gospel and arbitrary ministerial power are at eternal enmity. It is such as the apostles never exercised over the primitive churches, and is a contradiction in terms, it is blasphemy in religion, and downright wicked- ness in ecclesiastical government to say that any priest or bishop can have arbitrary power. Baptists teach that churches and their members are instituted to be governed by the law of the gospel ; and he that will substitute the rule of one man, or a few,* in the place of it, is an enemy to God ; it is not only pernicious to those whom it subjects, but it works its own destruction. But if we consider the manner of the institution of this sacred office, it is certainly a perfect, unalterable and universal commandment. For though every man in every circumstance is not by virtue of this institution obliged to enter upon the ministry except the Holy Spirit calls him, yet if he does enter it, by the institution, he is tied up strictly to the letter of the law, that under no circumstance can he go beyond the measures and limits of the divine law. He that enters it must do so by the strict laws of the New 432 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUPvCH JURISPRUDEXCE ; Testament, and no other. The reason is, because a divine institution is the whole cause and entire beginning, and the whole warrant of the ministerial state, and of the action of those who enter it ; and, therefore, whatsoever is otherwise contrary to the institution is not from God, but from ourselves. So that although the institution of this sacred office does not compel one to undertake it nolens volens, yet in all cases it obliges one who does undertake it, to do it in the manner appointed by Christ. / have received of the Lord ihat which also I delivered unto you; that is, whatsoever I did nOt receive from the Lord, whatsoever was not of his institution, I have the power to dispose of, but not anything which he appointed. Now, v^hen we look abroad in the Christian world and see men exercisins: a rule over the churches and filling high places in the various ecclesiastical systems of the land, and then look into the Scriptures to find a divine war- rant therefor, and see no resemblance between the apostolic system and these lordly politic communities, we conclude that great violence has been done to Christ's institution ; and that the churches and their government in the hands of these people are as the potter's clay to be moulded in whatsoever shape they please. E-ead the epistles general of Peter to the early converts to Chriistianity, and we find not an allusion to his supremacy over the min- istry, and not a hint in his writings that Christ had erected a papacy or an episcopacy to rule over the churches. This was certainly an opportune time for him to have defined his powers and his duties if he had been in- vested with such authority, as some contend. For this whole dispute whether Christ left any jurisdiction to Peter, as the first pope, must be gathered from the Scriptures. For jurisdiction is the power of ruling, which never was exercised in its true meaning, except by the local churches. The supreme power to rule includes the power to make laws, and with the sword of justice to compel men to obedience to those laws pronounced by the power that makes them, or by the judges appointed for that purpose. In what place in the Scriptures did Peter pretend to have such power ? For when Christ chose his ministry he gave them only the commission to preach, but not to judge of causes between man and man, or between church and church, for that is a power he never took upon himself, saying. Who made me a judge, or a divider amongst you f But he that has no power to hear and determine causes, between man and man, and no power to judge, cannot be said to exercise any jurisdiction at all. If Christ gave them not this power, they have it not inherently in themselves, nor can they derive it from the laws of nature A divine institution is something set up by Christ, with an efficacy beyond the nature of the thing itself. Any one man to rule, and have the divine right to rulcj must have it in express words given him in the Scriptures, but cannot take it by intendment, whereby they are capable of commanding and compelling obedience as a natural govern- ment ; and any supreme pastor to make himself capable of ruling the whole universal church wants three things that our Saviour has not given him : that is, the power to command, to judge and to punish ; neither one of which powers did Peter in the true sense of government ever exercise or pretend to exercise. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 433 But how is it that such distorted notions of the office of the Christian min- istry could spring from the simple institution of the apostolic churches, as we now see them reflected in the Scriptures ? How that Christians professing a loyalty to God and his word could suffer such encroachments upon ecclesias- tical government, and the ministerial office, and how these pernicious errors first crept in, to the complete per.version and overthrow of Christ's churches, is a marvel. One can see, cui bono, what good might be expected to result to the ministry in those times when these errors first started, but how that the membership who could not be profited thereby, could suffer them to be intruded into the church, cannot be understood. For without the authority at first of the membership of the churches there could have been no such seditious doctrines publicly preached. In the beginning, as in Baptist churches of to-day, it was by simplicity, humility, sincerity, wisdom and the other sterling virtues of the apostles, that the true witnesses and followers of Christ were enabled to preserve and keep pure the churches, as we find them to-day in the Scriptures. But in the course of time those ministers, to whom Christ had given no power but to preach and teach the gospel as the churches increased, assembled in council to consider what they should teach, and thereby obliging them- selves to teach nothing against the legislative decrees of their councils, made it to be thought that the membership were thereby obliged to follow their self-made doctrine, and when they refused to subscribe thereto, they were punished as disobedient. Then the ministers of the church of the chief city usurped and got themselves authority over the less pretentious ministers, and appropriated to themselves the names of bishops. And, finally, the bishop of Rome likewise usurped, and took upon himself an authority over all the other bishops of the empire. The ambition and canvassing for the offices belonging to this distorted power, and especially for that great office of being Christ's lieutenant on earth, became, by degrees, so evident that they soon lost the inward reverence due the ministerial function and the divine institution of the church. Whereas, the first law which protects, directs and renders useful the love of ministerial power in church government, should leave to the people the choice of the person to whom any portion of minis- terial authority is to be confided. The necessity of such a law is evident. Admitting that every minister serves his church or his denomination from the rewards it offi^rs him, that the love of power is the first object of his hopes, and that the different degrees of authority conferred on him are the equivalent for his services, it follows that when a part of the ministry is either wholly or partially excluded from these rights the ministry will be di- vided into two classes, one of which has but little interest in the churches, and the other, every inducement to serve them. This erroneous principle is the basis of Catholicism, Episcopalianism and Methodism, which once being removed, lays the foundations of ministerial equality ; without which religious liberty will be always timid from being under restrictions, and always languid because oppressed with the weight of its fetters. In the primitive times of the churches there was no such ecclesiastical 28 434 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; hierarchy, because it was the very basal rock of Christianity that the min- istry should in themselves have no power over the churches or over the con- sciences of men, but the word of God itself, working faith in every one. The Scriptures nowhere teach that there was any one universal church here on earth which had coercive authority to govern all Christians on earth, no more than was an universal nation or king that had a right to govern all mankind. We repeat, that church government differs not, so far as its organization is concerned, in any material particular from any other gov- ernment by institution. Whatever authority is acquired is gotten by cove- nant, and by the consent of many men together, in which they precisely set out what they agree to do, and make known by what right one man may acquire dominion over many, if such dominion be permissible. For when one man has dominion over another, there is set up a little kingdom. But at no time or place, known to the Scriptures, have all churches or Christians assembled together, either in person or by representation, and by covenants of subjec- tion, resolved themselves into a church universal, and acknowledged one man or several men for their rulers. If the local churches, in the begin- ning, never thus assembled and entered such a covenant of subjection, who- ever undertakes to rule them is but an usurper : in which case there would be two distinct persons, the one who would be a pretended sovereign, called by himself the master, the other would be the subject, called the slave. For he is a slave who is owned by another, and when the ruler or the pope had thus acquired authority over a number of slaves, this body politic would be nothing more than a kingdom, secular and despotical, organized after the carnal ways of the world. In the primitive, as in our Baptist form of church government, there is but one sovereign body, the church itself, with but one ruler, Christ himself, who rules by his Spirit, and who, while on earth, accepted not a forced, but a willing obedience. We see nothing in Scripture, of precept or example, that is not utterly abhorrent to this chimera. If God had constituted a lord paramount in church government, with an absolute power, and multitudes of nations were to labor and fight for his greatness and pleasure as they have done, this were to raise his heart to a height that would make him even forget that he was a man. Such as have studied the question of church government, not only know that it neither agrees with the letter or spirit of the Scriptures, but it is unreasonable in itself. The exaltation of such a being is incompatible with the genius of apostolic church government, to say nothing of the pride that always attends the elevation of one man above another. It is no less incredible with God who disposes all things in wisdom and goodness, and appointed a due place for all his ministers without distinction. The wise, the humble and the pious would refrain, and the ignorant and arrogant cannot Scripturally take upon them the burden of it without blasphemy, and with- out subjecting the Christian world to all the absurdities and mischiefs attend- ing such a subversion of apostolic church government. It was by degrees that this usurpation began in the primitive churches, and when once begun those ministers who were thus inclined to extend their OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 435 power and influence, were forced to follow the herd as soon as they began to expect a power which the Scriptures do not confer upon them. Men, even minister:?, are of an aspiring nature, and apt to put too high a value upon themselves ; they who are raised above their brethren, though but a little, desire to go further, and if they gain the name of a bishop, a cardinal, or a pope, they think themselves wrouged and degraded when they are not suf- fered to do Avhat they please. And the nearer they come to a power that is not easily restrained and hedged in by the divine Scriptures, the more pas- sionately they desire to down all that oppose it. And no greater testimony can be given of the effects we see of them than in the history of the world, since these perverted ideas became rooted in the minds of men. And it can- not be said that many ministers are so rich in piety and all the Christian virtues as not to desire more power than the gospel allows. This may be and is somtftimes the case, but such men are hard to find, and more than gospel laws are required to keep them within due bounds and limits. He has not searched into the nature of man who thinks that he can resist such blandishments of power ; nothing but the wonderful and immediate power of the Holy Spirit can preserve him ; but it cannot be claimed that the Holy Spirit is with those who thus distort and destroy ecclesiastical power ; for whenever it is thus destroyed it ceases to be a divine institution and has no divine efficacy in it, and whatever else it is, it is not a church of Christ. One of the evil consequences arising from this construction of the powers of the Christian ministry, is that the churches have not the right to select their own pastors, but that this right belongs to the bishops as such. In all well regulated secular governments, as in the United States, where any regard to the rights of the people is paid, the appointing power is in the President and the Senate ; the president nominating and the Senate confirming. But in many of these church governments the bishop has the sole right to appoint and the power to suspend a minister. The consequence has been precisely such as might have been expected, a severe contest for the possession of that power, as in the Methodist church, and the ultimate usurpation of it by that department of the government to which it ought never to be entrusted. It is true that it would seem that the power to remove a minister ought to attend the power to appoint ; for those whose duty it is to fill the offices of the churches with competent incumbents, cannot possibly execute that trust fully and well, unless they have power to correct their own errors and mistakes, by removing the unworthy, and substituting better men in their places. But this does not argue anything in favor of entrusting this enormous power to the hands of one man. In the Methodist church for a long time it was strenuously contended for by a large part of the laity, and was finally yielded, rather to the confidence they reposed in the virtues of their bishops, than to the conviction that it was properly a ministerial pDwer belonging only to the bishop. But even if it were otherwise what would it avail that the church must be consulted in appointing a minister to office, if the bishop may, the very next moment, annul the act by removing or suspending the person appointed ? The church has no right to select ; they 436 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; can do nothing more than meekly submit to the person sent them. The bishop maj appoint his own devoted creatures; if the church should disapprove of them they have no redress, but must endure as best they can for two or four years. And when the appointment is made the fortunate incumbent knows that he is the mere tenant at will, and necessarily becomes the veritable tool and subject of the man at whose sole pleasure he eats his daily bread. Surely this is a great and alarming defect in the Methodist discipline, that so vast and dangerous a power as this should be held by one man. Nothing more is required to place the liberties and the whole government of the churches at the feet of the bishop, than to authorize him to fill, and to vacate, and fill again, at his sole will and pleasure, all the oflSces in his bishopric. The object of ministerial equality is to unite all Christian people in a church system, where every advantage may be enjoyed by all. Every such ecclesiastical barrier should be destroyed. All distinc- tions between one minister and another are absurd, and ought to be rejected ; they are the fatal remains of ancient Judaism, of priestcraft, always destruc- tive to religious liberty, but now disgraceful and dishonoring to God, in an age that believes itself, what, in fact, ought to be — enlightened. The necessary consequence of enabling the bishop to appoint to and suspend from office at his mere pleasure is, that the appointee soon learns to consider himself the minister of the bishop, and not of the church. The nature of his responsibility is changed ; he answers not to the membership for his conduct, for he is beyond their reach ; he looks only to the bishop, and is satisfied with his approval, and is regardless of everything else. In fact, his charge, as it is called, however important or obscure it may be, soon comes to be considered only a part of the great executive power lodged in the bishop. The bishop fills the office of presiding elder, the metropolitan pulpit and the common circuit riders various pulpits ; and the incumbents of those offices are but his agents, through whom, for the sake of convenience, he exercises so much of his gigantic powers. The bishop has long since learned to say : " This eldership and these important charges are a part of the great executive trust which is lodged in me ; I have a right to discharge it in person if I please, and, consequently, I have a right to discharge it by my own agent, and to have it done in my own way." Who does not perceive that the claims which have already been made in behalf of the power of the bishops upon this system of ecclesiastical government must of necessity change the whole nature and spirit of apostolic-ecclesiastical institutions? Their fundamental principle is, that all power is in the membership, and that church officers nre . but their trustees and under- shepherds, responsible to them for the execution of their trusts. And yet there is, in effect, no responsibility whatever. The dissatisfied and disap- pointed member can make his complaint only to the bishop, and the bishop's creature knows that he is perfectly secure of his protection, because he has already purchased it by a humiliating subserviency. Is it enough that the bishop is responsible ? If so, responsible for what ? Will you impeach or remove the bishop because his creature does not come up to the standard of OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 437 a man and minister of God ? There is absurdity in the very idea. He will tell you that, according to the construction which has been placed upon ministerial power, and in which they themselves have acquiesced, that matter depends solely on his will, and you have no right to punish him for what the discipline authorizes him to do. And when the matter is brought to an issue, the bishop gravely tells them that his agents have abused the trust, and not he. And when they call on those agents to ansAver they impudently reply that it is no concern of theirs, they will answer to the bishop. Thus powers may be multiplied and abused without end, and the membership, the real sovereigns, the real depositories of all power, can neither check nor punish them. Hence this system of church government is incompatible with religious liberty as Baptists love it. It is absolutism which exists whenever ecclesiastical power, unmitigated, undivided and unchecked, is in the hands of any one man. It is the opposite to religious freedom ; it is the negation of protection ; protection in its highest sense is an essential element of religious liberty. It is needless to remind Baptists that religious liberty has been lost quite as often from false gratitude toward a personally popular bishop, a cardinal, or a pope, as from any other reason. It matters not how such a ruler may be raised up. He may be either ap- pointed or elected by the membership. It does not change the principle and will be none the less unscriptural. Baptists, in their free system of govern- ment, would have no more authority to elect a pastor to rule the church by his own arbitrary will than a Methodist conference has to elect a bishop to lord it over the churches. Of all power, especially popular power, by which we mean the unscriptural sway of the multitude, is the most dangerous, be- cause it is not borrowed, and is the most deceptive because in most cases it is led or handled by one man or by a few. Hence power is not religious liberty and does not secure or insure the stability of church government. It is true it is necessary for the protection of the government, and it consists in a great measure in the protection of certain rights ; but nevertheless power is not religious liberty, and because it is power it requires checks and limita- tions, and it is necessary to prevent the generation of a still more dangerous power. The bishop and the priest are the central force of the universal church. They are the incarnation of the popular power, and if any of the smaller men should happen to indicate an opinion of their own, they are really given to understand that the clergy are in fact the church. They assume to be the church, and whoever dissents from them is an enemy to the church. Their divine right to rule the church is the voice of God, which speaks in the voice of the church. Such bodies cannot, of course, be called churches of Christ, for they are devoid of independence and every element of self-government. The question m these cases is not whether they love religious liberty, but simply whether they love power. They do not look beyond the single measure, nor to the means by which it is carried out ; yet the Scripturalness of these means are of greater importance than the measure itself, forgetting that the levies, so to speak, of apostolic church government once being broken through, the whole system may be soon flooded by an irresistible tide of arbitrary power. 438 A THEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JTTRISPEUDENCE ; Whatever can be said by those beloDging to the Papal, Episcopal and Presbyterian forms of church goverament in opposition to these apostolic examples, seems to proceed from a groundless conceit that the powers exer- cised by popes and bishops arise not from the church, but by reason of their ordination at the hands of pseudo-ecclesiastics. But it is not possible for one minister, made such under the same conditions with the rest of his brethren, can have a right in himself that is not common to all others, until it can be shown that they have a right to confer a superior authority, the one upon another. How is it that a set of ministers without the utmost ab- surdity can be said to grant ecclesiastical powers to a man greater than they have themselves, and which does not reside in the church itself? But our friends contend that they have been led into this extravagant idea, about the office of a Christian minister, by the terms used in patents and charters granted to particular men ; and not distinguishing between Christ the giver and the church the dispenser of these powers, they have been led to think that they really have the authority to give as their own, that which was never given them by a grant or charter from Christ. This cannot be denied by any who considers that no set of men can confer upon others that which they have not themselves. If popes and bishops be originally no more than other ministers, they cannot grant to them, or to any one of them, more^than they have themselves. One is your master ^ even Christ; and all ye are brethren. Now it is evident that all cannot inherit ministerial dominion, for the right of one would be inconsistent with that of all the others. The right which is common to all ministers, properly called and ordained, is that which w^e call liberty and ministerial equality ; or, rather, it is exemption from dominion. It is quite certain that the very first ministers under the gospel dispeusation, including the apostles, neither had nor exercised any ecclesiastical power in themselves, only in so far as they were ministers of the local churches, for Paul said, What have I to do to judge those without? And whatever authority they had was uniform, and devolved to every one alike. If Peter was the first pope, and Titus the first bishop, they must not have been aware of it, for they never pretended to exercise any power over the churches or over their brethren, such as w^e now see exercised by these post-apostolic saints, but they w^ere all equal. Some of those ministers, not made such immediately by Christ, for example, Paul himself, although the most active of all the first ministers, exercised no ecclesiastical power beyond his preaching, teaching and planting of new churches. Taking the example of these early ministers, seeing that none of them seemed to exercise more power than the others, if they were popes, bishops or ruling elders, there would now be in the world as many of these dignitaries as there are true ministers extant in the world ; that is, no one minister would or could be above another, and no minister could be ruled by another, and it is certain the churches would not be dominated by them. This ministerial equality of right and exemption from being ruled over, is what Baptists have ever contended for, and he who enjoys it cannot be deprived of it, not even by his own consent : that no church can elevate one minister above another, or if OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 439 it did, it could confer no right upon hii^ inherent in himself as a ruler, and that a church consenting to be ruled by a minister, confers upon him no ecclesiastical power. For there are many things a church may, and must do, but there are likewise many things it cannot do. One of these is to make a man a pope, or bishop with power to rule over them, whether willing to be ruled by them or not. All this is clear from the Scriptures, as seen in the examples of every church planted by the apostles and evangelists. Besides if the Jews would choose a king, God commanded them to take one of their brethren, not one who has assumed to be a ruler. When they resolved to have one, as those who believe in these high ecclesiastical dignitaries, resolved to have them, he commanded them to choose him by lot, as Matthias, Paul, Barna- bas and all the other early ministers were chosen, and caused the lot to fall on Barnabas. All that these popes, and bishops have, therefore, is from their elevation, and their elevation is from those that elevated them. If any should be so vain as to think that Christ by a grant of power to Peter, he elevated him to the throne of the papal see of Eome, which place he never saw in his life, and there be nothing in his conduct that indicates that he exercised the power conferred, we must infer that after his demise, those stepping into his pontifical shoes began to raise themselves by degrees and by their bootstraps, above the common herd of his brethren. And that if any one of them did so, it cannot without madness be ascribed to Peter, nor to the apostles, all of whom were but humble ministers of the gospel, for they all seemed to have as much title to dominion over their brethren and over the churches, or the means of attaining it, as any other true ministers of this day. This must be true in all times and places unless the present pope could prove by a perfect and uninterrupted genealogy, that he is the divine personage in the line of Peter, and that line to have continued perpetually in the government of the Christian world. For if Christ left no example or precept, as to how Peter's successor should be elected or known, or if the ministerial power was in fact divided equally between Peter and all other ministers, as they all used it equally, it may be sub-divided into infinity, and if inherited, the pontifical chain is long since broken, and is but a mythical whimsy, and can never be made whole. It is ridiculous to pretend a right that belongs to no minister, or to go about to defend a right that lay dormant during the whole lifetime and ser- vice of the apostles, and has been quiescent for these eighteen hundred years. This leads us necessarily to the conclusion, that all ministers are equal in power "and authority, and at first were created by the consent and approval of the local churches, and was given to whom they please, or else all are set up by force and usurpation, or some by consent, and some by force and usurpation. If any are setup by the consent of the churches, as are all Baptist ministers, they do not confer liberties and privileges upon the churches, but receive all from the churches. Matthias was elected by the church at Jerusalem, that he may take part of this ministry andapostle- shijp. The logical conclusion is that had he not been thus elected he could 440 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; not have Lad or taken any part in that ministry and apostleship, for Christ, the appointing power, had already been taken up into heaveu, and left all matters of that nature to the local churches. If this conclusion can be refuted, those who do so must prove that ail ministers of the world have their beginning from usurpation, and that usurpation always creates a right; or if they recede from that general proposition, and attribute a peculiar right to popes and bishops who are absolute lords of the churches, and that all under them have neither Christian liberty nor any part in the government of the churches but by their concessions, and therefore that these church dignitaries gained by usurpation the power they have, and their right to govern the churches is derived from it. But if the power of these pseudo-ecclesiastics be a mere spectacular extrava- ganza, that has no place in Bible jurisprudence, and that no church was ever commanded by Christ to make it their rule of action, nor any reproved for neglecting it, none ever learned it from any of the analogies deducible from the Scriptures under the gospel dispensation. The apostles, nor the evan- gelists claimed any privileges from it when their power was equal, and if there be such a thiug as a natural pope, or bishop, it could be of no use now when there are so many ministers in the world both true and false, that not one in the world can prove whether he has come down by divine succession from the original. And that the first churches, whether well or illy consti- tuted, according to the command of Christ, or the invention of men, were contrary to and incompatible with it. If there be, therefore, or ever was any true church government extant in the world it was instituted by those entering the organization, or if there was ever any true minister of the gospel ordained in the world they were made such in the manner and after the examples laid down in the Holy Scriptures, and the powers annexed to that ministry were the donations of Christ and the churches that made them to be ministers. Truth being uniform in itself those who desire to propagate it for the good of mankind, lay the foundations of their reasonings in such principles as are either evident to common sense or else easily proved. But those who have a weak cause delighting in obscurity suppose things that are dubious or false, and think to build one false premise upon another ; and, therefore, those who believe in the authority of popes and bishops, persuade us that all eccle- siastical power was by Christ vested in them from the beginning before even the planting of the churches. K there were such a thing in ecclesiastical law as a natural or a divine pope to rule the world, and a bishop to rule a whole city or state, and that the right must go by descent and succession, it would be impossible for any other man to acquire it, or for any one to confer it upon them, and to give authoriry to the acts of those, who neither is, nor can be, a pope or bishop, which belongs only to those who have the right inherent in themselves and inseparable from them. For the essence of a pope or bishop consists in the lawfulness and validity of their acts. And it is equally absurd for one to pretend to be a pope or a bishop whose acts are unscriptural and invalid. OS, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 441 If it is possible to prove that these usurpers of ecclesiastical powers hold not their authority by divine right, and that they came to be possessed of it by the perauadon of those who would elevate them thus above their breth- ren, they who at first were thus persuaded were doubtless persuaded to con- sent that they should be popes and bishops. That consent, therefore, made them popes and bishops. But they who at firbt made them popes and bishops made them such popes and bishops as best pleased themselves. They had, therefore, nothing but what was given them ; their greatness and power must at last be not from Christ, but from those who gave it, and their au- thority could not be in themselves, but inherently in those who made them what they pretend to be. We know of a certainty that there was a people who were members of a local church at Jerusalem, that made the first min- ister under the gospel dispensation, not including the apostles, who were made apostles by Christ himself. The story is short, but exceedingly interesting. In the first chapter of Acts we read: And they appointed two, Joseph^ called Barnabas, and Matthias. And they prayed and said, Thou Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two Thou hast chosen, that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship. And they gave forth their lots ; and the lot fell upon Matthias ; and he was numbered with the apostles. This election by the local church was to fill the vacant apostleship made so by Judas' treachery. Likewise we learn in the thirteenth chapter of the Acts how the church at Antioch identically the same way elected and set apart Paul and Barnabas to the work of the ministry. These are the very first examples of the call and election of ministers, and were the acts of the local churclies of which they were members, and not the act of Peter nor the acts of the eleven, otherwise than as members of those churches. These are divine examples, and any man who assumes to enter the sacred office of the ministry in any other way than therein pointed out, can be but an usurper, for the authority by which these first ministers became what they were could not be from themselves, but from Christ and the churches, who set them apart. Their ministry, therefore, was from them, and depended upon their will. These very earliest churches having been planted by the apostles were so fully convinced that in the creation of a minister they exercised their own right and w^ere only to ask the Holy Spirit to guide them and to point out to them whom to elect, and were to consider what was good for the cause and themselves, and that without foreign interference. They were accustomed to take such as seemed most likely to perform their office, and to refuse those whom they did • not want as they did Joseph, for IMatthias received more votes than he, and, therefore, was the choice of the church. Which we take to be a manner of proceeding that agrees better with the quality of freemen, making ministers for themselves, than of subjects recei^ang such as were imposed upon them by a pope, or college of bishops, or elders. Now what excuse can there be for a departure from these examples, and for transferring the power the church always exercised in those primitive times to other hands that have no right to use it ? If these rules and examples were given 442 A TREATISE VTOliJ BAPTIST CHUKCH JURISPRTIDENCE ; by Cliiist it must have Leen from the beginniDg universal, and will be perpetual to the end of the world. No minister of this day and generation can be a successor to the apostles, endowed with their power and authority, for all of them held their appoint- ment from Christ, except Matthias, whom the Holy Spirit directed should be chosen to fill the office made vacant by the treachery of Judas. Taking it for granted that they held the empire of the churches, during their official lives, by the will and appointment of Christ, their offices can belong to no minister, or set of ministers, who came after them, because the mantles w^hich they laid down came not to their possession by inheritance. If so, how, when, and where? How did their authority come to be divided without such an injury to the universal church, whatever that is, as can never be repaired ? They who place all ecclesiastical power in a multitude of Chris- tians, which multitude, whether it be great or small, have not all ecclesias- tical power, because ten men organized into a Baptist church are as free and as powerful as ten millions ; and though it may be more prudent in some cases to join with the greater than the smaller number, because there is more strength, it is not always so, because we see no great multitude of Christians in the primitive times so joined together for government ; but every man must therein be his own judge, since, if he mistakes, the hurt is to^himself ; and the ten may as justly resolve to live together in a church capacity, and oblige themselves to the laws of the gospel as the greatest number of Christians that ever met together in the world. But we cannot find a more perfect picture of Christian freemen living together according to their own will, under the instruction of the apostles, than the local churches in the days of the apostles. All these churches might have banded together, as do post-apostolic sects, to choose and ordain popes, bishops, and ruling elders, but they did not ; and in their^failure to do so we find no shadow of despotic ecclesiastical dominion, effected by one or many, as rulers, or successors to the apostles ; but all apostles, including ministers, made after them, lived together in that fraternal equality, which, according to the instruction of Christ, they ought to have done. There was no high priest, subordinate, or vassal ; there was no strife among them for the supremacy, they were brethren, they might live together, or separate into independent churches and be independent ministers as they found it convenient for themselves under the free laws of the gospel. Each church had its own bishop, which was the common name for a pastor. Whether these pastors were elective in the apostolic period, or was transmitted by succession or hereditary right, is one of the contested ques- tions in church government. The latter was hot the ancient theory of the office. Indeed we have positive examples in the apostolic times of the elec- tion of these officers, notably that of Matthias, Barnabas and Paul. A change so great and radical, affecting the independence and personal rights of all the members of the churches, requires positive proofs, in view of these examples, to override the presumption against it Hereditary right to this office, or the right of one man to be appointed to it, carrrying with it OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 443 authority over and obligations from the members of a churcli, is a very dif- ferent thing from an office bestowed by a free election, with the reserved power to depose for unworthy behavior. The very nature and genius of those free and independent churches forbids the supposition as to them that they had parted with a right so fundamental and vital to the independence of the members of those early churches. Hereditary or apostolic succession, if it existed amongst the minister.-^, would indicate a remarkable develop- ment of the aristocratical element in those early churches in derogation of that liberty wherewith Christ had made them free. All the ministry, includ- ing the apostles, were perfectly free and equal, and acknowledging the same in each other. We find religious liberty, equality and fraternity written as plainly in the constitution of those apostolic churches as can be. Heredi- tary right and appointment to the principal office in a church system is totally inconsistent with the ancient doctrine set out in the Bible concerning the churches of Christ, and cannot be indulged in except to round out a theory or to bolster up a system. It is usual, with those steeped in error, to obtrude their deceits upon men by putting false names upon things, by which they may dazzle men's minds, and from thence deduce false conclusions. Now of all that is said about the divine right of the ministry, nothing is more incomprehensible than what is meant by this phrase, to which all the perversion of the Scriptures is due, concerning the lawfulness of the power of the ministry. For lawful minis- ters are ministers by the law of the gospel. In being ministers by this law, they are such ministers as the law makes them, and that law only must tell us what is due to and from them, or else they are ministers by an universal higher law and right above and independent of the churches, to which no minister can have title, as before said, until he prove himself to be the right- ful heir by succession, coming down with an unbroken chain from the apostles, and along with it inheriting the authority to rule the churches. This chain, however, is broken when we consider that nowhere did the apostles pretend to exercise a rule over the primitive churches, except by their council, advice and admonition, and certainly not in the sense that bishops and other officers rule over the churches at this time. Hence, this overgrown power of the ministry must be imposed upon the churches by some other authority than the apostles. It is certain that this imposi- tion must be either by the law of the Gospel or by force. But laws in church jurisprudence are made to keep things in order without the neces- sity of force, for it would be a dangerous extravagance to arm with force the ministry, who, probably in a short time, as the history of the world has shown, must be opposed by force in order to keep them within the limits of the laws of the land. If usurpation can give aright to a minister, or set of ministers, to rule the churches in mass, why not to a local church to rule themselves? Or, rather, if Christ did in gross confer such a right to govern the churches upon them all, and they neither did, or can, meet together for the good of the whole, why should not Baptist churches that did and can meet together after 444 A TREATISE UPOj^ BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; the exact examples cf the primitive churches, agree upon that which seems most expedient for the government of themselves ? Did Christ redeem man and place him under the necessity of wanting a hierarchical form of church government, and all the train of blessings they say proceed from it, because at the first, even in the very days of the apostles, all the cliurches did not, and afterwards all could not meet, to agree upon rules and rulers of this kind of government ? Or did Christ ever declare, or the apostles under Him, that unless they should use the first opportunity of dividing themselves into a diocese, and diocesan bishoprics, as were to remain unalterable, the right of ruling over them should fall upon the first audacious ecclesiastic that should dare attempt to do it ? Or, is it not more consonant to the wisdom and intention of Christ to leave to every local church, as he unquestionably did, a liberty of repairing the mischiefs fallen upon them through the supposed omission of Christ, and his contemporaries, the apos- tles, by setting up churches among themselves, than to lay them under the necessity of submitting to any that should insolently aspire to a rule and domination over them, as do popes, bishops and presbyters ? Or is it net more just and reasonable to believe, that the universal right to do these things, not being executed by Christ and his apostles, and that inasmuch as they set up common Kttle Baptist churches, that all ecclesiastical pawer w^as lodged in them, as members of a great religious commony/ealth, than that it should become the reward of an individual's fraud and usurpation? Or, is it possible, that any one man can make himself an ecclesiastical lord of a religious people, or a parcel of that body, to whom Christ has given the liberty of governing themselves by any other means than by usurpation, unless the apostles and the early churches under them did themselves will- ingly submit to such a dictator ? If this right to rule the churches did not devolve upon one man, is not the invasion of it the most outrageous injury that can be done to all the Christian world ? By this means any number of men, or so many as could conveniently meet together in one place at a time, agreeing together and framing a church under a covenant of faith and good w^orks, beconie a complete church, hav- ing all ecclesiastical power in themselves and over themselves, to call and ordain a minister, as the great apostle Paul was made one after the call of the Holy Spirit subject to no other human law than the Holy Scriptures. All those that compose the churches, being equally free to enter it, if found converted, no man or minister could have any prerogative above others ; and nothing obliging them to enter into these churches but the consider- ation of their o^Yn good and the good of the cause, that good must have been the rule, motive and end of all that they did ordain. It was lawful, therefore, for any such local churches to ordain their ministers, as they did these very first and greatest niinisters ever ordained by any church before or since, and he or they who are thus ordained, having no other power but what was thus conferred upon them by the Holy Spirit, and the churches, whether great or small are truly by them made what they are ; and by the law of their own creation, are to receive those powers, and those only, ac- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 445 cording to the proportion, and to the ends for which they were given. These powers thus conferred upon ministers cannot be variously executed accord- ing to the various whims and caprices of the ministry in setting up a papacy, an episcpacy or a presbytery ; but they are to take the ecclesiastical govern- ment and control already set up as models of perfection, and confine the churches within the same. Ecclesiastical history has shown that these various systems have been good or evil, according to the nearness of their approach to the apostolic models, or according to the rectitude or probity of tlieir in- stitution, or the folly and vices of those to whom these perverted powers have been committed. But in Baptist church government the end which has been ever proposed, being the good of the churches only, they have erected their church polity and performed their duty who procured and maintained it according to the laws of the gospel which were equally valid to all of their ministers alike, whether they were few or many, great or small. Nor can the force of these arguments be avoided by the fiction of men's brains, that Christ gave this power to whole multitudes or to the ministry by a divine right and not to every particular church of Christ equally. If that which papists and protestants call a divine right elevates one minister above another, and puts them in high positions in the church, and the laws of the gospel regulate these matters, they might have been spared the pains of resorting to ecclesiastical legislation, to create these various ofiices, telling us exactly how these dignitaries shall be elected, when and by whom elected, and the tenure of their offices ; for an ecclesiastical sanction was unnecessary and of little force to confirm a perpetual and universal law given by Christ to his churches, and of no value against it, since man cannot abrogate what Christ has instituted. Baptists do not need such legislation to regulate the call and ordination of their ministry, taking the Scriptures alone for their guide. Never have they laid pen upon paper to define, augment or decrease the authority and power of the Christian ministry. They have never abused the Scriptures, nor followed the writings of the fathers of the church, whose opinions are to be valued only as far as they rightly interpret them, to build up a church hierarchy, in order to round out a theory, and to gratify the whims of a class of ofiicials which has no counterpart in the Scriptures. But we have already abundantly proved that the local churches, in the primitive times, called and elected their own ministry, which is more ancient than the systems since set up by man, and that there never has been a time since the institution of the churches in which there were not such tribunals as had, and exercised, the power of calling and ordaining their own ministry, making and unmaking them as occasion required, and as best pleased themselves under the laws of the gospel. It is a mixture of nonsense and error to say that the ministry reigns over the churches by a divine right alone, since it can be proved by no place in the Scriptures, These foolish inferences cannot be logically drawn from the Scriptures, since they impute to the ministry acts of which in their persons the Scriptures give no warrant and of which the apostles had no knowledge and never exercised. Can the [lower of all the churches be imputed to a 446 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDEKCE ; single man, who can be but in one place at one time, and is always compre- hended in the dimension of his own little sphere? If the apostles, before their death, divided the then Christian world into diocesan districts, and put a bishop in charge of each, giving to them specific powers, we were only to inquire into how many districts they appointed the world to be divided, and how well the division we see at this day agrees with the allotment made by them. But as the Scriptures make no mention of such a division and appointment, during the lives and labors of the apostles, and the churches having for many ages afterwards laid under such a vast confusion, and inasmuch as contemporary history gives us no clue as to what w^as done, we have nothing that can lead us to guess how it was to be sub- divided, nor to w^hom the several parts were to be given, and how they were to be governed. So that the difficulties are absolutely inextricable. And though it were true, that some one minister had a right to rule every parcel that is known to us, it could be of no use, for that right must necessarily perish which no man can prove, nor indeed claim. But as all natural rights by inheritance and succession must be by descent, this descent not being proved by the Scriptures there can be no natural right to this rule ; and all rights being either natural, created, or acquired, the right to be a minister, not being by inheritance or succession, must be created, or acquired, or none at all. There being no law or example laid down in the Scriptures by which these things can be done, as has been proved by reference to the apos- tolic churches, according to which ministers were made, we must seek the right concerning which we dispute, from the particular local churches, or we shall be able to find none. Having shown that the very first ministers were not bishops, in the sense that they had power to rule over many churches, and that the apostles them- selves exercised no such rule, and that all those ministers mentioned in Scripture came to be ministers different from, and inconsistent with, that of inheritance or succession ; and that we are not led by the word of God, nor by the reason of man, or light of nature to believe there is any such thing as a minister by divine right alone, above the call and ordination of his church, w^e may safely conclude there is no such thing, or that it never was so under- stood and practiced by the apostolic churches, which to Baptists is the same thing. It is as ridiculous to think of practicing a pow'er, which in the be- ginning was never exercised, as to create that w^hich never w^as ; for it is folly for a minister to pretend to derive a power from the Scripture, who cannot prove from the Scripture his right to exercise it. If this be not true we desire to know from which of the apostles, or early bishops of the apos- tolic times, the bishop of New York, for instance, deduces his authority to rule a whole city or State ; or what reason he can give why the right to rule, which is fancied to be in him, did not rather belong to the first of his predecessors, that attained to the rule he now enjoys, than to the humblest Baptist preacher ever ordained in a country log cabin or school-house ; or how that can ba transmitted to him which was not in the first? We know that no man, or church, can give what they have not ; that if there can be OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 447 no giver there can be no gift ; if there be no root there can be no branch ; that the first part failing all the rest