II. THE CONCILIAR IDEA. MEN believe in government by others as truly as in self-government. Claiming freedom, they trust themselves freely to authority. Both faiths are instinctive and universal, representing innate needs of the soul. Both are exemplified in the feeling of the child toward the parent-the home their birthplace and chief training school. Both are found in all conditions of life, in all positions whether public or private, in all states of society, under every form of civil administration. If ever men fought for selfgovernment, it was the Spartans who died at Thermopyla; yet the monument above their dust bore the inscription: "O stranger, tell it at Lacedæmon that we lie here in obedience to her laws.” If ever a woman knew the power of self-command, it was Susannah Wesley; yet when, in her husband's absence, she was holding religious meetings which he had been led, as rector of the parish, to disapprove of, she wrote to him not to desire but to command her to desist―"send me your positive command." And it is certain that the followers of her most illustrious son, in their voluntary obedience to him, keeping the rigid rules of the United Society, offered a thousand fold illustration of the same principle. With respect to the Church as well as the State, both these principles of government by others and self-governing freedom are sanctioned in the New Testament. Concerning the State it is said, "Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers;' concerning the Church it is said: "Obey them that have the rule over you, and submit to them." On the other hand, it is taught in the New Testament that men shall act for themselves in freedom, according to their own judgment and conscience, even though contrary to civil or ecclesiastical law: "They will deliver you up to councils, and in their synagogues they will scourge 991 you; yea, and before governors and kings shall ye be brought for my sake;" "Let no man therefore judge you in meat, or in drink, or in respect of a feast day or a new moon or a sabbath day." Moreover, it is the teaching of the New Testament that the authority of the rulers whom the people must obey and submit to is intrusted to them by the Supreme Ruler. And it is only when these "ministers of God," in Church or State, so abuse their trust as to enforce enactments in violation of his declared will, that men, acting in freedom, may rightfully disobey them. Such disobedience, therefore, is itself under law. It is obedience to the law of God: "We must obey God rather than men;" "Not being without law to God, but under law to Christ." If a man should "die unto the law"-unto any law, civil or ecclesiastical— it must be that he may "live unto God." Now as regards these ultimate principles of freedom and authority, all reasonable men agree. It is in the adjustment of them either to other that difficulties start up. How much freedom, or self-government, and how much authority, or government by others, in any particular case-that is the problem. None but an anarchist would approve the sad fanatics at the rise of the Lutheran Reformation, whose claim Calvin honors with a refutation, and assert that obedience to any civil magistrate is "incompatible with the perfection of that obedience accompanying the gospel of Christ." But, on the other hand, few will be found in intellectual sympathy with the attitude described by John Henry Newman when he says: "I loved to act as feeling myself in my bishop's sight as if it were the sight of God." These are the extremes-lawlessness and blind subservience. But always to find the golden mean, in the present state of human faculties and temperaments, is clearly impossible. In the Church, while Congregationalism stands for the largest possible freedom, Presbyterianism lays a heavy stress upon law. 'Matt. x. 17, 18. 'Gal. ii. 19. 2Col. ii. 16. 'I Cor. ix. 21. "Apologia" (1897), p. 50. Congregationalism commits the whole government of the congregation into the hands of the people; Presbyterianism, into the hands of a select body of men holding a lifetime office. Congregationalism will have only churches associated in a sisterhood to which not a feather's weight of authority is intrusted; Presbyterianism organizes many separate churches into one united Church, placing them all under a common and graded presbyteral control. I. THE CALVINIAN POLITY. Waiving for the present the question of its apostolic origin, let us look at this system of government as it was set forth by the great Genevan theologian and reformer.1 Calvin was no Independent. He was far more a believer in law than in liberty. Discipline and restraint were to his mind very sacred words. "If he had lived in the Middle Ages," says Dr. Philip Schaff, "he might have been a Hildebrand or an Innocent III." Perhaps so. Nevertheless, the John Calvin of the sixteenth century was no prelatist. Himself as to political opinion an aristocrat and as to ecclesiastical rank only a layman, he chose for the Church a middle way equally removed from prelacy and from Independency. He would make church rulers of chosen laymen side by side with ministers. While magnifying authority, he would