It is commonly observed, that a sacerdotal caste has three invariable characteristics. It assumes a lofty dominion over the minds as well as the bodies of men, it imposes a very heavy yoke upon both, it is opposed to every thing humane and expansive.
How much warrant there is for these accusations, everyone who reads history must perceive. And assuredly these evil tendencies have not been confined to one set of circumstances or one form of religion; they have manifested themselves in Judea and Christendom as well as in Hindostan. They may therefore be fairly considered as belonging to human nature, and as being especially likely to assail anyone who anywhere and under any conditions, assumes the office of a religious guide and authority.
That this institution has not been merely fruitful of evil, the impartial inquirer, especially in the most modern times, is ready to acknowledge. But he rightly observes, that we must not restrict the advantages it has produced to any particular system. Much has been done for civilisation by Memphis, and Delphi, and by the Brahmins of the East. And it remains, he says, to be proved, that the idea of the priesthood does not involve tyranny and narrowness, though at certain periods the tyranny may have been useful, the narrowness common to all classes.
Undoubtedly this is the real question. If we should find upon inquiry that the fundamental principles of a sacerdotal caste, amidst all its outward varieties, are those we have just set down, it ought to be got rid of as soon as possible; and it will disappear as soon as truth and honesty have gained the victory, which we at least are bound to believe they will ultimately gain, over fraud and falsehood. If on the other hand it should be found that an idea of the priesthood, curiously and exactly opposite to that which presumes dominion, restraint upon the human spirit, confinement of men within certain districts and habits of thought, to be its objects, is embodied in the forms and language of the Christian Church, we may perhaps ask ourselves whether this may not be the idea after which men in all ages and in all religions have been feeling; whether the good which is attributed to them have not been the consequence of their attaining to some apprehension of it, the evil they have done, the consequence of their losing sight of it or contradicting it; whether therefore the triumph of truth over falsehood may not be exhibited in the full accomplishment of this idea, not in the destruction of the institution which has witnessed for it and preserved it.
Now these facts are indisputable, 1. The whole sacerdotal caste in Christendom has the name of ministers or servants. From the Bishop of Rome down to the founder of the last new sect in the United States of America, everyone who deals with the Gospel at all, or pretends in any sense to have a Divine commission, assumes this name as the description of his office. 2. The most remarkable power which these ministers have claimed, and that on account of which the greatest homage has been paid to them, is the power of absolving or setting free. This claim has in a manner been universal. Luther believed that he was to absolve as much as Tetzel. Every person who says that the sole office of a minister is to preach the Gospel, says so because he believes this is the way to absolve. There are most serious differences about the nature of the power and the mode in which it is to be exercised, none at all about the existence of it, and about its connexion in some way or other with the Christian ministry. 3. The third fact is this. In Christian Europe, ever since it became Christian, the most conspicuous order of ministers has been one which assumed to itself a universal character. The overseers or Bishops of the Christian Church have felt themselves to be emphatically the bonds of communication between different parts of the earth. The jurisdiction of each has been confined within a certain district; but, by the very nature of their office, they have held fellowship, and been obliged to hold fellowship, with those who lived in other districts, who spoke different languages, who were bound together by different notions and customs. Now though such an order may be very far more dangerous, and may have been felt by the rulers of particular countries to be far more dangerous than that kind of priesthood which confines itself within a particular region, yet it is evidently of an entirely different kind. Whatever this institution may have effected, it seems to aim at establishing a more extended commerce and fellowship among men. Looking at it superficially, one would say that this ecclesiastical order imported something more comprehensive, more diffusive, than any civil order which one can think of, unless it should be some one which attempts universal conquest, and destroys its character as an order by the attempt. And yet this episcopacy has not been merely an accidental addition to, or overgrowth upon other forms of priesthood. In those countries where it is recognized, it has been the root of all other forms, and has been supposed to contain them within it. It has been believed, as a necessary consequence of the importance attached to the Eucharist, that an order of men must exist in the Christian Church corresponding to the priests of the old dispensation, with the difference that the sacrifice in the one case was anticipatory, in the other commemorative. This office has been associated with that absolving power of which I spoke just now. Yet it has been always supposed to be included in that of the Bishop; and where it is assigned to a distinct class of persons, that class receives its authority from him. In like manner there has been acknowledged in the Church an order whose functions are evidently distinct from either of these; whose main object is to provide for the bodily wants of men, or only to announce to them spiritual truths. Yet even this office has been understood to be only a delegation of certain powers inhering in the Bishop, which he has not leisure to discharge, and no person can undertake it, in the countries which recognize episcopacy, without such a delegation. So that an office implying an attention so very remote from that which the word priest ordinarily suggests to us, would seem to have been the characteristic one in the Christian Church, that which includes all others, and out of which they arise.