that should be derived from it must necessarily fail. It is ridiculous to say that one minister is above another when even the apostles never exercised any such prerogatives. It is ridiculous to say that Peter was pope when he never exercised any of the functions of a pope ; or that he was the first bishop of Rome when he never saw Rome ; or that it is lawful to have bishops ruling over many churches when no such rule was ever exercised in the apostolic times ; or that we should have ruling and presiding elders and cardinals and archbishops when there were not created such offices by those who founded the churches ; or that the churches in a whole State or territory should be cast up and lumped together, and the sov- ereign local churches thus divested of all ecclesiastical power, and these extra- ecclesiastical bodies invested with power and authority to rule over them, when nothing can be shown in the law of the gospel that authorizes it. How then can any of these things be lawful unless there be Scriptural authority for them — unless we are so disloyal to God's government as to say that man may with impunity destroy the local churches we see in operation in the apostolic times, and set up whatsoever they please instead thereof. It will not do to say that these things are established by divine right, and grounded upon the eternal and indispensable laws of Gods and nature. On the other hand, if God had intended them to be thus, he would have given us either positive laws or examples to that efifect. Hence those who established these human systems cannot contend that there is anything of divinity in them, unless they were from a root consistent with the Holy Scriptures. If they have no such a beginning, and are not grounded in the word of God, their establishment can have no right. If they have none they cannot be reputed to have any ; for no man can think that to be true which he knows to be false. If, therefore, there was no shadow of priestly government and right in the institution of the apostolic churches, there could be none in those that succeeded. Peter could have no more power than Paul, and Barnabas seemed to have as much as John or James ; and it is absurd to say that supremacy ought to be imputed to either of them, when none exercised it, and the powers and duties of each were the same ; for our thoughts are ever to be guided by truth in the study of these questions, or such an ap- pearance of it, as persuades or convinces us. If ecclesiastical governments proper arise from the consent of those who institute them, and are instituted by men according to their own inclinations, they did therein seek their own good. A people, therefore, that set up churches plain and simple, in imita- tion of the apostolic patterns, do it not that they may be great and glorious, but that they may fulfill the purposes of their organizations. They do not ordain ministers to lord it over the churches, but to become a loving shep- herd of a particular flock. This is not accomplished by setting one, a few, or more men above another in the administration of powers, but by placing ecclesiastical authority in those who may, under the laws of the gospel, rightly perform the office of governing the churches. He or they, therefore, 448 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; may be singled out as Matthias, Paul and Barnabas were, who are most fit, in the opinion of the local church, to perform the duties belonging to the min- istry, in order to the public good of the churches for which they were ordained. If there be such a thing as the right of one minister to be above his fellows, and any rules laid down in the Scriptures whereby the one may be distinguished from the other, and the duties which the one may exercise to the exclusion of the other, then we would yield the point. But no right is to be acknowledged in any but such as is conferred upon them by those who have the right of conferring, and are concerned in the exercise of the power upon such conditions as best please themselves. No obedience can be due to him or them who have not a right of commanding. This cannot be con- ferred upon any that are not esteemed willing and able rightly to execute it and will not abuse it. This ability to perform the great work of a true minister of the gospel, and the integrity not to be diverted from it by any temptation to assume functions to which they are not entitled, comprehends all that is most commendable in an humble minister of Christ, and we may easily see that Avhensoever ministers act according to the laws of the gospel, they can have no other rule to direct them in ordaining one minister to the exclusion of another, than the opinion of a man's virtue and ability, best to perform the duty incumbent upon him as a Spirtual adviser of . the local church ; that is, by all means to procure the good of the people committed to his charge. The law of every instituted power, like that of an organic church, is to accomplish the end of its institution, as creatures are to do the will of their Creator, and in departing from it they overthrow their own being. Ministers of the gospel are distinguished from other men by the power with which the law of the gospel invests them for the good of Christ's cause. But he that cannot or will not procure that good, without puffing and swelling himself up above his brethren, destroys his own being, and be- comes like other men. This may seem strange to those who have their heads infected with priestcraft and other Episcopal whimsies ; but to Baptists, they are certainly grounded upon such truths as are evidenced by the Scriptures. Such men are viewed from the pinnacle of majestic reverence. If a bishop is a Scriptural functionary, he is a man whom the common people cannot elect or depose ; you cannot regard him with anything less than mystic awe and wonder ; and if you are bound to worship him, of course you cannot change or depose him. If you ask the immense majority of these aristocratic churchmen by what right a bishop rules over the churches, they never would tell you that he rules by the election of and ordination in a local church, as Matthias and Paul were elected and ordained, but they would tell you that he rules by God's grace ; and hence they believe that thc)^ have a mystic obligation to obey him. When he comes into his earthly kingdom, his patrimonial inheritance, it would be a sort of high treason to maintain that he did not reign by a Divine right, with its pretended divine sanction, for it would be equivalent to saying that he was an earthy mortal and was not in the line of apostolic succession, and was indeed no better than an ordinary Baptist preacher. Whatever he does has a sort of sane- OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 449 tity different from what anyone else does. He has good intentions, and thinks his calling divine, and attends to the business of the churches as a government clerk, with his daily bread to get, attends to the business of his office. Ac- cordingly, his business is to resist the gospel order of things, and to set up and prolong what ought not to be. This unscriptural episcopacy, by its religious sanction, confirms all ecclesiastical order, and has little in it except itself. It has grown until it has given a vast strength to the entire polity by enlisting in its behalf the credulous obedience of the masses ; it lives aloof and absorbs all the holiness into itself, and turns over all the rest of the polity to the jurisdition of the dwarfed and misguided churches. Baptists affirm, therefore, that the liberty and equality of the Christian ministry is granted by Christ to every church, as an organic unit, and to every minister in his own proper person, in such a manner as may best serve his cause, and as it was exercised by all the apostles, and all the early ministers of the churches, as has been proved, and not by the vast body of the churches, which was never known under the supervision of the apostles. The histories of all the apostolic churches, especially those in which the apostles themselves figured most conspicuously, are so full of examples of independent local churches, their governments, and the equality of their ministers, that no man can question them unless he be very stupidly ignorant, or obstinately contentious. A Baptist minister, to be inferior to another could not be a member of a Baptist church, and no member who is not the equal of every other member, can belong to a Baptist church ; for he that is not in his own power as a freeman in Christ Jesus, can have any part in the government of others. Baptist churches are thus instituted. They all derive this power from the examples of the apostoKc churches. These first assemblies did not, and could not, confer ministerial superiority upon one man and deny it to another. They had no such power, and such as now claim superiority under them, can inherit none from those that had none ; and there can be no right in all these hierarchical church governments, and in all these ministerial dignitaries, that men so much venerate and worship. I am sure nothing can tend more to their overthrow than the study of Baptist church jurisprudence in all its beauty and simplicity. Religious liberty, being only an exemption from the dominion of others, the question ought not to be, how churches can come to be free, but how a minister comes to have a dominion over them? for until the right of dominion be proved, and justified from the law of the gospel, liberty subsists as arising from the nature and being of the churches. Liberty of the churches is from those who institute them, for no minister can have more power than he has received from the churches. Hence a minister having no power to govern in himself, and being nothing but what the church makes him, must owe all to the church, and nothing to any one from whom he has received nothing. Christ only who confers this freedom from priestly domination upon the churches, can deprive them of it. And we can in no way understand that he has done so, unless he had so declared by express revelation, or had set some distinguishing marks of dominion and subjection upon his churches. 29 450 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; It would be justifiable enougli bad some of the apostles pretended to a dominion over the cburcbes, for ministers of this day to exercise the same power, in imitation of their examples. But nothing of the kind appears of record, for Paul says : What have I to do to judge those without f The rule, therefore, of one minister over another, and over the churches, which Presby- terians and Episcopalians fancy to be lawful, universal, and perpetual, fails in the very beginning and is directly contrary to what they assert ; and being never known to have been authorized afterwards by the apostles, were enough to silence them forever, if they had anything of modesty or regard for the truth. That which was begun without warrant of law, has been carried on in ignorance, and has ended in confusion. It is my purpose to dedicate this treatise, when finished, to the Baptist ministry of the United States. I propose to do this because I am fully per- suaded that they are the most intelligent class of men to whom has been committed the preaching of the word of God ; not only so, but they are the most loyal to the truth as it is written in that word. Yea, more can be truthfully said of them, they have been, under the blessings of God, enabled to resist the blandishments of priestly power, and to remain humble and modest shepherds of one flock, not for rule and government over them, but to feed them with the bread of eternal life. Faithful and true men of God ! you have not received your reward in this life, but there is laid up for you a crown of glory in the life to come. Though weak as babes in the flesh, God has clothed you with the spiritual strength of giants and enabled you to perform a work wonderful to behold. You have not puffed up yourselves with official pride and gone off* after the vain glory of this world, as others have done, but have remained faithful to the trust Christ committed to your keeping. You have never considered yourselves wiser than Christ and his apostles by pretending to set up new churches and new systems of polity for their government, but have been content to take the Lord's models and have made the best of them, thus showing your loyalty to him and his govern- ment on earth, believing that Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it. Truly there is no surer sign of the decay and decline of a church or a ministry than their fondness for gaudy show and ostentatious pride. Thank the Lord Baptist churches and Baptist ministers have been marvelously exempt from these evidences of decay and weakness When he instituted this ministry he set bounds and limits to their powers and created a circumscribed jurisdiction within which they must act, beyond which if they go their performances are devoid of any divine efficacy. As the local independent church is the seat and subject of Christ's ordinances and worship on earth, so are his ministers the servants of the churches, in his name, to administer those ordinances, and to lead that worship, to the edification of all whom tlie Lord has called to attend upon their ministry. It is as absurd to say that Christ ordained two kinds or orders of the Chris- tian ministry as to say he taught different doctrines, the one contrary to the other. Indeed there is an orthodox ministry as well as an orthodox jdoctrine. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 451 CHAPTER XVI. BAPTIST CHURCH DIVISIONS, OR A SEPARATION OF ONE PART OF A CHURCH FROM THE OTHER. THUS in one of the preceding chapters we have shown the necessity and utility of ecclesiastical councils. We have shown that it is impossible for them to pretend to a power over the churches, or over our consciences, and that nothing can oblige us in faith or practice but the word of God and the sovereign local church. As to associations and conventions they are so wholly human in their constitution that though by custom and usage they are to be convened and made use of, yet to make either them or councils standing and formal judicatories, and give to them a legislative power, or a dominion and empire in faith, is something not taught in the word of God ; and, therefore, they cannot be legal tribunals obliging any but them who consent, and they themselves are bound no longer than a better reason inter- venes, and they can as much alter their findings when the case alters as they can abrogate any other matter to which they have voluntarily consented, and that without calling another council to release them therefrom. In this place let us consider those disorders and diseases that either divide or destroy a church of Christ. To treat the subject conveniently we will divide these disorders into those that are schismatical and those that are heretical — schisms being such as only divide a church, while heresy totally destroys it. Surely the valuable time of the reader could not be more profit- ably taken up than to evolve a few of the rules by which to ascertain the true ecclesiastial status of the factions in a divided church. If those composing a church could always have the proper use of reason and as much religion as they ought to have, our churches might be secure, at least from perishing from unnatural diseases and disorders ; and when they come to be dissolved, not by external violence, but by internal disorders, the fault is not in those who adhere to the doctrine and polity of the churches, but in those who de- part therefrom. Any who contend that Baptist church government is so sovereign as that its authority cannot be attacked when it steps beyond the bounds of the laws of its organization, mistakes the true nature of that gov- ernment. Some contend that if a Baptist church is invested with supreme government in a full and absolute manner, no one has a right to resist it, although there be a departure from that justice and equity which is the very basis of its free government, and that nothing remains for the membership who dissent but to suffer and obey with patience. This idea is founded upon the supposition that such a church is not accountable to any one, not even the denomination, for the manner in which it governs, and that if an 452 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDEXCE ; injured minority might control its actions and resist its authority where they conscientiously believe the church unjust, that authority would no longer be absolute and would in effect as they contend destroy all church government. They say that the church possesses all ecclesiastical power which no one can oppose; that if the church abuses its authority it does illy, indeed, and wounds its conscience, but that its doings are no less obligatory, as being founded on the lawful right to govern, and that the church by covenant and institution in giving the ruling majority the sovereignty, has given the minor- ity no right to revolt against that sovereignty. This process of reasoning is correct if we concede the fact that the majority is always right and do not materially err. In endeavoring to discover the true rule in this behalf we ought to weigh carefully every circumstance in order to make a just applica- tion of these principles. Baptist churches are subject to the laws of the gospel because they can make no new laws except what is found in the Scriptures, and have no power but what is given by the laws, since they cannot abrogate what God has instituted nor one church free itself from a law that was given them all. The power of the church is the power of the law — a power of right, not wrong. The church oaght to exercise the power of the law of the gospel as becomes the representative of Christ upon earth, because that power is the power of Christ alone ; but the power of doing wrong is the power of the evil one, and not of Christ. Whilst the church remains the ground and pillar of the truth, it is indeed the representative of Christ, but when it turns from the truth to teach for doctrine that which is heresy it forfeits its church state, and unless it repents its candlestick shall be removed, and can no longer lay claim to that which it has forfeited and lost by apostasy. In being a church by the law of Christ it is such as the law makes it, and by that law we can only judge what manner of church it is, whether true or false. In all things we are obliged by our church covenant to hearken to the church when she commands those things which Christ does not counter- mand. It were a thing much to be desired if there were no divisions, yet differences of opinion touching points of doctrine controverted is rather to be chosen than unanimous acquiescence in heresies and material erroi-s. Net every division, but such as are causeless separations from the communion of the church is schismatical. All such as only forsake the heresies of the church do not thereby forsake the church, and may justly cast off from them- selves the imputation of schism, for in such cases those who do not separate from such errors are to be considered as the common partakers thereof. It is one thing to separate from the communion of the whole denomination united in one communion, professing the same faith and worshipping God after the same manner — one thing to separate from those who are united among themselves, and another to separate from those who are divided among themselves. It w^as not the pleasure of Christ to give to any council or society of men authority to pronounce for all the churches a judicial sentence in controver- sies of religion in such a way as to do violence to the conscience, although it OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 453 was his most ardent prayer just before his death that his people might be one. On the other hand the whole teaching of our Saviour was that all men should content themselves with, and to persuade others unto, an unity of charity and toleration in matters of belief, and it is certain he has author- ized no man to force all men to unity of opinion regardless of the truth. For we are commanded, to hold forth the word of life; to buy the truth and sell it not ; to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints ; to hold fast the form of sound words which they have received ; to strive together for the faith of the gospel; and to maintain the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace and love. In order sometimes to preserve these principles it becomes necessary to differ with one's brethren in the same church which often di- vides the church into factious. Now factions in a church which may justify themselves are those which cling to principles rather than to their conse- quences — to truth rather than to men and majorities. Those that are un- justifiable are such as ostensibly display the selfishness of their character in their actions. The means which they employ are as wretched as the end at which they aim. They would wreck a church in order to carry out a purpose, being deficient in good faith. Those who generate and lead factions generally begin by discerning their own interest and their own selfish pur- poses, and discover those other interests which may be collected around and combined with it. They then generally find out some new doctrine or principle which may suit the purposes of their new association, and which they adopt in order to disrupt the church of which they are members, and tiius become schismatics in the true sense of that word. When a church falls into this condition it is not the rule of the majority, but the rule of those who are the strenuous partisans of the few who have incited and now lead the majority. Men enter a Baptist church to embrace the truth as it is in Christ Jesus, and that they may enjoy all the privileges and immunities of this divine institution. The moment the church neglects to bestow these blessings, or falls into such disorders as to be unable to do so, it has broken its faith and its prerogatives are forfeited. It matters not in what form such a departure from the faith appears, it has disregarded the purpose for which it was con- stituted, that is, the keeping of the faith once dehvered to the saints, and no reason, either technical or moral, can convince the denomination that it has not degraded itself, and unless it repents, it is not justly and totally destroyed by all the laws either human or divine. Although in theory the church may have absolute power, yet individuals composing the church never yield up the entire sovereignty. There is one portion always reserved by the members — the right and power of preserving themselves as Baptists, and keeping pure the doctrines of the gospel. This is one of the inalienable rights of every church member and is the property of every one. Were we even to wish it, we could not alienate that liberty of thought and action and soul, which is the birthright of every Baptist, breathed into him at the moment of his regeneration. Hence, Baptist church government stands in greater need than any other of sincere piety and universal intelligence, be- 454 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; cause it is naturally weak and exposed to factional quarrels, the violence of which often rends them in twain. The Saviour committed his churches to the faithful, pious and spiritually minded, and not to the fancy or covetous- ness of the heretical, the quarrelsome or contentious. The unity of the faith is effected by love one for another ; uniting all the members of the church in one body ; contrary to this is schism or division, which is a voluntary and causeless separation from the unity of charity whereby all the members of the church are united, and consists in being di- vided from that true church with which a man agrees in all points of faith. Schism is a special aud particular vice distinct from heresy, because they are opposite to two distinct virtues — schism to unity, heresy to faith. Heretics corrupt the faith by believing of Christ false things, while schis- matics, by wicked and needless divisions, break from fraternal union, although they believe the same doctrine we believe. He who has denied the true faith has broken the unity of the church. Those who really and dearly love the church of Christ are rarely ever guilty of schisms, for schism in the beginning may be understood different from heresy, yet, in process of time, if schismatics stand aloof from the church, they are very apt to fall into some heresy, and by that means become both schismatics and heretics. Hence schism, or the breaking without cause the unity of the church is never justified, except when it proceeds originally from and is caused by some heresy indulged in by the dominant majority in a church, or some gross injustice practiced, which renders living in the same church insupportable. For light and frivolous causes a schism is a most grievous sin, as nothing so tends to degrade the cause of Christ as that the church should be divided. True religion is not sought or looked for either among heretics or schismatics, but among those alone who are purely ortho- dox and lovers of the peace and unity of the whole church, and are followers of the truth. There are those who for trifling or small causes divide the body of Christ — such as speak of peace and make war, such as strain at gnats and swallow camels. It should be laid down as a general rule that slight corruptions of manners yield no sufficient cause to leave the church, otherwise men must go not only out of the church, but, as the apostle says, out of the world. Even the Saviour foretold that there would be in the church tares growing with choice corn and sinners with just men. We should learn to tolerate many things for the good of the peace and unity of the church, things which we detest for the sake of peace ; for there are many slight disorders in every church that are not hurtful to any but such as imitate them. To break the unity of the church for every little disorder we see in a church is but to flit from one church to another without any hope of amending them. The ex- perience of the past has shown that those who are the most vehement accu- sers of others are often the greatest offenders against the peace of the churches, and that they are, indeed, the greatest schismatics who make the way to heaven narrower, the yoke of Christ heavier, the differences of faith greater, the conditions of ecclesiastical communion harder and stricter than OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 455 they were made at the beginning by Christ and his apostles. It might be asked : How can a man remain faitliful and pure being joined with those that are corrupted ? The answer is emphatic ; that he cannot so remain, especially if he be joined with them ; that is, if he commit any evil with them, or countenance them which do commit it ; but if he do neither of these things, he is not joined with them. These two things being retained will keep such men pure and uncorrupted, that is, neither doing evil nor ap- proving it in others. Every church tolerates many things ; and yet what is against faith or practice a good man will neither approve nor countenance. But the imposing upon men, under pain of excommunication, the necessity of professing known errors, and practicing known corruptions is a sufficient and necessary cause of the division of a church. It cannot be contended that a church has sufficiently discharged her duty to God and man, by avoiding only fundamental errors and heresies, if in the meantime she be negligent of other weighty duties, which, though they do not destroy salvation, but block up the way to it. Such errors as these, if any church should tolerate and neglect to reform them, and not permit them to be freely, yet peaceably, opposed and impugned, no pious man can say that she has sufficiently discharged her duty, and has with due fidelity dis- pensed the gospel of Christ. AVhat ought a faithful minority in a church, who oppose these disorders, say and do if they be taught by the church and commanded to be taught, and the church thunder out her admonitions against those who do not beheve and practice them ? Can any one but fear, that such a church, though it hold no error absolutely inconsistent with salvation or true church polity, that its candlestick is not either already removed or the light of it will be very soon totally extinguished ? But not- withstanding this, the communion of a church is not to be forsaken con- temptuously for every error not fundamental unless it exact either a dissimulation of them, being sinful, or a profession of them, against the dictates of conscience. If the church does this then a division is justifiable and her communion is to be forsaken rather than the sin of hypocrisy be committed. But in this behalf it may be laid down as a general rule, that for slight disorders ought a church to be forsaken if she does not so enjoin them upon others; but if she should do so, then we should forsake men rather than God, and leave the church's communion rather than commit sin, or be compelled to profess and practice errors as divine truths. Unity is not to be purchased at so dear a price, but we should choose rather to leave the church voluntarily or to be ejected from its communion than to persist in the profession of errors though not destructive to salvation, yet hindering edification. For men should not dissemble, but if they be convinced in con- science that their own church do thus err, they are of necessity to forsake the church in the profession and practice of those errors. We speak of divisions in churches that arise upon just accusations and for adequate causes and not those schismatic and factional in their nature. It is the manifest duty of the minority in a church to yield obedience to the church in all cases of difierences when the church has shown a disposition to 456 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; admiuister justice and to exercise its proper authority without oppression. It is not the design here to set up the rights of schismatics. In church government when a number of men, a part of a church, without authority and without cause, consult apart from the church, to contrive the guidance of the rest ; this is a schism, or a fraudulent and secret seducing of the church for their own particular ends. Those who, without just cause, set up an interest in themselves, as against the interests of the ruling majority in the church, become an enemy to the same. In following their own selfish designs, they offend all except a few disaffected creatures by whose help they corrupt the church and thereby incur universal censure. Not having in themselves enough power and influence to legitimately carry their points, they stir up one faction against another and place the only hope of their success in the calamity of a church division. For a body of schismatics, large or small, to thus conspire against the sovereiguty of the church and thus sow the seeds of discord, is a stab at the vitals of the church, and an entire subversion of the order of church polity, and a manifest diminution of church dignity and authority. It is patent to all close observers of Baptist church government that the disorders arising therein are more schismatic than heretical. Our divines tell us that all that is sufficient for any man's salvation is for him to repent of his sins and to believe that Christ is the son of the living God ; and suppli- mental to this fundamental belief is for him to believe that the Scripture is true and its authors divinely inspired, and contains all thiugs necessary for the salvation of the soul ; and to the best of his ability and endeavor to find and believe the true sense of it, without believing any particular catalogue or thirty-nine articles conceived by the T\^it of man to be the fundamentals of faith ; and, therefore, in believing all that is contained in the Scripture we are sure to believe all that is necessary to one's salvation. And if we err in our interpretations of some obscure and ambiguous texts of Scripture we may be sure that God w^ill not condemn us ; because if w^e honestly desire to find the truth it does not stand to reason that God will damn him who desires and endeavors to find the truth. This is fortunate for every church so long as the Scriptures by Divine Providence are preserved in their integrity and authority, and are reverenced although ever so far collapsed and overrun with disorders, it is yet possible of being reduced to its original state by the untiring labors of those who are faithful and obedient. While corruptions of manners yields no sufficient cause to leave the church, yet it is a sufficient cause to cast them out of the church w^ho are disobedient, for their obstinate contempt of the church's public admonitions ; yet in doing this it is often milder and more merciful to retain in the church those who deserve to be excommunicated, if their sins be not too egregious, than to eject those who deserve to be retained. For God intending that members of a church should live together justly, certainly wills that he who does no wrong should suffer none. The work of a church is to be just and see that the minority in a divided church is given every privilege to which they are entitled, especially in a system of church government where there is no right of iippeal. But OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 457 sad to say tliat the church which is to protect the whole membership is often known not to have done it. The church sometimes renders its office useless by neglecting to do justice ; sometimes it becomes mischievous by overthrow- ing it. The laws of God and those of the church are of no effect when the church itself is left at liberty to break them, and if the determination of the church to act unjustly cannot be otherwise restrained than by a division, such a division is justified by the laws of God and the customs of the church. If law properly so called is a rule the violation of which should be visited with punishment, what ought to be done with a majority of a church who with impunity tramples upon the law which they themselves have established? If a church, thus divided, refuse to call an impartial council to adjudi- cate such troubles, that circumstance alone shows a disposition to refuse to do justice. No fair-minded church will undertake to discipline a large and influential minority of its membership who have been estranged, without the advice and counsel of those standing aloof and outside of the church. Eccle- siastical proceedings are of force against those who submit to church author- ity, or may be brought to trial, but efforts at discipline are of no effect against large numbers who resist and ask for a council, and are of such power that they cannot be restrained. It were absurd to cite a large body of members who conscientiously believe they have justice on their side, to appear before a church, who often through passion have forfeited the character of a just judge. If a single member of a church does anji^hing against the discipline of the church and the rule of the gospel, so that he gives offence to the whole church, the whole church or a large majority consenting together may safely cut him off" and cast him away. But when it is not an express and clear duty it is always a great source of danger, and a cause of schisms and divi- sions in the church to undertake to discipline great numbers, for the keys of the church were given for the shutting out of single persons upon their single responsibility and not multitudes. It is certain that to excommunicate a single person cannot make a schism, unless the multitude follow him ; and consequently a multitude is a dangerous thing to be involved in censures. If great parts of a church be excommunicated it is certain to make a schism if they unwillingly suffer the censure, a schism not only in the particular church wherein the disturbance arises, but it sometimes disturbs the whole denomination. When public divisions and a breach of the denominational peace are in agitation, the welfare of the whole denomination is sometimes as much concerned as the particular church ; and, therefore, where there are no fundamental errors involved, and where the laws of God do not intervene the greatest care and precaution should prevail, and such factions should not be cut off" from the church except upon the solemn advice of a prudent coun- cil after a full and fair consideration of the case. For in a church trial where the factions are evenly divided every man's cause is right in his own eyes, and when such heats as these happen between confident persons every man is judge of his own cause ; and what is like to be the result of such things all the world can easily imagine. One of the chief ends of Chris- tians entering churches is to try to live according to God's ordinances and 458 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUUCH JURISPRUDENCE ; to mete out even-handed justice to one another in all differences that may arise. In the unfortunate and unhappy condition of a divided church there is wanting an established, certain, settled and known law, received and allowed by common consent to be the standard of right and wrong, and the common measure to decide all controversies between them ; for every church under ordinary circumstances is able to do this, yet men being biased by their interests are not apt to allow of it as a law binding upon them in the application of it to their particular cases. Hence there is wanting an indif- ferent judge, to determine all such differences according to any established rule ; for every one in that state being both judge and executioner of the law, men being partial to themselves and prejudiced against others, passion and revenge are apt to carry them too far in their own cases, as well as negligence to make them too remiss in other men's cases. Besides there is often wanting a power to back and support the sentence, when right, and give it due execution. Whereas, if an impartial council is agreed upon, these difficulties can be obviated. If Baptists are so careful to see that their ministers are properly called and ordained that they may be fit administrators of the ordinances of the church, why should they not be equally solicitous about the proper order and organization of the churches ? If a minister were to attempt to consti- tute himself a minister and undertake to do the work of a full gospel minis- ter without a call and ordination thereto, what commotion would he cause among the churches, and how soon would he be silenced ! The proper and orderly organization of the churches is of vastly more importance in the ad- ministration of church affairs than the ordination of the ministry, for after all it is the church that administers the ordinances while the minister is but the agent through which it is done. If members, be they few or many, can with impunity withdraw from a regularly organized church and can resolve themselves into a church, what does organization mean, and of what value is it in church polity ? Yet very often do we see such disorders in our sys- tem and recalcitrant bodies of men, minorities in the church, recognized as churches by the denomination at large. We often hear brethren speak very extravagantly about the right of minorities. Minorities have no rights aside from those belonging to every other member of the church except in the limitations imposed upon the majorities. They have precisely the same rights as the majority, except the power to rule the church. They have a right to all the privileges of church members, to think, speak, write, publish, persuade, convince and to vote, and thus become themselves the majority, and thus to become in turn the ruling power in the church. To give them greater rights than these would be to reverse the order of church govern- ment and make them the dominators over the majority, and the obstructors of the ecclesiastical will. In all cases where fragments of a church fly off* at a tangent and attempt to set up a church without organization, they should receive no recognition especially where the church from which they go has not destroyed itself by the practice of heresy. If the ties of the church are broken by unhappy divisions, usually the OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 459 fragments will immediately unite again ; and if a part of the membership are thrown out of the pale of a large church, they themselves usually again unite to obey some general rule, to have it insisted upon by some authority, to begin the church anew. But certainly they ought not to attempt to set up a church in and of themselves without calling a regular council to con- stitute them into a regular church. No council would hardly refuse to organize them into, and recognize them as a church, provided they were not tainted with heresy, and it would remain for the denomination, in the future, to extend to them recognition as a regular Baptist church. If such a body of Baptists were so grossly in the wrong as that no judicious council or presb}i;ery, from sister churches, could be convened to organize them into a church, it is very probable that were they to set up housekeeping without the assistance and recognition of such a council, the denomination would refuse to take them into the sisterhood of Baptist churches. Each church is an organic unit and cannot be divided into fragments and both fragments claim to be a church. It is no accidental mass of atoms, it is an organism. It takes methodical organization to constitute a church. It is no ready-made ma- chine to be set in motion by recalcitrant members who lived previously out of it, no disease of ecclesiastical government which will be cured in time by denominational recognition ; no accidental thing, no institution above and separate from the denomination, no instrument for one or a few, void and without form ; — a church is Christ's judicatory upon earth, — it is the glory of the Son of God. One essential difference between a spiritually enlightened and pious church and one destitute of these noble quahties is, that the former may contend among themselves, but they settle their differences and animosities by con- cihatory and moral methods, while the latter decide theirs by church schisms and divisions. A division in a Baptist church is the offensive action of one part of the church against the other, being the attempt to overcome the aggression of the majority in its management of church affairs. It is the last remedy to be resorted to and should be availed of not merely when all others have been tried, but when aU others have failed. This is a remedy, which, although it may remove the particular evil complained of, it does so only by sometimes substituting a worse. And, furthermore, it is one of those sad transactions from which both parties are sure to be sufferers. Discord in a church is a state not only inimical to religious development, but it is a condition most opposite to it. It is true that these upheavals seldom occur in the best churches, while in some other churches mal-administered they are quite frequent. " In all Baptist churches these quarrels are apt to occur between those spiritually minded as well as among those not so well developed ; but it is not often among the former that resort is had to a church division, which is analogous to war between nations. A condition of complete religious development will, it is hoped, be one also of permanent and solid peace among the churches. Occasional divisions, like occasional quarrels, are nevertheless evils almost inevitable. That form of church government in which all are required to take part necessitates some 460 A TREATISE UPOK BAPTIST CHUECH JUHISPEUDENCE ; differences of opinion. But it should induce also mutual forbearance and amity as conducive to the interest of each. As we prefer our own homes to all other places and so conduct ourselves that peace will dwell therein, so we should prefer our own church to all others and make it a fit dwelling-place for the Holy Spirit. The outbreak of troubles between contending factions in a divided church, is, therefore, analogous to the occurrence of quarrels among men. In the case of both, the disagreement tends to develop the energies of the contending parties whether for good or evil purposes ; but it puts a stop to all social and spiritual intercourse between them, and the progress of development is at the same time impeded. In the place of endeavoring to benefit, their only object is now to overcome and overreach one another. If there be those in the church whose voice is for peace they imitate the conduct of angels ; if there be those who fan the flames of discord they follow the course of the evil one. As in the case between different rival parties in a state, so different factions in a divided church have no legitimate right to attempt the injury of one another, further than what is necessary to promote the truth and the general benefit of the church and the whole denomination, in preventing or repelling aggression, through the unjust ambition of a faction bent on the injury of the church, and by restraining the undue assumption of authority that does not belong to them. The only admissible excuse for engaging in these quarrels is the restoration and preservation of Baptist j)rinciples, which of itself affords the surest guarantee for the permanence of peace and security. If the love of the truth, equity, and justice were generally established in every church, and this spirit animated all their members alike, not only would each of our churches be as forward to assist and improve, as some of them seem to be to injure one another ; but in the maintenance of their mutual friendly relations, the welfare of each and the whole body of them would be considered, and but few occasions for ruptures between them would be afforded, and instead of internal discords, peace and tranquility would be their happy portion. By a faction, I understand a number of members, whether amountiag to a majority or a minority of the whole church, who are united or actuated by some common impulse of passion or interest adverse to the rights of other members, or to the permanent and aggregate interest of the church. There are two methods of curing the causes of factions : one by removing the causes of the same ; the other, by controlling its effects. There are again two methods of removing the causes of a faction : the one by destroying the liberty which is essential to its existence ; the other, by giving to every member, if pos- sible, the same opinions, the same passions and the same interests. To de- stroy the liberty which is essential to the existence of factions, would be to destroy Baptist church government altogether, and would be worse than to destroy the faction. Ecclesiastical liberty is to faction what air is to fire — a food without which it instantly expires. But it could not be less folly to abolish liberty of action and opinion, which is essential to ecclesiastical liberty, because it nourishes faction, then it would be to wish the annihila- OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 461 tion of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency. If a faction consists of less than a majority, relief is supplied by tho Baptist principle, which enables the majority to defeat its sinister views by a regular vote. It may clog the administration of church affairs, it may convulse the church ; but it will be unable to execute and mask its violence under the forms of church government. But when a ma- jority is included in a faction, the form of Baptist church government, on the other hand, enables it to sacrifice to the ruling passion or interest, both of the church and the faction. To secure the good of the church, and at the same time to preserve the spirit of popular church government, is the first great object to which our energies are directed. The leaders of factions in our churches should think weU what they do. The mind and passion of such men gather velocity and momentum as they move in a given direction, so that the actors in these connections often find themselves carried or im- pelled beyond the point they aim to reach, or if they would stop, find them- selves powerless to arrest the swift rush of those whom they have put in motion, and thus in the end the church is rent in twain and the cause made to suffer. If rival factions in a church, instead of waging war one with another, could consent to settle their differences by calling in the good offices of a judicious council, a far more equitable basis for a firm and per- manent peace would be established through their deliberations, where truth, moderation, forbearance and equity prevail, than the chances of discord and schism where passion and physical numbers decide who is to obtain his claim. It is in vain that we seek a church that is in all respects free from the possibility of divisions. Well-regulated and pious churches sometimes fall into these errors. Those that arise from misunderstandings and mistakes are easily healed if they be discovered in time and caution is used in their handling, but such as proceed from mahce, the extinction of them is exceed- ingly difficult, if they have continued long- enough to corrupt the church. However liable the churches are to these divisions, they rarely ever arise from malice towards the church itself, for they are hurtful to the church, and every true lover of Christ loves his church as he loves himself, and none are designedly willing to hurt themselves. There may be, and often is, malice in those who lead oflT in these divisions towards individuals in the church, and whatever is done in these unhappy broils, is done to overcome and overreach some particular man or faction in the church, rather than to injure the church itself If it be said that the breaking of the unity of the church for a just cause implies that which is evil, the answer is, that it ought not to be so considered as to those who seek nothing but that which is just. And though the ways of delivering an oppressed membership from the vio- lence of an unjust and unreasonable church be extraordinary, if their cause be just, the righteousness of the act fully justifies the authors. They who have the virtue and courage to resist injustice and save themselves, can never want the right of doing it. Their actions always carry in themselves their own justification. In a church that is guilty of a mal-administration of its 462 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE J own affairs, and tramples upon the laws of its own creation, lie who denies an injured minority the right to quit the church to escape oppression, does at once condemn the most glorious actions of the wisest, best and holiest men that ever lived, together with the laws of God and man, upon which they are founded. In a system of church government, where there is no appeal, this is the only remedy left. If therefore laws are necessary for the government of the minority, they are no less so for the majority, or rather that is not a church which has no laws binding upon both alike. It is no less impossible for a church to subsist without such laws and an observance of them, than for the body of a man to perform its functions without nerves and bones, and be in a perfect state of health. That rule must be uncertain which depends upon the fancy of a church as to whether it will be executed or not. The rights of the mem- bership of a church ought to be established upon a firmer basis which no pas- sion can disturb. It ought to be void of oppression and partiality, and retain in some measure the divine perfection. The laws of the gospel of Christ do not enjoin that which pleases a part of the church, but without any regard to persons, commands that which is just and good, and disci- plines all alike, whether rich or poor, high or low. The church that governs not according to the laws of the gospel, degenerates into a profane society, and its acts of discipline have no efficacy whatever. If the security of the whole membership be the supreme law of the church, and this security extends to, and consists in the preservation of their rights as Baptists, that law must necessarily be the root and beginning, as well as the end and limit of all ecclesiastical power, and all church discipline must be subservient and subordinate thereto. The question will not then be, what pleases the ruling majority, but what best preserves the rights and privileges of the mi- nority as well as the majority. The majority of a divided and agitated church does not rule for itself, but for the whole church ; it is not the mas- ter, but the servant of the church. It is very difficult to