have the people represented, at least to some extent, in the seat of authority. But no autonomous congregations: the Church must be one. And Calvin's gifts were constructive-those of a theologic and ecclesiastic upbuilder. In the matter of government, Luther was more successful in the destructive; Calvin, in the constructive. Luther with his fiery energy agitated, Calvin with his instinct of order crystallized. So, in opposition to the Roman hierarchy, there issued from his hand a strong, compact, and reasonable form of ecclesiastic administration, which claimed to rest on the foundation of the Hebrew Lawgiver and the Apostles, and was 'Compare pp. 224-227. not long in proving its adaptiveness and efficiency throughout a great breadth of Christendom. Shall we sketch the Calvinian polity as it is presented in the "Institutes of the Christian Religion?" The government of the Church is of Divine ordering,' absolutely necessary, and entirely distinct from civil polity; the ordinary or permanent officers of the Church are four-namely, the Pastor, the Teacher (for example, Hermas or Justin Martyr or a modern professor of theology), the Lay-elder, and the Deacon. These officers should be elected at a meeting held under the presidency of the Pastor; they should be ordained by one or more Pastors, with the laying on of hands; the judicatory of a church, to which its discipline is committed, should consist of the Pastor and Layelders; the civil government must directly promote the interests of religion and punish offenses against it." Under these guiding principles Calvin wrought out in detail the organization of reformed Christianity in Geneva. There were two governing bodies: (1) The Venerable Company, which consisted of ministers and theological professors only, and had charge of purely ecclesiastical matters-such, for example, as the preparation of candidates for the ministry, and their ordination to office; (2) The Consistory, or Presbytery, made up of ministers and lay elders, whose function was the administration of discipline. This court could inflict only ecclesiastic penalties. "We must now treat of the order which it has been the Lord's will to appoint for the Church." (Institutes, IV., iii. 1.) "For neither the light and heat of the sun, nor any meat and drink, are so necessary to the nourishment and sustenance of the present life, as the apostolical and pastoral office is to the preservation of the Church in the world." (Ibid., IV., iii. 2.) Ibid., IV., xi. I. "A teacher or doctor is of most excellent use in schools and universities; as of old in the schools of the prophets and at Jerusalem, where Gamaliel and others taught as doctors." ("Form of Presbyterian Church Government.") "Institutes, IV., iii. 9. "Ibid., IV., xi. 6. Ibid., IV., iii. 15. "Ibid., IV., iii. 16. Ibid., IV., xx. 9. But it could deliver offenders into the hands of the Council, which was a civil court for the infliction of civil penalties. Both Council and Consistory were inquisitorial tribunals. It was a part of their business, by house-to-house visitations and otherwise, to search closely into the moral and religious life of the people, and bring them to punishment for delinquencies. But the extreme rigor of their discipline brought the whole system into discredit and defeated its object. As to the part of the people in the government of the Genevan Church, it was very small. They were called upon to confirm the election of the ministerial members of the Venerable Company and the Consistory; that was all. Practically the government seems to have been that of an oligarchy. In the Institutes, as just said, Calvin advocates for the Church a spiritual polity "entirely distinct from the civil polity." But as a matter of fact the two polities were not kept distinct in the church as it was organized in Geneva. For the pastors were supported at the public expense, and the city magistrates must elect (out of their own number) the lay elders of the Consistory, and must confirm all nominations to pastoral charges. The State was to be a Christian State, and as such must be incorporated with the Church, giving it governmental and financial support, and including all citizens in the church membership. At the same time the Church must maintain its own supremacy in matters of doctrine and morals, and make authoritative use of the State to enforce discipline. This was about the nature of the alliance between these two divine institutions in Geneva. It was more of the Old Testament than of the New, more Mosaic than apostolic.' It called for civil punishments-imprisonment, whipping, "It does not follow that because a Jewish king, as God's viceroy, was bound to punish idolatry, a Christian government has a right to suppress by force what it conceives to be religious error. When it can be shown that God has delivered to any Christian state a law prescribing the manner in which he is to be worshiped, and made that law part of the civil constitution of the state, appointing the magistrate his deputy to execute its provisions, the argument from Jewish polity may stand; but not until then." (Litton, "The Church of Christ," p. 92, n.) |