But I have used the phrase, “the countries in which episcopacy is recognized.” It is important, that we should consider what these countries are, lest we should be drawing an inference respecting the nature of this institution which facts do not warrant. Let, then, the reader call to mind, first of all, the circumstances of the Eastern Church for the last fifteen or sixteen hundred years. Let him think of it at the time when Constantinople was in its glory, of the different sects which broke from it, of the horrible contentions which took place between those sects and their common mother. Let him remember the degradation which every part of this Church, and every one of these sects, has suffered from the Ottoman power, and let him then reflect that in whatever countries they may have dwelt, to whatever circumstances of good or evil fortune they may have been exposed, whatever strifes may have gone on amongst them, this institution has been preserved by them all. Let him next consider the different circumstances under which Christianity was preached and adopted in the different nations of the West, the different influences to which it has been subjected, the different characters of the different races which compose it; and let him then remember that all these nations, under all these influences, amidst all their conflicts with the eastern part of Christendom, did, without one clearly established exception, preserve this institution till the sixteenth century. Let him consider the circumstances of the Reformation leading to the separation of the nations, to a violent conflict with the old system of Europe, to an excessive magnifying of individual faith, and then reflect that this universal institution was preserved in all the Latin nations—among the Teutonic nations, in England, in Denmark, and in Sweden; that it was rejected, and that not without great reluctance, in certain parts of Germany, in Holland, in Switzerland, and in Scotland; that in each of these countries some witness of its existence has been preserved; that in at least one of them there are those who think that it is more necessary now than in any past time. Let it be remembered, further, that this institution has passed over to the continent of America; that it has established itself in a set of colonies founded by Puritans and Quakers; that it grew up after the influence of England had ceased in those colonies; that without the least state patronage it is making itself an instrument for diffusing the Gospel from those colonies to many parts of the world. These are the pretensions which Episcopacy makes to the character of a Catholic institution.
It is implied in what I have said, that this institution has a character of permanence as well as of universality. It is implied also that this permanence is something different from the permanence of a custom which has first derived its significance from some local accident, and then has perpetuated itself by the care of some body especially created for its conservation. For we have seen this institution maintaining itself amidst the oppositions and contradictions of bodies differing most vehemently with each other; we have seen it reappearing when all local habits and customs were adverse to it. How then has it been preserved or seemed to be preserved? It has been preserved by an act of consecration performed through the agency of three existing Bishops; signifying, according to the faith of all the nations and ages which have retained it, that the person newly entering upon the function receives the same kind of authority and the same kind of gifts as those who were first endowed with it.
It must be quite evident to the reader, that the facts which we have now been considering touch the very heart of the questions which I have been discussing in this work. These questions have been, Is there any meaning in the words Kingdom of Christ? Do the words mean what they seem to mean? Are there any facts in the history of the world which seem to shew that they denote that which is really and actually existing? Now we have found a series of facts, all, it seemed to us, bearing to the same point, all proving the existence of a universal and spiritual society; a society maintaining its existence amidst the greatest perplexities and contradictions; a society of which all the conditions are inexplicable unless we suppose it to be connected with, and upheld by, an unseen power. But as all these signs which we have considered hitherto exist for the sake of men, so also they imply the agency of men. And upon the character of this agency must depend the whole character of the kingdom itself. It may be something else, but it is not a commonwealth, not a kingdom according to any admitted sense of the word, if it have not certain magistrates or officers. Practically these exist even in those societies which boast most of their self-government; they have officers, whatever be the tenure of their office. And, therefore, we must either give up all that we have previously maintained as untenable, or we must steadily consider this question—What kind of officers would be consistent with the character of such a kingdom as those other signs speak of? It would seem clear that as all these signs pointed to an invisible presence, and were intended to admit men into it, these officers must be constituted with a view to the same end. They must be intended to bring before men the fact that they are subject to an invisible and universal Ruler.
And if so, it would seem also necessary that they should exhibit Him to men in that character and in those offices which He actually came to perform. If He came not to be ministered unto but to minister, if His exercise of power was a ministry, theirs must be so too. They can look upon themselves in no other light than as ministers; they cannot suppose their power diminished by this acknowledgment; they cannot suppose that their power will be real, if not exercised with a continual recollection of it. If one chief part of His work in the world was to absolve men from past evil, from the power of present evil, from the danger of future evil; and if there be a continual necessity for all men who come into the world, that they should have this absolution, and if He exercise His powers or make Himself manifest in any way through men, one must suppose that they would be called especially to represent Him in this office of Absolver. If His greatest purpose was to bind men together in one family, if the office on which He entered when He ascended on high, was that of Head and overseer of this family; if all His other acts and services to men are implied and presupposed in this, one must conceive the highest office of His servants would be to exhibit Him in this character, and so to make it known that His kingdom was a real kingdom, and one that ruleth over all. If, finally, Jesus himself when upon earth received a formal and outward designation to the office which He had undertaken, that it might be signified to men on what terms He held it—not as a separate independent Being, but as one with the Father, and honouring Him in all His words and acts—it would seem reasonable to expect that an equally formal and visible designation would bear witness to men, that those offices which are fulfilled for their sakes, by creatures of their own flesh and blood, are not held in virtue of any qualities or merits in those creatures, but are held from Christ and under Christ by persons who can exhibit His character truly only just so far as they perform their work faithfully.