lay down rules by which to determine the causes which justify a member or a minority of members in withdrawing from a church where it has openly violated a common right, or a principle of jus- tice. But when the injuries are manifest, and an attempt is made to deprive a member or members of those rights to which they are entitled under their covenant, when there is an infraction of any of those fundamental laws of the church, or a departure from orthodoxy, or an effi)rt made to subvert any other principle of Bible doctrine or polity, to which alone it appears the members were willing to submit on entering the church, a division is inevi- table and ought to follow. Those members, although in the minority, who are more jealous of their rights, so sacred to them, and who know how to appreciate them, though obliged to allow the majority to do as they please, are under no obligation to submit to the new order of things. They may with impunity quit a church which has dissolved itself by disorders and corruptions. They have a right to retire to a church of their own faith and order, provided they can find one willing to receive them, or they may OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 463 organize a church of their own, if upon application to sister churches a council or presbytery can be convened willing to recognize them as a church of Christ. And any church receiving such members, or any council organi- zing them as a church even without letters of commendation, commits no breach of Baptist church customary law, provided that thereby no dissen- sions are sown in the denomination. Allegiance to one's church signifies no more than such obedience as the customary laws of the church and the Bible require. No covenant can bind any except those who make it, and that only in the sense and meaning of it. No Baptist can by his covenant be obHged by anything beyond, or contrary to the meaning of it. Private men in secular governments who swear obedience ad legem, according to law, swear not obedience extra, or contra legem. Certainly violent and extreme measures ought not to be resorted to in cases like these. Loving words and kind advice rarely ever fail to bring an erring brother to a knowledge of the truth. He may be fully convinced that the majority of his brethren may err, and that he has the right and often it is his duty to use his whole energy to convince them of their error, and lawfully to bring about a different state of things. But if he is a Baptist at heart and has the mind and the inclina- tion to learn and to embrace the true doctrine, a degree of unrest seems to be attached to a person that does not swim with the broad stream. No mat- ter what flagrant contradictions may take place, or however sudden the changes may be, there seems to exist in the breast of every true Baptist a deep feeling of discomfort, until he has rejoined the general current. To wilfully dissent is deemed to be a malcontent ; it seems more than rebellious, it seems traitorous. They become ashamed, and if they are not truly black sheep they soon mingle with the rest of the flock. While a member or a minority of members may leave a church and sepa- rate from its communion for good and sufficient reasons, yet if they in a fac- tious spirit break the unity of the church having no good reasons for so doing, they thereby become schismatics and have no right to be recognized by sister churches, and ought not to be assisted or countenanced in the organization of a Baptist church. It ought to be borne in mind that a minority in a church great or small should not be permitted to resist church authority and pronounce sentence on its conduct in all rightful disciplinary matters without exposing the church to dangerous troubles and violent shocks capable of overthrowing it. The disaffected party should remember that the ruling majority can neither govern the church nor properly fulfill its destiny, if it be not punctually obeyed. Minorities have no right in doubtful cases where no injustice is attempted and where no fundamental principles are involved, to question the wisdom of the church's decisions, for the church alone is responsible for the consequences that may result from them. The nature of church sovereignty will not permit members to resist its rightful authority whenever it appears to them to be unjust. This would be falling back into a state of disorganization, and rendering church polity of no effect. A member ought to patiently suffer from the church, things that are sufferable ; because whoever has submitted to the decision of a judge 464 A TREATISE UPO^^ BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; in matters lawful to be judged, is no longer capable of deciding his own pre- tensions, and one's own private interests ought to be sacrificed for the peace and safety of the church. Those who leave the church under such circum- stances go out without any right to membership elsewhere, and the sister church that receives them without letters of commendation or without the advice of a council thereby gives countenance to those errors, which the parties seeking admission committed upon disrupting the church from which they go. In all such cases sister churches ought to observe a strict neutrality and on no account ought they to take sides with one faction or another in a divided church over a question of mere discipline. In other words the dis- censions in one church ought never to be allowed to spread from one church to another, and thus break the peace of the denomination. A sister church that wishes to preserve her own peace when the flames of discord are kin- dling in a neighboring church, cannot more successfully attain that object than by attending strictly to its own affairs and refusing to have anything to do with the quarrels that unhappily aricc in sister churches. As long as one church wishes securely to enjoy the blessings of peace herself, she must in all things show a strict impartiality towards the contending factions in a divided church ; for should she favor one of the parties to the prejudice of the other, she cannot complain of being treated as an adherent and'confeder- ate of the one as against the other, and thus discord is spread among the churches. While injustice is not to be countenanced, and on the contrary it is generous and praiseworthy to succor the oppressed and innocent, yet no church can afford to resolve in favor of one faction against the other, especi- ally where it is likely to divide the church attempting it. Every church ought on occasion to labor for the peace of the churches, and for securing them from discords as far as it can do this without exposing itself to the same discords. A church is more or less perfect as it is more or less adapted and inclined to preserve itself from dissensions and divisions and to help other churches less fortunate than themselves. Every church, therefore, should according to its power and influence contribute not only to put an- other church in possession of these advantages, but likewise to render it capable of procuring them itself. But though a church be obHged to pro- mote, as far as lies in its power, the peace and concord of others, it is not entitled in an obnoxious way and uninvited to obtrude these good offices upon them. Every church in a state of discord has a perfect right and it is emphatically its duty to ask of another that assistance and those kind offices which she conceives herself to stand in need of In all such cases where divisions are threatened, both parties in the church, before it is too late, ought to call an impartial council to take these unhappy broils in hand, and if possible save the church from schisms and divisions. In all church quarrels, when the end is lawful, he who has a right to pursue that end has, of course, a right to employ all the lawful means which are necessary for its attainment. But the lawfulness of the end does not give a real right to anything further than barely the means necessary for the OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 465 attainment of that end. Whatever is done beyond that is reprobated by the customary laws of the churches, is faulty and condemnable at the tribunal of conscience. What is just and perfectly innocent in the turmoil of a church trouble, in one particular situation, is not always so on other occasions. The rights and duties of church members go hand in hand mth necessity and the exigency of each case, but never exceeds them. But it is very difficult always to form a precise judgment of what every case requires, and as it belongs to each independent church to judge of what her own particular situation authorizes her to do, it becomes absolutely necessary that churches should reciprocally conform to general rules on this subject. Accordingly, whenever it is certain and evident that a particular measure is necessary to be taken in a divided church to preserve it as a pure church of Christ, or to thus preserve a minority therein as true and consistent Baptists, that measure thus viewed in a general light, is by the customary laws of the churches to be deemed lawful and consistent with propriety ; although they who unnecessarily adopt it when they might attain their end by gentler methods, are not innocent before God and their conscience. An innocent minority in a church no less than the church itself is obliged to preserve itself, as the church is no less obliged to preserve all its membei-s. The church owes this to itself since the loss of one of its members weakens it and is injurious to its entire preservation. It owes this to its members in particular, in consequence of the very act of organization, for those who compose a church are united for their common advantage and edification, and none can be justly deprived of this union or deprive themselves of the advantages they expect to derive from it, while all, both the church and the disaffected minority, are striving to fulfill the condition of that union. Since then all are obliged to preserve themselves from either heresies or other scandalous corruptions, all have a right to everything necessary to their preservation. For the common law of the churches as well as the law of nature gives us a right to everything, without which we cannot fulfill our obligation to God and ourselves; otherwise it would compel us to do impossibilities, or rather would contradict themselves in prescribing us a duty, and at the same time debar us of the only means of fulfilling it. It ought to be here understood, that these extraordinary means sometimes resorted to in a disturbed church ought not to be unjust in themselves, or such as are absolutely forbidden by the customary laws of the churches, and will not pass under the scrutinizing eye of the denomination. Every close observer of Baptist church government must have noticed how disorderly churches sometimes become when they attempt to put into execu- tion its ordinary disciplinary powers when large numbers are involved in disputes that arise in a divided church. If the charges be for heresies and the larger part of the church be partakers of these errors and, therefore, refuse to put in operation the disciplinary powers of the church to suppress them, it is very clear that the minority are not bound to remain in communion with them. The justification of the separation is put upon its necessity, and that necessity does not exist until all peacable and lawful means has been 30 466 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; resorted to in vain. It is a right that should not be exercised, and, indeed, cannot be said to exist, until the omissions and the oppressive acts of the church are ills as great as the ills of a division ; or to state it more accurately the disaffected should not forcibly disrupt a church until they can do better without the church than mth it, and not only so, but can go hence with the approval of the denomination, which keeps an ever-watchful eye upon all such disturbances, which as a grand court is ever in session rendering its verdict in the pages of history, and which of necessity and of light is the final trier of that question. It is infinitely better that these irregularities should be restrcdned by a division of the church, the pure separating from the corrupted than the whole church should become poisoned and perverted. Had not this spirit of resistance to church authority been prevalent in the early history of the church, none would have been left to contend for tlie faith and polity established by the apostles. So we see that the rights and privileges of a Baptist must be utterly subverted if the right did not rest somewhere to assert them especially in a system of government where there is no tribunal outside the church to supervise these matters ; and they who thus withdraw from a corrupted church cannot be accountable to any but to God and their own consciences for what they do in these emergencies. They only make use of their rights in aU these measures, which they adopt in good reason and in the fear of God ; and if evil or discord from thence results to the corrupted church that has reduced them to the necessity of taking such steps, they must impute the consequences only to the church that has thus destroyed itself and refused to call an impartial council to try the issue between them. If there were a church that made open profession of pro- faning the truth of the gospel, and trampling justice under foot, that despised and violated the rights and privileges of others whenever they found an opportunity, the interest of the whole denomination would justify and authorize a faithful few in such a church to withdraw therefrom after over- tures of settlement had been made by them and denied, for in so doing they act in conformity to all their duties, and therein consists the right. The right of preserving themselves, and refusing to suffer injustice is the sum total of the right of security and of religious liberty. This right is a perfect one, — that is to say it is accompanied with the right of peremptorily withdrawing from the church in order to assert it. In vain would the law of the gospel enjoin upon us the duty of contending for and preserving the faith once delivered to the saints, — in vain would this law oblige the church to abstain from corruptions, if we could not law- fully make use of this right, when the church refuses to discharge its whole duty, otherwise the faithful would be at the mercy of the unfaithful, and all their rights would soon become useless. If the body of the church absolutely fail to discharge its covenant obligations towards a member, the latter may withdraw himself provided he has resorted to all the means known to Bap- tist church jurisprudence to rectify the evils complained of For if one of the contracting parties to a covenant does not observe his engagements, the other is no longer bound to fulfill his, as the covenant is reciprocal between OK, THE COMMON LAW OF TRE GOSPEL. 467 the churcli and its members. It is on the same principle that the church may excommunicate a member who violates its laws. If the majority of the church countenances the preaching of a doctrine heretical in its nature, or attempts to establish rules relative to matters in which the covenant can- not oblige every member to submisson, those who are averse to these matters have a right to quit the church and go elsewhere provided they can find a sister church willing to receive them. For instance, if the church or the greater part thereof, should employ and maintain a pastor notoriously un- sound in the faith, or should after trial shield and countenance a member in a scandalous life openly lived to the injury of the cause of Christ, or should subvert and overthrow some fundamental principle of church polity, those who will not partake of these errors have a right to withdraw. For, they cannot be supposed to have subjected themselves to the authority of men in affairs of conscience, and if the church suffers and is weakened by their departure, the blame must be imputed to those who have corrupted them- selves ; for it is they who fail in their observance of their covenant obliga- tions, it is they who violate it, and force the others to a separation. As to whether a church that has thus gone into heresies can return to its original status as a church, I think there is no question, so long as the Scriptures by Divine Providence are preserved in their integrity and authority as the law book of the church. Asa regenerate man can repent and return to the integrity of the faith, so a Baptist church, though never so far departed from the faith and practice of the gospel and over-run with disorders, is yet in the possibility of being reduced into its original status of a church of Christ, so long as the ancient laws of the gospel and fundamental elements are ex- tant, and remain inviolate, from which they may be directed how to make such a reformation. A man's obligations to his church may change, lessen or entirely vanish, according as he shall have quitted it lawfully and with good reason, in order to choose another of the same faith and order, or has been excluded from it deservedly, or unjustly, in due form of law, or wrongfully. A mem- ber or a number of members may quit a church of which they are members even where there is no apparent reason for so doing, provided they are in full fellowship and good standing and can do so without doing it a visible injury. But we must here draw a distinction between what may in strict propriety be done, and what is honorable and comformable to every Christian duty. A good and well-disposed member will never determine on such a step wdthout necessity or very strong reasons. It is taking a dishonorable advantage of one's church, to quit our brethren for no cause, or upon slight pretences, after having worshipped with, and derived considerable advantages from them. But should a minority withdraw from a church by reason of some heresy practiced by the church they need no reorganization to make them a church, for they themselves constitute the church as will be abundantly shown in in the next chapter when we come to treat of the property rights of a di- vided church. In their separation they do not leave the church, but only separate themselves from the heresies which destroyed the majority. But as 468 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; has been heretofore stated, if a minority great or small should withdraw themselves from the body of the church which has not destroyed itself by heresy, but is only guilty of some mal-administration, they do not carry with them the status of a church, and before they can exercise the preroga- tives of a true church they need to be organized as such by a presbytery according to Baptist church customary law, for the church is the body of Christ and they who forsake it must forsake his subordination and relation to the church itself. A church may be guilty of disorders not fundamental, and the gates of hell not prevail against it, and continue still a church and bring forth much good fruit, as a member may hold some error and yet be still a true and pious member. There is but one sovereignty in every church, and that cannot be separated into two parts. One church is not involved in nor can it come out of another, but is an organic whole, and any fraction of the church separating itself from the whole cannot pretend to be, nor do they constitute a church without the forpaalities of organization and recognition by sister churches. When a church becomes divided into two factions, acting absolutely inde- pendently of each other, and no longer acknowledging a common superior, the unity of the church is broken. Whether a church be split into two fac- tions, either for justifiable causes or not, each maintaining that it alone con- stitutes the church proper, and though one of the parties may have been to blame in breaking this unity and resisting ecclesiastical authority, they are not the less divided in fact. There exists in the church two separate bodies who pretend to absolute independence, and between whom there is no ac- knowledged judge, and who mutually term each other schismatics. This being the case, it is very evident that the rules, customs and usages of the churches in the handling of these unhappy troubles ought to be observed by both parties. For the same reasons which render these maxims a matter of obligation between church and church, it becomes equally and even more necessary in the unhappy circumstance of two incensed parties lacerating their common church. Whenever, therefore, a numerous body of men in a disorderly church think they have a right to resist the church, and feel themselves justified in dividing the church, they ought to leave open every means of preventing outrageous extremities and for the restoration of peace, for it is a lamentable fact that of all the quarrels, those between brethren in the same church sometimes become the most violent. Such flames of dis- cord are not favorable to the procurement of pure and sacred justice. Hence all the benign rules and laws of the church ought to be resorted to in order to pacify and assuage the rigors of a church quarrel. The day of strict dis- cipline in Baptist churches is fast passing away. We have passed the period of restraint and attained the age of love and duty. Whether it be right or wrong, we have torn down and are fast tearing down the old church of the past with which is associated every form of restraint ; but how little do we understand the new ! How few understand or appreciate the glorious beauty of the coming temple ! Let us then cease to clamor for rights only, and let us not forget our duties. Let us cease to depend upon self-defense, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 469 but let us think more of brotherly love, duty and mutual help. The Scrip- tures everywhere insist upon duties rather than rights ; upon mutual help, rather than upon self-defense. The true spirit is a spirit of loving, helpful recognition of inferiority where it exists, and a loving recognition of superi- ority where it exists. Anything else would destroy all moral relations and ecclesiastical forms of government, and end in discord and disunion. Sister churches are not to interfere in the internal government, nor in the quarrels of an independent church. It belongs not to them to judge between the members of another church whom discord has divided. Both the church and the faction withdrawing are equally independent of their authority. They may, however, interpose their good offices for the restoration of peace and concord. Sister churches cannot convene a council, a convention or an association to try either the church or the refractory malcontents for sup- posed wrongs. But if their mediation proves fruitless, they may, with the view of regulating their own conduct, take the case into consideration, being their own judges, and commune or associate with that faction which they shall judge to have right on its side and which have, in their judgment, kept the faith and practice of the church pure, in case that party requests their assistance or accepts the proffered offer of it from sister churches. There can be no true union in a church of Christ, except upon the basis of brotherly love. It has no valid claim to be called unity, except in so far as we regard it in the light of charity. Unity is the expression of that love toward one another, which belongs to all true lovers of Christ. It has always been observed, and it is a most remarkable fact that Baptist churches in a state of discord, have been separated most widely by the very effort to coerce large numbers who submit to ecclesiastical censures unwillingly. The beginning of a church division has its commencement here. It is far better to letter off malcontents and let them go elsewhere, if they be sound in the faith and" otherwise pure in life, and willing to leave the church, than to try to force a union that is distasteful and unprofitable to both parties, notwith- standing they may not be in full fellowship one with another. Divisions are not prevented, but rather encourged and fostered, by attempting to arraign large numbers of disaffected members and compelling them to pursue a certain line of conduct, when they are not inwardly impelled to a real unity in these matters. Nothing else so hinders such a manifestation of unity as an attempt to compel members to allegiance to a dominant and domineering majority, and the individuals and churches that attempt these things are the most schism atical and the chief provokers and producers of actual schisms. The responsibility, the right and duty of determining this ques- tion rests with the faction who are to make the movement. It is at once perceived to be the most important and fearful ecclesiastical responsibility that is or can be presented to the consideration of an upright, pious body of members ; and they should decide it in the fear and admonition of the Lord ; not only so, but with due regard to the interests and rights of them- selves and the church from which they break away, but also with respect to the opinions of the denomination. If the churches, do but crush the spirit 470 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; of jealousy and persecution — punish severely whoever shall dare to disturb others on account of the independence of their thoughts and actions, and we will come nearer seeing the members of all churches living in peace, and ambitious of advancing the cause of Christ. Church authority is appointed for the guidance of the churches in the edification of men in glorifying God, but rigid and severe discipline of large numbers counteracts that end, and ceases to be laudable on those occasions when it only produces divisions and gives offense. When a church is really desirous of peace, unity and agreement the dif- ficulties of arriving at this are seldom insurmountable ; while on the other hand the most trifling pretexts may serve as an excuse for the outbreak of quarrels, where either party is actually determined to divide the church. If rival factions instead of contending one with another would consent to settle differences by the intervention of a council, a far more just and equitable basis for a firm and permanent peace would be established through their de- liberations where moderation and equity prevail than by the chances of a trial of the delinquents, where often numbers, and not right, decide who is to triumph. Every church ought to watch attentively in order to prevent its disciplinary powers from being employed for sinister purposes, either by making use of it to gratify hatred or other passions, or the preaching of some heretical doctrine, to which the whole church cannot subscribe, in such a way as will divide the membership. No one should be permitted to abuse his privilege by hastily precipitating these deciplinary measures without first taking all the gospel steps to settle them, these affairs being altogether the most delicate and the most fruitful of dangers. The energies of the whole church should first be exhausted to prevent quarrels rather than cause divi- sions by hurriedly arraigning parties for prosecution. Christian patience and forbearance should be brought into exercise as these two noble qualities never occasion schisms in a church of Christ. This attention every church owes to her own happiness, repose and prosperity. Confusion, disorder and divi- sions will soon arise in a church when the membership are not sure of being dealt with fairly, and of easily and speedily obtaining justice in all their dis- putes, for without this all the Christian virtues of the membership will be- come deadened, and the church weakened. If men in church quarrels were always equally just, charitable and enlightened, these laws would doubtless be sufficient to keep the church in peace and prosperity. There may be anarchy in an individual member of a church as well as in the church itself, which results whenever a man throws off all rule and all due moral restraint and discipline, and not only contends for entire liberty of action, but con- ducts himself without regard to order or decorum. This, however, is the condition and the course of a religious anarchist, not of a converted man, or even of a man with the irtstincts of a common gentleman, but of one who deserves to be cut off from church privileges. A want of charity, the illu- sions of self-love and the violence of the passions, too often render these sabred laws ineffectual. Sometimes it is necessary, but very rarely, to devi- ate from this cautious and conciliatory course towards offenders in order to OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 471 prevent arrogant abuses, and to accommodate ourselves to circumstances, since the covenant obligations have frequently so little influence on the hearts of some, discipline becomes necessary to give the laws their full effi- cacy and to maintain the dignity of church authority. And when once a sovereign church decides a case and has administered its rightful discipline no other church can meddle with its decrees. Every attempt to violate them is an assumption of arbitrary power, to which it cannot be presumed that any gospel church could have intended to subject itself. We should be ever ready to render our assistance when it is requested, and to avail our- selves of that of others when we really require it, and request them to ren- der it. Indeed, as each individual member lives, or should live not for him- self alone, but for others as well, and should be ever striving to benefit them as well as himself, so each church should, in a corresponding manner, carry on its aflairs not for its own advantage only, but for that of the whole de- nomination by which it is surrounded, and by whose condition it is ever necessarily more or less affected. These maxims, we trust, are not only dictated by justice and that forbear- ance which should prevail in every church of Christ so unfortunate as to be disturbed by discords, but also as forcibly recommended by prudence and the art of church government. A good church will keep a watchful eye over its disciplinary matters ; it will oblige every member to observe scrupulously the established forms of procedure, and will itself take care never to break through, nor to violate them. Every church that neglects, or violates the forms of justice in the prosecution of offenders, especially when large numbers are involved, makes large strides towards schisms and divisions ; and the security of the membership is at an end when once they come to be certain that they cannot be disciplined in their own church, in pursuance of the law^s of the gospel, and the customs and usages of the church, which secures to them the right to be tried by an impartial ecclesiastical council, should the parties to be tried ask the call of one for that purpose. Neither ought the trial of the accused to be committed to a packed council, chosen by the church itself, without the consent of those to be tried. This is a tyrannical practice of some churches by which the dominant faction in a divided church seeks to crush those whom discord has divided. A good church will never give its consent to such a proceeding if it has sufficient discernment to foresee the dreadful abuse ex-parte councils may make of it. Church offences ought to be measured according to the object of the offence, the injury to the church, and the malice of the delinquent ; hence offences against God should be deemed the most criminal; next, such as disturb the denomination; next, such as disturb the peace of the church ; and, lastly, those private offences between members of the same church. Nearly every truth in the Baptist confession of faith, every doctrine of the gospel fixed by her customs and usages is but a victory over a corresponding error and in a certain sense is its logical completeness. Near akin to heresy is the idea of a schism, or church division, which means a separation from the government and discipline of the church, and does not necessarily include 472 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; a departure from her orthodoxy. Heresy as distinguished from schism con- sists in the adoption of opinions and practices contrary to the faith of the denomination, whereas a schism is a secession from the church of which the schismatic is a member, the renouncing of allegiance from its government, or forming of parties and factions within it. Then we see that a schism is not an offence particularly against the denomination, but against some particular church, and by its own members. For churches being independent establish- ments, may consult each other, and one may in a friendly way admonish another, but if they cannot agree the guilt is upon that church which is in disorder. Nevertheless, if a new church has been formed by the secession of members from another church on some disagreement of principles not in- volving heresy, each seceder is a schismatic, because of his former connection and his causeless separation therefrom, but if a church has been formed out of such material by the aid and with the assistance of sister churches in the customary way, the offence does not attach to the new church so formed nor entailed on succeeding members who are added to, or spring up in it. If, however, the schism was founded in heresy on the part of those withdrawing, the guilt of heresy would always attach to it, and its members, and the churches that lent their assistance to the formation of the new church would be partakers of the heresy. It cannot, therefore, be said that Baptists have no warrant for refusing to commune with disorderly persons and heretical churches. The same pre- cept that warrants a suspension from communion and withdrawal from a brother who walks disorderly, authorizes one church to give or refuse fel- lowship to another church in the administration of the ordinances. So it cannot be said that there is not a command for it, but that there is not an institution or example for it in the Scriptures. It is a duty, though not an act of authority. That which authorizes any Christian not to bid a heretic God speed, which it is not an act of jurisdiction, warrants this close and ex- clusive communion which Baptists have ever felt it to be their duty to prac- tice. That which warranted Timothy, being a minister, to guide and direct the churches. To turn away from sueh who having a form of godliness hut denying the power thereof authorizes also this non-communion which Bap- tist have ever practiced. Paul wrote this to his son Timothy by way of prophecy^ and so to all ministers and churches in the latter ages when all those train of evils should befall the churches of which in his letter he writes. When the churches of the world should thus depart from the faith, and being thus defiled by holding communion indiscriminately with churches having only a form of godliness although professing religion, from such the churches are bidden to turn away. What one apostle did to another in case of offence, the same one church may do to another upon the same ground. One apostle had no power to excommuuicate another in a way of censure; neither had Paul power to excommunicate Peter, or to admonish him in an authoritative way, but to admonish him by way of brotherly love which all brethren owe to one another, though he could not excommunicate him. Likewise one church in its watchfulness over the faith of sister churches OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 473 should ao SO in the spirit of brotherly love and forbearance and so ful- fill the law of Christ. To love one another was the general law of Christ which he gave to his people. This is the sum of the whole law of the gospel. It is contrary to this law of love that they should lay burdens upon one an- other, for it was the award of the council held at Jerusalem : For it seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to us, to lay upon you no greater burdens than these necessary things. To love our neighbor was a duty from the beginning, even from Adam down. Cain was the first who broke this law of love, and hated his brother because of his religion. And for that first breach of this law God parted Adam and Cain. So has Christ parted the good from the bad, the true from the false, and has builded a wall between them, and com- manded them from such to turn away. But those of the household of faith Christ has commanded to love one another and to bear one the others' bur- dens. He has likewise left his peace with his people. My peace Heave with you. But where does this peace lie ? Evidently in cases of differences be- tween brother and brother and church and church, for therein peace is greatest in demand. He foresaw that differences would be in his churches to the end of the world, and he urges this disposition towards peace, because so necessary in ordering and preserving his churches. So soon as he had ascended to Heaven they quarreled about circumcision, and had not Christ left this law of love and peace among them where would his true churches have been ? This transcendent law of love and peace which Christ left as the rule of his church was given because he foresaw all the differences which arose in the very first times of the churches, and saw that peace and love were neces- sary to begin, to continue and preserve his churches. He did not put a rod into the hand of the churches to rule one over another, but planted them in the gracious soil of brotherly love and peace, and waters them with the dews of divine grace, that men may know that they are indeed a peculiar people, and are truly his disciples. If this great law of love and peace which Christ breathed upon his people just before ascending to Heaven will not cement them in the bonds of a perfect union, and preserve them from the errors so prevalent in this life, no bonds of a false and perverted politic organization can do so, and it matters not how much human wisdom may be displayed in setting it up. Peace and brotherly love is the natural state of every true church of the loving God. If there should unfortunately exist in a church anything other than these blessings it cannot be said that a church is fulfilling its mission on earth, and it behooves them to reflect seriously as to where the evil lies and restore unto themselves the joys of brotherly love and fellow- ship. For it is the part of rational Christian men and women to terminate their differences in a divided church in a rational way ; whereas, it is the unfortunate disposition of the contentious to settle theirs by quarrels, dis- sensions and unhappy divisions. Members of our free and independent churches without a large portion of the grace of God in their hearts and without thoi charity that suffer eth long and is kind, would necessarily be in 474 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHTTECH JURISPRUDENCE; a very wretched condition when in a state of turmoil and division. They stand in need of the intercourse, assistance and prayers of the wise and good in order to dispose them to peace and brotherly love that they may enjoy the sweets of a purely religious life, to develop all the Christian graces and love in a manner suitable to their gracious opportunities. Now, it is in a state of peace that all these advantages are to be found ; it is in peace that men respect, assist and love each other ; nor would they ever depart from that happy state, if they would but reflect a moment as to who they are, and the great price with which they have been bought, if they were not hurried on by the impetuosity of their passions, andblinded by the gross deception of their self love. Churches that are really composed of regener- ate men and women, that seriously and religiously attend to their duty and are acquainted with their true and substantial interests will never seek to promote their own advantage at the expense and detriment of peace and fellowship. Thus disposed they will necessarily cultivate peace. If they do not Kve together in a state of peace how can they perform those mutual and sacred duties which our common Saviour has enjoined upon them. Thus, this state of peace is bound to be no less necessary to their happiness than to the discharge of their duties. Thus it is that the law of the gospel every way obliges them to seek and cultivate brotherly love and peace, among them. That divine law has no other end in view than the welfare of those who unite to keep house for the Lord ; to that object all its rules and all its precepts tend ; they are all deducible from this principle, that regenerate men who profess to love the Lord supremely should love one another and seek their own felicity and happiness to the end that peace and love should reign supreme in their hearts. This obligation of cultivating brotherly love in a church binds the church by a double tie. The church owes it to itself, on whom discords and divi- sions pour a torrent of misery and evil. But one church owes the same attention and consideration to sister churches, whose happiness likewise is disturbed by church quarrels and divisions. This obligation on the part of churches to cultivate peace and fraternal feeling, is the foundation of the denominational tranquillity and the firmest support of the healthy spiritual condition of the whole denomination. Everything is uncertain, violent and subject to discords and divisions in those unhappy churches where arbitrary power, on the part of a majority or minority, is sought to be wielded. The church ought not only to refrain, on their own part, from disturbing that peace which is so salutary to the denomination, but they are moreover bound to promote it, as far as lies in their power, in sister churches, and to inspire them with the love of peace by their good offices, their good advice and kindly admonitions. What a glorious and amiable character is the peace- maker ! No Baptist church ought to stand idly by and see a sister church rent in tv/ain by discords without some effort to stay the tide which, if taken in time, may prove the salvation of the church. For experience teaches that a violent church quarrel entails calamities even upon sister churches that are not immediately engaged in it, and sometimes so fierce are these OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 475 dissensions that they disturb the whole denomination. Often sister churches, whom neither of the contending parties in a divided church have any occasion to suspect as being biased in favor of one party as against the otiier, can step in and thus reconcile the church and put a period to the conten- tion. Baptist churches that have the free disposal of their internal affairs may intrust a single person, usually their pastors or several friendly and pious messengers, with the power of agreeing upon terms of settlement, although they have not the power to transfer to such a body the right to enforce such agreement. It does not belong to any sister church to set herself up for a judge of the conduct of a sister church and to oblige that church to alter or amend it. If the church thus offering its overtures of assistance should fail to reconcile their differences, then it would be well to advise the calling of a council to undertake the settlement of the troubles after the well-established customs of the denomination laid down in another place in this treatise. A serious intention and purpose on the part of a di- vided church to do justice, and to meiit in all their actions the approbation of an infinitely wise Saviour, cannot fail of inducing both parties to join in the call of a mutual council to adjust the difficulties, for it is the only pledge and hope of the church's safety known to Baptist church jurispru- dence. But the parties in a divided church, who acknowledge no superior here below, what security can they have if they yield not to the importuni- ties of well-meaning brethren to submit to the call of a council to be mutu- ally agreed upon to adjust those matters which they cannot, or have not, the disposition to settle themselves, and to thus unite the maxims of sound policy with those of justice and religion. But when we speak of peace and the unity of charity, it should never be attained at the sacrifice of the truth. When w^e plead for forbearance, our meaning is not that the churches should remain indifferent to the truth of the gospel and the faith once delivered to the saints. "When it comes to a clmrch teaching a doctrine contrary to the fundamental truths of salvation, one church ought not for one moment to bear with churches thus offending, but should promptly take such measures as will show to the world, and es- pecially to Christ, the founder of the churches, that they are not partakers of their sins by entering into communion and inter-communion with them. Churches must and should be able to make a distinction between heresy and schisms. Faith hath a deadly opposite — ^that is, heresy. Contrary to the unity of the church, is separation and division. This unity or oneness of will, faith and practice is effected by charity, uniting all the members of the church in one organic body ; contrary to which is schism or division. Schism is a voluntary separation from the unity, whereby all the members of the church are united. Therefore, we learn, that schism is a vice, distinct from heresy, because they are opposite to two different virtues — heresy to faith, and schism to unity and charity Heretics corrupt the faith by believing of God false things. Schismatics, by wicked divisions, break away from fraternal unity, although they are true to the faith of the gospel and believe what we do. Nevertheless, as he who is unsound in faith or is de- 476 A TREATISE UPON- BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; prived thereof, must want charity and unity, so every heretic is a schismatic, but, conversely, every schismatic is not a heretic, although sometimes schism degenerates to heresy if the spirit thereof be not checked, and by that means they are indeed bothi schismatics and heretics. Hence churches, in dealing with these intricate subjects, ought to be able to discern between heresy and mere schisms, which only divides the church, but leaves their faith entire. With an heretical church there should be no compromise whatever. When matters are brought to this posture in Baptist church government, either the author of the faction, which in this case is the church itself, or the faction, must suffer. A part of a flock cannot subsist under a shepherd that seeks its ruin and will not lead them into wholesome pastures, nor can an upright minority in a corrupted church hope to preserve itself under an unjust and unfaithful church. The good shepherd, says our Saviour, lays down his life for his sheep ; the hireling in time of danger is represented in a reprehensible character, but he that would destroy the flock is likened unto a wolf. The authority of the ruling majority in a disturbed and distracted church is incompatible with justice and fair dealing, and whosoever dis- approves of a division in a church by which such a majority may be resisted and rebuked, subverts the foundation of all law, exalts the fury of the many to the destruction of the few ; and giving an irresistible power to wrong and injustice exposes all that is good to be injured, and the true faith of the gospel to be corrupted and extinguished. If it be said that the word faction implies that which is evil, we answer that it ought not then to be applied to those who seek nothing but what is just. And though the ways of deliver- ing an oppressive minority from the violence of an unjust church be extra- ordinary, if their cause be just, the righteousness of the act fully justifies the authors. They who have the virtue and power to resist injustice and save themselves can never want the power of doing it. Their acts always carry in themselves their own justification. If a church, for instance, fall into gross heresies or some gross mal-ad ministration which undermines the very foundations of the church, if this be not enough to justify those who resist such a wrong on the part of their church, the examples of holy men raised up by God for the deliverance of his people from their oppressors decide the question. Suppose there had not been such men in the olden times of the churcShes, when there was a first departure from apostolic church govern- ment what would have become of the purity of apostolic government ? They were renowned for their love of and adherence to the truth, and for having led the true lovers of the truth by extraordinary ways to recover their ecclesiastical liberties, and to avenge the wrongs done the church of the living God. The work of the apostles was not in their time to set up or pull down any civil state, but they so behaved themselves in relation to all the powers of the earth both civil and ecclesiastical, that they gained the name of pestilent, seditious fellows, and disturbers of the people, and left it as an inheritance to those who in succeeding ages by following their steps should deserve to be called their successors. These are some of the times and cir- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 477 cumstances under which it is eminently proper to call a council if the membership have a mind to allay such troubles and to save the church and the denomination the sad spectacle of schisms and divisions. These trouble- some commotions that sometimes arise in churches only produce persecutions and intolerance a thousand times more dangerous to Baptist church govern- ment than anything else imaginable. Churches ought to lose no time to bring these unhappy troubles to a peacable termination. If the church neglect these weighty matters and spend their time in quarreling over things useless to the salvation of souls she need expect to witness those horrible dis- orders so destructive to her peace that vex and crucify the membership, and which so often bring Baptist church government into ridicule. Really it cannot be a matter of surprise, when we consider the free and independent nature of Baptist church government, and the multiplicity of these churches, and the utter want of ecclesiastical ties to bind them together, that there should be many divisions and much confusion in them, aud that the wholesome control of church government should be perpetually threat- ened. This freedom and independence sets in motion a host of interests and opinions which by this straitened condition, are disarmed of the power to change the doctrine or polity of the churches, or to do any immediate mis- chief, but not sufficiently so to prevent the churches from being infested with a multitude of troubles. Except in the case of Baptist church govern- ment, and in these churches until very modern times, the popular mind was unaccustomed to meddle with the subject of doctrine. But here in these churches we have the happy spectacle of a people who grapple with truth and religious creeds with the same freedom which the outside world em- ploys in attacking politicial opinions. All, the highest as well as the hum- blest, are called upon to take in the government of the churches, as well as the unlimited range of inquiry, subjects everything to the most fearless and rigid examination. Many very intelligent persons seeking church connec- tions, and who are inclined to look favorably upon the doctrine of Baptist churches, and the deep root it is taking in the world, when they behold the troubles we sometimes encounter, and into which we sometimes plunge our- selves, they recoil from it with dismay, and are disposed to take refuge in what they denominate a strong church government. Nevertheless, it is most certain that the distinguishing excellence of Baptist church polity, con- sists in its giving birth to freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, and that the little annoyances and inconveniences which these principles occasion in the churches are productive of incalculable advantages. It is a great mistake, with our knowledge of human nature and church government, to suppose that the churches would be better ordered if their surface were a perfect calm. The fact is, the principles of Baptist church government and doctrine came not into the world to bring peace. When first established by Christ and his apostles nothing before ever created such commotion. It required a brave, a fearless and an earnest set of men to plant them, and to foster thera to full grown maturity. The human mind, with all its capabilities of thought 478 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; and action, is wonderfully disposed to listlessness and inertia ; so that it re- quires the most powerful incentives in order to rouse its dormant energies. And