it unconditionally, as a free gift to them, or he could do it in the customary way, which was on condition of a money payment ("alms") by some one willing thus to buy the indulgence for them. For this unseen world, with its awful pains and penalties, let it be remembered, was also included in the territory and under the dominion of the pope. Who would not pay a sum of money to be saved from going there, or, if he had the heart of a human being, to save a friend who was already there and pleading for deliverance?

Indulgences were advertised or were hawked about in the streets and the country places. So much money for so much Divine remission of punishment for sin, either here or hereafter, and either for one's self or for one's friends. The sale of them was acknowledged by the Council of Trent to have been attended with grave abuses-as, for example, in the case of the monk Tetzel soliciting funds under authority of Leo X. for the completion of St. Peter's Cathedral. But it was the abuse of an abuse, of the fearful fundamental abuse of offering the grace of God as an article of merchandise, the barest account of which one's hand hesitates, as if it were quoting blasphemy, to write down.

Here flew the electric spark that kindled into flame the Lutheran Reformation.

'Lea, "Confession and Indulgences," Vol. III., pp. 351-354

"The Council of Trent, in its "Decree Concerning Indulgences," giving no definition of indulgences and deciding none of the vexed questions concerning them, "condemns with anathema those who either assert that they are useless, or who deny that there is in the Church the power of granting them," and desires that in granting them “moderation be observed," and that "the abuses that have crept therein and by occasion of which the honorable name of Indulgences is blasphemed by heretics, be amended and corrected."

4

IV.

SOCIAL DEPENDENCE: DISCIPLINE, ORGANIZED

FELLOWSHIP.

THERE was another disciplinary procedure which in certain times and places was no less familiar than fearsome. It was a procedure in which Church and State were united in inflicting punishment for offenses against religion. Such offenses were accounted crimes against the State, and dealt with accordingly. Condemned by the Church, men were fined or whipped or imprisoned or put to death for them. Especially to be noted is the law of those States which made burning alive the punishment of heretics.

This kind of discipline may be traced back to the very beginning of the alliance between Church and State. Constantine the Great announced a decree of banishment against those who refused to sign the Nicene creed, and of death against readers of the works of Arius. His successors on the imperial throne followed a similar rule of action. In our modern age also the infliction of various corporal pains and penalties for errors in religion used to be almost universally accepted as a righteous law of the Christian State. It was found in the statute books of even Protestant peoples. Nor did it appear there as a mere dead let

ter.

Both in the New World and in the Old it was frequently and severely executed. The story of our American colonies furnishes some lamentable examples.

Not only in statute books of the Christian State, but also in the beliefs of the very best Christians, it lingered. In approval of this law such men as the saintly Bernard of Clairvaux, the spiritually charming Fénelon, and the mild, scholarly Melancthon, it must be admitted, kept company with each other and as well with the Council of Constance and the Grand Monarch of France. For the idea of religious liberty, now so familiar-and, shall we say, so world-wide in its prevalence?-had to fight its way slow

ly, and at much cost of mental anguish and of precious blood, to enthronement in men's minds. So the ecclesiastical court of the sixteenth century, for example, not only excommunicated the condemned heretic, but also delivered him into the hands of the magistrate to be burned at the stake.

Shall we ask for the idea of so unfitting a form of punishment-the motives that disposed even good men to approve it? One motive, no doubt, was to prevent the destruction of souls by the man who with his persistent heresies would destroy them, and to terrorize any others who might be disposed to follow in his steps. Another motive was to effect and preserve, in both Church and State, an unbroken outward unity.

I. DISCIPLINE EMPHASIZED IN PROTESTANT REFORMATION, AND WHY.

But the Churches of the Reformation recognized the exercise of discipline, for the most part, in its true value and significance.' In some Protestant confessions of faith it is even given, together with the administration of sacraments, as one of the three marks of the true Church. Nor is this surprising when it is remembered that the Reformation was, in spirit and aim, a reformation of morals no less truly than of religious rites and doctrines. It was against the demoralizing influence of indulgences that Luther's first heroic protest was made. And in the Roman Catholic revival that followed the reformatory movement it was not the rites or the doctrines of the Roman Church, but its discipline, that was amended.