But is there anything in the language of the New Testament which accords with these anticipations and explains these facts? One would think that this language, like that which refers to the institution of Baptism, must lie on the very surface of the record, and yet must connect itself with all its deepest announcements; otherwise it can be no authority for institutions which pretend to embody the whole character of the new dispensation. A few casual hints could never suffice as the warrant for fallible men to suppose that they were meant to be the ministers of Christ and to present Him before men. Still less could such hints be an excuse for sinful men who should take upon them, in God’s name, to absolve their brethren. Least of all could they justify the existence of an order, which assumes such a singular position, and claims such high functions as the Episcopal. The mere appearance of such an office, even in the time immediately following our Lord’s departure from the world, ought not, I think, to be looked upon as a sufficient reason for its claiming to be an estate of His kingdom, if He did not expressly and formally institute it Himself.
We turn, then, to the Gospels for the purpose of inquiring whether they offer any guidance upon the subject; and we are immediately encountered by the history of the selection and appointment of a set of men who were emphatically distinct from all classes which had existed in the Jewish polity. They are, indeed, carefully connected with that polity; their number shews that they were meant to remind the Jews of the tribes into which their nation had been distributed. They were all Jews, and their first commission was strictly confined to the house of Israel. But these circumstances only make the peculiarity of their office more remarkable. The most evident indications were given to them, even from the first, even at the time when they were least capable of understanding the nature of their service, that it was meant to transcend national limitations. At the same time, even while they were falling into the greatest confusions respecting the place which they were to occupy in the world, even while they had need to be reminded continually that the kings of the Gentiles exercised dominion over them, but that it was not so to be in the Church; they were still assured, in the strongest language, that they were to perform a wonderful work, and to be endued with wonderful powers; that he who received them would receive their Master; that they were sent forth by Him, even as He was sent forth by the Father.
Everyone must perceive that these intimations are not scattered carelessly through the Gospels, that they form a part of their very substance and tissue. It was in teaching the disciples that those who became as little children were greatest in the kingdom of heaven, that their rule was to be a service, it was in the acts which accompanied these teachings, that our Lord’s own life and image are most distinctly brought before us. Evidently He never separates the thought of training them in their office from that of performing His own. As evidently He is training them to an office; He is not teaching them to be great saints, to keep up a high tone of personal holiness as if that were the end of their lives. But He is teaching them that they have a work to do even as He has; that He is straitened till He can accomplish His; that they must be straitened till they can accomplish theirs; and that in trying to accomplish it, they will most find that they are lights of the world, and that they must derive their light continually from Him. So that if we called the four Gospels ‘The Institution of a Christian Ministry,’ we might not go very far wrong, or lose sight of many of their essential qualities. Above all, one would not lose sight of the different crises in our Lord’s life, and of their connexion with different discoveries of grace and truth to man. Before the resurrection there was merely the general commission, “Go and preach the Kingdom of God. Heal the sick. Cast out devils. Freely ye have received, freely give.” Far deeper views of their office were brought out in those conversations which our Lord had with them the night before His Passion; views all connecting themselves with the awful facts of which they were to be witnesses, and with the mysterious service which they had been performing. But it was not till our Lord came back from the grave, with the witness and the power of a new life for man, that He breathed upon His disciples and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost. Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained.” It was not till He was just leaving them that the commission was given, “Go ye into all nations,” and the promise, “Lo I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” And it was not till He had ascended on high that the powers for fulfilling this commission were confirmed, that a sign was given of the existence of a union which the distinctions of nations and language could not break, that they were declared to be the pillars of a universal Church.
Now these poor fishermen could not doubt for a moment that these powers belonged to them officially, and not personally; and therefore the chief question to be considered is this: Did they suppose this kingdom was to die with them, or that they were to perpetuate its existence? Were they to perpetuate it in the manner in which our Lord Himself had established it, or in some other manner? Was the change which the new circumstances of the Church necessarily occasioned in the position of those who were to be its ministers, to be a change in the nature of their office and institution, or only a change in their numbers and in the circumstances of their jurisdiction? Supposing the latter to be the case, were those who succeeded to the Apostolic office to reckon that they derived their powers less immediately from Christ, that they were less witnesses of His permanent government, than those who received their first commission from Him while He was dwelling upon earth? If these questions be answered in one way, those nations which have preserved the episcopal institution have a right to believe that they have preserved one of the appointed and indispensable signs of a spiritual and universal society. If they are answered in the other way, it seems difficult to understand how such a universal society can exist at all.
The Quaker
But we must consider the arguments of those who think otherwise. The Quaker tells us at once that we have described a formal and not a spiritual ministry; a ministry of the Old Testament, not of the New. ‘A true minister is consecrated such by an inward call, The voice of the Spirit, not of men, invites him into God’s vineyard. Older and more experienced men may judge whether his vocation be a real one; but they do not give him his appointment; still less can they confer one upon persons not chosen by God. Under the old dispensation there was a succession to the office of priest in a certain family. Such an arrangement belonged to the time; it is done away in Christ. And even under the first covenant there was a race of prophets who simply obeyed the Divine voice, simply spoke and acted as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The (so called) Church of Christ has adopted the obsolete part of the whole system, has rejected the living and spiritual part of it. Lastly, the Christian teacher is fitted for his work by the teaching of the Spirit, not by the preparation of human culture.’ Each of these points deserves a careful consideration.