the condition of the great majority of mankind is such, that none but the most sensible interests which touch them on every side can be relied upon as the instrument of moving them. By giving a full and free play, and a favorable direction to these. Baptists succeed in imparting life, activ- ity and energy, to church government. And this being attained, a great amount of thought and reflection is sure to be developed among the great bulk of the denomination. A factious spirit at the bottom is but the con- flict of diflerent opinions, to each of which, in nearly every case, some por tion of truth almost invariably adheres. Therefore it is, that in every era in the history of the world when these conflicts, whether religious, philoso- phical, or political have been the fiercest, has always been one of spiritual and intellectual advancement. As the interests of private persons under this system of polity become more and more identified with those of the churches of which they are members, each one has a desire and a motive for understanding and taking part in the public affairs of the churches. The question in church government is, never whether any particular arrange- ment shuts out all causes of divisions, but only whether it excludes the greatest practicable amount, and not of one kind merely, but of all kinds. The contentions and quarrels of factious are not thus entirely extinguished ; but there is, notwithstanding, a greater degree of denominational tranquil- lity than would otherwise exist. Ecclesiastical power in Baptist church government is of a totally diflerent character from what it is in all papal, episcopal or presbyterian forms of government ; hence there must be a corresponding diflerence in the ma- chinery which sets each of them respectively in motion. In these hierarchical forms of government there are the various orders and degrees of the clergy, from which a system of checks and balances is derived, to secure the influ- ence of ecclesiastical authority, and to maintain each department in its proper place; but such an expedient would be futile and powerless where church government means vastly more than the rule of the priesthood, and the persons who fill the various public oflices. In Baptist church polity ecclesiastical powers are equally distributed and designedly communicated to the whole membership. We want something more, therefore, than a sys- tem of checks and balances such as flow from the ministry within the churches. As the forces which are set in motion are so much more exten- sive we must contrive some machinery equally extensive for the purpose of controlling and regulating them. And thus those who have diflerent inter- ests and different shades of opinions, very naturally, not to say necessarily, take the place of that unscriptural system of checks and balances which are well enough adapted to the' universal church, but which play only a sub- ordinate part in Baptist church government. In Baptist church jurispru- dence parties have no existence. Factions there may be, but not parties, because they are overborne by an extraneous influence which disables them from representing denominational opinion. The membership themselves OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 479 compose all the existing parties. Hence differences of opinions arc not only submitted to examination, but they are submitted to the examination of those who are immediately affected by them. But the greater the number of persons who are consulted with regard to any measure, which has any important bearing upon their interests, the greater is the probability that it will be adjusted with a view to their common welfare and with which they will be satisfied, those who consented as well as those who dissented. It is a rule by the majority to which the minority must consent. When factions in a church, that is to say, ruling majorities and minori- ties, are not subjected to a strict accountability they becom.e a law unto themselves ; they create a standard of opinion within their own circle, which necessarily weakens the force of that general opinion, whose office it is to watch over the actions of all the functionaries of church government. While it sometimes becomes the duty of the leading and more influential members of the churches to consult, apart from the body of the church, to shape and direct the business to be transacted therein, yet not unfrequently the unskill- ful handling of these interests foments disorders and arouses factions in op- position to them. For all these interests must ultimately come before the whole church for action, and there is nothing to prevent the humblest mem- ber from a full and free expression of his views. Hence the temper and disposition of men become inflamed as well as their understandings en- lightened. Indeed, the whole business and conduct of the affairs of a church is never under the immediate control of the leading men alone who shape them for action, but all should share in the control of church affairs. It thus initiates the membership into an acquaintance with the practical workings of the churches and its business, and founds their attachment to the church upon their interests. All other systems are without these advantages. The conduct of church affairs, and the actions of those who take part in them, are made up of an infinite number of acts, each of which may be in itself inconsiderable, and yet the aggregate of incalculable importance. The vot- ing class in Baptist churches are the governing classes which happily embraces the whole church. By them everything must at last be done. And it may be insisted that when we reflect upon the perfect security and equality which this system insures we will be unwilling to exchange it for any other ; that we will be more strongly impressed with the advantages which it has in producing internal quiet and contentment, and inspiring an instinctive obedience to the laws of the church. Thus the popular mind of the membership sanctions all the symbols and insignia of legitimate rule and authority with the same sort of veneration and respect which contributes to the upholding of the artificial forms of all other systems of church government. The absence of differences of opinion upon all questions in a system of church polity, would imply the existence of absolute unanimity on all occasions. But in the imperfect condition of man, when we consider how apt he is to err, unanimity would not be desirable. As" in the individual, one faculty is set over against another, in order to elicit the greatest amount of judgment, wisdom, and experience, so the natural encounter and conflict 480 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHTJECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; of rival opinions in a church constitutes a discipline of the same character, on a much larger scale. Unanimity, which has the appearance of being the only rightful rule, would, if it were conceivable, render the church absolutely stationary. Man is not born with knowledge, neither do all men see the truth alike, how much soever they may try to view it from the same stand- point. All of the useful or noble qualities which one ever exerts are the off- spring of variety, and not uniformity in every particular. Constituted as Baptists are, there would be no virtue nor truth without some conflict of interests, and no wisdom without some conflict of opinions. In view of this state of things one very important fact arises : that although the majority rule, the minority, by virtue of the naked power which belongs to opinions and the power thereof, are able to exert an inherent and yet a very decisive influence upon " the conduct of church affairs. This influence is so great, that no one who has been accustomed to examine the workings of church government can fail to have been struck with the repeated instances in which the opinions of a minority have triumphed over those of the majority • 80 as ultimately to become the settled and established opinions of the church, and transformed the minority into the majority. Hence, so far as effective and permanent influence is concerned, it is of little consequence whether a certain line of policy to be pursued is first suggested by the minority or the majority. The fact that it is right and useful gives it a claim to success, and that success is almost infallible. The beauty of Baptist church govern- ment is that when opinions have to pass through a great number of minds before they are reduced to practice, the churches do not experience a violent shock, as it does upon their sudden and unpremeditated adoption. In all matters of detail factions stir the passions of men, but in matters of grave importance such as faith and doctrine, they introduce the conflict of opinions. The struggle of new opinions is the longest protracted, whenever the general state of denominational opinion is least prepared for an important change in the existing conditions of things, especially whenever agitation, discussion, and the encounter of rival opinions, is most necessary. For to contend over these matters would be without meaning and utility, if they were eternally to battle with each other with no other result than the alternate loss and acquisition of victory over one another. The desire to obtain the ascendency may be the moving cause and spring which actuates each; but fortunately this spring cannot be set in motion in a Baptist church, without rousing a prodigious amount of reflection among the membership, they being accustomed to handle these questions themselves. But the moment these opinions are promulgated, they are subjected to a searching examination, because they are felt to have a practical bearing upon the substantial interests cf all. The true office of factions in a church then is to elicit and make manifest the amount of truth which belongs to the tenets of each ; so that the great body of the church, who have not taken sides with either faction may both be easily and understandingly guided in the decision they must make of the question at dispute. When we speak of factions, we do not use that term in any offensive way, OE, THE COMMON" LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 481 but in the sense of majorities and minorities in a disturbed cLurcli contend- ing about some matter of common interest to them all. Any one who has grown up in Baptist churches, and who has made an accurate observation of the structure of their government, and tTie disposition of the members who compose them, must have noticed that there is a constant tendency towards what may be called the supremacy, or precedence of individuals composing the churches. These will, perhaps, be composed of the older members, or perhaps of professional men, who hold themselves up as leaders in the churches. But many circumstances, however, in the course of time, contribute to weaken or entirely to break up this condition of things. When any body of men, no matter how wide or how narrow the sphere of their influence may be, have maintained a certain degree of precedence for a con- siderable time, those who compose it become arrogant in themselves and among others by making a show of their influence and power. This being the case, it leads very naturally to the crumbling of the faction, and to the formation of new opinions and new factions. Quarrels and disputes in churches only give occasion to this condition of aflfairs, and often aflbrd a plausible ground for open contentions, when in truth the actuating motives are of a strictly personal character, in which individuals are arrayed against one another — often the new members against the old — often the talented and ambitious against the supine and unintelligent. Often the new men will not succeed in getting the mastery ; but they, notwithstanding, will work a great change in the mode of thinking of the opposite faction, and it serves as a balance-wheel in government ; for even ineffectual opposition may sometimes have a very advantageous influence. It wakes up those against whom it is directed ; it leads them to soften or correct their defects ; otherwise they cannot maintain the ascendancy they hold in the church. It is of very great importance that this, the ugly side of Baptist church government, should be thoroughly studied by every one. We thus gain a clearer insight into the origin, character and fluctuations of those disorders which sometimes disturb the peace and tranquillity of the churches. It is sometimes as necessary to study the physiology of Baptist church govern- ment, in order to understand the workings of ecclesiastical polity, as it is to study the physiology of man, in order to penetrate the character of the in- dividual. These things we are bound to know and to understand only to draw instructions from them. To some, if this view of the weak side of our churches does not present a very flattering picture, it at least shows that through the instrumentality of even church quarrels, important changes for the better are brought about imperceptibly, if not very peacefully. A free and independent form of church government, like that of the Baptist, is not, therefore, so liable to those terrible shocks, which, in other systems, are necessary to sweep away church abuses. In those systems that have pre- siding elders, presbyters, bishops, cardinals and popes to rule them, what can a faction or a party, large or small, do to correct what they consider de- fects in church government ? Nothing less than a veritable upheaval would ever change abuses heaped upon them. In these hierarchical forms of 31 482 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; government the great bulk of the membership are mere figure-heads, mere spectators, not actors ; and the operations of factions and minorities are con- fined to a very narrow circle. But Baptist church government presupposes that the great mass of the membership are active,not passive and idle citizens in the commonwealth of Israel, and these members not only regulate the con- duct of the handful of men who sometimes assume to dictate to the church, but they regulate also the whole denomination, who, though not of the same mem- bership, yet they constitute the springs which set church government in motion. If this were not the case, if there were no regulative principle to shake the churches, and to overturn factions, and to overthrow their abuses, as well as to act upon church government and to keep it true to itself, there would be no way of maintaining the free institution of Christ's churches on earth, and to keep pure the doctrine which he committed to their keeping. Hence, we see, that there is really no such thing as entire compulsion in Baptist church government ; and that if, in a church divided in sentiment, a course of conduct, even by a contending minority, has won over a majority of the votes of a church, a very considerable portion of truth, to say the least, must belong evidently to that party thus contending for it. Differences of opinion between members of a church such as ours, local and independent in its nature, ought not to justify any great alarm among Bap- tists, Inability to agree is one of the incidents of political, religious; social, scientific and business organizations. It is not more strange that members of the same church should often be at odds on a measure touching church affairs than that men in all other relations should fall out with each other in the management of other interests. To say the least of it, disagreements and divisions are continually happening, and will continue to happen until we get close up to the millennial period. Disputes, quarrels, bolts, schisms and other infelicities are looked-for occurrences, but occasional and unavoidable incidents. These unhappy occurrences are so frequent in free and independ- ent Baptist churches as to cause little anxiety. The great cause in which this great denomination is interested goes right on in spite of these manifest- ations of the old Adam. If a church divides after failing to adjust a differ- ence, we have two churches competing in good works, and the result is often advantageous and is doubtless sometimes Providential. And not unfre- quently, if a little error is at the bottom of these upheavals and disruptions, in the end, the truth which stands over against the error practiced, only shines the brighter. On the whole therefore, it seems to be a very natural thing, and one that does not call for any alarm for, or abuse, or denunciation of Baptist church government, that the members of our churches should sometimes but very rarely, differ about those ecclesiastical matters in which the members of other systems have no voice, and over which they are not permitted to have any control. Above all things a church being in the midst of unhappy divisions ougl.t to be careful not to let their differences pass over into private life. It is delightful to see brethren who assiduously oppose one another upon con- ,&cientious grounds, remaining in a state of brotherly love and friendly pri- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 483 vate intercourse, a circumstance which can take place only where there is great forbearance and charity. It is the best evidence in the world that brethren have passed from death unto life. For brotherly love accustoms brethren to respect the opinions of others, while the want of it so thoroughly weans us from this Christ-hke virtue, that if, for any reason, dissensions do break out, it is invariably vehement and passionate, and every opponent is at once considered as an enemy. If this is the case let brethren pause and ask themselves, Am I a Christian ? If we know we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren, ought it not to be equally evident that we have 7iot passed from death unto life because we hate the brethren ? Then let no brother foment the spirit of dissension, while it is the duty of every member to assuage discord, and allay ecclesiastical strife as much as pos- sible. It is very true, indeed, that our danger is not so great now as in the former times, because our system of church jurisprudence is beginning to be better understood, because our churches are becoming more orderly and wiser, we value our free system of government higher, and above all we are becoming more charitable one to another. Let us, then, upon this ground among so many others, value and foster the more earnestly our form of church polity in which every member, however high or low he may be in intelligence is a ruler as well as one of the ruled. But lastly, there is one thing very noticeable about Baptist church divisions, they never result in the setting up of new churches of a difierent faith and order. Other denominations are divided and sub-divided into in- numerable bodies, and some of these seceding sects even in time outnumber- ing those they leave behind, thus becoming, indeed, permanent and incurable schismatics by rending the body of Christ in twain. Baptist churches not being welded together in an organic union, may one part separate from the other, and under the free and independent apostolic system, the party seced- ing in the' absence of heresy, may organize and live under the same laws of the gospel, all believing the same things, and remain churches of the same faith and order, because there is no tribunal in the denomination charged with power to keep them out or to make them afraid. Hence Baptists may divide up, but they continue Baptists, but when others divide there is no place in the economy of the hierarchical church for them. Think of a division in a Methodist or Presbyterian church, the recalcitrant part seced- ing from the mother church, and independently, in and of themselves, setting up a church, and in spite of the conference or synod, becoming a church of Christ ! Such parts of a divided church would, at once, become and forever remain schismatics, living forever without the pale of the church. Other- wise they must surrender their individuality and self-independency, return to the church from which they came, or were ruthlessly thrust, and profess to be in full fellowship and believe it not, and be compelled to live in a perpetual lie, and thus to dissemble against their own conscience. Men rebel against men, often, rather than against God or their church. A church is not a prison house in which to detain a man or a faction of men against their wills, and to separate from the church leaving it in peace and harmony is often a less sin than to remain in it to the disturbance of the whole body. 484 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; CHAPTER XVII. PROPERTY EIGHTS OF A DIVIDED BAPTIST CHURCH — COMMON LAW RULES GOVERNING SAME. THE vast and rapidly increasing amount of property held by Baptist churclies in this country renders a knowledge of the tenure by which it is secured and held a matter of grave importance to laymen who have the custody of this class of property and who should be somewhat familiar with the laws under whose authority they act. In so brief a space as a few pages allotted to this subject we cannot do more than give a brief account of the common law rules relating to this subject, which we hope will serve all prac- tical purposes. We cannot proceed without to some extent going over a part of the ground commonly traversed in the treatment of the subject of ecclesiastical heresy, for the belief of that in a minister, which destroys him as an ortho- dox Baptist, if a Baptist church practices the same will likewise destroy it as a church of Christ. In a minister heresy consists in publicly preaching, writing or printing any false opinion repugnant to, and subversive of Bap- tist church government, concerning some point of doctrine absolutely essen- tial to Christian faith revealed in the Scriptures. In a church this false opioion consists in persistently and authoritatively allowing the same to be preached or taught. For until a church has broken the faith and departed from the doctrine, or polity of the churches, can any question as to the property rights of its members become the subject matter of a suit at law. In the first place the law does not take cognizance of any church, oi church aifairs, in respect to its doctrinal peculiarities, nor does its denomina- tional character affect its civil rights. The courts may, however, inquire into those matters when questions concerning property rights call for it. The statutes of the various States, if any, which regulate the incorporation of churches, and the management of their affairs, have reference alone to their temporal concerns. Such laws, although they declare that the deacons or trustees shall be a body corporate, a view of such laws and the current authority, as well as the popular opinion, sustains the position that the con- gregation, and not the trustees, are incorporated. The relation which the trustees bear to the church is not that of private trustees to the cesiuis qui trust, but that of directors to the civil corporation. They are nothing more than the managing officers of the property, invested, as to its temporal affairs, with such particular powers as are specified in the act of incorporation, also within the sphere of their appropriate duties with such discretionary powers as may properly be exercised by officers of any other corporation. There- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 485 fore, whatever property is acquired is vested in the church aggregate and not in the trustees. Whatever possession the trustees have of the church is the possession of the church itself. Although they are styled trustees they do not hold the property in trust. Their name is simply the title of their office, and their position is the same as if they had been called directors or managers. Their right to interfere with the property is only an authority, and not an interest, or an estate. Hence any legal proceedings affecting the property should be conducted in the name of the church and not of the church trustees ; and any transfer or conveyance, when sanctioned by the church, should also be in the name of the church, signed by the trustees for the church. There is a common mistake in making conveyances to the trustees of a church ; the word trustees should never be used in the body of a con- veyance. The proper title is the name of the church, just as when the con- veyance is to an individual the name should be stated. Incorporated churches are not regarded in law as ecclesiastical corpora- tions, but as civil corporations governed by the principles of the common and statute law. At common law every church has the capacity to purchase and alien lands and chattels, unless restrained by their charters. The trustees can bind the church within their authority, and in order to execute that power, they must convene as a board, at which a majority must be present. When convened, a majority of the quorum present is competent to make valid their action. The separate action of the trustees individually, although a majority in number should agree upon it, would not be legally the act of the constituted body clothed with the corporate powers. The property of the church cannot be distributed by the trustees among the members, nor can the members themselves, or the courts of law sanction such a distribution. Church houses are sometimes let, or permitted to be used, for purposes other than those for which they were erected. Such casual or occasional use is not objectionable, provided it does not interfere with the rights or convenience of the congregation. It cannot, however, be carried to such an extent as to amount to a perversion of the legitimate ends for which the property is held. Now courts of justice, in taking cognizance of the affairs of a church, have decided, and all the authorities tend to establish the doctrine, that there are two kinds of laws prevalent in these religious bodies — the one immutable and the other voluntary. The immutable laws are such as are fundamental in their nature, and are so called because they are unalterable and indestruc- tible, and are so just, equitable and necessary at all times, and in all places, that no human or ecclesiastical authority can either change or abolish them, for they have their intrinsic authority in and from themselves, and are grounded, rooted, and nourished, not only in the Holy Scriptures, but in the common law of the land. They are such which being taken away the church fails, and is utterly dissolved as a building whose foundation is destroyed and with it its property rights are swept away. While the voluntary laws of the churches are such customs as are changeable in their nature, and have been held to be such as each church may, from time to 486 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; time adopt, alter or abolish as there is occasioD, and to do which will not destroy or impair the foundation upon which rests the fabric of church government. They are such as are flexible and may be differently esta- blished and quite abolished without violatiug the letter or spirit of the Scriptures, and which churches may exercise without destroying either the church or its property rights. Besides, there are some principles relating to both doctrine and polity in Baptist church government that are absolutely essential and necessary to be believed, to change which is not only a transgression of the divine law, but also shows a contempt of God, the divine legislator, but also of all human law itself. For such contempt is a breach of all laws at once, not only those fundamental, but those not so. An ecclesiastical law fundamental in a Baptist church is that, therefore, which being taken away the church is utterly destroyed. A law not fundamental is that, the abrogation whereof draws not with it the dissolution of the church, such as the laws concerning ordinary cases of discipline and other matters of maladministration of church affairs, not sounding in heresy or a departure from the faith of the gospel. Every Baptist church is obliged to obtain a just and true conception of both the religion and polity of the primitive churches, to study God's word con- cerning the same, and to take nothing on trust from others, unless tried by the severest tests of the Scriptures themselves. A new fangled religion ought to be received as from the devil, cautiously, lest mischief be hidden under it. We should be essentially and necessarily free to make use of our choice in matters of religion, but having once subscribed to the tenets of the church, and the church once having erected a standard of belief, in common with the whole denomination of which it is a part, should they suffer that standard torn down, to the end that there is no oneness of faith it can no longer claim to be a Baptist church ; in other words it has destroyed itself and is neither a church nor is it the church. Therefore this treatise upon Baptist church jurisprudence would be incomplete without compiling some of the legal maxims relating to ecclesiastical heresy, or orthodoxy, as the case may be, as applied to a church, from which church members may be enabled to decide which party in a divided church is entitled to church property, where such questions are raised in suits at law. To supply this demand and at the same time to keep this chapter within the dimensions of a few pages, will be our present aim. We have not in this country a regular ecclesiastical establishment, as they have in England, and if we had, the rules relating to the English establishment would not apply to cases arising under Baptist church govern- ment; and yet the importance of religious worship and rights of property is recognized by the laws of the several States, and especially by the common law of the land, and church organizations are encouraged and protected by the statutes and judicial decisions, so that a well defined system, peculiar to this country, is now pretty well established. However it would be well to lay this dowr as a general principle, that over the churches, as such, courts of justice do not in general profess to have any jurisdiction whatever, except 487 so far as is necessary to protect the civil rights of the members belonging thereto, and of others who may have an interest in such rights, and to pre- serve the public peace. All questions relating to the faith and practice of the churches, and their members, belong to the church judicatories them- selves, and civil courts will interfere with churches, or associations, only when rights of property are involved. But even then they will not revise the decisions of such churches in ecclesiastical matters, merely to assert and maintain their jurisdiction. It has always been a well-defined rule of the courts that causes spiritual, must be judged by the church judica- tories, and causes temporal, by temporal judges. Civil judges have no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and cannot revise ordinary acts of church disci- pline. The church, as to its doctrines, government and worship, is to be governed by its peculiar rules, and courts will not interfere with those rules, unless it is necessary to do so to protect some civil right. Whatever is done in a church of our Lord Jesus Christ should only work by love, and inscribe the laws of liberty and light on the heart ; and the civil government has no just or lawful power over the conscience, or faith, or form of worship, or church creeds, or discipline, as long as they neither demoralize society or disturb its peace or security. It is most important in legislation to avoid intermeddling with the peculiar province of divinity. The divine law is the province of the theologian, ethics of the moral philosopher. Neither uses the compulsion which it is the province of the legislator to employ. On the other hand, if jurisprudence be viewed as only one branch of the social science, whose object it is to ascertain the great natural law of the progress and development of society, and according to Avhat laws men may live up to their obligations in happiness, then Baptist church jurisprudence may be held to include the entire domain of the rights and duties which come within the province of positive law, ethics and theology. The true objects of the science of Baptist church jurisprudence are the knowledge of the legal rela- tions which ought to be established by courts of justice Avhenever they are called upon to exercise their rightful jurisdiction in church quarrels, and the ascertainment of the best means to enforce such jurisdiction. Men can do nothing together in a church capacity that they cannot do by themselves in reference to the temporalities of their organization. Hence the same gen- eral rules of law that governs the one governs the other. While the secular arm of the government, including especially courts of justice, can take no cognizance of the religious afiairs of the churches, yet it cannot be doubted but that religion and jurisprudence have their common foundation in the order and appointment of God ; for it is he who is our Judge, our Law-giver and our King. Thus, it is he who, in the spiritual order of religion, establishes the ministry of ecclesiastical powers. In like manner he makes kings to reign, and gives to them all the power and authority which they have. From whence it follows that religion and juris- prudence, having only the same common principle of the divine order, they ought to harmonize and agree together and to support one another mutually, and in such a manner as that private persons may be able to pay a punctual 488 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; and faithful obedience botli to the one and the other. It is certain that true religion and civil jurisprudence are always united together, and those who are employed in the ministry, both of the one and the other, ought to exercise it according to the spirit and rules which reconcile them together. It is the province of religion to bring men back to God, and by the light of the truths which it teaches them, to draw them out of the by-paths of self- love, and to prevent those disorders in church government which sometimes rend them in twain. But because all men have not this true spirit of re- ligion, and that many otherwise pious men carry themselves so as to disturb the external order of the churches, the spirit of civil jurisprudence is to maintain the public tranquillity and to settle the rights of property among all churches, and to keep them in order in this regard, whether they have the inward disposition to it or not, by employing for that end even force, according as there is occasion ; and it is for these two different uses of religion and civil jurisprudence that God has established these powers whose authority he has proportioned to these ends. The end of religion is only to redeem man from his sins and to form good dispositions in his heart, and God gives to the powers, which exercise the ministry of it, a spiritual authority to guard the churches from heresy and corruption, and to insin- uate the love of justice without the use of any temporal force upon the out- ward part of man, for the great apostle says. Not for that we have dominwn over your faith y hut are helpers of your joy : for hy faith ye are saved. But the administration of the temporal powers of courts of justice, which tends only to regulate the external order of the churches, is exercised by the force that is necessary for the restraining of those who depart from the faith, and not being lovers of justice, commit such excesses as disturb the order cf the churches. Thus the spiritual powers of the churches instruct, exhort, loose and bind the inward part of man, or his conscience, and exercise the other functions that are proper to the exercise of this authority. The courts of justice command and forbid what relates to the outward man ; maintain every one in his rights proportioned to what justice and the public peace requires. Thus, in every Baptist church, they whose duty it is to rule the church have no other way of preserving their rights, and no other way for the punishment of those who depart from the gospel faith, but by inflictifig such civil penalties as may be proper to reclaim their property rights and to bring the disorderly back to the duties which they have violated. But these differences between the spirit of religion and the spirit of secu- lar jurisprudence have nothing in them that may be a hindrance to their union ; for the same powers, spiritual and temporal, are united in their common end of maintaining order in the churches, and they mutually assist one another for that purpose. For it is a common law of religion, and a duty incumbent on those who exercise it, to recommend and to enjoin upon every one obedience to the temporal powers, not only out of fear of their authority, but as an essential duty, and out of a principle of conscience, and love of order. Let every soul he subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power hut of God : the powers that be are ordained of God, Whosoever, there- OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 489 /ore, resisteih the power, resideth the ordinance of God. For rulers are not a terror to good works, hat to the evil. And it is likewise a law of temporal policy, and a duty of those who are employed to enforce it, to maintain the exercise of religion and to employ even temporal authority and force against those who disturb the order of it. Thus these two great principles agree together, and mutually support one another, even when the church seems to demand something that is contrary to the spirit of religion ; as when a man being sworn perjures himself by calhng upon God to help him to speak the truth, and then speaks falsely ; or where a man disturbs the peace of those assembled to worship courts will inflict penalties upon him for so doing. Likewise when one part of a church violates their covenant obligations by prostituting and perverting church property to a use not intended by the original founders of the church, courts will enjoin them from so doing or will oust them entirely and give those entire control of the property who have kept the faith pure and undetiled. It is by these secular laws that the rights of everything which man can possess are regulated, even the property of the churches is preserved tu it only by the authority of these laws ; be- cause it is to secular governments that God has given the control in tempo- ral things, and it alone has the right of joining force to authority, for pre- venting acts of injustice and for restraining usurpers who would divert church property from the purpose for which it was intended. And we may judge of the certainty of these principles by the impression which such truths ought to make upon our minds, which God reveals to us by the religion which we profess, and makes us to apprehend by our reason. From which it follows that the engagements and covenants of every church mem- ber are to him, as it were, his proper law^s which courts of justice will take notice of and enforce accordingly in so far as they bear upon the property rights of church members. That each j^articular member being linked to this body of the church of which he is a member, he ought not to undertake anything that may disturb the order of it. And this implies the obligation of submission, and obedience to the powers which God has established for maintaining this order. It remains then to inquire into the details of these principles as applied to controversies over the property and other temporali- ties of a divided churcli ; that we may discover thereby the foundations of many of the maxims that are essential to the knowledge and right use of these civil laws as they relate to church affairs. Generally speaking the only churches recognized in law are those which are incorporated and thereby become competent to sue and be sued by special charters, or under general laws of a State. It has, however, been held by the courts of many of the States that when there is no local statute contravening, church property may be held by trustees, or, as in Baptist churches generally in the South, by the deacons of a church for the use of the congregation, and they may at common law, sue and be sued, for and in 'the name of the whole church. AU churches of all denominations have long since recognized the right of courts of justice to interfere in the eccle- siastical afikirs in all cases where the property rights or other temporal 490 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE ; f affairs of the churches are involved. Peace and good order would not be guaranteed and upheld if this rightful jurisdiction were not recognized. There is no doubt about the right of unincorporated churches to sue in a court of justice on a contract made with them in their associated capacity, and for the legitimate purposes of their association, even though there be no persons named in the contract as trustees or committee-men on behalf of the church. Such associations have always been recognized as having an asso- ciate and quasi corporate existence in law, with power to hold property and build appropriate houses of worship, and of course with power to acquire rights by contracts and to vindicate them in the courts. And if the com- mon law-forms are insufficient for such cases, there is readily admitted the infusion into our law of the plain equity principles that allows a committee of voluntary associates to sue, and be sued as representatives of the whole. In most of the States suitable statutes provide that a religious association by voluntarily associating themselves together and performing other acts shall become a body corporate, and the society by performing such acts obtains a corporate existence, and may sue and be sued in that capacity. All purchases, gifts or devises of property for pious uses are trusts in con- templation of law, and w^hen created for religious worship, and it cannot be discovered from the deed or will creating the trust, what was the nature of the religious worship, or doctrine intended to be taught under it, it must be implied from the customs and usages of the congregation worshipping there. If it appears to have been the founder's intention, though not expressed, that a particular doctrine should be taught, it is not in the power of the trustees, or of the church, to alter the designed objects of the institution. The rule is that when a church becomes divided among themselves, as to the intention of the donor, the nature of the original teaching and preacliing of the congregation worshipping there must be looked to as the guide for the decision of the court, and to refer to any other criterion, as to the sense of the existing majority, would be to make a new church institution, which is altogether beyond the reach, and inconsistent with the duties of a court of justice. In all such cases it becomes necessary for the court to inquire what was the religion of the church before the controversy arose which di- vided them, and not to animadvert upon it, but to ascertain whether there has been such a change. This general principle of the common law applies to cases of this kind as well as to aU others, it being one of the rules of the universal order of society, that no law is made to serve only for one person, or for one case, but they provide in general for what may happen, and their dispositions respect all persons, and all cases, to which they extend. Hence the general doctrine of trusts, as practiced in courts of justice, is applicable to cases of this sort, and where property has been purchased by or given to a Baptist church, the meaning is that the same shall be applied to the teach- ing of the doctrines of the Baptists in their connection with that denom- ination, exclusive of all others ; and, of course, that the violation of this trust, in matters of doctrine or church government, entitles those who adhere to these principles to the relief which they claim in equity. Customarily, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 491 there are two ways of acquiring title to church property — by purchase and by gift, the title to which is generally perfected by deed, and, as in all other conveyances, any conditions may be expressed in it the parties may desire, and such conditions establish a trust and that trust must be carried out according to the intent of him who makes the deed ; but where there are no such conditions, and the property has been sold or given to any Baptists worshipping at a certain place, or to any other sect, indicating to what de- nomination the church belonged, by the use of the name which should de- scribe the fundamental doctrines, practices and pecularities of such denomi- nation, in the absence of a reversionary clause, the property would be taken to be held in trust for that particular church or denomination. Usually in Baptist churches deeds of conveyance are made to their deacons or other trustees, and their successors in ofBce, to be held by them in trust for them- selves and the churcli, and this trust is established, and the use, custody and control of the property is placed under the direction of the church, with special reference to the belief and the doctrine of the church as indicated by its name. For a long time in this country courts were slow to assume jurisdiction in matters ecclesiastical, the judges fearing that they might thereby invade the realm of religion, and even now it is held that the exercise of jurisdic- tion in cases of this kind is not without its difficulties. But more recently numerous cases have arisen in this country, w^hich clearly settle the ques- tion in favor of such jurisdiction. That which gradually led to this juris- diction was the numerous discussions in cases of religious charities, and what doctrine was fundamental in religion, and as to whether the private religious opinions of the founders of a charity were competent to be proved in evi- dence in order to aid in giving construction to the words of a will or deed by which a charity or trust is created. So it is now a well-settled principle of the common law, and of equity, that when property is conveyed to a certain church to promote the teaching of the doctrine of that church, and the property is attempted to be diverted to the support of different doctrines, it is the duty of a court of equity, upon application to it, to interpose for the purpose of carrying the trust into execution, according to the intention of the donors or purchasers ; and that it is no reason why the court should not thus interfere to enforce the trust, that the trustees elected by the church are in favor of the diversion of the trust from its original purpose ; but that the court would, in such cases, interfere upon complaint of the minority, large or small, against the majority. That in ascertaining the purposes for which property conveyed to the church was intended to be devoted, the language of the conveyance, if clear and unequivocal, is con- clusive. If the language is vague and indefinite, extrinsic evidence, such as the tenets held by the donor, or the faith then actually taught by the church, and the circumstances under which the gift was made, and the de- nominational name of the church to which the donation is made, and the doctrine actually taught therein at the time of the gift or purchase, may be resorted to in order to limit and define the trust in respect to the doctrine 492 A TREATISE VFOl^ BAPTIST CHTJECH JURISPRUDENCE; usually considered fundamental, such as those in dispute between Baptists and others, but not as to lesser shades or points of doctrine not deemed fun- damental ; for it is not every change of principle or the practice of every error in church government that will operate as a destruction of a church, so as to forfeit its church state or to extinguish the light of its candlestick, and authorize the minority to sue for church property. Courts of justice must look to these questions as statesmen and jurists, and not as theologians, and a line must be established between the two. Theologians think they have become so wise as to fix the limits for the growth, the faith and prac- tice of the churches, but courts can fix none until the law can decide, with the help of theologians, what church is absolutely perfect. Not even can Baptists go into court and insist that they alone, of all others, are right, for courts have no standard of religion of their own, but must take their relig- ious views from the contestants in each particular case, and in so doing will not allow themselves to become sticklers over small things. All history reveals the church to us as an institution that is continually being educated and developed, and it changes with the changes it produces, and this right to develop in matters not fundamental is part of its freedom. An individual or an association of individuals, as a local church, may dedicate property, by way of a trust or charity, for the purpose of sustain- ing, supporting and propagating definite religious doctrines or principles, provided that in doing so they violate no law of morality and give to the instrument by which their purpose is evidenced the formalities which the law requires. And it would seem also to be the obvious duty of the court, in a case properly made, to see that the property so dedicated is not diverted from the trust which is thus attached to its use. So long as there are per- sons qualified within the meaning of the original dedication, and who are also willing to teach the doctrines or principles prescribed in the act of dedi- cation, and so long as there is any one so interested in the execution of the trust as to have a standing in court, it must be that they can prevent the diversion of the property or fund to other and different uses. This is the general doctrine of courts of equity as to charities, and it seems equally ap- plicable to ecclesiastical matters. In such cases if the trust is confided to a religious congregation of Baptists holding to the independent form of church government, it is not in the power of the majority of that kind of a church, however preponderant, by reason of a change of views on religious subjects, to carry the property so confided to them to the support of new and con- flicting doctrines. A pious man, or set of men, building a house and dedi- cating a house of worship to the sole and exclusive use of those who believe in the doctrine of the Baptist church, and placing it under the control of a congregation which at the time of dedication holds the same belief, has a right to expect that the law as administered by the secular courts will pre- vent that property from being used as a means of support and dissemination of the Armenian doctrine and as a place of Armenial worship. Nor is the principle varied when the church to which the trust is confided is of the episcopal or any other form of church government. The protection which OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 498 the law throws around the trust is the same. And though the task may be a delicate one and a difficult one for a secular court, it vf ill nevertheless be its duty in such cases when the doctrine to be taught or the form of worship to be used is definitely and clearly laid down, to inquire whether the party accused of violating the trust is holding or teaching a different doctrine, or using a form of worship which is so far variant and heretical as to defeat the declared objects of the trust. The religious belief of the parties is irrelevant to the matters in dispute, except so far as the court is called upon to execute the trust. In such cases, where there is a schism which leads to a separa- tion into distinct and conflicting bodies, where there is no departure from the faith, the rights of such bodies to the use of the property must be determined by the ordinary principles which govern voluntary associations. If the principle of government in such cases is that the majority rules, as in Bap- tist church government, then the numerical majority of members must con- trol the right to the use of the property. This is obviously the case even where the deacons or other trustees hold possession of the property. Title is vested in them for the use of those persons who, by the customs and usages of the church, are entitled to that use. They have no personal ownership or right beyond this, and are subject in their official relations to the property, to the control of the church itself. A schism in a general sense means a division, or a separation. It occurs where there is either a departure from faith or a division on account of a mere difference of sentiment not involving heresy, or a departure from the faith. Appropriately speaking, a division in a church is a separation on account of a diversity of opinions, and