"As the saving doctrine of Christ is the soul of the Church, so does discipline form the ligaments which connect the members together to keep each in its place. Whoever, therefore, either desires the abolition of all discipline, or obstructs its restoration, whether they act from design or inadvertency, they certainly promote the entire dissolution of the Church." (Calvin, "Institutes," Bk. IV., c. xii., Sec. 1. Cf. "Westminster Confession of Faith.")

2"The marks by which the true Church is known are these: If the pure doctrine of the gospel is preached therein; if she maintains the pure administration of the sacraments as instituted by Christ; if church discipline is exercised in the punishing of sin." ("The Belgic Confession (1561)," Art. XXIX. See also the Scotch "Confession of Faith (1560)," Art. XVIII.)

2. ILLUSTRATION FOUND IN CALVINIAN DISCIPLINE, IN

INDEPENDENCY, AND IN METHODISM.

Let us take the disciplinary procedure of John Calvin, set forth in the "Institutes" and embodied, though imperfectly, in his own ecclesiastic administration, as fairly representing that of Protestantism in general. Here the course of discipline consists in, first, private admonition (unless the sin be public and notorious) by any brother Christian, but especially by the pastor and the presbyters; next, if necessary, a second admonition, in the presenee of witnesses; then, if these prove unavailing, a summons before the presbyters, who constitute the tribunal of the Church, for more severe admonition; and, finally, if the offender, refusing to obey the church, persist in his wrongdoing, exclusion from membership. In the case of notorious crimes recourse must be had at once to exclusion. In it all the severity of the church should be tempered with clemency; and the excommunicated member must not be given up as hopelessly lost, but won back, if possible, to the communion of Christ and his people.*

But in the application of these scriptural principles and methods in the Genevan Church, Calvin met with serious difficulty. On the whole, his undertaking failed; and one explanation, at least, of its failure may be found in that cause of demoralization which we have just now had occasion to notice-in the alliance of Church and State. The same cause has also been operative in the same direction in the various national Protestant Churches of Europe-Lutheran, Reformed, and Anglican-even unto this day. Must not such a failure be inevitable, where the Christian idea of the Church as the communion of saints is exchanged for the political idea of the body politic as a church?

It was for the purpose of securing a godly discipline, which seemed impossible then, as it seems now, in the Anglican Church,

'It will be seen that the course prescribed by our Lord for the individual Christian who has been wronged by his brother, is here adopted as the course of administration of discipline by the church. Cf. "Discipline of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (1906),” p. 130.

"Institutes," Bk. IV., c. xii., 8.

arose.

that Separatism, or, as it was afterwards called, Independency, Hence Independency would have church members walk together for mutual edification, and the church, or congregation, as a whole, to call wrongdoers to account under the method prescribed by Christ for the offended and the offending brother.'

Methodism, which, like Independency, had its origin in the English Establishment, offers a peculiar example of church discipline in connection with Christian fellowship. It began as, in more than the ordinary sense, a social religious institute. Its membership, gathered in large measure from the illiterate and neglected classes of the people, and as individuals rather than as families, found a congenial church-home in the "societies." Having no regular and complete ministerial service, they were largely dependent on one another for spiritual upbuilding. In these circumstances the class meeting arose, not through design or foresight, but incidentally, as the providential supply for a manifest need. All members of a society must be enrolled as members of some class, which held weekly meetings for the interchange of religious experiences and to receive the counsels of the leader. Fellowship was organized.*

"The censures so appointed by Christ are admonition and excommunication; and whereas some offenses are or may be known only to some, it is appointed by Christ that those to whom they are so known do first admonish the offender in private (in public offenses where they sin, before all), and in case of non-amendment upon private admonition, the offense being related to the church, and the offender not manifesting his repentance, he is to be duly admonished in the name of Christ by the whole Church; and if this censure avail not for his repentance, then he is to be cast out by excommunication, with the consent of the Church." ("The Savoy Declaration (1658) of Church Order," Art. XIX.)

"Wesley wrote concerning the class meeting, soon after its origination in his societies: "It can scarcely be conceived what advantages have been reaped by this little prudential regulation. Many now experienced that Christian fellowship of which they had not so much as an idea before. They began to bear one another's burdens, and naturally to care for each other's welfare. And as they had daily a more intimate acquaintance, so they had a more endeared affection for each other. Upon reflection, I could not but observe, this is the very thing which was from the beginning of Christianity." (Tyerman, "Life of Wesley," Vol. I., p. 379.)