1. It follows from that doctrine of Baptism, which lies at the threshold of our Churchmanship, that we suppose every Christian infant to be taken under the guardianship and education of God’s Holy Spirit. - In the faith of this truth, the well-instructed parent brings up his child. Whatever of stern discipline he uses to curb its self-will, whatever of tender affections he manifests to call forth in it corresponding affections, hath this end, that the subject of his visible and temporary government may be brought to feel that it is under the government of an unseen Teacher; that the object of his imperfect and wavering love may perceive that it is unceasingly tended and brooded over by a love which is unchangeable and imperishable. Which life-giving truth, when it has dawned upon the mind of the child, will create some blossoms and buds there, upon which the parent will gaze with an anxious but confiding eye. Strange thoughts and impulses before unknown; wonder respecting his own condition; hopes stretching into infinity; a deepening sense of ever-present evil; a brightening view of an ever-present Deliverer: such mingled emotions, as he watches them arising, the foster-father knows assuredly to be indications that his care has not been in vain, and that the boy is learning the secret of his other his royal—parentage. And, gradually he imparts to him the conviction, that not merely his adoption and expected inheritance appertain to another region than this, but that all the dim desires and longings which have pointed to them, have been heavenly inspirations. Joyful and consolatory tidings indeed—yet not precious only for their own sake, but as interpreting other feelings and impulses which are to arise within him hereafter. For now the questions, What is he? or, Whither he is going? are not all that occupy him; but, What relations exist between him and his fellow-men? How is he to act upon them? What is his destined vocation? In pursuing this inquiry, he will remember, first of all, that which he has often been told by his earliest instructors, that just so far as he nourishes all gentle affections within him, and keeps himself from sensual defilement, and seeks the temper of a little child, and thinks on things which are lovely and pure, and maintains a cheerful heart, and does good according to his opportunity, and strives to avoid noisy excitements of the flesh or the spirit, and is not impatient of present perplexity, or greedy of distinctions—so far he will be able, in quiet meditation and prayer, to learn the mind of the Spirit, and to know in what part of His vineyard God has destined him to labour. And then, if the circumstances of his outward position shew him that he is intended to be one of those who minister to the carnal necessities of men, and the apparent end of whose vocation is mercenary, he will be sure that in this station, whether esteemed among men or not, he is to glorify God, and vindicate his calling from every deserved reproach, maintaining a free and noble and heavenly spirit, amidst all temptations to be sordid and secular. Or if a secret impulse of his spirit, not the less to be heeded because outward influences and early education may have co-operated with it, or have created it, should lead him to those pursuits which have their basis in science, and require in him a scientific insight, as well as all diligence in the study of experiments and facts—then, whether it be man’s physical structure, and the secret powers of his life, and the circumstances of his diseases and decay, which most engage his thoughts—or whether it be the civil ordinances, by which our social position is upheld, and our wrongs redressed—or whether he is drawn to look still more comprehensively at our different relations, and to meditate on those mysterious powers of sympathy, or fear, or awe, which are the real bonds of human policy, he will feel that it is a Divine Instructor who is marking him out for a physician, a lawyer, or a statesman; and to the same watchful guidance he must look to direct his intellect while he is preparing for the work, and while he is actually engaged in it to preserve him in the fear of God and in honourable, affectionate thoughts of his fellow-men, that he may not dare to follow any low or selfish impulses, or be ever tempted to think of his brethren as the legitimate victims of quackery, chicanery, or party-spirit. Nor can I so far yield to prejudices and feelings which I respect, and which I would not wish to remove from the mind of any Quaker till I can shew him what I conceive is the truth which they pervert, as not to carry this principle a step farther, and to maintain, that every soldier of really brave and gentle heart has been led to reflect on the preciousness of national life and the duty of upholding it even at the cost of individual life, awful as that is, and has been taught to dedicate his energies to the preservation of this higher life, not by an evil spirit, but by that same Spirit of truth and love, who, when He would lay the foundation of His new kingdom on earth, chose for the first subject and witness of it a Centurion of the Italian band. But, when a young man, studying in all things to approve himself to his great Taskmaster, finds not in himself any of these particular promptings, but rather a large and general desire to be the servant of his race—when a certain stronger sense is given to him than to others of man’s highest destiny, mixed, perhaps, with a less keen perception than in other men would be desirable of those necessities which, though they may be baptized with a heavenly life and adopted into religion, are themselves of the earth, earthy—when spiritual forms, which the majority have need to see reflected in sensible mirrors, rise up before him in their naked substance and majesty—when good and evil present themselves to him, not as means to some result, but as themselves the great ends and results to which all is tending—when the conflict which is going on within himself, leads him to feel his connexion with his kind—when there is imparted to him a lively sense of temptation, and of its being most perilous to those whose objects and vocation are the highest—when he has been endued with a certain habit of measuring acts and events, not by their outward magnitude, but according to their spiritual proportions and effects—when he has been taught to reverence poverty and helplessness—when he has understood that that truth is the highest, not which is the most exclusive, but which is the most universal—when the immediate vision of God, and entire subjection of heart and spirit to His loving will, seem to him the great gifts intended for man, after which everyone for himself and his fellows may aspire: then, surely, if a strong combination of outward circumstances do not oblige him to what perhaps is a still more glorious, though more painful, task of yielding to a wisdom which he adores without understanding, he may conclude that it is to no partial or specific service, but to that one which we emphatically call The Ministry, that the Divine Voice is inviting and commanding him.