is a breach of unity among people of the same faith and order. It is a separation of the church into two parts without any change of faith or ulterior relations. The courts of the country do not recognize the rights of a minority to discard the faith of the church, its doctrines and organization, and to affiliate with another church, or to organize one of their own, and still be entitled to share equally with their former brethren in the use of their church property, especially if they have voluntarily left the church for cause other than heresy on the part of the majority, or have been excommunicated for immorality, or contempt of church authority, which always terminates the property rights of such excluded members. It is the right of a majority in a Baptist church to control in all ecclesiastical affairs, and not less in the management of the temporalities of the church than in any other. This is a cardinal principle in our ecclesiastical polity. When men differ in opinion, the will of the majority must prevail, provided there is no departure from faith. The rule is safe and equitable. Sometimes, though not often, the application of the rule results in individual hardships. Sometimes, too, though very rarely, it is necessary to protect the rights of a minority against the arbitrary acts of the majority that they should contend earnestly for their rights in the church. But generally,' where individuals unite their interests to accomplish a common end they should expect, and be willing, that a majority of the church should govern in all matters of common concern. They may be 494 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; supposed to enter the church with the knowledge that they are to be governed by this principle. On the other hand, those who prevail in such unhappy controversies should not forget that the minority, as well as them- selves, have their rights. These rights should be tenderly regarded, and the more so because they are the rights of the minority. The minority, however, in choosing to separate themselves into a distinct body, and refusing to recognize the majority in the government of the body, can claim no rights in the property from the fact that they had once been members of the church. This ruling admits of no inquiry into the existing opinions of the contending parties when no heresy or departure from the faith is charged ; for if such was permitted, a very small minority, without any officers of the church among them, might be found to be in the right in some little controversy in the church over which they had become divided. There being no such trust imposed upon the property when purchased or given, the court will not imply one for the purpose of expelling from its use those who, by regular succession and order, constitute the church, because they may have seen proper to differ from the minority upon some matter of church policy not sounding in heresy or religious truth. In this class of cases the rule of action which governs the civil courts, founded in a broad and sound view of the jurisdiction of the civil courts in these matters, and supported by a pre- ponderating weight of judicial authority, is, that, whenever any question of mere discipline or rule has been decided by a Baptist church, the legal tribunals must accept such decision as final, and as binding on them in their application to the case before them. In this free land of religious liberty the full and free right to entertain any religious belief, to practice any religious principle, and to teach any religious doctrine which does not violate the laws of morality and the rights of property, and does not infringe personal rights, is conceded to all. The law knows no heresy, has no articles of faith, is committed to the support of no dogma, nor the establishment of any sect. The right to organize volun- tary independent churches, to assist in the expression and dissemination of any religious doctrine, and to create tribunals for the decision of controverted questions of faith and practice, as in the episcopal and presbyterian forms of church government, and for the ecclesiastical government of all the indivi- dual ministers and members of such churches and officers within the whole denomination, is unquestioned. All who unite themselves to such bodies do so with an implied consent to its government, and are bound to submit to it. But it would be a vain conceit, and would lead to the total subversion of such religious bodies, if any one aggrieved by one of their decisions could appeal to the secular courts and have them revised. It is of the essence of these religious unions, and of their right to establish tribunals for the decision of questions arising among themselves, that those decisions should be binding in all cases of ecclesiastical cognizance, subject only to such appeals as the organism itself provides for ; which happily for Baptist church government there is no appeal from the decision of the church itself, and its decisions are final. Nor do we see that justice would likely be the better OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 495 promoted by submitting those decisions to review and revision in the ordi- nary judicial tribunals of the land. The Baptist denomination has a body of ecclesiastical laws, customs and usages founded upon the Bible itself, which constitutes a system of both faith and practice. It is not to be sup- posed that the judges of the civil courts can be as competent in the eccle- siastical law and religious faith as the ablest men in the churches are in reference to their own. It would be, therefore, an appeal from the more learned tribunal in the law which should decide the case, to one which is less so. Courts of justice having no ecclesiastical jurisdiction, cannot revise, or question ordinary acts of church discipline. Their only judicial power in ecclesiastical matters arises from the conflicting claims of the parties to the church property aud the use of it. They cannot decide who ought to be members of the church, nor whether excommunicated members have been justly or unjustly, regularly or irregularly, cut off from the body of the church. Profane judges cannot enter the holy precincts of the church for the forbidden purpose of vindicating the alleged wrongs of excommunicated members ; when they became members, they did so upon the condition of con- tinuing or not as they or their churches might determine, and they thereby submit to the ecclesiastical power of the church, and cannot afterward invoke the supervisory power of the civil tribunals. Any other than these ecclesiastical courts must be incompetent judges of matters of faith, discipline and doctrine ; and civil courts, if they should be so unwise as to attempt to supervise their judgments which come within their jurisdiction, would only involve themselves in a sea of uncertainty and doubt, which would do any- thing but improve either the tranquillity, religion or good morals of the churches. Hence the civil tribunal tries the civil right, and no more ; tak- ing the ecclesiastical decisions out of which the civil right arises as it finds them. Courts of equity have gone so far, as, upon application of a minority of the church, to restrain the majority from applying the temporalities of the church to the support of a person as minister who had been deposed from the ministry by the proper ecclesiastical tribunal, and had not been restored. It has also been held that the support of particular doctrines or systems of worship, or government, or a connection with some particular church judica- tory, may be made a condition in a grant or deed to a church ; but if no such condition be expressed, none will be implied, except as to fundamental points; but that the denominational name may indicate the nature of the trust, so far as it respects doctrines deemed cardinal, and if a denominational enterprise becomes incorporated, it may be considered as designed and con- stituted for the purpose of advancing the vital doctrines taught by that denomination, and the trustees, or those in charge, may be enjoined from applying the property, or the use of it, to the promotion of the tenets clearly opposed and adverse to the fundamental principles of the faith professed by the church at the time the trust was created. If a Baptist church in the course of time should become equally divided, and one half of its members should deny the faith and secede from the church and denomination, and 49G A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; each half should separately undertake to control the use of the house accord- iug to its own religious views, and the views of the two divisions were antagonistic, and a court were called upon to enforce the trust ; can there be any doubt that equity would require that the control of the house should be given to the division which adhered to the original faith ? Would not that be carrying out the wishes and intentions of the original founders of the trust ? It certainly would be the duty of a court of equity to look beyond the mere form of the thing to its material substance, and to say that the portion of the church who adhered to the faith and polity of the denomina- tion that founded the church, were entitled to the control and use of the house, rather than that portion who, still being members of the church in name only, or who had been excluded therefrom, and in form had renounced the faith of the denomination whose fundamental doctrine had given name to the church. They cannot abandon the tenets and doctrine of the church by the belief and practice of heresies and retain the right to the property of a divided membership, even if but a single member adheres to the original faith of the church. This rule of law is founded on reason and justice. Church property is rarely paid for by those who there worship, and those who contribute to its purchase, or who erect it are presumed to do so with reference to the Baptist form of worship, and to promote the promulgation of its particular doctrine, and to pervert its property to another use and purpose is an injustice of the same character as the application of other trust property to purposes other than those designed by the donors. Hence it is, that those who adhere to the original faith, for the preaching of which a church has been erected, constitutes the church, and are the sole beneficiaries designed by the original donors and founders, and those who depart from and abandon those doctrines cease, in the eye of the law, to be the church, although from a judicial standpoint they may be a church, and especially do they forfeit all claim to the name of a Baptist church, and may be enjoined from any interference therewith. There is a class of cases, however, where it has been held, that in case of a division of what is known as congregational churches, where no heresy is charged but both parties still adhere to the tenets, doctrines and discipline of the society, the property has been divided between them, in proportion to the members on both sides, at the time of the separation. This ruling must be based upon some statute law of the states wherein these decisions have been rendered, or else in pursuance of some custom among themselves. It certainly could not be applied to Baptist church government, as it would be destructive of the very foundation upon which church authority rests — that is, purity of the faith, and rule by the majority. A minority of a church may be wrongfully driven away, or expelled for some reason other than heresy, and they go hence without any rights in and to the property they leave behind them in the divided church. Such cases could not be regarded as authority if applied to our democratic system, and really in no other form of church government except in States that have undertaken to regulate those things by statute, or in congregational churches where not only the OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 497 members thereof participate in the government, but likewise those who have no definite religious views, but nevertheless are of the congregation, and where religious societies have organized and incorporated themselves under such laws. Neither can we depend upon, and be guided by another line of decisions which have been made by the English courts under well-defined statutory laws governing the English Establishment. We can very well understand how the Lord Chancellor of England who is, in his office, in a large sense, the head and the representative of the Established Church, who controls very largely the church patronage, and whose judicial decisions under the canon laws and statutes of that country may be, and not unfre- quently is, invoked in cases of heresy and ecclesiastical contumacy, should feel, even in dealing with a dissenting church, but little delicacy in grappling with the most obstruse problems of theological controversies, or in construing those ecclesiastical enactments which those churches have adopted as their rules of government, or inquiring into their customs and usages. The dis- senting church in England is not a free church in the sente in which we use the term in this country ; and it was much less free in the olden times than now. Laws then existed upon the statute books hampering the free exercise of religious belief and w^orship in many most oppressive forms. Any rulings under cases arising in those times and under systems of that nature would be misleading. Likewise there is a shade of difference between our free system and where the religious bodies holding church property is but a subordinate member of some overgrown general church organization, in which there are superior ecclesiastical tribunals, with a general and ultimate power of con- trol, more or less complete, in some supreme judicatory, over the whole membership of that general organization. Ours being a system where the property is held by a church wdiich, by the nature of its organization, is strictly independent of other ecclesiastical associations, and so far as church government is concerned owes no fealty or obligation to any higher author- ity, the judicial decisions, as applied to it, are essentially different. The question naturally arises as to whether a church, as a whole, not so much as one excepted, should apostatize and depart from the faith held by Baptists ; in that event, would equity raise up a trustee, in an outside Bap- tist, not a member of the fallen and apostate church, upon application, to hold the property for the use and benefit of the denomination to which the church originally belonged ? I do not know that this identical question has ever come before the courts in this shape for settlement ; but after a careful study of the question of charitable trusts and uses as a lawyer, I do not hesi- tate to lay this down as a sound principle of law. That when property, real or personal, is vested in a Baptist church, for the teaching and preaching of those doctrines for which that church is noted and known to have alwa^^s taught, whether the church is incorporated or not, it is a charitable and pious use, whether the donors be one or many. The church is a trustee for the whole denomination to administer the trust, and can no more divert the property from the use to w^hich it was originally dedicated than any other trustees can. If the church as a whole should undertake to divert the prop- 82 498 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; erty, and there should be no one faithful enough to contend for it in the church, equity will raise some other trustee to administer it ; or if a minor- ity of the church, whether one or many, contend for the right, equity will constitute them trustees to apply the property according to the intention of the original donors. When the founders of a charity, or of a church, have clearly expressed their intention that the property shall be put to a certain use, or that a particular set of doctrines shall be taught, or a particular form of worship and government maintained, it is not in the power of the indi- viduals having the management of the church, or society, to niter the pur- pose for which it was founded, and cannot break off from that connection and government. If they do, equity will lend a listening ear to any bene- ficiary who will, in the proper way, contend for the property, in order that the trust may be faithfully carried out. If a Baptist gives his substance to found a Baptii^t church for the purpose of teaching the doctrine of the Bible as understood and promulgated by the Baptist denomination, and those who might afterwards have immediate control of the property should attempt to divert it fi'om such a use, I take it any Baptist, although not a member of that church, might sue for the property, and thus save it to the denomina- tion for whose use it was originally intended. Where a church under such circumstances has destroyed itself by ecclesiastical apostasy and heresy, and the whole body has denied the faith, so that there is no faithful representa- tive left to contend for the property and the faith, for the teaching of which it was donated, a court of equity will rescue it from such a church and pre- vent it from being appropriated by those, who have ignored the faith by voluntarily withdrawing from the denomination, its doctrine, its faith and practice. It would not change the principle of law to say that those who thus sought to divert the property had contributed a part of the funds to erect the house and that, therofore, they were entitled to the use of it, or a 'pro rata division of it ; for a court of equity would not divide such a trust,nor suffer it to be prostituted to any use other than that for which it was intended. They could claim no interest in it, having themselves been instrumental in founding the trust, and if there were no such conditions imposed upon the property when purchased a court would not imply such a trust for the pur- pose of depriving those of its use, who by regular succession, order and gov- ernment constitute orthodox Baptists willing to hold and use it for Bap- tist purposes. To constitute a man a Baptist, and a member of a Baptist church, two points at least are essential, a profession of its faith, and subniission to its government. There must necessarily be government in every church, as well for the due regulation of its temporal affairs, as for the preserva- tion of the integrity of its faith. Hence not only a departure from the faith by a church will operate as a forfeiture of church property, but like- wise a departure from church government. Indeed in many societies, and especially in all Baptist churches, their form of church government is ns important and fundamental as the doctrine they teach and preach. It is based upon the exact Scriptural model. This government by the ruling OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 499 majority, churcli sovereignty, independence and equality is part of the reli- gion, as well as the order and polity of the churches. It is not to be looked upon as a matter of human invention and contrivance. Being instituted by the apostles, it is not assumed that man has the power or choice to change its religion or polity, and to cast about in his own mind as to how, or on what pattern the church shall be constituted. This government was at first set up by inspired men, and the courts of the country undertake to say, and do say, that it cannot be changed or corrupted, without branding those who do so with infidelity and heresy, viewing these things from a denominational standpoint. When secular men institute profone governments, they satisfy themselves as to which form combines the greatest amount of good with the least evil, and then go about persuading others that it is the best. But in Baptist church government those who enter it take it as they find it reflected in the Bible, and established by the apostles. With us it is not a matter of choice, and our busine-s is not to develop it into something else, but to acquaint ourselves with its natural properties, and to assimilate our- selves to its form. They, therefore, cannot choose or change its doctrines or government. The mere details of its rules of action, its internal workings, its minor customs, are all matters of choice, but the essence of the whole, its fundamental doctrines, the lodgment of its sovereignty, are matters which cannot be abrogated, and when property rights are involved, and the aid of courts are invoked, they will so decide. These courts hold that it is a part of the religious liberty guaranteed to every man and body of men by the constitution and laws of the land to separate from their former church, if they become dissatisfied with its faith or polity, and build for themselves another church, and to organize on other principles ; but it is no part of that liberty to appropriate to themselves, in their new capacity, property which had been solemnly dedicated and consecrated to other uses. All dissenting members, in a legal point of view, are voluntary members of the church to which they belong. The position was not forced upon them, they sought it. They accepted it with all its burdens and consequences. They are supposed to have known its doctrine, and solemnly pledged themselves to teach and uphold it, and to be faithful to its every interest, and are supposed to be acquainted with all its rules and laws and customs subsisting, or to be made by competent authority, and can at pleasure, and with impunity, abandon it. But all such should go hence with a full knowledge that they leave behind them no rights, either in the church, or in its property, which can be maintained in the courts of the country. Thus it will be seen that a court of equity is the only judicatory, outside of a Baptist church, to which parties in a divided church can appeal, and the only tribunal that can sit in judgment, and review the decision of a Baptist church, but does so in no religious sense, but in a legal capacity, for it has no religious vicvs in itself, by which to measure these rights. By this inter- meddling, on the part of the judicial arm of the government, there is no admixture of religion and the profane law, neither by the use of these laws is it attempted to enforce Christianity. True religion asks no aid from the 500 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; sword of civil authority. It began without the sword, and as our Saviour told Peter, those who take the sword must perish by the sword. As a church has no power to arm an officer with authority to administer a property right, or trust, the customary law of the churches allows a resort to profane courts for that purpose, and those who thus appeal, do nothing more than preserve themselves as Baptists, and reclaim that which is their own. Then we see that a schism or division in a church by discord is only an ecclesiastical disease, but heresy is the death of a church. It is a good and proper thing to use pacific means, advices, remonstrances, and admonitions to cure these maladies, but those who have no regard for the faith of the church, or for justice, and will not hearken to counsel, must be constrained and enjoined by the strong arm of the law, where temporalities are concerned. The principles laid down in this chapter but confirms what was said heretofore, that it is folly for an upright and a faithful minority to deal otherwise with an un- faithful majority, who will not be guided by reason, and have receded from the faith of the church. The law, neither does true Baptist church govern- ment, hold that to be a church, which rejects the fundamental and essential doctrines of the church, nor does it account that a church of Christ which overthrows the laws and doctrine by which it is made a church. The history of Baptist church government is not without examples of this kind. The question ought to be whether these jarring discords which give rise to these trials of the rights to property, shall fall upon one church, or upon the whole denomination, by allowing the infectious disease to spread among the whole body. A covenant broken on one side is broken on the other. When a controversy happens between the two divisions of a disrupted church, neither of them can determine the cause, but it must be referred to a court of justice, which, for the purpose of determining property rights, is superior to them both ; not because it is not competent for a part of a divided church to be a judge in their own case, but because both have in their distracted condition assumed equal right to judge, and neither will consent to any sub- jection to the other. No minority that has preserved itself by a faithful adherence to the doctrines of the church can persuade itself that it is their duty to submit to the control of those who set themselves to overthrow the church and its government, and can only judge whether that control can be employed to their welfare, or turned to their ruin ; in other words they must be the judges of the manner in which the ruling majority fulfills its trusts ; and there is but one way to do it and that is by the standard of their own opinions. When a church is thus rent in twain by these internal troubles, so that they have no regard for the laws of neither God nor man, and those laws are held in contempt by them, the only power capable of subjugating them is more of the spirit of our Lord Jesus Christ. The original, as well as the permanent, function of church government, is the exercise of such control over the relations of members to one another in a church as may bring those relations into accord with the requirements of the law of the gospel and protect majorities and minorities from aggressive inter- ruptions on the part of each other, and may, by the help of the best system OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 501 of ethical rules, facilitate the government of the churches in the presumed interest of all their members. But if it becomes a custom in Baptist church polity for a minority, great or small, for trivial causes, to witiidraw from a church, and without taking the customary steps to pretend to erect them- selves into a church, or to declare themselves to be a church, why intelligent and orderly church government is at an end. It is admitted that in this respect Baptist church government is weak in the extreme, yet it subsists and must be 2:)erpetuated by the observance of well-defined rules by the de- nomination at large. Hence is it not only inexpedient for Baptists to trifle with the fixed and spontaneous practices of the churches, but it is impos- sible for them to do so long without committing often an act of ecclesiastical suicide. There are two choices, the choice between orderly government and chaotic confusion. Therefore the question among Baptists is not, nor can be, whether the alternative of confusion and disorder is to be selected, on. any failure of Baptist church government to do the work expected of it, but only what modification in the existing form of government is most urgently called for. It may be contended that any system of church government that will allow a resort to a profane court to pass upon questions of religious belief to settle property rights, rather than allow an appeal to some judicatory erected by the denomination, of which the church is a pait, is defective. Had we an example of one in the Scriptures, or any warrant for the erection of such a tribunal, gladly would we erect one and cheerfully follow it. Again, it may be said, that in all well-balanced governments, whether church or state, the supreme power ought to be divided, and each department be protected against the usurpations of the other by being armed with powers for defense as strong as others can wield for attack. Concede this to be so ; yet we see as many, and even more, adjudications of property rights in churches with hierarchijsal forms of governments as we see in our own free system. As to appeals from decisions in Baptist churches, he is a dull observer who does not learn that there is a quasi appeal from every important adjudication in a Baptist church to the denomination at large. This denominational public opinion is so powerM a thing that any error committed or any heresy prac- ticed will be corrected and uprooted when confronted at the bar of this mighty tribunal. To plant heretical seeds in Baptist soil and expect them to spring up and grow, would be like sowing bad seed in stony places, or like ^sop's earth, which would not nurse the plant of another soil, although ever so much fertilized, because the plant was not of its own production — not indigenous to the soil. Heresies will not grow in Baptist soil ; erratic hands may, in an evil hour, deposit the seed, it may even spring up, a feeble and perverted plant, but under the withering eye of a scrutinizing and ever- watchful denomination they soon die and are forgotten. As to our form of church government. Baptists find themselves much in the condition of the navigator— they may direct the vessel which bears them, but they can neither change its structure nor dry up the waters upon which it rides. Hence, whatever defects there may be found in the system, courts of justice will not 502 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPHUDENCE ; undertake to remedy, neither can they be remedied by the skill of the eccle* siastical legislator, but we must find in ourselves, as a denomination, the strength necessary to bear the natural imperfections which others are so ready to see inherent in the system. Those churches which are the best ordered, and ruled according to the strictest principles of the laws of both God and man, can sustain many and great shocks. But the badly ordered are often destroyed by trifling disorders, and therefore need greater caution. In treating of Baptist church jurisprudence we ought, if possible, to discover some rules applicable to the churches in a state of discord as well as in a state of peace, for the object of rules is the betterment and happiness of the churches, and discords neither produce the happiness of those who are the occasion of them or of those who sufier from them. Though the laws of the land have discarded religious establishments, being contrary to the doctrines of religious liberty, it does not forbid judicial cogni- zance of those offenses against religion and morality, which have no refer- ence to any such establishment, but are punishable because they strike at the root of moral and legal obligations, and weaken the security of social ties. In fact the Constitution of the United States never meant to with- draw religion in general, and with it the best sanctions of moral and social obligations, from all consideration and notice of the law. In this sense, in deed and in truth, is Christianity a part of the common law of the land, as it is likewise the common law of the churches. In very many of the States a man who speaks contumelious, blasphemous and disgraceful words of Christ may be tried, convicted, fined and imprisoned. It has also been held that while individual consciences may not be constrained, yet men of every opinion and creed may be restrained from acts which interfere with Christian worship, or which tend to revile religion or bring it into contempt. "When any belief tends to acts which interfere with the rights of those who represent the religion of the country, their acts may be restrained by the courts or by legislation. Hence the laws of the land and Christianty are wedded sisters. They go hand in hand, and give energy and effect to one another. There is not a right that we enjoy which is not pervaded with the living principles of justice and truth, whose sure foundations are the Holy Scriptures. God rules the universe and has given the kingdoms of the world to his Son who occupies the Supreme Bench and judges everything. All laws, therefore, which are framed for the guidance of human society should be subordinated to the higher system of Heaven ; which in a wonder- ful wisdom and love has not only devised the redemption and restoration of humanity, but has revealed those eternal princi])les of morality that are endued with living power for the order and welfare of men. The peace and well-being of society are thereby promoted, and increased security of life and property is thereby afforded. Christianity is a part of the common law of the land, not to the extent that would authorize a compulsory conformity in faith and practice to the creed and formula of worship of any sect or denomination, or even in those matters of doctrine and worship common to all denominations styling themselves OR, THE COMMON LAW OF IHE GOSPEL. 503 Christians, but to the extent that entitles the Christian religion and its ordi- nances to respect and protection. The belief of no man can be restrained, and the proper expression of religious belief and the rights of property is guaranteed to all, but this right like any other right must be exercised with strict regard to the equal rights of others ; and when religious belief or unbelief leads to acts which interfere with the religious worship, or the lib- erty of conscience of those who represent the religion of the country, as established, not by law, but by the consent, custom and usage of a denomi- nation and existing before the organization of the government, even if they are not indictable at law. Compulsory worship of God in any form is pro- hibited, and every man's opinion on matters of religion, as in other matters, is beyond the reach of the law. No man can be compelled to perform any act, or omit any act as a duty to God ; but this liberty of conscience iu matters of faith and practice is entirely consistent with the protection that the law throws around the property rights of a divided church, as furnishing the best sanctions of moral and social obligations. The public peace and public welfare are greatly dependent upon the protection of the religion of the country and the preventing or punishing of offences against it, and acts wantonly committed subversive of it. Now it is plain, that that tribunal, though it be a secular one, which is able and has the power to decide the law in such cases, and also to carry its judgment into immediate execution, must ultimately acquire the supremacy over the church and assert its juris- diction. When, therefore, the question is asked. Why is the court the tribu- nal of dernier resort?— the obvious answer is, that its office, as such, is the natural and necessary consequence of the manner in which our government is constituted. The courts never arrogate to themselves the imposing authority of intermeddling in these church affairs. They act as they are acted upon, and yet it is the exercise of this more humble duty which has rendered them the undisputed arbiters in settling the disputed property rights of a divided church ; and it is fortunate when churches can avail themselves of these salutary helps and agencies, in order to strengthen the authority of cliurch government, and to maintain order and tranquillity in the denomination. Courts of justice, then, may well be considered as institutions in every respect suitable for the purpose of putting an end to disputes in a church over property rights. Without this instrumentality of judicial tribunals, which in Baptist church government, has to act in detail and not in gross, the denomination would be a prey to perpetual church quarrels over tem- poralities. Disputes in this respect in divided churches in a denomination, so large as that of the Baptists, are of frequent occurrence. The manifold relations which men have to each other in a thriving and progressive deno- mination multiply them greatly. These disputes are not alone confined to Baptists, and have a relation to the most valuable interest to the whole denomination ; to both doctrine and property. And especially in our sys- tem, to have devised for us a mode by which they may be quietly appeased, is one of the greatest adjuncts to Baptist church government. When 604 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; heresies spread from church to church, the quarrels over property and prop- erty rights frequently assume a formidable shape, and become matters of the gravest public interest. In the Methodist and Presbyterian churches before, during, and just after the late war, especially, was this the case, when those churches divided upon questions of pohtical interest. The in- jured parties interested, first their relatives and friends, then the neighbor- hood, and finally whole denominations, were involved in the ferment. Hap- pily, the Baptists, having no ecclesiastical iron-bound bonds that bound them together as a denomination, were exempted from those turmoils. A tribu- nal, therefore, which goes to the bottom of the evil, and takes each case as it arises, separately and in detail, and which is so constructed as to inspire a very general confidence in its impartiality and integrity, necessarily occupies a very important place in the apparatus of Baptist church jurisprudence. The above legal principles are laid down, not for the purpose of encour- aging my brethren to go to law, one with another, over property rights, but rather to keep them from doing so, except in cases where there is hope of recovery. No one should claim the exercise of a right or the performance of a duty unless he has the law to support him, and has the power of the law to make his claim efiectual. It is inconsistent with the idea of a right that the enjoyment of its object should be merely precarious and at the will of another. If it is in the power of the person, against whose interest the benefit is sought, to permit or refuse the request, it is still precarious and not a claim of right in him, though it may be in the other. But if it is in the power of the claimant to compel the other to enforce the request, then the claim may be a claim of right. A man, to be able to call a right his, must be certain of it by some means, that is, legally certain ; in human afiairs he can only have that certainty by having in his hands the power to enforce i-t, which can only be acquired by making out a clear case which entitles him to have that power exercised in his behalf. The sum total, then, is that in all cases where there is no heresy involved, nor any departure from funda- mental principles, no recovery can be had ; otherwise the minojity must submit to the rule and government of the majority in mere matters of dis- cipline and practice. But should Baptists ever go to law with one another ? By no means ! It is the greatest scandal that can befall a Christian church. There is no ques- tion in church government upon which one of the apostles speaks so plainly and positively. Nothing is more opposite to the duties we owe to the cause of Christ nor more contrary to the law of brotherly love, which should be cultivated by all Baptists and churches alike, than this breach of the law of the gospel which brings absolute disgrace upon the denomination. Offences of this sort excite such asperity and rancor between brethren and churches that we should avoid giving anj room for the spread of such a pestilence and disease among our people. Here is work peculiarly for a judicious council, to be agreed upon between the contending factions to the division. It is for all purposes adequate — Scripturally adequate — to handle these deli- cate interests. Whenever we see a court of justice forced to handle these OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 505 ecclesiastical questions, it ought at once to be understood and known, far and wide, that one side or the other — either plaintiff or defendant — has so little faith in the justness and justice of their cause that they are afraid to submit these matters to a council for a settlement; that they have departed so widely from the faith and practice of the denomination as that they are un- willing to have the light of the truth shed upon their conduct. And until one side or the other does so refuse overtures to settle matters in this way, ought the other to resort to the courts of the country for an adjudication of these matters. And I doubt very materially, as a lawyer, whether a court, upon the point being raised upon demurrer, would feel that it could take proper jurisdiction of a case of this kind until resort had been made to a Baptist council for amicable settlement, or, at least, that a willingness had been shown to resort to a council and the dominant faction had refused. The courts have decided that where a controversy has arisen in a divided church, over some matter, not sounding in heresy, but of a voluntary nature, and the case has been finally determined in the recognized church judicatories known to the denomination, they will not disturb their findings, but will leave the parties to abide their decision. Couucils being the only tribunals known to Baptist jurisprudence to try such cases, when the church, for any cause, is unwilling or unable to try the same, it is believed that the court would compel Baptists to first resort to a council before appealing to a secu- lar court for relief. At least, if either party has committed such a breach of all the laws of God and man as to be unwilling to have their own brethren to sit in judgment upon cases of this kind, then let the party whose cause is just take the case into the secular court, and let the strong arm of the law settle that which cannot otherwise be determined. If men were always equally just, equitable and spiritually minded, the laws of the gospel would doubtless be sufficient for the churches. But arrogance, the illusions of self- love, pride and the violence of the passions, too often render these sacred laws ineffectuah It is sometimes necessary to deviate from them, in order to prevent abuses, even in church government, and to accommodate our- selves to circumstances ; and since our obligation to the church has fre- quently so little influence upon us, a civil sanction becomes necessary to give the laws of the gospel their full efficacy. Thus the law of the gospel is converted into a civil law, and made to subserve the ends of justice. Then, to speak from the standpoint of the gospel. Baptists have no right to go to law with one another. The disputes that arise between them origi- nate either from contested rights, or from injuries received. It is true that every Baptist as well as every church ought to preserve the rights which belong to them ; and the care of their own safety forbids them to submit to injuries. But in fulfilling the duty which they owe to themselves they must not forget their duty to others, and especially must they follow the law of the gospel as the supreme law of the churches. If neither of the parties to the dispute think proper to abandon their rights, or pretensions, the con- tending parties, by the laws of the gospel, which forbid the going to law one with another, but recommends peace, concord and charity, are bound to try 606 A THEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JUEISPRUDENCE ; the gentlest metliods of terminating their differences by the calling of a council before which to try these disputes. And should any be in doubt as to the lawfulness of this method and its scrip turaln ess I will here quote the law of the gospel, which wull be a fitting conclusion to these considerations : Dare any of you, haviiig a matter against another, go to law before the unjust and not before the saints f Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world. ^ and if the world shall be judged by you, are ye unworthy to judge the smallest matters f Know ye not that we shall judge angels f how much mo-re things that pertain to this life f If then ye have judgments of things pertain- ing to this life, set them to judge who are least esteemed in the church. I speak to your shame. Is it so, that there is not a wise man among you f no, not one that shall be able to judge between his brethren f But brother goeth to law with brother, and that before the unbelievers. Now, therefore, there is utterly a fault among you, because ye go to law one with another. Why do ye not rather take wrong f Why do ye not rather suffer yourselves to be de- frauded f Nay, ye do wrong, and defraud, and that your brethren. Therefore in the face of so express a Sciiptural declaration upon this im- portant subject Baptists ought to refrain from the practice of going to law one with another, but resort to councils of arbitration for the adjudication of their differences. This is the only Scriptural remedy. The essential elements of an arbitration of this kind consists in, first — agreement on the part of litigants having a matter in dispute, to refer the matter to a tribunal composed of brethren believed to be impartial, and constituted in such a way as the terms of the agreement may specif}^, and to abide by the judg- ment ; and secondly, in consent on the part of the council to conduct the inquiry, and to deliver judgment. These councils may be organized some- what in the same way as councils for other purposes are, and in the main many of the rules laid down for the government of such tribunals are applic- able to those for arbitration purposes. Men who are members of the churches should be selected, and who are known for their piety, wisdom and sense of justice. They ought to be members of the same churches to which the parties litigant belong, provided impartial councillors can be mutually agreed upon in those churches. One discreet brother should be selected by each party and the power be given to these to select an umpire should they be unable to agree. As questions of legal import are likely to come before the council it would be well to have at least one lawyer upon the same, or at least the right to seek the advice of those learned in the law should be accorded, provided the parties so consulted are members of Baptist churches in good standing, and are willing to serve the council without a fee, as this might relieve the parties of any suspicion that -might otherwise rest upon them. For the want of a better name this tribunal might be called a Council of Reconciliation. As a mode of procedure before this council it might be best for the com- plaining party to lodge a plain untechnical statement of his complaint before this council of reconciliation, where both parties are then required to appear at an early day, in person and without counsel, and generally without OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 507 witDesses, though, when deemed Decessary, witnesses may be heard. Before this tribunal, face to face, the parties may state their own cause, and may be also questioned by the council so far as they think necessary. This should generally close the examination of the case, but the council can allow or require witnesses to be called. Or the parties may agree in writing as to the facts of the case and submit that to the counci', and having thus acquired the facts so far as agreed upon, and the statements of each party upon dis- puted matters, as well as other evidence when it is deemed requisite, the council might carefully explain to the parties the law as they deem it applica- ble to the case, and also state what they deem the strict legal right to be ; and when the council, upon the whole case, legal and equitible, as well as moral, have heard the parties, they then might make such suggestions and give the parties such advice as is deemed just and appropriate in the premises. Having heard this advice it is obligatory upon the parties to stand to and abide by the decision if they have agreed so to do, otherwise it is entirely optionary with parties to adopt it or not. They may adopt it exactly as given, or they may reject it entirely as per the agreement entered into, or they may come to an agreement entirely of their own making, or to one based in part en the views of the council and in part upon their own conclusions. As stated in the preceding pages in regard to other councils the parties should always agree to abide by these determinations with a religious fidelity, otherwise it would be a waste of time But if no agreement or reconciliation is reached by the council, that fact is announced and noted of record, and the parties go hence with perfect liberty to abandon the matter or to call a new council as they may agree. On the other hand if an agreement is had, that agreement, whether it be that the matter be reconciled and abandoned, or that one party recovers of the other, is entered as the judgment of the court, should be final, and in many of the States of the United States is in all respects as binding and efficacious as the judgment of any other court. In many of the states under special legislation, execution may issue upon it, and it may be pleaded in complete bar of any other or future proceeding for the same com- plaint, or cause of action. Arbitration is a very reasonable mode, and one that is perfectly conform- able to and made obligatory by the law of the gospel, for the decision of every dispute over the property rights of church members, which does not directly interest the peace or safety of the church. It is obvious that there are certain conditions which must be satisfied in order to render arbitration even so much as possible. In the first place, the matter in dispute must in itself admit of being formulated in such a way as to be made a matter suit- able for a judicial decision, as distinguished from a mere matter of fellow- ship between two or more brethren. Of course, the terms of the reference may be large and indefinite, and considerable powers may be given to the council, or arbitrators of adjusting claims, even of an indeterminate kind, and making compensatory settlements of a variety of sorts. This condition points to the obvious suitability of arbitration to all cases in which the dis- pute relates to a matter of unsettled law, or to controverted matters of fact 608 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPEUDENCE ; claimed on the one side and denied on the other, or to the amount and kind of compensation due from an admitted wrong, or to monetary claims on the part of a brother against another. In all such matters as these, in the mere statement of the ground of dispute indicates a readiness to accept a coDcilia- tory solution of it, if such can be found compatible with the self-respect of both parties, the field for the friendly offices of a judicious council of arbi- tration in forming, or assisting to form, these tribunals, is almost illimitable ; and it is likely enough increased recourse will be had to this benign mode of reducing dissensions between brethren, as its value becomes better recog- nized, and the Scripture injunction upon this subject becomes the more deeply impressed upon Baptist churches. Thus, though the field of arbitra- tion is at the present time undoubtedly limited, there are two directions in which it is now undergoing, and may be made to undergo much more rapidly, further extension. In the first 'place, the sensitiveness of Baptist churches as to what touches their prerogatives, their existence and indepen- dence, is already being greatly reduced, and may be reduced still further, so as to take in and compass these objects, especially when a true view is taken of the utter scandal and disgrace of two brethren going to law, and of the superior concern which all Baptist churches have in the welfare, rather than in the misfortunes, of other churches, and the individual members com- posing them. If further proof were needed of a change coming over the spirit of Baptist churches in reference to the disreputable practice of a brother going to law with a brother, which may have issues in the future to which no limit can be assigned, it would suffice to refer to the extraordinary development of inter- church association and co-operation for all sorts of purposes which is mak- ing Baptist church government better understood. This development is no doubt, to a great extent a direct consequence of the present era of universal education that has dawned upon our people, and therefore, it might be held to be fairly adducible as a distinct ground for faith in the advent of a new order of ideas inimical to church councils in general as a Scriptural means of settling disputes between church and church and between brother and brother. But this growing habit of inter-church asso- ciation and co-operation, whatever its causes may be, is a phenomenon deserving attention on its own account, and one which every day is mani- festing itself in more various and noticeable forms. There is scarcely any part of the field of Baptist church jurisprudence, religious and philanthropic efibrt, or educational and journalistic enterprise, in which by means of councils, conventions, associations, societies and unions,. the whole Baptist family are not learning to organize themselves, in' exactly the same fashion in which the members of each local church train themselves, and were trained, to harmonize their erratic notions and desires, and submit to coun- cils as the only legitimate way of settling questions of great moment to all the churches alike. This progress is likely, indeed, to be more rapidly effected as between the members of different churches than in primitive times, inasmuch as culture and practice has now explained the benefits of OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 609 these bodies, and long habits of ecclesiastical existence have accustomed Baptists to the discipline which these beneficent bodies impose. No one need any longer be in fear of these organizations, for there is in them the utter absence of any central force, such as exists in a community forming itself into a church, by which the independence of the churches is in the least interfered with, or recalcitrant members compelled to obedience. This want of force can never be supplied even by a higher state of culture, moral self- abnegation, nor even a greater concentration of mind and purpose to the achievement of a complete inter-church union for the purposes of govern- ment. How far this work will proceed in our system of government, and how rapidly, can only be a matter of conjecture, and opinions in respect to it will differ widely. But there can be no doubt that councils for reducing differ- ences between churches and individual members of churches to the smallest point are becoming more and more conspicuous, and are assuming a very practical shape, while their general tendency to promote lasting peace in our churches is unquestionable. Every Baptist council is the creature of the churches involved in and affected by a controversy between brethren or churches. It is not a party to the churches, but the result of them — the creation of those parties involved in those controversies. It is a mere agent, entrusted with limited powers for certain specific objects, which powers and objects are to be agreed upon between the parties concerned. Shall the agent be permitted to judge of the extent of his own powers, without reference to his constituent ? To a certain extent he is compelled to do this in the very act of exercising them, but this is always in subordination to the authority by v/hom his powers were conferred. If this were not so the result would be that the agent would possess every power which the constituent could confer, notwithstanding the plainest and most express terms of the grant. This would be against all principle and all reason. If such a rule should prevail in regard to church government written instructions to a council would be the idlest thing im- aginable. It would afford no barrier against the usurpations of a council, and no security for the rights and interest of the parties involved. If then a church has no authority to erect itself into a high court and try another church for some supposed breach of inter-church law, with what propriety can it be said that a council may do so ? This is an absurdity as pernicious as it is gross and palpable. If a council may determine the powers of a church it may pronounce them either more or less than they really are. But churches, as well as all parties, could have no right to complain of the decisions of a council which they had chosen for themselves as long as it kept within the limits of its powers, and refrained from the exercise of powers never conceded, inconsistent with private right and dangerous to the liberty of the churches. Considering the nature of our system of church government the churches ought to be, and I presume always will be, ex- tremely careful not to interpose their sovereign power against the decisions of a lawfully constituted council in any case where the council had jurisdic- tion. Of this character are the cases already cited ; such, for example, as ^10 A TREATISE UPOX BAPTIST CHURCH JUBISPEUDENCE ,* those between the brethren of the same church, those involving the question of heresy taught by a minister or other public teacher which disturbs the peace and good order of the church or denominatioD, and especially such as concerns the conduct or character of ministers of the gospel. As to all these subjects the jurisdiction of a council is clear, and no church or party can have any interest to dispute it. The decisions of a council, properly chosen and agreed upon, therefore, ought to be considered as final and conclusive, as to the matters submitted to them, and when reported to, and adopted by, the church, it would be a breach of the contract on the part of the parties thereto to refuse submission to them. Churches should be very careful not to go beyond these enumerated cases in the calling of a council, for they can have no jurisdiction whatever. In all such cases the churches nmst neces- sarilly decide for themselves, and their decisions are final and conclusive. And their finding in all matters of this nature, whatever it may be, is bind- ing upon themselves, and upon their own membership and no farther, in that particular case. So far as the decision of any church in any case may claim the force of authority it is not, however, conclusive even upon those who pronounced it for all time, and certainly is not so beyond the sphere of their own government, otherwise their erroneous decisions might be perpetu- ated, , A sovereign church of our Lord Jesus Christ does not ask any one what is its rights, nor do they limit their powers by ecclesiastical precedents. Still less do they entrust important subjects to tribunals not their own, and least of all to the tribunals of that power against which their own power is asserted. All councils, therefore, are but the emanations of the sovereign power of the churches, and can neither limit nor control that power, for the churches created them. Church government is an organism for the purpose of preserving pure the faith and practice of the churches, and if that government fails to do this from a want of knowledge or energy, or because it endeavors systematically and continually to undermine and destroy these ends, those in the church, if any, w^ho are willing to contend for the faith, have the simple right to op- pose the church. The church is no longer a Scriptural one, though estab- lished according to all the formalities of the Scriptures, because no longer answering the purposes or obtaining the ends of the laws of the gospel. Baptist church government is hemmed in, and cannot go beyond a certain line. Every doctrine persistently taught, that is fundamentally heretical, of sufficient magnitude to amount to a departure from the faith, can and ought to be resisted, especially if all the common and regular means of redress have previously been fairly and honestly tried. By heresy, as here used, I mean a violent change of the fundamental doctrine or practice of the church from that known to and practiced by the denomination. As unpleasant as the^e upheavals sometimes are^ yet in many cases such disturbances have salutary results, because churches learn practically that they cannot violate the laws of God and man with impunity and be kept in the line of Scrip- tural churches. It must be admitted that our Baptist churches of to-day would not now exist in their purity had they not been obliged to submit, at OR^ THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 511 some period, to attacks upon them from within and from without. Many of the doctrines of the churches would not now shine so brightly, unless at some time or other they had not passed through this process and crisis. Besides, litigation through the ordinary courts of the country between Baptists is demoralizing, is immoral and begets immorality ; it sets an example before the world that is degrading to Christianity, and never furnishes ad- vantages which can compensate for the evils it entails, and, as rational beings, both churches and individuals ought to settle their property rights through the medium of arbitration, before a tribunal of the saints, rather than through the courts of law. Litigation of this kind is always unjust on one side or the other, and is immoral in its effects as well as in its causes, and is ruinous to peace and order in the highest degree, both to the churches at large and to the individuals who engage in it. Christians going to law with one another, in all cases in which there is an evil intent on one side, is resorting to secular force, for it is very plain that by going to law the party in the wrong would not do the bidding of a court of law, and abide by its decision, were it not supported by public force. Men do not go to court to convince their adversaries, but to convince the judge. A law-suit between two Baptists amounts to this : Brother A has wronged brother B ; B goes to law, and demands assistance against A. The law says, " I will lend assistance, but I must first be convinced that you are not mistaken in your contention, or that you do not mean, perhaps, to wrong A. Go to C, who has been appointed to adjudicate such cases. He is judge and will see who is right ; and if he says that you are right, come back, and I will lend you force to obtain your right from A." Here we have all the machinery of a court of justice, in the make-up of which we have no choice. The question is, if the object in going to law is to convince the judge, and not your adversary, can you not more readily convince a judicious council of your own brethren selected' by mutal consent, than a secular court which may be against your interests, and not in sympathy with you to start in with ? To one who has been schooled in the science and practice of the civil law this subject is of vast interest and affords much food for thought, especially to Baptist lawyers. We have seen how circumspect Baptist churches must be lest they forfeit their existence as a church and their rights to church property Avhich they themselves have helped to pay for. It is a law of the gospel that Ye are not your own. In a more significant sense it often happens that property w^hich one helps to purchase and dedicates to God and his true worship is forfeited when it has been prostituted to profane purposes and to other uses than to his true worship. Men must be true not only to God, but to their brethren with whom they have covenanted to keep the faith. Infi- delity carries w^ith it its own reward. Sometimes the strong arm of the civil law is resorted to in order to compel men not only to be faithful, but to be honest. These are matters pre-eminently fit to be referred to Baptist councils or arbitration committees who might often appease the rigor of the common law that need often such a tribunal to moderate it. 512 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPEUDENCE ; CHAPTER XVIII. PAPAL CHUECH GOVERNMENT — IN WHICH THE OFFICE AND FUNCTIONS OF A POPE ARE CHALLENGED. THE best, and indeed tlie only way to test the legality of an ecclesiastical office or institution is to compare it with that which was set up by Christ and his apostles while on earth. To do this, therefore, we must know and understand thoroughly what was instituted by the apostles and to rightly compare it with existing establishments, and find out, if possible, whence came the ideas implied by them. Are they divine, or are they human ? From every view that can be taken of the subject, reasoning on principle and from Scripture the doctrine of divine right, upon which alone the papacy is established, as the foundation of a claim, in any one, to the ruling power in the ministry, is utterly absurd. It belongs to a later age than that of the apostolic, and is characteristic of the superstition and idolatry which pre- vailed long after the death of the founders of the churches of Christ. We have heretofore demonstrated that all ministers are by Divine right equal and equally free. Christ made them so, and the equalities which have grown up among them, and the governments ecclesiastical which have been established over them, founded on other principles, have proceeded from other causes, by which their ministerial rights have been subverted. We must trace ministerial rights and functions to other sources, and in doing so, view things as they are and not indulge in superstitious, visionary and fanciful speculations. It is the crowing virtue of Baptists that they have not implicit faith in anything but Christ, and his infallible word. To place implicit faith in a mortal man or an erring church to the exclusion of Christ and his word is the foundation stone of the papal church, and it will stand as long as those who compose the Cathohc church can be persuaded to submit their con- sciences alone to the word of the pope and his priests, and esteem themselves discharged from the necessity of searching the Scriptures, in order to know whether the things that are told them are true or false. Whereas, the true rule is, that such as have common sense and are imbued with liberty of con- science ought to make use of this liberty in those- things that concern them- selves and the church of Christ, and to suspect the words of such as are in- terested in deceiving, or persuading them not to see with their own eyes, that they may be the more easily deceived. This rule obliges us so far to search into matters of ecclesiastical government in general, and our own in particular. And should any question the propriety of this animadversion against Catholic church government, I have only to say that they who exercise that govern- OK, THE COMMO:^- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 513 ment have no right to do so, and that there is no man to whom it belongs, and no one man who has not as good a title to it as any other. There is not, therefore, any one man who has not a right, by legitimate criticisms and arguments, to overthrow that which has none at all. He who has no part in that system of government may contribute to its overthrow, as well as he who has the greatest, for he neither, has that which God ordained he should have, nor shows a title to that which he enjoys from that original prerogative of birth or succession, from whence it can only be derived. For it is im- possible to treat of the different kinds of ecclesiastical governments in their most perfect form, so as to take a comprehensive view of their respective merits, without looking at them likewise in their worst state. It is evident that in the Scripture Christ has ordained ecclesiastical powers and made ample provision for the ministry, prescribing their powers and duties ; but he has given no one of them more power than another, because we have shown by the law of the gospel all ministers are equal. This I take to be the genuine sense of the Scriptures, and the most lawful way of interpreting the places relating to the subject. Instead of constituting many free and independent churches which Baptists take to be models fit to be imita,ted throughout all time to come, Christ might have instituted an uni- versal or consolidated church government, and have declared one of the apostles should be pope with full power to rule over the churches and his brethren, and his will to be their law. This would have been more suitable to the goodness and mercy of Christ than to have left us in the dark, or rather to make the ecclesiastical government given to his own people, a false light to lead them to destruction. To speak truthfully it is hard to think seriously of an universal church erected for rule and government, as to think any man to be in earnest who mentions it. Notwithstanding this our Catho- lic brethren bestow the proud title* of Christ's vicegerent and lord para- mount upon the humble Apostle Peter who exercised no more power, and probably not so much as some of his brethren, and was utterly void of all worldly glory, splendor and power, such as popes now exercise. In the first place, before entering upon the question of the power and authority of the papacy, it would be well to give a short history of the part that Roman Catholic popes have taken in the government of the Catholic church. Up to the middle of the second century each church was sub- stantially and really independent of every other. After the middle of the second century the departure from apostolic church government com- menced, and the new system of government then set up was, for several cen- turies, an ecclesiastical aristocracy ; nearly all its powers were exercised by bishops and by synods and councils of bishops and high orders of the clergy; but finally it degenerated into an absolute ecclesiastical monarchy, and the whole power vested in a pope. This was the natural and necessary conse- quence of the ignorance of the great mass of the people, before the inven- tion of printing, and the general diffusion of learning and intelligence. The government of the Roman Catholic church is a complete monarchy, based on a religious aristocracy, appointed for life by the pope, who is a complete 33 514 A TPvEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; monarcli, and they in turn elect his successor. The pope is elected as the head of the church, as a monarch for life, by the college of cardinals, seventy in number. When elected he has supreme and absolute power over the church, legislative, executive, elective and judicial, and has no charter or constitution, law or gospel to limit his power. Its laws he often changes without the aid of a council, and no general council can be convened with- out his order ; and when assembled he can veto all its proceediugs and dis- band it at pleasure. All the members of these councils consist of cardinals and bishops appointed either by the pope himself or by his predecessors, and the people have no voice in the matter. The pope not only appoints the cardinals, but all other higher orders of the clergy, including the bishops ; not only in Europe, but in America and elsewhere. The bishops in their respective dioceses select and train up young men for the ministry, and ap- point and ordain all the lower orders of the clergy, send them wherever they please, to take charge of, and exercise ecclesiastical authority over the people, without consulting them, and without their consent ; and the priest- hood claim and generally exercise the sole right, either by themselves or by their representatives, to instruct the people in all matters of education in order to form and guide their opinions in all matters of morals and civil gov- ernment as well as in religion. And it is a matter of history that no effort has ever been made in any Catholic country, to educate the mass of the people, or any of the common classes, except some few selected by the priests, to be educated for the min- istry. The whole of the zeal and exertions of the bishops and priests seem to be directed to train up youug men for the priesthood, and to educate, mould the minds and views, and form the opinions of the noble and wealthy classes, who are to fill the learned professions and places in civil government, and to make agents and instruments of them, to manage and govern the people; and to leave the mass of the people in ignorance, that they may be the more easily governed and directed in the propagation of the catholic religion. If, however, it be denied that it was the object of the pope to enslave his people directly, it cannot be gainsaid that it was his purpose to mould their minds and opinions in such a manner as to make them perfectly submissive, and capable of being led by advice and persuasion wherever and in whatever manner they desired ; force was however resorted to, when persuasion failed, and the Inquisition was finally devised as the most effectual means of applying force, and accomplishing the object. The fact is well attested by many candid writers and historians, that the popes and other great leaders of the church of Eome struggled during cen- turies for temporal dominion, as well as spiritual, supremacy ; to make the pope an universal monarch, temporal as well as spiritual ; and it is probable that they did not give up this object until they were humbled by the upris- ing of an indignant and long-suffering people. And it is not strange that such a combination of learning and talent, ignorance and superstition, all obedient to one man, acting in concert, operating upon the hopes and fears ,.of the mass of the people, and wielding their prejudices and passions at will, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 515 should enable the pope to crown and dethrone kings at pleasure, and to require the proud monarchs of England and France to hold the stirrups of his saddle while he mounted his horse, as was done in the twelfth century. Not only the pope, but all the catholic priesthood claimed perfect exemp- tion from any subjection to the civil power. They insisted that the clergy could be tried only by the church, that is, by brother members of the cleri- cal profession, and could not be tried even for the highest crimes, by the civil courts. They succeeded in carrying this abominable doctrine into practice ; and even in England, the plea of a criminal charged with a crime of the most atrocious character, that he was a clergyman, if true, was treated as a vaHd plea in abatement ; and the culprit was discharged, to be tried, and perhaps only reprimanded by his brethren of the clergy. Such was the supremacy they gained over the civil government and laws throughout all countries where the popes of Rome held the supremacy ; and such the in- fluence, like a spell of enchantment over the popular mind, that they not only thought for the mass of the people, and moulded their minds, views and opinions according to their own wishes, and fitted them to submit quietly to the clerical yoke, but by enslaving their minds, they took away from them all desire for freedom and independence. They were required to have faith without proofs, and mental conviction of the truths of the Scriptures, without sufficient learning and capacity to examine and understand the force and effect of the evidences upon which those truths are founded. In this mode, doctrines and usages not enjoined by the Scriptures, but which arose from the condition and ignorance of the people, have been sought to be perpetuated by the pope and clergy of the Catholic church, as a means of keeping the laity in subjection and in spiritual bondage for cen- turies after enlightenment and the dissemination of learning had removed the causes upon which such doctrines and practices were founded. They taught two of the most pernicious principles, the most dangerous and destructive to morals and civilization, ever inculcated upon earth : the first, that their religious doctrines and dogmas should be propagated and extended by the power of the sword ; the second, that the church was not bound to keep faith or any engagements with those they deemed heretics, but that they might mercilessly put them to death for their religious belief. The establishment of the inquisition in the thirteenth century appears to have been the first general and systematic attempt of the Roman Catholic church to propagate their dogmas by force ; by using physical punishment to com- pel others to renounce their religious opinions, which were not in accordance with those of the church, by putting to the sword and to the stake all per- sons in their power who would not receive their doctrines. In the fourteenth century, statutes were enacted in England, at the instance of the pope and his clergy, authorizing the apprehension, trial and execution by the bar- barous practice of burning, of all persons convicted of heresy in matters of religion. Such were the intolerant opinions then prevailing, and, to some extent, yet prevailing in all catholic countries. Such are the general outlines, briefly stated, of this stupendous fabric and machinery of ecclesiastical gov- 516 A TREATISE TJPON BAPTIST CHURCH JTTEISPRUDENCE ; ernment, the authority for which we are here to examine, to see whether it be from God or from the evil one. The Koman Catholic church, which has departed further from the plan of the apostolic churches than any other, is as fruitful in preserving its power as the seven-headed serpent is said to have been in evil,^when one head was cut off, many rise up in the place of it. When monarchical gov- ernments, which have ever been the nurse of the Catholic church, could no longer tolerate and endure its corrupt domination over them, put an end to that rule, it then turned its lustful eyes towards the United States, and is now fastening its claws and fetters upon this free government. There are no words of praise too extravagant for the pope to bestow upon a republi- can form of governmeut. All at once it dawns upon him that liberty and freedom, such as we enjoy, are great succors to Catholicism, and that there is no missionary field like it. And if the history of the past belies not itself, it is no advantage to a free government to choose excellent men to office, for in those times in the past, in those governments where the pope had full sway and ruled the rulers, and a necessity was laid upon every people to choose the worst of m,en, for the reason they were the worst and most like themselves, lest that virtuous and good men should come into power, they should be excluded for being vicious and wicked. Bfy this means every people know when they are in danger. But if all should de- pend upon the will of an ecclesiastic, whose power is inflated, puffed up and distorted, the worst would often be the most safe, and the best in the greatest danger. The crudest would often be advanced and the good and the true scorned and neglected. The freest and most generous nations have, above all things, sought to avoid this evil. Such nations as have overthrown this monstrous power, and are no longer under its accursed sway, have enjoyed religious liberty, and such as are yet in its cruel clutches are still groping their way in ignorance and superstition. It is in vain to say that this proceeded from the fatal corruptions of the ages ; for that corruption proceeded from the government under the dominion of the pope and his emissaries, and the ensuing desolation was the effect of it. And as the like disorder in all gov- ernments united with the state, and ruled over by the secret influence of ecclesiastics, will appear and. prevail in this free land, unless Americans are vigilant and watchful of their religious liberties, and nip in the bud the first encroachments upon them. " Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty," is a saying as true to-day as when it was first spoken. It will take a nation born for war to resist such a church when the proper time comes to strike. "SVhat- ever is defective in our system of free government, which makes these things possible, can only be supplied by the constant vigilance of every true American. With the Catholic church, time changes nothing, but the changes in methods proceed only from the change of governments. A republic domi- nated by r. pope would be as pliant in the hands of the pope as the mon- archies of old were. The seeds are being sown and the end will be reached, unless time is taken by the forelock and the calamities averted. This is a OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 517 lesson republics must learn, and the sooner the better. The free government of the United States is of all governments the most liable to this danger, and no one knows it better than the pope. They, therefore, who say that popes and priests are bound to uphold and preserve the religious hberties of a nation^ and yet lay for a foundation that laws both human and divine are no more than the signification of their pleasure, seeks to delude the church and the world with words which signify nothing. The vanities of these whimsies will further appear if it be considered that ministers are ministers by the law of the gospel, and popes and priests by overthrowing the law. The mischiefs designed are dissembled and denied, and will continue to be until they are past all possibility of being cured by any other way than force, and such governments of the world as have been driven to use that remedy, learned very late that they had to use force or perish forever. And they who in the past had to draw the sword against this monstrous church, threw away the scabbard, for they who were compelled to do so were sure to be ruined if they miscarried, so ferocious is religious fanaticism when driven to extremities. These things are the growth and outgrowth of that most perni- cious doctrine that there is such a thing in ecclesiastical government as an universal church on earth w ith a ruler at its head to govern it. This strikes at the root of Christ's ordinance that there are independent local churches with a separate pastor over each, and ruled by the membership of each ; that there are Scriptural laws and general and particular customs and usages for their government as best please the membership. But nevertheless, when the dangers that threaten a people are manifest, they ought to lay aside all ceremonies and begin to cast about them for the things that make for their defence, and proceed against such a people as are enemies to their lib- erties, and by that means preserve themselves from utter ruin. The same course is justly used against any other enemies of the government, who take upon themselves a power which the law does not give. It was not for this that they received the commission, Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel, and may and ought to be restrained as any other public enemy. The Christian ministry is not set up to do what they please, but what the gospel appoints for the good of men's souls alone ; and as they have no other power than what the gospel allows, so the same gospel limits and directs the exer- cise of that which they have. And if one of these ministers, although he may call himself Christ's vicegerent on earth, may be duly opposed, — yea, even exterminated, when he commits acts unbecoming a loyal citizen, and no man will deny, that if one of them, by an outrageous violence, should endeavor to overthrow the government, although he might contend that it was for the good of the church, he might, by violence, be suppressed and chastised. The worst of men seldom all at once arrive at such a degree of impu- dence, as to propose the greatest mischiefs and enormities. Those who are under no law, and fear not God nor man, dare not offer such things as the world will not bear, lest by that means they should overthrow their own designs. All poison must be disguised, and no man can be persuaded to 518 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUPvCH JURISPRUDENCE; swallow arsenic, unless it be covered wjtli sometliing that appears harmless. Mother Eve and father Adam would not have eaten the forbidden fruit if it had not seemed to be good and pleasant, and had not been induced to believe that by eating it they should both be as Gods. Evil men with evil designs have always followed the same method. Their malice is carried on by fraud, and they have seldom destroyed any, but such as they have deceived. Truth can never conduce to mischief, and is best discovered by plain words, but nothing is more usual with bold bad men than to cover their mischiefs and designs by figurative phrases, and hypocritical pretences. It would be too ridiculous to say in plain terms that the pope of Rome held in his hand to be used at his will, a temporal as w^ell as a spiritual sword, and that he is better able to judge of all matters both human and divine than any, or all, of his people ! And that, therefore, the pope must be called the head of the church on earth, and that thereby he may be invested with all the pre- eminences which in a natural body belong to that part of the human anatomy, and men must by deception or force be made to believe the analogy between the natural and ecclesiastical body to be perfect. But the matter must be better examined before this mortal and spiritual poison can be swallowed. It is true the natural body cannot subsist without the natural head, but the churches of Christ can subsist without a pope. For the churches did, in the times of the apostles, not only subsist without a pope, but without any such head, before he, by the help of a misguided ministry, had usurped the name and power of a pope, which shows that to have a man at the head of the church may ba a matter of choice and con- venience, but not of necessity. Baptist churches never had one, never will have one, and have no use for one ; neither did the apostolic churches. As to Peter and the other apostles, all equally exercised a charitable care over the churches and such of their members as were inferior to them in office and power without any shadow of rulership or sovereignty. And such as were under their care are said to have been their brethren, which is not a word of majesty and domination, but of dearness and equality. We hear nothing of holy father, his eminence^ his highness, or his majesty! The name, therefore, of head of the church, or pastor of a church, may be given to a minister, but it implies nothing of sovereignty, and must be exercised with charity and without power, which always terminates in the good of others. The head cannot correct or chastise, it cannot wield a sword, the proper mark of that part of the body is only to vindicate, and he who takes upon himself to do more, is not the head. How can he be the head of the whole Christian world, who neither knows, never saw, and cares not for the members, nor understands the things that conduce to their good, more especially if he set up an interest in himself against them ? It cannot be said that these are imaginary cases, and that no pope has ever done these things, for the proofs are too easy, and the examples too numerous. In those dark ages when popes w^ere the maddest and most ferocious, if the question arose as to who should succeed to the papal chair and office, the answer was, choose him who had the sharpest sword and could wield it in OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 519 the most cruel and merciless manner. Even if he were well disposed he could do no more than suspend the mischief for a while, but could not correct the corrupt principles of their church government which alone made it possible for such things to exist. This universal church which has bred and sustains a pope, is not a crea- tion of Christ, but a development out of a wild speculation as to what a church of Christ ought to be, and forged into its present organic form under the mistaken impression that Christ left no form of government for his churches, and that Christians were left in their liberty to establish such as best pleased themselves. One universal supreme government is established or ought to be established over all the churches in Christendom with a ruler over all, and no limits can be set to the power of the person that manages it. The dominion of the head of this church is over all, and we are not to ex- amine whether this ruler be virtuous or vicious, sober-minded or stark mad ; the right and power is the same in all. Whether truth be exalted or sup- pressed, whether he bears a temporal sword or a spiritual one it matters not, for both by a divine right were placed in his hands to be wielded at his pleasure ; whether he that bears the sword does so to exterminate those who do righteousness, or to defend those who do evil, it concerns us not ! for the pope must not lose his right, nor have his power diminished on any account. "When we stop to think of these things and examine into them we wonder how things of this nature could enter into the heads of human beings pro- fessing Christianity and claiming to be followers of the meek and lowly Saviour. One would suppose that the popes of the earth, even those who served in the darkest ages of the church, professing to be Christ's vicegerents and Fathers of the Holy Church, would have sought the good of the church, but it seems no such things are to be expected from them. The church being united with the State they considered nations as a Texas ranchman does his vast herds and flocks, according to the profit that can be made of them. If this be true, and the history of those dreadful times attests the facts, they look upon not only the church, but nations as their patrimony, and upon the people as their subjects, not to do them any good, for their own sakes, or because it is their duty, but only that they may be useful to them, as oxen are put into plentiful pastures that they may be strong for labor under the yoke, or fit for slaughter. And yet this is the divine model of government for the church of our Lord Jesus Christ that Catholics ofier to the world ! But we must be charitable to our fellow-Christians and con- clude that all people, especially Americans, are lovers of reUgious liberty and could never be brought under the dominion of such a church unless they were made to believe that in conscience they ought to do it, and that they will be eternally damned if they do not do it, and that there is a super- stition born and bred in them which they cannot dispel, and which puts the examination of these things out of their power. The error of not examining into these weighty matters that so vitally con- cern their souls may, perhaps, deserve to be pardoned in those who are for- bidden the right and privilege of reading and interpreting the Scriptures for 520 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; themselves, as proceeding from ignorance ; if, indeed, a professed Christian can be excused when they neglect the study of the nature of the govern- ment of Christ's churches which requires the best efforts of their minds and the very highest knowledge. This woeful ignorance can be only dispelled by a resort to the word of God with a permit to read and study it for them- selves, where they will find no authority to have a pope and no use for one if they did have one, as there was no use for Peter, as a pope, but they will find that they have a right to elect their own pastors, and such as are so constituted owe an account of their actions and conduct to those by whom, and for whom they are elected. They will also learn that the government of Christ's churches is his own creation, and that nothing of this kind was ever left to the choice of men, and put it in a way from which it cannot swerve. One form was created for all the churches alike, and like the laws of the Medes and Persians it cannot be changed, but must last forever, and specific limits are set to its powers, and to the persons that rule it. Csesar, or his counterpart, the pope, has no part or place in it. This is Christ's Royal Charter granted to his elect upon earth. Who but him could be head over all to such a church. Good and wise men will say with Moses : I cannot bear the burden f He saw that the Lord should appoint helps for his many infirmities ; he shrank from the responsibilities ; but a Roman Catholic pope can say : Give unto me all power both in heaven and earth, that I might rule with an iron hand the church of the living God ! It is not enough to say that the universal system of ecclesiastical govern- ment was established by Christ, or that it has his divine sanction, unless a tlius sayeth the law can be found for it. Neither will it do to take pieces of passages of Scriptures and turn them directly against their meaning and scope to round out a theory, and justify that which Christ never instituted. When the departure from the true form of church government first commenced it was in the latter part of the first and the beginning of the second century, of the Christian era when the Christian religion was comparatively in its infancy ; the churches were composed in the main of unpretentious converts, who, though they soon grew to be considerable in number, were for the most part men of humble wit and wisdom, who, knowing themselves to be freed from the power of sin and the evil one, presumed they were also freed from the obligation of laws both human and divine. At this time it was peculiarly the work of the men of that early time, in which those who preached and propagated the gospel w^ere diverted from their duty, by entangling them- selves in the care of secular affairs, and being allured by the blandishments of priestly pomp and power, they unwittingly departed from the teach- ings of Christ and his apostles. But since the reception of such loose ideas of the sacred laws of God was the extirpation of all true government, there were those even then who doubtless looked to another rule of obedience, and found that to be the law which is expressly laid down in the Scriptures, based not on the depraved and perverted will of man, which fluctuates according to the different interests, humors and passions that reign in design- ing men, which abrogates that which had been enacted by God. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 521 "Whereas, Christ had established by law his church two or three hundred years before this sad departure, and as no body of men can be a rightful church except by law, nor have any just power but from the law, that power which afterwards founded a different church upon different principles was both mythical and whimsical. If this could be done with impunity there is no need of ecclesiastical law for the government of God's people, and the founding of any polity upon these principles, would be and really was, as history has abundantly shown, a perpetual exercise of misdirected zeal, rage, malice and madness, by which the worst of men were armed with powder to destroy the best. For catholics are taught to believe that the pope of Kome has a divine personage, and w^henever such a man is seated in the papal chair he ought by divine right to reign ; he bears in his sacred person the divine character of an ecclesiastical and political person ; God has raised him above all, and such as will not submit to him ought to be counted the sons of Belial, brought forth and slain like cattle. When such men reign, and are too well furnished with means to accomplish their detestable designs, well may we condemn that system of church polity which makes such things possible. And if some otherwise well-meaning Christians have been so stupid as not to foresee the mischief of such a government. Baptists more wise and more loyal to Christ could no more be induced to adopt that system than to deny their Lord and Master by going pell-mell into any other pernicious heresy. And though this advanced latitudinarian and human authority is in direct derogation of the divine, to a degree that may please such as are of that way of thinking, yet Baptists resolving rather to obey the laws of God than the commands of men could not be induced to enter such a government. No minister can have any power peculiar to himself unless they w^ho had the right conferred it upon him. For it is not the ministry that gives to the church, but the church to the ministry. If they who place a minister in his office had no right to give what they did, none was conferred upon the receiver. If they had a right, he that should pretend to derive a benefit from them, must first prove the grant, that the nature and intention of it may appear. K it be admitted that ministers who rule in high offices, rule alone by a divine right (which is absolutely denied), it would prove nothing which is contrary to the plain teaching of the Scriptures ; and if the proofs are wanting the defects can never be supplied by any amount of admission, or if power be pretended to be grounded upon a divine right alone, the thing to be proved is, that Christ did really confer such a right upon Peter, or some one of the other apostles. And if no such thing appears, the proceed- ings of one or more ministers as if they had such power, can be of no value. But in case of any one of the apostles, no such grant can be proved to have been made, or, at least, none of them, not even Peter, ever exercised any ruling power over the churches, or any of those who succeeded him. And if they had it not, or did not exercise such power, their successors could not inherit it or succeed to it, and consequently cannot have it, or, at least, no better title to it than that of usurpation. If Peter was singled out and made ruler of all the then existino^ churches and Christians, it were meet and 522 proper that he assumed the reins of church government and asserted the right and assumed the duties of a ruler, in order that he might justify his title to what he possessed, and to what had been conferred upon him. If Peter had been appointed ruler of the churchy he could have done the church and the cause of Christianity no greater evil than by doing nothing, for by so doing the law under which he was appointed was thereby perverted or rendered useless, null and void. This must have been done by some one, and no man could be so fit as he who had been made chief among them. This was nothing more than what was expected of him, and what was usual among those appointed to office. The governor of a state, the speaker of any house of representatives, or the mayor of any city, when elected or appointed to these places assume the reins of government and do and perform the duties of the offices respectively to which they had been elected. It is as ridiculous to think of retrieving that which from the beginning of the gospel was lost, or never was exercised, as to create that which never was. But we may go further and affirm that though there had been such a right in the first ministers of the gospel, and they never used it, it must have necessarily perished from non-use, for it is folly for a man to pretend to an inheritance, who cannot prove himself to be the rightful heir, and he ^ alone is a rightful minister who now fills a ministerial position such as we see exercised in the very earliest times of the Christian dispensation, when those ,were yet living whose business it was to set limits and bounds to these weighty matters. Did Peter perform t lie office of a pope? Let there be pointed out one act of rule or dominion he ever exercised over the churches, by virtue of this pretended power granted him. Compare his acts with those of Paul and answer which one approached nearest to that of a ruler, or to that of a pope ? Contrast the acts of Peter with that of the pope of to-day. We see in him no rule, no dominion, no show, no ostentation, no pomp, no splen- dor. All the veneration that is, or can be given to his acts, does not exalt him above his brethren. Hence nothing can be more ridiculously absurd than to impute to the humble God-like man Peter, a power which he had not, at least which he is positively known never to have exercised, and to assign the name of pope to his pretended successors when, in fact, in the gospel economy there was no such office. All that Catholics can insist upon is that we can only look to the pretended office and usurped power of a pope, without any proof that Peter ever exercised either, and can show no Scrip- tural means and ways by which he obtained it, but who now enjoins a blind submission to his pretended successors. It ought not to be considered impertinent to ask to be given the marks by which a lawful pope is dis- tinguished from an usurper, and in what a just title to the popedom consists. If they place it in an hereditary succession, we ought to know and be in- formed whether this right must be deduced from Peter or some impostor or usurper set up long after his death, or from some visionary lord of mankind. If from a universal lord, the same descent that gives him a right to rule over Catholics, enslaves the whole Christian world to him. If these things be so. OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 523 proof must be given hov; it came to be so, for if there was a defect in the first iucipiency of the power it can never be repaired, and the possession of the power in Catholics is nothing more than a continued usurpation. Therefore, that which ought not to be and is unscriptural, is no more to be received than if it could not be. No man can usurp that which never was and of right ought not to be. Neither can any man justly impose any- thing upon those who owe him no allegiance. If this can be done by force we are to examine how it can be possible or justifiable, for he that forces must be stronger than those that are forced. To talk of one man who in strength exceeds that of many millions of men, is to go beyond the extrava- gance of fables and romances. There is no difierence between force and usurpation, for the one would be as lawful as the other. Our contention is about the right of the thing. It will not do to ascribe the enlargement of papal power to irresistible development, as some authors have done. It will not do to say that inasmuch as Christ made the early Christians naturally free, they were at liberty to form such governments as best pleased them- selves. It is, indeed, a strange liberty, the exercise of which subjects them to the dominion and domineering will of one man. If they were born into the kingdom of Christ free men, and afterwards surrendered that freedom, it were the same as to be born under the necessity of perpetual slavery ; no freedom can be of any use to them, for all must forever depend on the will of the pope and his priests, how cruel and proud, or wicked soever they may be. It is unreasonable to believe that Christians can be brought under such subjection. We are led to the conclusion that every man is free and ex- empt from the dominion of another, although he be called a minister of Christ, as were the apostles free from the dominion of one another. It is hard to see how that Catholics can arrive at the conclusion that any one of them was above another, and came to be master of the others, equal to him- self in right and power. The apostles and other early ministers of the gos- pel were co-laborers, without any other preference of one above another, than what arose from the advantages Christ had given to any particular one of them. Thus Paul who said of himself: I am in iiothing inferior to the very chiefest apostle, seemed to be the most gifted, and was really the prince among them, so to speak, but nevertheless one without power to rule the churches. This I take to be proof to the utmost extent and certainty, that the equality among them was then perfect. He, therefore, that will deny it to be so now, ought to prove that neither the apostles or first ministers of the churches, or the early fathers of the churches, did ever understand, or regard the law declared by Christ to the churches ; or that ministerial power having been equally distributed at first, and so continued for two hundred or more years, it was abolished and a new one introduced, not by the au- thority of man, but by the command of Christ. But until it does appear to us, when, where, how, and by whom this was done, we may safely believe there is no such thing ; and that no man is or can be an ecclesiastical lord amongst us. Church government and the office of the apostles who founded it was 524 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; created by Christ. They who gave a being to it cannot but have a right of regulating, limiting and directing it equally as best please themselves under the laws of and according to the rules of its creation ; and hence all this pretense concerning the absolute power of one man falls to the ground. But if the now reigning pope who claims to rule by divine right and Avould justify it, he might do well to tell, or some one for him, who created his office, when it was done, how it was done, and with what assistance, and upon what reason he undertook to be Christ's prime minister on earth. For he can ground no title upon the obscurity of an unsearchable antiquity ; if he does not, he ought to be looked upon as an impostor. The existence or first beginning of the Baptists is said to be " hid in the remotest depths of antiquity.'' This would amount to but very little in their favor, if their church government did not resemble that of the apostolic churches. If it were a monstrous distortion of, and a departure from the models of those churches, it would not matter whether the churches were new or old, they would be unlawful. Age cannot improve wine if the wine, instead of beiug wine, happened to be water. Yet the pope claims to be the perpetual lord paramount of the ecclesiastical world ! It is a pity Peter did not know this. It is possible that Peter was commissioned lord of all the earth, and through ignorance of his title did not have wit enough to supplant his ai^ostolic brethren who shared the honor of ruling the churches equally with him, as equals can have no right over each other. A