Thus far, then, our opinion respecting inward calls seems to accord with that of the Quaker, only that we carry it farther. He considers that there is one inward call, which is needful for a Christian, and another which is needful for the Christian preacher. We contend that every Christian should believe himself called to every work in which he engages; and that except he believe this, the work will be unholy and cheerless, pursued without confidence in God or any expectation of high and worthy fruit. Not that in this I mean to explain away the express call of the minister, as if it meant nothing more than what everyone pleases it to mean; my wish is rather to maintain, that the language, which we use in reference to the highest pursuit, determines the tone which we should adopt in speaking, or at least in thinking, concerning all our pursuits. Other men may have honourable thoughts and inspirations, and may honestly obey them, and silently and implicitly attribute them to their true source. But the minister of God, with fear and trembling indeed, but still without cowardly diffidence, is to declare to himself and to others, the real fountain of that which is within him. He cannot teach others to believe themselves the temples of the living God, if he dare not acknowledge the plain consequences of this doctrine in relation to himself.
But then this question remains,—If, in every rightly ordered community, the tradesman, the lawyer, the physician, the soldier, the statesman, believes that the secret influences which determined him to embrace his own vocation in preference to any other were not themselves his title to enter upon that vocation, but only the predisposing motives to seek for such a title,—is the analogy in this instance violated, is the immediate minister of God in a different predicament? Does the secret call in his spirit make him a minister, or does it only set him upon inquiring what is the lawful way of becoming one? I confess I do not understand what should make the difference. I can see, indeed, that the call is to a higher work. I can see that it has need to be more distinctly apprehended as to its principle and origin, by him whose very outward duty is a spiritual one than by others. But I cannot see that the difference is one of kind, and that while the Spirit of God in all other cases moves a man to adapt himself to some rule or order, here it teaches him that he has no need of such an order, but that the “motion” is a substitute for it. I should have expected, certainly, that the minister of God,—if his very name be not a mere invention; if there be any communication between heaven and earth; if any men be intended or called to teach their brethren in matters directly pertaining to God,—should receive his commission in some very different way from that in which the member of any other profession receives his. I should have expected that some scheme would have been devised, to shew that he did not derive his authority from the king of his land, or from any learned incorporation, or from any limited power whatever. But I should never have expected that, whereas in other cases the witness of a man’s own mind, and its inward impulses, though most needful for his own satisfaction, though most needful to convince him that he is walking in the road appointed for him, are yet considered wholly inadequate to confer authority, and affirm his position to others, here, in an office especially instituted for the sake of mankind, for the poor and ignorant,—an office in which the individual performing it is to be especially hidden and forgotten, and the majesty of God asserted,—these motions should be all in all, and no token given which all men alike can apprehend, as to the extent and derivation of the influence which they are intended to obey.
2. Next comes the question, so often discussed in previous sections, of the relation between the Old and New Testament. In the Jewish Commonwealth, as the Quaker confesses, we discover at first a strict, definite organisation; a priesthood limited to a certain tribe, a place and time appointed for sacrifices, the sacrifices themselves appointed. Here is a rigid system, the author of which now and then, as in the case of Eli, asserts as well his own prerogative, as the fact, that this, like every system, exists for an end and is not itself an end, by infringing some of its maxims. Yet we know that this Divine precaution was not adequate to prevent a dead sense of routine, injurious to the working of the system itself, from creeping over the hearts of the people who were subject to it. Wherefore, the next contrivance which we notice in this celestial machinery, seems intended to counteract this tendency, without any violation of uniformity. When the ecclesiastical constitution had been well established, and its principle explained by its operation, a new order of men is raised up, for the express purpose, it seems, of proving that forms and institutions are indications of our relation to God, and means of attaining to intercourse with Him, but neither create the one, nor are substitutes for the other. This being the very intent of the Prophet’s vocation, several consequences follow inevitably. His functions cannot be defined in a ritual. It cannot be ascertained by a formal law, as in the case of the priest, to what portion of the community he shall belong. Neither of these limitations would defeat the end of his existence, he would cease to fill his proper place in the great order. The prophet lives as the witness of a continual presence and power dwelling in the nation, which it may forget, but of which it cannot rid itself. He must rise up, as the emblem of the conscience which he awakens, of the law concerning which he testifies; he must come as a thief in the night upon the guilty soul; he must not allow it to forget itself in the dizzy whirl of events, or the monotony of observances; he must make it feel that both alike speak of a living person, who is coming out of his place to judge, whose day is at hand. To fasten this fact upon the mind and heart of the people, he must oftentimes do strange acts; he and his children are for signs and wonders; he must walk barefoot; he must carry on a mimic siege; he must see his wife die and not weep; he must marry an adulteress: by all means he must break the yoke of familiarity and custom. And yet he is most orderly. From first to last he is a witness for order. The neglect of institutions, the indifference to Divine precepts, the recklessness of the everlasting covenant,—these are his charges against kings, and priests, and people. If he reveals the inward law of God, it is in the outward law that he learns its nature and mystery; if he desires communion with God, it is in the temple he expects to enjoy it, and to behold His glory; if he is stricken with a sense of his own iniquity, and of his people’s, it is a coal from the altar touching his lips, which purges it away; the desolation of the beautiful city calls forth all his human feelings; the loss of the Shechinah is the key-note to his most melancholy and awful religious musings.