perverted judgment always leads men into error, and persuades them to believe that those things favor their cause, that utterly overthrow it. In proof of this let us apply it more specifically to the Scriptures that catholics rely upon to bolster up the papal power. They found the right of the pope upon the passage that says : Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I build my church. Whatever is the import of this passage, it is exceedingly difiicult to see how, that by it, the papal power was conferred upon Peter. It is exceedingly strange that out of all the New Testament Scriptures no other authority can be found more pertinent to this purpose. By these words, and also the words concerning the Keys of the kingdom of heaven, being given to him, by virtue whereof Peter is pretended to have been made pope, it is strange that he and the rest of the apostles should still be so ignorant of it as to question. Which one of them should be the greatest f Yet, it is stranger still that our Saviour should not set them right, and once for all settle this vexed question by telling them that Peter was the man ; that he should have all power in heaven and earth, that he should wield the sword, both spiritual and temporal, and be unto him his vicegerent and lord paramount over all others in the Christian church throughout all time to come. No less wonder was it that all the apostles mentioning Peter often, they should do it without any title of honor, and did not give to him the highest title of honor such as Holy Father, His Eminence the Pope, but place him on an equality with the rest of the apostles, and say, God hath appointed, (not Peter the pope, and then the rest of the apostles, but) first apostles, secondly prophets. If the apostles were all first, no one of them was, or could be, before the rest. Be- OR, THE C0MM0:N- LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 525 sides probably comparing himself with Peter, the apostle Paul said I am in )iothing inferior to the very chiefest apostle. But if there should be any doubt about this, the question is settled beyond a,ny quibble, when we consider that it was incredible that Peter should have any authority over them, and yet exercise no one act of authority over them, and that they should show him no sign of subjection. This is about as strange as that the President of the United States, for four years together, ' after his election, should do no acts of authority, have no title as president, nor receive any recognition, or acknowledgment of it, from the people over whom he had been elected to rule. And then when the apostles contended among themselves as to which one of them should be the greatest, the Saviour told them, Peter among the rest, that, The kings of the Gentiles exercise authority over them, hut it should not be so among them. Catholics ought certainly to be able to give a few better passages of Scripture, than these to prove the extraordinary power of the pope ; but according to their habit they are pleased to trouble themselves with neither law or examples to make good their pretensions, but think that the impudence of an assertion is suffi- cient to give authority to that which is repugnant to both Scripture and common sense. Or rather how comes that right, which catholics say is eternal and universal, to have been nipped in the bud, and so abolished before it could take any effect in ecclesiastical polity, as never to have been heard of amongst the apostles and early churches until the time much later when it was set up by a people who had completely apostatized from the faith and practice of the gospel of Christ. Hence the utmost degree of im- pudent madness to which perhaps any man in the world has ever arrived, is to assert that to be universal and perpetual, which cannot be verified by any one example in the New Testament plan of church polity, nor justified by any precept of Christ or his apostles. And if this pretended right be grounded upon no word or work of Christ it is to be accounted a mere silly invention that has nothing of truth in it. Besides, if there be a difference between an apostle and a pope, we are to examine who is the apostle and who is the pope, for the name conferred or assumed cannot make a pope unless he be one indeed. He who is not a pope can like Peter have no title to the right belonging to him who is truly and lawfully a pope. So that a people who find themselves menaced by a pope may oppose him with all their might without doing violence to any principle of law or ecclesiastical government. This is evidently the case when it is the true doctrine of all Roman Catholic popes who look upon the .Christian world to be their own exclusive patrimony, and for the foundation of their doctrine, assert such a power as cannot be limited by any law, whether human or divine. Their title is not to be questioned ; usurpation and fraud confer an incontestable right. The existence of their power is no more to be disputed than the manner of its acquisition, their will is a law to their subjects, and no law can be imposed by them upon their conduct. All of which might be expected, for he who reigns without law cannot be expected to obey any law. If the apostle Peter had been made pope by any decree of the Saviour, 526 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUKISPEUDENCE ; he would have had the sovereign authority in his hands, and power sufficient for the execution of his office. The other apostles and evangelists, living and laboring with him in the propagation of the gospel and laying the foundations of the church of Christ, could not be guilty of excess in carry- ing the power and veneration, due to their ecclesiastical dictator, to the highest. On the other hand, not one of them ever alluded to this apostle in the sense of a ruler, but all labored together upon perfect terms of equal- ity, and paid Peter the same respect and courtesy, and no more, than was due to others. Peter himself, when thoroughly convinced of the demise and departure of the Saviour, concluded that he would return to his old occupa- tion — that of a fisherman — and so expressed himself. They did not give to him a magnificent title nor use submissive language in speaking of that one whom Christ had set up to be the head of the church on earth. We hear nothing of majesty, highness, holiness, eminence, serenity, or excellence being appropriated to him. None of them who were contemporary with him ever used those mighty titles in speaking of him, nor took upon them- selves the names of subjects or servants as people who live under an earthly ruler. They most naturally delighted to lavish every endearing name and title upon the Saviour, as courtiers never speak more truly than when they most exalt their masters and rulers, and give to them the titles that befet ex- press their love and admiration for them. From private usage they pass into public acts. ~ But not a word of this do we see in the Scriptures, which might give us some clue as to whether Peter's contemporaries took him to be a ruler over them or the churches. He certainly was not a pope if he neither acted as such nor the disciples received him as pope. He did act as an apostle and was gladly received as such. A pope without a popedom is an absurdity. But had Peter been made a pope he would have doubtless acted as such, and would in that capacity have been sovereign of the whole church. Whatever the sovereign power may perform at one time, it may modify or revoke at another. There is no check in the government to prevent it. In those instances in which it is vested in an individual, or a few, the govern- ment and the sovereignty are the same. They are held by the same power or persons. The sovereign or ruler constitutes the government, and it is im- possible to separate it from him without a revolution. Create a body in such a government with authority to make laws, without reference to the party from whom it is derived, and the government is changed. Such agents must be the instruments of those who appoint them, and their acts be oblig- atory only after they are seen and approved by their master, or the govern- ment is no more. Hence he is not a pope dejure nor one de facto, who calls himself so, but he who is made such by the law of the gospel assumes the duties of his office and the people over whom he is to rule, had in themselves the power of re- ceiving and authorizing his acts as such, and did so receive and authorize his acts. If Peter did not fill such an office, and the early disciples were not called upon to receive and recognize him as pope, it would be impossible for any man, two or three hundred years afterwards, to acquire the office, 527 or for the people to confer it upon him, and to give authority to the acts of one who neither was or could be a pope, which could belong only to him who had the right inherent in himself and inseparable from him, for the essence of a pope consists in the validity of the law, which makes him to be what he pretends to be. If these things are wanting, he is neither, in truth or right, a pope, but a lawless impostor and usurper. Nevertheless, if Christ had conferred this power upon Peter, and he had acted as pope, and if he had been received by the disciples and placed in the papal chair, he would have become a true pope de jure. His acts would have been valid in law, and all Christians would know what reverence and obedience was due to his office and his successors. No man can have a power over the church otherwise than dejure or de facto. He who pretends to have power of right, must prove that it is originally inherent in him or his predecessors from whom he inherits, or that it was justly acquired by him. The vanity of any pretence to an original right appears sufficiently, I hope, from the proofs already given, that Peter or any other apostle had it not; or, if they had, none of them ever pretended to exercise it, and no man could inherit such a right, there being no man able to make good the genealogy that should give him a right to the succession. Likewise, we should know from the same law how and whom to choose as his successor, for they who have the power of making a pope may, by law, make a pope as well as any other minister, and thus we could make him to be a legal pope whom we acknow- ledge to be a genuine pope. The obedience due to such a man from private men is grounded upon and measured by the law of the gospel ; and that law regarding the welfare of the churches cannot set up the interest of one or a few men against the whole Christian world. The whole body, there- fore, of the disciples of Christ, cannot be tied to any other obedience than is consistent with the law of the gospel according to their own judgment. And Baptists never having been subdued or brought into such a church and into fellowship with them, cannot be said to have come out of such a body and hence, in that sense, are not to be considered protestants. As ecclesiastical laws are made to keep things in order without the neces- sity of force, it would be a dangerous extravagance to build up a huge estab- lishment — a universal church government — and arm the head of that church who probably in a very short time must be opposed by force even to the taking up arms against him to preserve our liberties both religious and po- litical, as history gives us abundant examples. No man knows what men will be and become, especially if they come to the exercise of ecclesiastical power under a raistaken idea of a divine apostolic succession, it is reason- able to fear they will become evil, and consequently it is necessary to limit their power, that a whole universal church may not be destroyed which they ouglit to preserve. For he that is above the law cannot be expected to rule by the law. Taking the history of the past we are not assured that popes are so good. Goodness is always accompanied with wisdom and Christian tolerance arid forbearance, and we do not find those admirable qualities gen- erally entailed upon Catholic popes. Christ the great head of the church 528 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; foresaw tlie evil that is hid in man's heart, especially when put in high places and clothed with all power. Hence he built no universal church for government, but instituted the free and independent churches, dividing up ecclesiastical power and scattering it broadcast over the land, in order to curb the pride and ambition of his ministers, preventing them from bring- ing destruction upon his kiugdom and cause upon earth, knowing that the best of men are so subject to vices and passions that they stand in need of some restraint in every condition, but most especially when they are in power. The rage of a private man may be pernicious to one or a few of his neighbors ; but the fury of a maddened ecclesiastic would drive a whole church into ruin. But for the fact that God in his providence has ex- empted Baptists from those fearful temptations they might be as bad as others. The great mass of men make better servants than masters, and these very men who have lived modestly when they had little power have often proved the most oppressive of all men when they were clothed with a little brief authority ; when they thought nothing able to resist their will. Power, especially ecclesiastical power, is a snare to any man ; so that they who in a low condition might ha,ve passed their days in innocence, when advanced to the highest have often become puffed up with pride and arro- gance. . And they who advanced such men to these high places are like them. The apostles called by Christ and installed into their high offices are worthy exceptions to this rule, especially Peter, the first pope according to Catholic theology. He was the most humble and modest of all men ; he never raised his heart above his brethren, and admonished earthly rulers to live in the same modesty. He never desired that the early Christians should depend upon his will. In giving laws to them he fulfilled the will of Christ, not his own, and those laws were not the signification of his will, but the will of Christ. He was not proud and insolent, not pleased with that osten- tatious pomp which Catholics call wMJesty, eminence and the like ; and who- soever so far exalts and magnifies the power of Peter to make the whole Christian world depend upon the will of his pretended successors, blas- phemes the name of that humble apostle which every wise and good man ought to revere, and whosoever with an impious fury endeavors to set up an earthly ecclesiastical government to be ruled over by his pretended succes- sors is guilty of high treason against the true government of Christ. And as the safety and stability of all ecclesiastical polity consists in rightly plac- ing and measuring the power of the ministry, such have been found to pros- per that have given to those from whom usurpations were least to be feared, who have been least subject to be corrupted ; and who having the greatest interest in the churches are most concerned in preserving their independence and welfare. This is the greatest trust that Christ ever reposed in man. Baptists have kept it faithfully, although to do this has cost them a vast amount of the most generous blood that ever flowed from martyrs' veins. Grant for the sake of argument that the apostle Peter was the first pope under Christ's immediate appointment. Peter could not devolve this title to those who were to succeed him. He could not pretend to be a pope, or have OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 529 any other right than what was conferred upon him by Christ, and conse- quently whatever is inherited from him can have no other original, for that is the gift of Christ which was bestowed upon Peter, as if it had been by a peculiar act given to him alone. It is hard to tell who Christ intended should be Peter's successor, much less how he should be chosen, and by whom. Under the Jewish economy it was known who was to be high priest and how he was to be designated, and likewise what his specific duties were. For though it were granted contrary to fact that the pastors of the church at Rome were to inherit this great oiSce, Catholics must first prove that Peter was the first pastor at Rome, and the succession must forever be con- fined to that line of ministers, otherwise the succession fails. They must also prove that Peter was once in Rome, and that he received his right from this circumstance, or he could have none at all, and all of his successors have been under the same conditions. If it be said that the papal power with which Christ invested Peter entitled his successors to the right of ecclesias- tical rule over the wdiole Christian world, there must be some intelligent rule ]aid down by the donor of the right by which to know who should be chosen, and how he should be chosen, otherwise there might arise an honest difference of opinion as to who should be installed into the office. Is it possible that Christ would create this great office and not lay down the semblance of a rule directly or indirectly, by example or otherwise, how or by whom it should be filled ? Suppose the Constitution of the United States should create the office of President and mention not a word as to how this chief magistrate should be chosen and by whom. Or suppose that the framers of the Con- stitution should say that Washington should be the first President. Pie might have filled this office during his natural life, and at his death the office would lapse, or cease to be, and without an amendment to the Constitution the office could never be revived. That which is expired, is as if it had never been. Was not this pretended papal power granted to Peter forfeited ? and no man can forfeit anything to one who can justly demand nothing. All the apostles who were equal with Peter in authority could not join in trans- mitting to him the supremacy, much less Peter could not transmit the for- feitu]-e. This power, therefore, never having been exercised by the apostle Peter, and not being transmitted, it perished as if it had never been, and no man can claim anything from it. There is also involved in this transaction the right of disposing of the government of the churches which must be in them, or he or they who receive it can have none. This cannot be, for the grand charter of church government was not from them, but from Christ. If this be most ridiculous and absurd, it is certain that the name and office of pope, cardinal, or bishop, or the like does not confer any determined rights upon those who have them, but every one has a right to that which is allotted to him by the laws of the gospel by which he is created, and the rights due unto, as well as the duties incumbent upon every officer of the church of Christ, are to be determined by the laws of the gospel itself, all being equally regulated by them. In other words, the law that gives and measures the power prescribes intelligent rules how it should be transmitted. 34 530 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDEITCE ; If this utter want of all law and rule by which to know how and who shall be entitled to the papacy, and if it does not destroy all the pretences of all who lay claim to the right, I think it will be hard to find a lawful pope, cardinal, or bishop, in the world, or to prove that there ever have been any. For the first came in by usurpation and those who have held these offices everywhere since owe their exaltation to usurpation and fraudulent pretences. Then are not all the solemnities, pomp and splendor attending the instalment of these high church dignitaries into these offices foolish and impertinent and profane, and impious and sacrilegious, if there be neither laws, nor acts, nor deeds by which the right of dominion, is or can be conferred upon them ? But our Catholic friends say that the cardinals make the pope, but we say that the power that makes the cardinals is no more lawful or defensible than that which made the pope. It is indeed a poor and contemptible system of church polity which will permit the pope to make the cardinals and in turn to make the pope. That certainly is a government in a circle not one example of which can be seen in the Scriptures. What could be more wickedly rebellious and superstitious than to say that a college of cardinals, officers, not known to the apostles nor to the churches, could elect a pope and how the lot could have fallen on Peter's successor forever throughout all time ? and how by that means he could inherit a power that Peter never had, or at least never exercised ? Who elected the first cardinals, and who invested them above all others with this supreme power to choose the ruler of the church ? They were not cardinals before they were appointed and some covenants entered into defining their powers and duties. Were the cardinals made such by the pope, or was the pope made so by the cardinals? These are problems past finding out by common mortals which Catholics perfectly understand, but cannot explain intelligently. If indeed the pope be a pope, if there be such a creature outside of a mad dream, it becomes our duty to render a passive as well as an active obedi- ence to him, for he who will not do what his master commands ought to suffer the punishment he inflicts. If the master has a right to command there is a duty incumbent on the servant to obey. He who suffers for not doing what he ought to do, draws upon himself both the guilt and the punishment but certainly no one ought to suffer for that which he ought not to do, because he who pretends to command, has not so far an authority. For if Christians ought to obey the pope rather than God, as Catholics have ever taught, they sin in disobeying, and that guilt cannot be expatiated by their suffering. If it be thought that this is not a practical question, in this the latter part of the nineteenth century, and that I carry this conten- tion to an undue extremity, the limits ought to be demonstrated, by wdiich it may, appear that I exceed them, for the nature of the care cannot be altered. It is true that the Inquisition is not now raging, but the storm is only lulled for a season and it may burst upon the world again with all its fury. If the power can be given to a man, at his pleasure, to annul the laws of God, the apostles ought not to have preached, when they were forbidden by the powers to which they were subject. The tortures and deaths they OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 531 suffered, for not obeying that command, were of their own seeting, and their blood was upon their own heads. And if the same spirit does not animate the Christians of this day, a period may yet be put to religious liberty in this fair land and country. We have no other way of distinguishing between a free church and a free gospel, and such as are not so, than that the free are governed by themselves and by laws and ministers according to their own minds, and that of others who have either unwittingly subjected themselves, or are by force brought under the power and dominion of one or more eccle- siastics, to be ruled according to his, or their own pleasure. He is a free Christian man who lives as best pleases himself, under the laws of the gospel of Christ, and such rules as are made by his own consent, and the name of a religious subject can belong to no man, unless to him who is either born in the church of a man who calls himself a pope, or willingly crosses his hands to be manacled. Thus are Baptists said to be free in opposition to Catholics and all others ruled by one man, or many, under the dominion of what is called the uni- versal church. Grapes do not spring from thistles nor figs from thorns. If God has not therefore ordered that thistles and thorns should produce grapes and figs neither can we expect that the sacred affairs of the church of Christ when put into the hands of the worst of men should answer the ends of its creation. And if men can be guilty of so great an absurdity as to trust the weakest and worst with a power which usually subverts the wisdom and virtue of the best, a system of church government founded upon the rule of one man cannot be grounded upon the ordinance of Christ nor the institu- tion of man. If any such thing had been established by the apostles, the utter impossibility of attaining what they expected from it, must wholly have abrogated the establishment itself. Or rather, it would have been void from the beginning, because it was not, as Blackstone says, " a rule of action pre- scribing what is right, and prohibiting what is wrong," but a foolish and perverse rule setting up the unruly appetites of one person to the subversion of all that is good in ecclesiastical government, and subjecting the most pious and best of men to be destroyed by the most wicked and vicious. These being the effects of the unlimited power and prerogative of a pope, which Catholics say was duly instituted by Christ ibr the good and defense of Christianity, it must necessarily fall to the ground unless subjection, destruc- tion and dissolution tend to the preservation of religious liberty, and are to be preferred before spiritual strength, security and happiness. If the best interests of the cause of Christ are to be subserved and advanced, the ends of church government are accomplished and those who rule churches must be contented with such a proportion of glory and majesty as is consistent with the teachings of Christ, since the ministry is not instituted, nor any person placed in it, for the increase of his majesty, but for the good of the church, and the defense of religious liberty, which Christ came upon earth to establish and maintain. If, then, Peter was not the first pope, I desire to know whether the name and power belongs to all the other popes, to whose descent Catholics owe 632 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; veneration? I cannot see the possibility of fixing the guilt of usurpation upon the apostle Peter, for he never claimed or exercised the office of pope. If his title to the papacy was not good because it never was conferred upon him, or if the office lapsed, or died from non-use, that of those who claim under him is by the same reason overthrown, for he could not be considered the predecessor of any of them, for no man can succeed to that which does not exist or go before. The ecclesiastic who has no role has no duties. As a successor must have a predecessor, otherwise he inherits or succeeds to noth- iog. This fundamental defect could never be repaired ; for successors could inherit no more than the right of Peter, the first, which was nothing. What right soever Peter had, mu&t necessarily perish with him, for it is not even contended by Catholics that Peter had an immediate successor, no, not for over two hundred years after his death. The authority of a true minister of the gospel, as soon as it is established by his call, election and ordination, is as legal and just as that of a pretended line and succession of ministers which may be said to have continued since the days of the apostles. For as time can make nothing lawful or just, that is not so of itself, that which a local church does establish rightfully for their own good, is of as much force and efficacy the first day as continuance can ever give to it. And, therefore, in matters of the greatest importance, Baptists do not so 'much inquire what ought to be, as what is good and has been, for that which of itself is unscriptural and evil, by continuance is made worse, and upon the first opportunity is justly to be abolished. And nothing can be alleged to color the business but a dispensation of the next pope set up after Peter's death, bridging over the hiatus, as all defects, either in government or morals, can be cured by a dispensation of his holiness and pre-eminence, the pope of Rome, it matters not how absurd it may be. And no one part uf the succession has remained entire and uniform, for the world has witnessed the ridiculous spectacle of two popes occupying the same papal chair at the same time, as well as other absurd and ridiculous irregularities equally as flagrant. If the office of a pope has a right in itself, some one should have succeeded Peter immediately after his death, which Catholics do not pretend, or, at least, cannot prove ; thereby acknowledging that the papal succession is a myth and a fraud, unless usurpation can give a right. He who pretends to have a power by a divine right, must first prove that it is originally inherent in him or his predecessors whom he succeeds, and from whom he inherits ; or that it was justly acquired by him. The vanity of any pretense to an original divine right to rule the church by a pope, appears sufficiently from the proofs already given, that Peter, the apostle, had it not ; or, if he had, no man could now inherit the same, there being a hiatus in the office of many years, and no man being able to make good the ministerial genealogy that should give him a right to the succession. Who can doubt but that an ecc-esiabtical kingdom so gotten may escheat for want of an heir? But then there is no need of seeking an heir, if usurpation can confer a right, and that he who gets the power into his hands ought to be reputed the heir of the first progenitor. The facility we have of proving OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 533 the acts and doings of the early beginnings of the churches, makes it absurd for any man to pretend a perpetual right of dominion over them. The pope of Rome can no more be said to have the right originally in and from Peter, the apostle, than an elective officer can claira a right before his election and installation ; and, having no other at the beginning, the nature of it must refer to the beginning, or original, and cannot be changed by time. What- ever proceeds not from the law of the gospel, must be de facto only — that is, void of all right. We really come to the conclusion that there being no Scriptural authority for the papacy, that the first pope elevated himself to his office from natural instinct, which is only an irrational appetite, attrib- uted to animals that know not why they do anything, and is to be followed only by those men who have the misfortune, through defect of education and training, to be equally stupid. Therefore, ought not all well-meaning Christian people, who have joined themselves to these hierarchical forms of church government, to turn away from them and return to the integrity of first principles? For as time can make nothing lawful or just, that is not so, of and in itself, and was not so in the beginning, that which God's people has rightly established for their own good, in strict conformity to original models, is of as much force now as when first instituted. And then in matters of such deep interest and great importance, Baptists, as wise and good men, have ever inquired as to what has been, more than as to what ought to be. For that which of itself is evil and unscriptural by continuance, is made worse, and on the first opportunity ought to be abandoned or abolished. Church order certainly consists in appointing to every one his right place and work in ecclesiastical government ; but the Catholic theory lays the whole weight of the government upon one person, who very often, yea oftener than otherwise, neither deserves, nor is able to bear the least part of it. Church order requires that the best, wisest and most spiritually minded men should be placed in ministerial offices, where wisdom and virtue are requisite. If common sense did not teach this we might learn it from Scripture. But if the Catholic theory be true, order requires that the business of ruling the whole church of Christ should be committed to one man, though he might be the weakest or the basest of men. While the will of such a man under such a system passes for law, the power usually falls into the hands of such as are most bold and violent, and the utmost security that any man could have for his life or liberty depends upon his temper. Indeed, the history of the world abundantly shows that in times past kings and princes them- selves, whether good or bad, hacl no longer leases of their offices or lives, than a furious and fanatical pope would give them. If Christians were not esteemed orthodox, according to the standards they had erected, they were persecuted with as much asperity as the pagans had done or as the Turks are now persecuting the Christian Armenians, and, indeed, showed them- selves more fierce against the professors of Christianity than they who had never had any knowledge of it. The world was torn in pieces by them, and oftener sufiered as great miseries and persecutions by their sloth and ignor- 534 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; ance as by their fury and madness, until nations and principalities were totally dissolved and lost ; whereas if Christ had set up such a government and guided him whom he had placed at its head it would doubtless have enjoyed that order and stability that always accompanies his true churches and people. There is no intelligent student of ecclesiastical history but will confess that the interests of popes and cardinals were more to be considered by those who had any private or pubhc business to treat at court than the opinions and wishes of kings themselves. There is no king's reign but will furnish abund- ant proof of what is here asserted, especially in those times when Catholi- cism was in league with the State. But if all this corruption and the evil effects of it began with Roman Catholicism it also expired with the temporal rule of that church. Mankind is inclined to vice, and the way to virtue is so hard that it wants encouragement ; but when all honors, advantages and preferments are given to vice, and when despised virtue finds no other re- ward than hatred, persecution and death, there are few who will seek and follow it. An unlimited and a lawless pope might be justly compared to a weak ship exposed to the violent storm, with a vast sail and no rudder. The nature of a man surrounded as a pope is so frail that wheresoever the word of a single man has had the force of a law innumerable extravagances and mischiefs it has produced have been so notorious that all true evangelical churches, which have any regard for the law of the gospel, have always abominated it, and made it their principal care to find out remedies against it, by so dividing and balancing the powers of their government that one or a few men might not be able to dominate and lord it over those they ought to preserve and protect. These considerations have given growth and strength to Baptist church government and all others that are built upon rational foundations. Though we should grant that a power like to this church, circumscribed by the laws of the gospel, though not authorized by it, and kept perpetually under the supreme authority and oversight of a spiritu- ally minded people, may, by a well-disciplined church, be prudently granted to a virtuous man, but it can have no relation to a Roman Catholic pope, whose power is in himself, subject to no law, perpetually exercised by him- self, and for his own sake, whether he have or have not the abilities required for the due performance of so great a work. If he be not above the law he is no pope, and if he be not an absolute pope he is not such an one as is suitable and needed to stand at the head of the Catholic church whose eyes have never slumbered and whose uill knows no bounds. Whereas, the prac- tice of all the apostolic churches has been ^s directly contrary to the abso- lute power of one man as their constitutions ; or if the original of these con- stitutions lie hid in the impenetrable darkness of antiquity, their progress when seen in action will serve to show the intention of their founders. But if the papal or the episcopal forms of government are such that must restrain religious liberty, and subject all to the will of a pope, or to that of a bishop, this is as much as to say that all Christians belonging to them desire that which is against both the genius of the New Testament churches, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 535 and the law and liberty of the gospel. For as we have already proved that no such unnatural government was imposed upon the churches by Christ or his apostles, and it is no less evident that Christians being rational creatures nothing can be universally natural to them, that is not rational. And to say that all Christians desire and love religious liberty without necessary restraint from irresponsible rulers of the churches, and yet that they should enter a system of government that does restrain it, is ridiculous. But as a few, or many joined together, in the New Testament times and framed free and independent churches, regardless of the interference of popes, or bishops, so may we in like manner institute like forms of government, and if the ends of those governments are obtained, we may equally follow the voice of liberty in constituting them without let or hindrance. The creation of an universal church with some one to rule over it, which entirely extinguishes the local churches, must necessarily be most contrary to the law of the gospel, though the people were willing, for they thereby abjure their own libe ty wherein Christ made them free. The usurpation of those who do it can be no less than outrageous violators of the law of Christ. Such a people living in such a church under such a government are religious subjects by nature and education and have neither the understanding nor courage that is required for the constitution and management of church government within themselves. They can no more subsist without a pope and a priest than a flock without a herdsman. They have no comprehension of religious liberty, and can neither desire the good they do not know, nor enjoy it if bestowed upon them. They bear all things, and endure all things ; and whatever they suffer they have no other remedy, or refuge, or desire any, than in the mercy of religious lords, in the shape of popes, bishops and priests. For what end can we think governments ecclesiastical to have been established unless to enjoy religious liberty and freedom of conscience? Or how can that be called a government which suppresses and stifles Christ-given blessings? Or how can these privileges subsist under a church government, which not necessarily by corruption, but by a necessity inherent in itself, brings about these deplorable things ? The law of rehgious liberty and that of conscience must in like manner be broken, and of all ecclesiastical govern- ments, that of the Baptists, in which every man's liberty is least restrained because every man has an equal part, would certainly prove to be the most Scriptural, the most rational and natural, notwithstanding some very unjustly represent it as a perpetual spring of discord and confusion. He who inquires more exactly into primitive church government will find the law of Christ enjoins every minister as well as every man not to arrogate to himself more power than he allows to others, nor to usurp that liberty which will prove hurtful to him or the church, or to expect that others will suffer themselves to be restrained, whilst he, to their prejudice, remains in the exercise of that freedom which no law either regulates or restrains. He who would be exempted from this law of the gospel must show for what reason he should be raised above his brethren ; and if he does it not, he is a lawless rebel against the government of Christ. For they who unjustly and unreason- 536 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUKCH JUEISPEUDENCE ; ably assume to themselves that "which agrees not with the teachings and examples of Christ, and set up an interest and title in themselves contrary to that of their equals, which they ought to defend, are wanting in fidelity to both God and man, and such as favor them are like to them. Even the apostles never sought liberty without restraint, but such as was guarded by the laws and teachings of Christ tending to the good of the churches, which all might join in promoting, and the unruly desires of those who effected and usurped powers which they did not deserve, and to which they had no right, might be repressed. Under all hierarchical forms of church polity the ministry have in all times endeavored to put all ecclesiastical power into the hands of one man, who might protect them, and advance them to fat livings and un- deserved honors, while under the gospel plan the best men trusting in their own merit, and desiring no other preferments, than what they were by their equals thought to deserve, and were contented with a due liberty under the protection of the laws of Christ. The question then presents itself to every reflecting mind, whether they who live under such governments, and know no other, do not always endeavor to advance that system, under which they enjoy, or may hope to obtain, the highest honors, and abhor and look down upon that by which they might be exposed to scorn and contempt, because of their mean abilities? "Which being determined, it will appear easily why the most worldly minded and least religious have ever been for monarchical forms of church government, and the best and most spiritually minded against them. Before the doctrine of the papacy can have any influence or place in a correct system of ecclesiastical jurisprudence, our popes are to prove that they are vicars of Christ and lords paramount of the Christian church by a lawful title, or some other equivalent to it. When that is done we shall know upon v/hom we have a dependence, and may consider whether we ought to acknowledge and submit to such a power, or give reasons for our refusal. But in order to do this, it is hardly worth while to search into the Scriptures for light upon that subject, for they are as silent as death upon the power of the pope. And it is in no way probable that the apostles and the very earhest ministers of the gospel, who had kept themselves within the very narrowest limits of ministerial power should sufi^er their immediate successors to transcend those limits to the overthrow of the system itself, without recording their protests against it in the Scriptures by a specific animadversion. But the record shows that they remained and continued most obstinate defenders of the freedom and equality of the ministry and the government of the churches which they had founded ; that each pastor managed his own church by himself, and acknowledged no other ministers and no other laws than their own. If they had made such a resignation of their rights, as was necessary to create a supremacy in one above another, it would have been enough to overthrow the whole system ; for it is not the ruler that gives to the people, but the people that gives to the ruler. If these great ministers, including Christ's apostles, had been given the author- ity to change this ministry and to grant to one man the power to rule over OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 537 the whole, he that would pretend to derive a right and a benefit from thence, must prove the grant, otherwise it falls to the ground. Failure to do this also shows that there is no such thing as ministerial power placed in the hands of a single man by the laws of Christ, but that each church has it in themselves. It was not by law nor by right, but by usurpation and imposture that Catholics took upon themselves to pick what they pleased out of the Scriptures to bolster up their system. Whereas the early disciples contented themselves by founding the free and independent local churches, which they knew to be the mother and nurse of religious liberty, fitting them for the spread of a pure and free gospel. For a church to single out and elect a minister, as was done in Matthias', Barnabas' and Paul's cases, is a matter of good judgment and intention under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but they receivod the power and authority of ministers from the law of the gospel. It would be in vain for a pope or a college of cardinals to say that they will have it otherwise ; for if there were such creatures known in church government, they are not created to make laws, but to govern according to such as are already made ; otherwise they will not only govern by will, but by that irregular will, which turns the law, that was made for the public good of the churches, to the private advantage of one or a few men. Thus in the early history of the churches did a sect rise up, and by force or fraud usurp a power of imposing what they pleased. Others being foolish and disloyal to Christ did so far err in the foundations, as to give up themselves to the will of one or a few men, who, turning all to their own profit, have been just in nothing, but in using such as they have blindly misled like dumb cattle. Certainly all will agree, therefore, that ecclesiastical government was not set up for the profit, pleasure or glory of one or of a few men, but for the good of -the cause of Christ. If it can be set up for the profit and aggrandize- ment of one, or a few men, he that is the best of men may become the worst, and the most holy father of the church may make himself its worst enemy, and hence we may conclude that in all controversies concerning the power of ministers, we are not to examine or consider what conduces to their profit, ease and glory, but what is for the good of the churches. When a minister has gained to himself the gracious character and title of God's, vicegerent on earth, and is invested with a supreme unlimited power over the church and people, he leaves his pernicious practices as a perpetual law to such as be- lieve in him to all succeeding generations, whereby the world may be exposed to the cruelty. and madness of the most wicked men that religious fanaticism could produce, that is, if we are to judge the future by the past. And if such men are inclined to increase that power which has no limit by adding fuel to the fires of religious intolerance, we may safely return to our pro- positions, so often adverted to herein, that God having established no such authority as Catholics fancy, the churches of Christ and all Christians are left to the use of their own liberty and judgment in setting up local churches and in making provision for their own welfare ; that there is no lawful min- istsrs over any of them but such as they have elected and ordained ; that in 538 A TKEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPKTJDENCE ; creating tliem tliey do not seek tlie advantage of their ministers alone, but the good of the church and cause ; and having seen that an absolute power over a church is unscriptural and a burden that no free people could bear, and that no wise or good minister ever deserved it, we from thence con- clude that it is not just for any to effect it, though it were personally, good for himself, because he is not exalted to the sacred office of a minister for his own good, but that of the church of which he is pastor. Whatever ecclesiastical authority ministers had who were made such in the days of the apostles and by them, is inherited by every lawful minister now extant in the world ; and the title of pope and bishop, and the like, which Catholics and others so much magnify and exalt, as if it were an- nexed to one single person, vanishes into nothing, or else the teachings of Christ could have neither strength nor truth in them when he taught them that they were all equal in power and no one above the other. And yet if Christ had not declared himself so fully on this point we might easily see that he left his ministry in that equality from the fact that none were ever seen to have exercised such a prerogative. But the personal gifts and vir- tues, that give a reasonable preference to one more fit to govern than an- other, cannot be used as a reason why he should be set apart to rule unless Christ had so ordained, nor can be annexed to any one line or succession of ministers. Therefore, the Saviour cannot be presumed to have given one minister or his successors the government of his brethren or churches. If perchance one minister was elevated above another and one made head ruler over all, and that his commands are to be obeyed preferably to those of God, it were fit to know the limits of each kingdom, lest we happen pre- posterously to obey man when we ought to obey God, or God when we are to follow the commands of men. If these things be left in doubt and confu- sion the law of God is of no effect, and we may safely put an end to all thoughts about ecclesiastical government and religion, the word of God is nothing to us ; we are not to inquire what he has commanded, but what pleases our master, our most holy father, the pope, how vile, wicked or fool- ish soever he may be. The Baptist martyrs who died at the stake for pre- ferring the commands of God before those of men, fell like fools and perished in their sins. If every pope that has a following can thus exempt himself by becoming the maker and the unmaker of his own laws, the laws of God are at once abrogated throughout the world and everything is in chaos and confusion. What is this inflated and puffed-up power and majesty so inseparable from the pope of Rome, that the Christian religion canuot subsist without its existence ? Catholics boast of the greatness of this power. They must think it a glorious privilege to kill or spare whom they please. But such ministers as by Christ's permission were set up in the days of the apostles, had nothing of this power. Chuch dignitaries had no power to set up still greater dignitaries, nor were they to govern by their own wills, nor w^ere they to raise their hearts above their brethren. Here we find humble ministers of the gospel, without that unlimited power, who served the churches OE, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 639 according to Christ's law, from which they might not recede under the pen- alty of God's everlasting displeasure. We are to esteem those true minis- ters of Christ who are described to be such by the Scriptures, and we give another name to those who endeavor to advance their own glory contrary to the precepts of Christ and the interest of the churches and Christianity. No man will deny that Christ had the right of giving power to his ministry in such proportions as seemed most conducive to his will and the good of the churches ; and if we are in doubt as to the amount of the power he did give, we have only to look at the power they exercised, and the question is intel- ligently settled. If we do this we will find no similitude between a min- ister made such by Christ, and a pope, made such by man. Christ must have had this power, and he doubtless transmitted the same to his apostles, K they, having all power, set up no pope, made no cardinals, and commis- sioned no bishops to rule over the churches, by what authority were these various orders of the ministry set up, and who gave them their power ? Plad there been a necessity for them, or any place for them in the apostolic econ- omy, no doubt such officers would have been duly established. It is treason against this sacred government to say that it matters not who set up these offices or how they came by their power. Once concede this, and violence against this government, fraud and treachery are just as lawful as the elec- tion and ordination of a minister under the gospel economy. Admit this, and it is in vain to see any virtue in the laws of the gospel, or by what rule we may know a lawful minister from an unlawful one, or who has a right to administer the ordinances of God's house, and consequently what in con- science we are obliged to do. Suppose a man were to undertake, in and of himself, to minister at the altar — to go into the holy of holies — contrary to the law of the priesthood under the Jewish economy ? How would he have been treated, and what would have become of him ? If this is right and Scriptural, the world has to this day lived in darkness, and such things as would have brought down a thunderbolt from God under the priesthood of Aaron, are thought to be the most commendable and glorious under the priesthood and rule of the pope of Rome. Whereas, the true disciples of Christ knew no other minister than he who is so by the law of the gospel, nor any power in that minister, except that which he has by that law. He who would measure the power of Christ's ministry by any other rule, and pretend to take that rule from the Scrip- tures, makes use of the Scriptures, as the devil does, to subvert the truth. But if no such grant of power be made by those who had the right, under Christ, to set up an ecclesiastical polity, I leave it to any sane man, whose understanding and manners are not entirely