Such are the most obvious characteristics of the Jewish prophet, the appointed witness for a spiritual faculty and life in man. According to the doctrine, then, that an outward appointment is the great cause of corruption and hypocrisy in the Church, it ought to appear that the race of prophets was far more uniformly pure and exemplary than the race of priests; that the abominations which we know are charged upon the one, had no counterparts among the other. But if we are to believe Scripture, this was not the case at all. There were just as many false prophets as there were scandalous priests; just as many who pretended to be uttering the word of the Lord, when they were but speaking a vision of their own hearts, as there were who could not distinguish between the clean and the unclean, or who made the offering of the Lord to be abhorred. There were as many who abused the spiritual call as the outward ordination. But this remark is by the way. My main object is to fix the reader’s attention upon this point, that the best prophets were still Old Testament ministers; that they were not ministers of the Spirit. The Quakers will not deny this. But wherein did the prophet come short of the dignity of a New Testament minister? He exactly answers to their definition of one. Take away the law, the priesthood, the sacrifices, and leave simply the prophet, and we have the Quaker idea of the Christian ministry in its most noble and complete manifestation: for the Jew is a witness to spiritual life; he obeys a spiritual impulse; he speaks of the Living Word dwelling in the heart; he speaks by the Spirit. Surely, if they are right, the prophet stands on a much higher level than Peter and Paul, the witnesses for outward acts, the preachers of Christ’s death and resurrection. And so the early Friends evidently thought; for all the precedents of their proceedings are drawn from the records of his. Their sudden appearances, and utterances, and witnessings at the gates of cities, were copied (not accurately, I conceive, since the reverence for order and institutions, for sacred places and national worship, which were so conspicuous in the original, were wholly omitted in the imitation—but still copied) from the acts of the Old Testament seer, and had no sort of type or warrant in apostolical practice. For, strange to say, the apostles of our Lord, appointed to introduce a new dispensation, addressing a sense-hardened people, and foretelling the most awful crisis of their history as at hand, did nevertheless, in their outward conduct and bearing, entirely depart from that prophetical model which was constantly before their eyes, and which, for other purposes, they studied most diligently. All the sensible and startling peculiarities of the prophetical character were abandoned by men who proclaimed that they were sent by Heaven to announce the fulfilment of the promises made to the fathers, the accomplishment of law and prophecy. Far, indeed, were they from saying, that the function was obsolete; its essential characteristics were represented in themselves. They had no authority to declare that even its accidental features were lost, any more than they had authority to abolish sacrifices or circumcision. Agabus might still bind the girdle on his hands and feet; the daughters of Philip the deacon might prophesy; but the especial ministers of the New Covenant were throughout asserting for themselves a different function from this. They would not even submit to the voices of brethren or sisters whom they acknowledged to be rightfully inspired. Paul went up to Jerusalem in defiance of their expostulations and warnings.
But whence this difference? What is the explanation of it? We say, that the difference arose from this, that in the days of the prophets the Spirit was not yet given, for that Christ was not yet glorified. — The priests and sacrifices in the Jewish Commonwealth testified of a Divine constitution established in the Word. The order of prophets testified of a Divine Spirit actuating and energizing in man; but as the person of the Word was not yet manifested, so neither was the person of the Spirit. The mystery was hid for ages and generations. Each new step in the Divine plan is a preparation for the discovery of it; and faithful men are enabled to apprehend it before it is yet fully made known; first, by the undeviating regularity of the priesthood, like the settled succession of day and night; then, by the gusts of prophetical inspiration, like the wind blowing where it lists; lastly, by the inseparable connexion of one with the other. The one, when alone, a mere collection of chords, from which no sound of music could proceed; the other, at best, a mere Æolian harp, from which a sweet note might now and then come forth, but utterly incapable of satisfying the soul with any sustained or continuous harmony. But when the Son of God came in human flesh, to proclaim Himself the source of all the order of the universe, it was inevitable that the outward organisation which had been foretelling His advent should be converted into one which assumed it for its ground; and for the same reason it was to be expected, that when the Spirit of Truth, who proceeded from the Father and the Son, was given by the ascended Lord, to testify of the Father and of Him, the prophetical dispensation, which had been opening the way for this great manifestation, should undergo a corresponding change. The occasional glimpses of a Divine Lord of man, the beautiful vision in the plain of Mamre, the angel in the bush, and he who did wondrously before Manoah, - these preludings of the incarnation, as Bishop Bull calls them, had been lost in the full swell of the words, “Lo, I am with you always,” The crucified man had been declared, by the resurrection, to be the Son of God with power, - the ever-present King of man. But the foretastes of this revelation in the Old Testament, did not fall farther short of the revelation itself, than the sudden inspirations under the Old Testament fell short of the meaning expressed in the words, “When he ascended up on high, he received gifts for men, that the Lord God might dwell among them.” The Apostles, therefore, could not, without sinking their dignity as New Testament ministers, have given the same form to the prophetical office which it had assumed under the old dispensation. They believed themselves to be continually, not