corrupted, to determine what name ought to be given to that person, and how he ought to be regarded by all God-fearing men who usurps a power over the church of Christ, and what obedience and respect the people owe to such a one. Nothing is to be received as a general maxim, which is not generally true ; therefore, we need no more to overthrow such as Catholics propose to uphold their power, than to prove how frequently they have been found false, and what des- ^ 640 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE ; perate miscliiefs they have brought upon the world, as often as they have been practiced, and excessive powers put into the hands of such as had neither the inclination nor the ability to make a good use of them. One is forced to the conclusion that those who advocate and adhere to the doctrine of the papacy, that the church might have a pope because they did not have one in the beginning. But all rational men who are loyal to God's law require positive proofs ; superstitions and might-be' s are not to be ad- mitted and will not be accepted. Christ might reasonably have had a great veneration and regard for Peter, and doubtless did have, and whatever re- spect was paid him, or pre-eminence, if any, granted to him on that account can be of no advantage to any other minister since his death by reason of that fact. He had neither the name or power of a pope, and he did not transmit either the name or power to any man, W'hich according to Catholics is a right inseparable from a pope, and his power was not continued by any kind of succession, but his apostleship died with him as did that of the other apostles. When we come to the question of apostolic succession examples are little in favor of the doctrine. Under the Jewish economy the priest- hood was confined to and wrapped up in Aaron and his descendants ; but the apostles and the other early ministers belonged to no tribe to which the min- istry was promised ; they did not, nor could they transmit the power to aiiy particular man, or line of men, in which there could be a right inseparable from others, and their right was not continued by any kind of succession, but created occasionally and conferred upon whomsoever the Holy Spirit and the churches chose, as need required, -'according to the virtues discov- ered in those who were raised by Christ to deliver and preach the gospel. If the Apostle Peter had been made pope by the Saviour, and his office and duties specifically defined, and a provision made as to how his successors might be elected, that office would have succeeded to his successors, and those duties would have devolved upon them ; which being done, his suc- cessors lay hid among the rest of the ministers of the church as time and oc- casion might arise. Thus all the ministers of the churches of Christ chosen and set up, not so much by succession as by choice of the churches. These dignities w^ere not inherent in their persons, but conferred upon them; nor conferred that they might be exalted in pomp and splendor and power and glory, but that they might be humble ministers of the churches as the apostle Peter was, for their good, and not to their destruction. But I think it will be exceedingly hard from the life and acts of the Apostle Peter to deduce an argument in favor of the papacy, and such an ecclesiastical hierarchy as is necessary to descend to any one man, or succession of men ; and failing the whole fabric of Catholicism falls rashly to the ground. But whatever the dignity of the office of Peter was, and howsoever he was raised to that office, it certainly difiered from that of a pope, as we see the papacy in this day and time. Peter could not have refused to be pope if Christ had made him so, or if Christ from the beginning had appointed that the churches should have one. Certainly the early disciples would not have refused for two or three hundred years, after the death of Peter, to have OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 541 used tlie liberty Christ gave them to make a pope to be the ruler over the churches. If God had brought destruction and desolation upon the Israel- ites for choosing a king, when he had commanded them not to have one, cer- tainly he would have visited the same desolation upon the early disciples for not having a pope to rule over them after he had so commanded them. But God who acknowledges those works only to be his own which proceed directly from his commands to his people : Israel hath cast off the thing that is good, the enemy shall pursue him ; they have set up kings, but not by me; and princes, but I know them not. Thus God sought to justify the severity of his judgments brought upon them by their kings, that they, not he, had ordained. But the Catholic world should likewise remember that God has also said, I gave them kings in my anger, and took them away in my wrath. In destroying them God brought desolation upon the people that had sinned in asking for them and following their example in aU kinds of wickedness. But if Christ established the papacy the people had not re- jected God, and sinned in having a pope, if the churches by a general law of the gospel ought to have one, or by a particular law one had been ap- pointed by Christ over them, nor any law of Christ, particular or general, according to which they ought to have one, or ever did have one, until the degenerate days when they turned their hearts from God and placed them upon the sordid things of this world. The Pope of Rome, whether his office be lawful or not, should govern according to the law of the gospel, and if he does not he degenerates into a tyrant. He is obliged to frame his actions according to this law or not be a pope, for a tyrant is not a pope, but ought to be as contrary to one as the worst of men is to the best. But if a pope absolves himself from the law of the gospel that makes him to be a pope, and if all his obligations were dissolved, we may easily guess to what lengths he might go ; for experience instructs us, that notwithstanding the strictest laws and the most rigid con- stitutions that men of the best intentions in the world could invent to restrain the irregular appetites of those in power, the excesses of some of the popes in the past have frequently broken out, to the utter destruction of nations and principalities. If these things be true, lawless men stand at the head of the church ! and there is no difference between a gospel minister of Christ, who is what he is by law, and a public enemy to Christianity, who, by force or fraud, sets himself up against all law, both human and divine ! and what was said before is true, that a pope degenerates into a tyrant, if he be not under the law, for the history of the world, abundantly shows that tyrants have also been popes ! For as religious liberty consists only in being subject to no man's will and nothing denotes a slave but a dependence upon the will of another, if there be no other law in ecclesiastical government than the will of a pope, there is in the world no such thing as religious freedom. What then does it profit a man if he has a right in the church of Christ, if he enjoys it only at the pleasure of another? It is foolish to say that a pope is obliged to follow the advice of his college of cardinals unless he were bound by it. This coUege must be chosen by 542 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JURISPRUDENCE; him, or imposed upon him. If it be imposed upon him, which Catholics say cannot be, it must be by a power that is above him. If chosen by him who knows no law or is obedient to none, it is apt to be just as bad as he is, and it will generally come to pass, that he will take for his counsellors rather those who are of his ilk, and those he believes to be addicted to his person and interests, than such as are fitly quahfied to perform the duties of their places. If we take into consideration rather what is probable than possible, selfish and designing popes will never choose such cardinals as are good, but favoring those who are most like to themselves, will prefer such as second their humors and personal interests, and by so doing will rather fortify and rivet the evils and excesses that are brought upon the church through their defects, than cure them. If this college of cardinals be imposed upon him and he is obliged to follow their advice, it must be imposed by a power that is above him ; his will, therefore, is not the law, but must be regulated by the law. If so, what law ? The pope is therefore above the law, and if we are to beheve Catholics, he is no pope if he be not above the law, and has not his own will. We ought not by a preposterous conjunction confound the name and rights of ministers of the gospel, who are such by the law, with the lawless popes of the earth who are utterly against all law, and who by their actions declare themselves enemies, not only to all law, but to the best interests of the churches of our Lord Jesus Christ. This requires no other proof than to examine the history of Christianity from the time this monstrous power was set up in the world to the present time. It is impossible therefore to conceive of a system of ecclesiastical govern- ment, or a Christian ministry that is not regulated by a law. These exact limits are as specifically fixed as those of the priesthood under the Mosaic dispensation, not so much possibly by written details as by living examples made manifest while the apostles, who had all power given them, were yet living, whose business it was to regulate these great measures. Besides, the extent of those limits can only be known by the intentions of the apostles who set them up, which are so visible, that none but such as are wilfully blind can mistake. This latitudinarian way of construing God's word has given beginning, growth and continuance to all the divers kinds of ecclesias- tical governments now extant in the world. And as to some of them, notably that of the Catholics, one would think they had taken the model of the government they live under from the monstrous pattern of some lawless tyrant, where the king knows no other law than his own blind will. The head of this government has killed, torn in pieces, burned at the stake, im- paled, embowelled, beheaded, quartered, and thrown to the dogs whomsoever would dare think for himself, and few obtained the favor of being put to death or thrown to the vultures without bodily torments prior to death. The subjects of this pretended successor to Peter approach him, licking the dust, and not otherwise than on their knees, and crave the most gracious privi- lege of kissing his big toe. Yet lest it should be thought that Baptists are a non-progressive people, and averse to any changes from the somewhat crude system of apostolic OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 643 church government, I will say that the wisdom of man is imperfect, and un- able to foresee the effects that may proceed from an infinite variety of con- ditions and circumstances in church government, which, according to emergencies, necessarily require new rules and regulations to prevent or cure the mischiefs arising from them, or advance a good that should last forever, and the next thing was to evolve laws to prevent exigences, as much as in their power lay. And we who have followed those early Christians, who laid these foundations, should we persist absolutely in the way they first entered upon, or blame those too severely who go out of that in which their fathers had walked when they find it necessary, renders the worst of incon- veniences and defects perpetual ? Changes are, therefore, sometimes neces- sary and unavoidable. But as their are universal rules in physics, archi- tecture and military affairs, from which men ought never to depart, so there are some in ecclesiastical government, also, which ought to be observed. And wise administrators of church government, adhering to them only, will be ready to change all minor rules as occasion may require, in order to the good of the cause. This we may learn from studying the history of the apostolic churches and the fundamental law given to them, having its root in Christ, is subject to no change ; but, nevertheless, the churches were left the liberty of doing many things not done by those early churches, as lonh as they kept the foundations sure and steadfast; and the mischiefs tge churches afterwards suffered proceeded not simply from changing, but chang- ing unlawfully and for the worse, and that to the utter destruction of the fundamental principles which Christ designed should be stable and im- movable. They who aim at the good of the churches, and wisely institute means adequate to the attainment of it, deserve praise ; and those only are to be blamed and censured who either foolishly or maliciously set up a cor- rupt private interest in one or a few men contrary to all law and precedent. We reasonably infer, then, that when these principleB began to govern and to actuate changes in ecclesiastical governments, all foundations were utterly subverted and overthrown ; evil designs, tending only to the advance- ment of private interests, were carried on by means as wicked as the end to which they drifted, until now one can see no resemblance between these huge empirial governments and the plain simple forms laid down in the Scriptures, Hence, Baptists have ever held that while the foundation princi- ples remain identically the same, the superstructure may be changed and modi- fied according to the necessities of the case, without prejudice to the churches. This being the case, we may easily determine that both of these kinds of government are subject to changes and discords, but with this difference, that all absohite papal and episcopal forms are, by principle, led to it. Whereas, Baptist church government being popular and free, is only in a possibility of falling into it. As the first cannot subsist, unless the prevail- ing part of their people be either ignorant or evilly disposed, the other mu«t deteriorate and cannot prosper, unless they be virtuous, intelligent and spiritually minded. And I doubt whether any better reason can be given why there are more Catholics and Episcopalians in the world and more 544 A TEEATISE UPON BAPTIST CHUECH JUEISPRUDENCE J belonging to these kinds of church government, than that those people are more easily drawn into a proud, showy and pompous establishment than to those defended from them ; and that these monarchical forms can be said to be natural in no other sense than that men's restless and rebellious natures are most inclined to that which is worst. Which is sufficient to show that a people acting according to their own will, under the laws and rules of the gospel alone, never advance unworthy men to the ministry, unless it be by mistake ; whereas the pope and his satellites always prefer those who will yield a blind obedince to his will; which state of affairs cannot subsist unless the prevailing part of their people be either ignorant, or base and vicious. This is a true pattern of the Catholics' patriarchal monarch, and most holy father and vicegerent of Christ ! His majesty is most exalted, for he does whatever he pleases. His powerful word is law, and his law is the rule of action. The exercise of his power is as gentle and pacific as can be reason- ably expected from one who has all he has by the unquestionable right of usurpation, and those who follow his blind will are kept in such ignorance and weakness as neither to know how to govern themselves, or dare to resist him. Let there be raised up a people who are so ignorant and superstitious as to believe that the word of a poor weak human being can be substituted for the word of God as the infallible law of the church, and the whole nefarious business is done. The machinations of this overgrown ecclesiastical pandemonium have been so ingeniously contrived, that the sacred word of God, which we and our predecessors have so highly valued has been by them abolished or made a snare to all those who dare to think and act for them- selves, and are guilty of the unpardonable crime of adhering to the apostolic plan of church government, or have the courage and intelligence to defend it. 'No wonder that Baptist principles never flourished to any great extent in the dark ages under a religious monarch who believed that the kingdom of God on earth w^as his patrimony, that his will was law, and that he had power which none may resist. If any doubt whether he made a good use of it, he has only to examine history both sacred and profane as to what has been done in all places where they have had power and full sway. Oh ! but the Catholic principles and religion are so full of meekness and charity ! The popes of the earth have always shown themselves so gentle and forgiving towards those who would not submit to their authority ! ! The Jesuits, for instance, who may be considered the very soul of that system, are so good natured, so tolerant, faithful and exact in their morals, so full of innocence, jus- tice and truth ; no violence is to be feared by those who dare think otherwise than they do ! ! ! The fatherly care they have always shown to Baptists — the re-baptizers — in the past commends itself to the Christian w^orld as becomes a good father ! ! ! ! In a word, the exceeding abundant sweetness, mellowness, and apostolical holiness, and meekness of this universal church as we see it now in this enlightened Christian age, sufficiently convinces us that nothing is to be feared when this benign principle reigns ! ! ! ! ! May the good Lord deliver his people from the dominion and domination of one man, or many, whose y will is law and keep them free in that liberty wherein he has made them free! OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 545 Were I to vindicate the right to make a pope, this should be my argu- ment. AVhen our Saviour came upon earth and established the Christian religion, the evil one became alarmed that his kingdom was in danger, and casting about as to how he might put a lasting obstacle in the way of the spread of Christianity, raised up a pope, put a temporal sword in his hand, and clothed him with all the power of an earthly king. But a large part of the Christian world, being averse to a pope, because they could not suffer any man to enjoy such power; these would not have a pope for the reason they could not bear his manners. For though a pope is really but a temporal king in disguise, nevertheless, he possesses all the outward appear- ance of sanctimoniousness and piety, while his real life is a kind of imitation of the pomp and splendor of a foreign monarch ; and it being necessary for a pope to have subjects, to do him worship, reverence and honor, a people must be set apart, to bow down before him to worship his person and to kiss his foot. And as the customs of an enslaved people are a part of their servitude, and those of a free people part of their liberty, it is hardly to be believed that God, who is a good and wise being, should subject all men to the dominion of a pope, but being desirous to know whether there be any in the world, so true and faithful, as not thus to bow down at the feet of such a creature, though all be put to death mercilessly who refuse so to do. It is impossible for us to suppose this benign creature to be a man with the common instincts of humanity, because allowing him to be such a man, a suspicion would follow that we ourselves are not human beings, and especi- ally Christians. Therefore it is highly necessary to have a pope ! Or if this argument be a httle illogical and disjoined, I would say : That a pope must be a non-existing being ; for to conceive of a pope as having his com- mencement in the law of the gospel is impossible. Nothing can be produced from nothing ; if a pope can become a pope without law or gospel, then does a pope become something out of nothing ; for he was nothing before he was made a pope, and he is nothing now. Whence, therefore, was a pope produced ? From himself? No ; for then he must have already been in existence to be able to produce himself, otherwise he would have been produced from nothing. Hence the primary law. A pope is non-existing, and if non-existing, conse- quently, he is a Scriptural nonentity, and a misnomer ! Nothing is nothing. We conclude therefore that the rights of high church dignitaries, whether they be popes, cardinals, bishops or priests, are grounded upon usurpation. The religious liberties of the true disciples of Christ do not arise from such sources. The allegiance and obedience they are under binds no man to more than the law of the gospel directs. Baptists have been, under the blessings of God, kept within the limits of that law by the virtue and power of a great and loyal Christian nobility, not coming down from a line of popes, cardinals or bishops, but from Christ, the King of kings. They have never suffered themselves to be moved by the stupenduous changes wiiich in the process of time were insensibly introduced to undermine the superstructure which Christ had established for his own churches. Like Paul they have kept the faith, being filled with the spirit like to that which animated their 35 546 A TREATISE UPON BAPTIST CHURCH JURISPRUDENCE; early ancestors, they have endeavored to deserve the great honors achieved, by remaining faithful to the trust committed to their keeping. If we will remain true to our predecessors, it will become us as faithful stewards to preserve what we know they intended, and by new efforts, and new lights to repair any breaches we may have made in the law of the churches. Having the same spirit they had, we may easily preserve our ecclesiastical liberties, and hand down to posterity a free church and a free gospel. Failing, the fault will be among ourselves, and not to any virtue and wisdom in our opponents. We have noted those principles here in order that they might serve as a contrast to post-apostolic systems. The Baptist idea of church polity, as it is in a great many other directions, is simply the pure, sound Bible idea. These ideas are nowhere so prevalent as they are seen in Baptist church government. Those who live in other systems are prone to speak of the Baptists as slow, of their members as anti- quated and non-progressive. Tliey like to think of Baptists as behind the times. Should seemingly harsh things be said herein against the papal ministry it is not intended as a reflection upon the true ministers of Christ. And should it be said that the papal ministry is not evil in itself and that it is law-abiding and peaceful, and neither the people nor the government need have any fear of it. I have only to point to the history of Christianity in the past ages as an evidence of what they might do in the future. Oh ! the blood, the innocent blood, that has been shed in the name of Christ and Christianity ! Is the corruption of this church and its evil designs so little known that such as have common sense should expect justice and mercy from those who fear no punishment if they repeat the crimes of the past ? or that the modesty, integrity and innocence which are seldom found in one man, although he should profess to be Christ's vicegerent on earth can be found in a church which designs no less than the conquest of the whole earth ? For the rule of this church is that all men are to be guided by the church, and none to be separated from it under pain of damnation. We cannot suppose that goodness and mercy could be constantly found in all those who by any means attain the chief magistracy of this power, and that it would continue forever in their successors, or that there can be any security or religious liberty under that form of church government. No amount of Christian valor could defend one against religious fanaticism and intolerance if the malice of a mighty church establishment be upheld by public secular power. There must, therefore, be a way and a right of proceeding lawfully and judicially against all persons who band themselves together even under the sacred name of a church to transgress the laws of religious liberty or else those laws, and the true churches of Christ that should subsist by them, can- not stand, and, indeed, in the dark ages of the world never did stand, and the ends for which the government of the churches of Christ were constituted, together with the churches themselves, must be overthrown. But no truer words can be uttered than those which say that if we will find tlie true principles of apostolic church government now extant in the world, where men and women are loyal to the truth, as it is in the gospel, OR, THE COMMON LAW OF THE GOSPEL. 547 where a people professing Christianity in its primitive purity who are guided in their precepts and practices by a spiritually wholesome sentiment, where a people Hve religiously, practiciug the ordinances of Christ in their purity, and wliere the best of customs and usages are lived every day and perpetu- ated, where hearts beat to the most loyal sentiments, and where the people can be trusted to uphold what is highest and most lasting in church govern- ment and Christian life, we must turn to the Baptists of the United States. What is the best and most convenient system of church government, and the best form for the ministry to labor in, does not trouble Baptists. Their respect, honor and reverence for the plan laid down in the Scriptures is too deep-rooted to question its sacredness. Baptists do not question the divine laws ; they accept and perpetuate them. Intellectual and spiritual progress go hand in hand with a strict adherence to the accepted belief in the word of God. Their theological seminaries do not put a strained construction upon the Scriptures to conform to " new oracles not well inspired," but place them in the hands of their young ministry as God delivered them. They believe in progress along conservative, healthy, rational lines. Vague theories in theology or polity which upset and overthrow find no sympathy with them. They are content to move slowly, but surely, and some day when the vast majority of others who have flocked to the gaudy and showy establishments, get through worshipping high church dignitaries and drop their boastful manners, their eyes will turn towards the Baptists — a people loyal to the truth, worshipful, progressive, earnest and courageous. Every candid Baptist who has steadily followed the discussion of this subject, who has resolutely gone over the whole ground, and studied the history and true nature of the apostolic churches, and who is fairly acquainted with Baptist church literature, will agree, I trust, that the true idea of the churches of Christ has here been correctly stated. Possibly some of my readers may not at once perceive the whole import of the principles herein treated of, and some may not agree with me in everything, but let them study this subject in the light of the primitive churches, and their practices, and their own observations will not fail to furnish them with commentaries and full explanations of the preceding pages. I flatter myself, at least, that the fundamental principles herein laid down are sound and Scriptural. And now in taking my final leave of my readers let me kindly admonish them, as they love the truth and the churches of the living God, to adhere to the Baptist faith and practice as it conforms to the teachings of his word, to cherish and venerate the history of the denomination, to cling to that which exists, to maintain, to preserve, to contend for the necessary stability of the churches, without which true church government will perish from the earth, being assured that if these bulwarks of Bible church government are once demolished, the whole denomination will soon be flooded by an irresistible tide of arbitrary power and misrule. Ye, therefore, beloved, seeing ye know those things before, be- ware LEST ye also, being LED AWAY WITH THE ERROR OF THE WICKED, FALL FROM YOUR OWN STEADFASTNESS. ThE GRACE OF OUR LORD JeSUS ChRIST BE WITH YOU ALL. AmEN. INDEX ABNOEMAL church power, 301 Absolute unanimity not always at- tainable, 173 Acts and examples of the apostles, church polity illustrated by, 280, 295 Adjudicated cases, no record of^ kept in Baptist churches, 150 Agreement among Baptists applies to fundamentals, 169 Allegiance to one's church, what it sig- nifies, 463 Amalgamation of churches is the nega- tion of God's government, 146 Angels of the chui'ches, meaning of the term, 292 Apostles, formulated no code of laws, 20 • drilled the churches, 20 — the fountains of truth, 261 never wrote to the churches in their associational state, 287 contention among, who was great- est, 420 Apostolic times, churches at unity in, 210 churches, complete in them- selves, 287 succession, no such thing in church polity, 286, 413, 442, 541 Apostacy, in church polity began in third century, 143 Appeals from decisions of churches, none in church polity, 258 Arbitration of the property rights of a divided church, 507 Articles of faith, not the result of a preconceived design, 347 the collected wisdom of all the churches, 348 not the final statement of the truth, 349 548 Articles of faith, how generated in Bap- tist churches, 349, 356 should be few in number, 353 below the Scripture in point of verity, 357. Ark of the covenant, the depository of God's law, 162 Associations, human contrivances, 130, 314, 318 may refuse to fellowship a church, 259, 317 utility of, 270, 319 agents of the churches, 319 deliberative and advisory bodies only, 319 have no ecclesiastical powers, 321 — stand opposite to modern coun- cils, 323 — churches may withdraw fi:om, 317, 325 should guard the doctrine of the churches, 328 Associational power, dangers of, 178 — relations, duty of churches to live in, 317 government, weakness of, 328 Authority of opinion, its influence in church polity, 164 inter-church, must exist some- vrhere, 178. Autonomy of Baptist churches cannot be destroyed, 34 Award of councils interprets them- selves, 274 binding on all when consented to, 275 Axioms of Baptist church polity, 48 INDEX. 549 BAPTISTS, their love of the old paths, 10 appropriateness of their name, 42 cannot act through representa- tives, 221 duty of, to act out -what the apos- tles began, 228 ■ link themselves to the past, 10, 142 ■ measure duty by their own inter- pretation of the law, 297 motto of, 31 not allowed to choose their own church polity, 170 should be obedient to the civil law, 247 should not go to law with one another, 504, 508 ■ their right to revolt against church government, 451, 453, 462,, 465, 467 they have preserved the ancient forms, 31 Baptist churches, fac-similes one of another, 220 duty of, to preserve themselves, 250 church government, not one of 'complexity, 32 what necessary to change it, 145 how far it reaches back, 145 press, necessity for, 385 publishing houses, 386 schools should be under the con- trol of the denomination, 382 young people, word of caution to, 239, 240 Barnabas, how chosen an apostle, 293 Beginning of the churches, 48 Belief, necessity of, in church polity, 347 common ground of, 360 Bible, law of the, cannot be modified, 204 rules in church polity are few, 120 Bishops, college of, cannot make a min- ister, 410 their disposition to usurp powers unscriptural, 414 power of, to appoint and depose ministers, 435 and pastors synonymous terms. 442 Body, church used in the similitude of a, 282 Briggs, trial of, by the Presbyterians, 286 CANDLESTICK, meaning of the term ^ in Scripture, 262 Canon of the Scriptures, how deter- mined, 185 Catholics, history of their practices, 514 their struggles to usui-p temporal power, 515 being above the law are not ruled hy the law, 528 — usurpation by them of a rule over the churches gives no right, 524 — opposed to a general diffusion of learning:, 515 what they have undertaken to decide by their councils, 185 Change of church government treason against God, 40 Christ alone our law-giver, 204 his teaching concerning tradi- tions, 208 not the author of confusion in church polity, 293 gave no commission to make laws, 128 Christianity, a new creation, 104 part of the common law of the land, 502 Christian ministry, their call and ordi- nation, 390 equality of, 419 iinity, views upon, 362 Church, definition of the term, 74 care in the constitution of, 458 how formed, 18 cannot rest upon human grounds, 91 cannot divest itself of its sover- eignty, 27 must have power to bind and loose, 75 is the authoritative interpreter of the Scriptures, 171, 183 what it takes to constitute, 75 likened unto a family, 76 must develop from within, 77 550 INDEX. Church, the sole depository of all eccle- siastical power on earth, 78 houses, for what purposes to be used, 485, 492 universal, not a church proper, 278 how it originated, 279 its powers defined in Scrip- ture, 280 governments, three kinds of, 64 Churches, when organized, 61 highest and lowest development of, 59 Cicero, his definition of the unwritten law, 68 Classes in churches, unscriptural, 157 Cooperation of churches, 310 Commission to preach does not include the right to rule, 433 CommoU law of the gospel defined, 9 Common sense, usefulness of in church polity, 150 Communion with outside churches not allowable, 237 suspension from, in church polity, 472 Compensation of pastors, law of, 244 Congregationalism and the State church, 303 Conservative, Baptist church govern- ment is, 115 Constitution, church, no efficacy in a written one, 24 is a divine work, 95 Conventions, Baptist, powers and. duties of, 309 churches may withdraw from with impunity, 317, 325 have no ecclesiastical powers, 321 weakness of their governments, 328 their usefulness, 319 should guard the doctrine of the churches, 328 Councils, their powers and duties, 249 — definition of, 251 not to be convened on every ground, 272 ■• findings of advisory only, 82, 273 decisions of not laws, 252 Councils, have no right to pronounce a judicial sentence, 452 two occasions for their call, 251 ex parte, 258, 272 cannot execute their own find- ings, 252, 263 decision of should be unanimous, 256 cannot settle the canon of Scrip- ture, 186 7 cannot be called to settle doc- trine, 174 — authority of, 83 — no appeal from decision of, 258, 259 award of binding on all who join in their call, 274 Councilors, how to be chosen, 253 duties of, 257 Covenant, church, how formed, 62 > the germ of the church, 47 subject matter of, 69 churches not wholly instituted by, 49 the joint act of all uniting under it, 18 stands in the place of a law, 188 Creeds, church, 340 cannot be so framed as to exclude all error, 341 obstruction to Christian unity, 343 unknown in the early churches. 346 how generated, 348 Customary law of the churches defined, 110 — when it becomes established in the churches, 119 the first rule of the churches, 123 must . not be confounded with traditions, 210 Custom and usage the best interpreters of the Scriptures, 203 must have coherence of princi- ple, 203 I marks of true, 211 habit of following, 152 how transmitted into church laws, 20, 148 INDEX. 651 DECISIONS, no appeal from a church's, 258 De jure and de facto forms of church polity defined, 15 Denomination, authority of the whole, 176 heresy must be viewed from the standpoint of a, 371 Denominational opinion, office work of, 165 intercourse, 312 journals, usefulness of, 331 should be few in number, 332 enterprises, rivalry between, 333 schools, work of in spreading the the truth, 382 should be under Baptist control, 336, 382 Dependence of the ministry upon the bishops, 436 Development, material and spiritual j 157 of a church constant and gradual, 213 Discipline, civil courts cannot revise acts of, 495 councils cannot inflict, 264 Discords, evils of, in church polity, 459, 500 Discussion, free, should be allowed in every church, 383 Dismission of members, rule as to, 246, 272 Distribution of ecclesiastical powers in church polity, 25, 107 Disuse, customs and usages repealed by, 136 Divided church not a proper tribunal to try cases, 255 Divine origin of the churches, 42 right of the ministry, no such thing as in church polity, 443, 445 Division of a Baptist church, 451 in Baptist churches should occa- sion no alarm, 482 Doctrine, diffused by the common law of the gospel, 169 the denomination the guardian of, 328 difficulty ofinnovating upon, 177 that necessary to be believed, 341 Doctrine, churches the judges of the true, 358 Duty of a church to preserve itself, 465 of one church to another, 271 EACH church has its own rules, 113 Ecclesiastical powers not divided, 26 given to churches and not to men, 76 tendency of to increase, 133 not lodged in the church univer- sal, 281 creeds, 340 Ecclesia, meaning of the term, 74 Editors Baptist, how they should deport themselves, 388 Education, general. Catholics opposed to, 515 Elder, meaning of the term, 404 English government, without a written constitution, 37, 121 Enterprises denominational, how they should be managed, 332 Episcopalians copy their form of polity from Catholics, 33 Episcopal religion once established in many of the States, 303 theory of church government, 87 Episcopacy no more defensible than the papacy, 427, 429 destitute of apostolic sanction, 393 Equality of the Christian ministry, 419, 438 in church government, 134 Errors, in church polity, how they should be corrected, 123, 353 to remove, requires time, 171 no church free from, 173 a church's, cannot become its own law, 200 need the support of tradition, 207 not necessarily heresies, 370 diffused by inter-church commu- nion, 312 liability of churches to fall into, 461 — charity towards those who com- mit, 376 — perverted judgment leads to, 525 552 INDEX. Established religion set up in tlie United States, 303 Ethics, meaning of the term, 218. just rules of, the law of Christ, 12 • importance of understanding, 223 the unwritten law of the churches, 226 rules of, how they came into be- ing, 228 Ethical rules, scarcity of in the Bible, 129, 219 necessity of, in an unwritten church polity, 219 Evangelist, ruling authority of, 403 not an officer proper, 393 Examples, we are taught by, in church polity, 97, 98, 130, 250, 295 Excommunication, power and effect of, 100 ' efficacy of, in church polity, 260 Exparte councils, when to be called, 258, 272' FACTS, church goyernment rests upon, 13 Factions, definition of, in church polity, 460 withdrawing from a church, should organize into churches, 458 not always wrong, 476 Baptist church polity apt to Free discussion should be allowed, 387 Freedom, not absolute in church polity, 51 Freemen in Christ, 133 Free Will Baptists, faithful to primitive church polity, 138 Fun, a little, at the expense of his pre- eminence the Pope, 545 Fundamental laws in church polity, 38 cannot be changed, 17 definition of, 486 articles of faith, 368 GOD, secret government of, over the churches, 191 Good laws, the best legacy of Baptists, 224 offices, how far a church may in- breed, 477 not proper parties to settle church troubles, 254 Faith, a doctrine fundamental, 367 effete formulas of, 344 and knowledge, difference be- tween, 185 much influenced by the opinions of others, 166 and doctrine, a bond of union. '312 False religion, how perpetuated, 359 councils may be chosen to con- sider, 251 church, needs to write many laws, 57 Fellowship, none with those not of the church, 237 Fraternal union of churches, 312 trude its, 2G4 Government, how the apostolic form of, has been obscured, 10 church, rests on facts, 13 three kinds of, 64 hard to d.efine, 12, 132 not a self-acting machine, 50 right to change, not the subject of discussion, 184 two tendencies of, 194 illustrated by acts and examples of the apostles, 280 Guides, spiritual, v/hat we owe to, 362 HAYNES, D. C, his opinion of the rules of church polity, 120 Hebrew kings, not set up by God, 302 Heresy of heresies, 78 definition of, 366, 372 authority of councils, in cases of, 251 to judge of belongs to the church, 263 its nature and how it should be treated, 365 its relation to church polity, 366, 376 — most prolific in early times, 367 — must be viewed from a denomi- national standpoint, 371 — greater offence in some than in others, 374 IKDEX. 653 Heresy, correction of, should be more moral than disciplinary, 375 in a church operates as a forfeit- ure of church property, 489 not fostered in Baptist church polity, 501 Heretics and schismatics, difference be- tween, 475 Heretical church may return to the faith of the gospel, 467 Hiatus in the office of the pope, 530, 533 Hierarchical church polity, 425 Hiscox, Edward T., his church directory, 155 Historic churches, 144 Holy legislative synod among Catholics, 105 Scriptures, the fountain of truth, 344 Spirit, the chief minister of the churches, 16 Houses of worship, to what uses they may be put, 485 TNDIVIDUALITY, impossible to di- J- vest one's self of, 220 Independence, church, cannot be surren- dered, 283 — : in what it consists in church polity, 25 destroyed by the universal church, 300 Infallible, churches are not, 261 Infirmities of Baptist church polity, 266 Innovation, church legislation is, 23 Baptists have an aversion for, 33 Institutional church government, 53, 90 Institution, every Baptist church is an, 53 Intelligence, need of in Baptist church polity, 227 Inter-church law, code of, the need by Baptists, 224 common law, defined, 315 • ■ not binding except by consent, 316 dependence, 310 Interpretation, Scripture, churches not infallible in, 170 sign of true, 173 Intervention, the doctrine of between churches, 264 the exception and not the rule in church polity, 267 not allowable, except for pacific purposes, 269 JERUSALEM, council at, exercised no authority, 250 JeT\dsh synagogues, 104 dispensation, polity of no guide to Baptists, 394, 397, 398, 426 Journals, Baptist, how they should be conducted, 388 Judaism, not Christianity, 104 Judges, civil, have no ecclesiastical juris- diction, 487 slow to assume jurisdiction in church cases, 491 there should be a common one in faith and practice, 173 Jurisprudence, church, definition of, 9 is the work of many ages, 45 is a living principle, 30 the philosophy of needs to be studied, 12 codification of, for use of Baptists, 225 KEYS, what is meant by the term, 421 the giving of them to Peter^ 420 — received by Peter representa- tively, 421 — of the church, no such thing as. 422 Kingdom of God, meaning of the ex- pression, 280, 283 and the church, two different things, 426 Knowledge and ignorance, difference be- LANDMAEKS, true, how known, 208, 209 Latitudinarian construction of church polity, 88, 307 Law and religion, their appointment from God, 488 554 IXDEX. Law, Cicero's definition of, 58 need of, in the churches, 222 church, is a record of what is and has been, 154 is posterior to facts, 152 is rooted and grounded in the Scriptures, 162 custom and usage stand in place of, 212 two kinds of, 485 should remain unwritten, 22 of the gospel, ministers are made by the, 411 duty of the churches to observe, 52, 462 Law-making power vested in each church, 216 Laymen enj oy fuller liberty of conscience than ministers, 373 Laying on of the hands of the presby- tery, 392 Leading men, their part in church gov- ernment, 479 Legitimacy of church polity, 15 Liberty, religious, dangers to, 15 exists only in a free church, 24, 25 Licensing ministers, custom of, 391 Likeness between Baptist churches, 140 Limits of church government, 72 Litigation between Baptists unscrip- tural, 511 Local church, all ecclesiastical power lodged in, 16, 62 limited to as many as can assem- ble to hear the gospel, 291 the apostles wrote to them as such, 261 Lord's Supper and Baptism are divine institutions, 54 Love for our church, 231 office work of, in church polity, 151 Lycurgus left unwritten laws, 57 MACHINERY of church polity, 16 Maintenance of pastors, 245 Magna Charter of Baptist churches, 36 Majority rule, when first operative, 61 rights inherent in, 259 Majority of a church the ruling authority, 246 all rightfdl authority, is exercised by, 180 may be resisted, 180 right to rule, is limited by the law of the gospel, 234 Making a new church, 31 Man, not a creator of church polity, 94 should not in all things follow his own liberty, 351 Manners, slight corruption of no cause of schisms, 454, 456 Matthias, called to fill Judas' place, 24 how elected, 232 Members, church, sometimes a law unto themselves, 125 free from man-made law, 129 above and before the churches, 79 Meetings, extra-ecclesiastical, 180 Messengers, church, duties of, 179, 182 Methodists have copied their polity from the Catholics, 33 Ministry, their call, ordination, powers and duties, 390 no ruling power in themselves, 395, 399, 406 — their relation to church polity, 234 — God calls, but the church or- dains, 424 — do not exist by divine right alone, 87, 235 — not their province to organize churches, 262 — their right of judgment, 355 — what they obligate themselves to preach, 370, 373 — - as ordaining presbyters, 387 — all churches have a property in, 392 — two kinds of, 391 — have a ministerial and not a magisterial power, 394, 396 — should not preach politics, 241 — how made under the law of the gospel, 441, 444 Ministerial power, true source of, 449 Minority, importance of, in church pol- ity, 233 INDEX. 555 Minority, their duty to yield in cliurch polity, 455 Minorities, difficulty in disciplining * large, 457, 471 Moral obligation of councils, 274 Moses, explicit in his laws, 95 Multiplicity of laws, evils of, 124 NAMELESS churches, 43 National church under the Jews, 300 Necessary doctrine to be believed, 841 Necessity of a belief in religion, 347 Neutrality, duty of churches to observe, 464 New articles of faith should not be mul- tiplied, 347 Nice, council of, what it established, 185 Noetians, revolt of, from priestly power, 338 No lord paramount in church polity, 434 OBEDIENCE to secular law enjoined, 247 Office, ministerial, a trust, 235 Oneness of will, faith and practice, 52, 213 Opinions, marks of trustworthy, ] 67 concensus of, the guide of the churches, 178 of ministers, their influence upon the young, 167 formed often upon authority of others, 164 prevalent, not always sound, 174 not church law, 158 pass into church law by voting. 232 conflict of, 480 Oral teaching in early churches pre- vailed, 45, 56 Organic union, none among the early churches, 84 unit, every church is an, 21 Organized missionary work, 246 Organization of churches, two laws gov- erning, 67 Origin of the churches, 49 Orthodoxy, the true basis of Christian union, 363 in what it consists, 368 PAPAL church government, 513 see, Peter never filled the, 439 Parties, none in Baptist church polity, 478 Pastors, chosen agents of the churches, 222 and people, relation between. sacred, 244 law of compensation of, 244 Pastorate, changes in, 243 jumpers, 244 Paul, the prince of apostles, 427 had no power to coerce his brethren, 271 Peace should not be cultivated at the expense of the truth, 354 should subsist between the churches, 474 Pedo-baptist polity built up by church legislation, 120 writings on church polity, 12 Peter, his confession as to Christ, 421, 422 his acts compared with those of the pope of to-day, 523 Pillar and ground of the truth, 172 Polity, church, a gradual growth, 17 and religion should not be blended in church law, 127 church, a rich inheritance, 158 Political preachers, 240 Pontifical councils, 105, 185 Popedom, not conferred upon Peter, 428 Popular forms of church polity, no clash in, 136 Power ecclesiastical, where it resides, 60 limited to moral ends, 248 three elements of, in church pol- ity, 107_ _ ^ no division of, in church polity. 107 its tendency to escape from the many to the few, 133 — exercised by councils, 272 556 INDEX. Power, ministerial cannot be transmit- ted, 424 Post-apostolic polities, how formed, 214 Preaching, three things involved in, 281 Precedents, church, considered, 194 have no binding authority, 196, 199 make no church law, 202 Presbytery, ordaining, 387 Present, the, must be explained by the past, 219 Press the religious, 383 Priest-craft, obstruction to Christian unity, 363 Priestly authority, revolts from, 338 government has no counterpart in the Scripture, 447 Primitive beginning of church polity, 143 Private opinion, contrary to the stand- ards, not allowed, 250 Property rights of a divided church, 484 in a church is a trust in law, 49 Protests, members may make, in churches, 66 Protestantism, but reformed popery, 305 Publishing houses, Baptist, utility of, 386 Pulpit, non-affiliation, the common law of the churches, 237 Purity of doctrine, in keeping of the de- nomination, 328 READY-MADE creeds, obscurities in, 344 church polity, already provided, 170 Eeason, when it fails the law fails, 299 Eeception of members, rule as to, 246 Eeconciliation, councils of, 406 Reformation, church government is not a, 14 Religious liberty, duty of Baptists to maintain, 25, 184 press should guard the truth, 383 Religion and church polity, blended, 191 and law have their appointment from God, 488 Representatives, church can have no, 93 Resolutions of censure, reprehensible, 813 Revolt from priestly authority, 338 Ritualistic ceremonies. Baptists free from, 127 Rules, importance of, 51 how formulated, 221 ■ Bible ftirnishes but few, 108, 120 were unwritten in the begin- ning, 109 unwritten lie dormant until needed, 118 Ruler, Peter performed not the office of a, 527 Ruling elders, what is meant by, 399, 400, 405 ministry, ambition of, 435 a CHISM, definition of, 454, 471, 493 ^ Schismatics, who are, 456, 463 Schools of divinity, errors are apt to spring up in, 374 denominational, should be under Baptist control, 336, 382 Scriptures, how they became church law, 70, 184 interpreted by the local church, 172 canon of, how determined, 186 basis of all law, 117 Sign of true Bible interpretation, 173 Silent changes, to be dreaded in church polity, 194 Similarity, three points of, between Bap- tist and the primitive churches, 11 1 Sister churches should not intermeddle with one another, 486 Societies, Baptist, extra ecclesiastical bodies, 237 source of alarm, 238 Sovereignty, church, cannot be divided, 26, 35, 107, 141, 216, 229 Standard of authority should be erected in church polity, 189 Stability, characteristic of Baptist church polity, 139 Standing councils. Baptists have no, 81 State and church, union of, 304 Strict discipline, day of, passing away, 468 Succession, apostolic, views upon, 236, 262,413, 641 II5n>EX. 557 Succession, church, the historian must prove, 141 of ecclesiastical principles and doctrines, never ceasing, 35, 140, 365 TAXATION, cannot be imposed for religious purposes, 248 Temporal dominion, struggle for by Catholics, 515 Terra Firma of church polity, 51 Text-book writers, their share in church polity, 149 opinions of, deferred to, 171 should be consulted, 43, 188 Things necessary to be believed, 840 Titus, Paul's direction to, concerning ordaining elders, 408, 411 Tradition, has no place in church law, 204 sample of, given, 205 how known to be true, 206 not the same as custom, 210 is born of ignorance, 215 Traditional power of authority, 213 teaching of Christ, 208 Trustees, of church property, have no estate in same, 485 courts will raise up, to hold church property, 489 Trustworthy authority, in the interpre- tation of the Scriptures, 164 importance of, in church polity. 192 true signs of, 169 Truth, the only basis of Christian unity, 362 the church, the ground and pil- lar of, 89 mixed with error, no less repre- hensible, 379 True churches, patterns of, never vary, 13 polity of, not open to choice, 13 UGLY side of Baptist church polity, 481 Ulpian, his definition of jurisprudence, 105 Uniformity and variety, in church laws, 27 Unity, Christian, views upon, 362 human creeds an obstruction to, 343 Union, church, must be voluntary, 72 associational, necessary to the well being of the churches, 310 Uniformity of doctrine, necessity of, 360 Universal church, not the seat of eccle- siastical power, 278 evils of a government by the, 423 false glare of, 327 no example of, in Scriptures, 281 the link that unites church and state, 19 not a creation of Christ, 520 Usages, how transmitted into laws, 147 best interpreters of the Scrip- tures, 172 Usurpation cannot make a minister, 409, 440, 443. Unwritten church law, the heritage of Baptists alone, 126 VANITY of creed making, 343 Variation, hurtful and hateful in church polity, 219. Vote, every member should, 232 Voting, office work of, in church polity, 232 WEAKNESS of associational govern- ment, 328 Well ordered churches, usefulness of, 223 Withdrawal, not allowable in church government, 18 when permissible at all, 467 Without a model there can be no re- formation, 99 Women should not preach the gospel, 242 their worth to the churches, 242 Written laws, the dangers of, in church polity, 121 Christ might have established, if necessary, 122 Writings of the apostles, show no traces of the episcopacy, 432