momentarily, inspired; they felt that it was their sin to doubt of this continued inspiration; as it was sin not to act upon the principle of it; as it was sin to do anything which would weaken the perception of it in the minds of those to whom they preached. They therefore delivered their appointed message with perfect calmness and coherency. They had their commission, and this was a surer token that they had the Spirit with them to govern them, than any impulses and emotions could possibly have been. They were therefore always ready to preach, and always able to be silent. This was their notion of a New Testament ministry, and we say it ought to be ours. As ministers of the New Covenant, we must draw our rule of conduct from Apostles and not from Prophets. It is nothing to us that the holy men of old were sometimes called from the sheepfolds to be the witnesses of a spiritual presence to the people, and that this inward call sufficed, without any other designation. We know that the Apostles of our Lord received from Him a formal and express designation, before He gave them powers to go and preach in the villages whither He Himself would come; that after His resurrection, He gave those Apostles a new and more awful commission, accompanying it with the word, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost;” that after His ascension they completed their numbers by an external arrangement before the Holy Ghost endued them with powers to testify of the risen King. It is nothing to us if these Prophets, in exact conformity with the nature of their office, and the end for which it was instituted, waited for a conscious afflatus before they could utter their Divine oracles. We know that St. Paul said,—“If I do this willingly, I have a reward; but if against my will, a dispensation of the Gospel is committed to me… A necessity is laid upon me, yea, woe is me if I preach not the Gospel.” We know that he set it forth as the peculiarity of a New Testament preacher, that he put no veil over his face, that he used great plainness of speech. We know that now his preaching consists of a plain statement of actual facts, now of a long historical deduction, now turns upon some point connected with the habits, national character, and circumstances of the people to whom he speaks, is not merely eloquent, but at times most skilfully rhetorical,—but never exhibits a man over-mastered by a power which prohibits him from expressing himself in that way which is most suitable to the spiritual wants of his hearers. Was this because he wanted zeal? Or was it because he possessed an intensity of zeal which would never permit him for a moment to lose sight of the end of his apostleship; to sacrifice it for the sake of any pleasant feelings or emotions; to think about his own mind, when his business was to go forward; or to overlook any instruments which God had placed within his reach? Was it because he had not the Spirit? Or was it because he was under the habitual government of that Spirit who hindered him from surrendering himself to his own tastes or emotions, to his own projects or fears, and which converted every object in nature or art, all history, all passing events, to the service of the sanctuary? Once more, it is nothing to us that, under the old economy, there were prophetesses as well as prophets, and that during the interval between the establishment of the Christian Church and the destruction of the Jewish Commonwealth, this part of the system may, like all its other mere accidents, have been gradually disappearing indeed, but not have actually ceased. If there had been any restriction whatever, any, I mean, but what is reserved in the depths of Divine Wisdom, as to the subjects of the prophetical call, it would not seem to have answered its purpose as a balance to the rigid formality of the priestly institution. But when the Apostle of the Gentiles announced, that he would have women keep silence in the churches, we perceive at once that the principle which had been all along asserted in the regular organisation of the Jewish Church, now that the formal constitution had been brought into union with the spiritual power, was to become a universal law. If St. Paul had merely suggested this rule as one which was expedient, in order to meet Jewish and heathen prejudices, we easily admit that the Omnipotent Spirit might be expected at different periods practically to annul it. But if he was actually restraining a practice common among both Jews and heathens, and if he was doing this professedly upon principles connected with the divinely appointed relation of the sexes to each other, we can have no doubt that the Spirit of Order, by the mouth of his chosen witness, was announcing the law of his own commonwealth. And that the Holy Spirit does not break down eternal laws and ordinances, for the mere sake of bearing witness to his power, is one of the fundamental maxims of Christian morality; because power is the handmaid of love and order, and when it forsakes their fellowship, and claims a separate existence, is devilish, not godlike.
In this case, as in all the others we have as yet considered, it seems that the Quaker is guilty of the very sin which he imputes to his brethren; that he is the reviver of the old economy while he is professing to assert the glory of the Gospel. And it will be seen how remarkably his complaints against a succession of ministers illustrate this tendency. Just as he will not allow that in a universal and spiritual dispensation Baptism can take the place of Circumcision, the Eucharist of the Passover, so he cannot understand how in such a dispensation the succession by merely laying on of hands can take place of the Levitical and Aaronic succession. And just as I maintained, that the difference between a national dispensation and one which is spiritual and universal is realised in the difference between these two sets of institutions, and is lost when the old institutions are merely abolished; so I maintain, that the same difference is set in the clearest light by the change from a ministry which is permanent in a particular tribe and family, to one which is perpetuated by ecclesiastical tradition, and that those who, upon Quaker grounds, reject this last method as carnal and secular, have no escape but that of slavishly imitating the most superficial and transitory peculiarities of a bygone period.
3. The last point to be considered is that of ministerial gifts. There were, as everyone knows, under the old dispensation, schools of the Prophets. But we must not lay such stress upon this fact as to deny, that in many cases the Prophet’s call was itself that which endowed him with the functions necessary for his task. At any rate there was, it should seem, no outward act by which he became invested with the powers that he afterwards exercised.1 If what I have said respecting the nature of his office be true, it could not have been otherwise. There was no great difficulty in understanding, that the Priest might be attired with his solemn robes, and invested with his awful authority, by a rite of consecration; his endowments were matter of formal, legal explanation. But no idea which had yet been presented to the mind of the Jew, could have enabled him to understand how gifts of so subtle and inexplicable a character as those which the Prophets exercised, could have been transmitted by any similar method. The man of holy meditation, whose life is a witness to his own continual sense of an unseen presence, comes forth, and awakens in kings, or priests, or people, the feeling of their own subjection to an eternal law, which they have forgotten or resisted. By eloquence and song he rouses the spellbound, death-stricken conscience of the nation; compels it to remember that it is within the bonds of an everlasting covenant; and shews what judgments must startle it out of its long sensual dream. The acknowledgment of an operation from above, inspiring the understanding of the Prophet, comes at the same moment to the mind of the hearer with the consciousness of a secret wonderful operation upon himself. He does not distinguish with any accuracy between the power which has raised the teacher into a poet, and himself into a man; still less does he know from whom either impulse proceeds. He perceives only that there is some deep influence at work, invisible, indefinite, incomprehensible.
But, happily for that age, and for all ages to come, the duties of the Prophet were not limited to this task. Beneath this consciousness of a living judge spying out his ways, with the awful thoughts which it generates, other desires discover themselves in the mind of the holy Israelite, which the teacher is to educate by certain promises and glorious hopes. Through him man is to be taught, not only of that within him which fears and trembles before God, but of that which nothing but the vision of God can satisfy. The same event which is to set free the conscience, so far as its fears spring from the dread of sin, not the love of it, is also that which is to present these longings with their perfect object. The coming of the Lamb of God, who is to take away the sin of the world,—of Him who is to shew men the Father—this, consequently, is that glorious consummation of all past history, to which the prophetic eye is always turned, and in the glories of which every true Israelite, whether still sojourning on earth or departed from it, understands assuredly that he shall be a partaker. But on this hope is entailed another, equally exhilarating and still more mysterious. The spirit in man, striving after this perfect Object, hereafter to be revealed, feels that when it is admitted to behold Him, it will need to be sustained by a life proceeding from Himself—feels that, if it is admitted to converse with Him, it will need the assurance that He also is conversing with it. An unspeakable communion, a Spirit witnessing with our spirit, nothing less than this can be the boundary of the aspirations which have been thus wonderfully called out. The Prophet meets this deepest cry of the inner man; and the promise of the Spirit being poured from above, and the desert blossoming with the rose, is indissolubly linked to the promise of a King who shall reign in righteousness, and in whom the glory of the Most High shall shine forth.
As the mind of the Prophet himself rose to the level of these anticipations, it is impossible but that he must have perceived a distinction between that spirit in him which longed for intercourse with the Everlasting Spirit, and those faculties of thought and expression, by which he was able to impart the desires and hopes with which he had been inspired, to other men. Both, he will have felt, are subject to a Divine impulse, a Divine government, but one is in some sense a Divine faculty, meant for fellowship with that which is Divine, not realising its own properties but in that fellowship; the other is meant to obey a motion with which, strictly speaking, it cannot sympathize. But the deeper, the diviner faculty, is the more universal; this belongs to me as a man; this is the privilege of my race; the other is specially imparted to me for wise and gracious purposes; distinguishing me from my fellows; to be received as an awful trust; to be used for their benefit. Hence, in that great period of manifestation to which he looked forward, he will, at times, have anticipated,—first, that in close connexion with the revelation of Him who is the object of desire to all nations, there would also be a revelation of Him who had been moving secretly in the hearts and understandings of men; next, that this revelation would in some striking manner be at once the assertion of Him as holding fellowship with men universally, and as bestowing those special gifts by which some men are qualified to be the guides and teachers of their brethren.
Whether this anticipation did take a definite form in the minds of the Prophets or not, we can tell how it was realised. The Son of God selects His chosen servants, the heralds of His kingdom, from the fishermen of Galilee. With them He converses for three years, teaching them to apprehend mysteries which had been kept hid from generations; telling them that they were permitted to see that which Kings and Prophets had not seen; in all His intercourse with them, still treating them as men destined for a work—not merely imparting to them a knowledge of truth, but a method of communicating it. But, after the call which these disciples had received; after the wonderful discipline by which He had so long prepared them; after He had reappeared to them in His risen form, and breathed on them, saying “Receive ye the Holy Ghost;” still He told them that they were to tarry in Jerusalem to receive the promise of the Father; and that then, and then only, should they have power from on high to perform their work. As I have remarked before, they were met, not as individuals, but as a college; they had formally completed their number when this promise was fulfilled. And what was the fulfilment? The deep mystery of it, I have contended before (herein following the Church, which has fixed Trinity Sunday to follow next upon Whitsunday), consisted in the formal declaration of the Holy Spirit as a Person, the assertion of the Divine Unity of the Father and the Son in Him, and in the establishment of a Universal Church. But this is inseparably connected in Scripture with the conferring of powers on a set of men previously marked out to be Ministers of Christ. The call of Christ was not sufficient; here was a formal endowment with the gifts which Christ had designed for them when He bade them leave their nets, and which He had now received for them on high.
Signs, we know, accompanied the first great declaration of this Divine Presence in the Church. Those signs were like the twig or clod of earth which in ancient feoffments attested the delivery of a portion of land to a certain person and his heirs for ever. We should as little expect them to be continually repeated, as that the twig or clod should be solemnly presented to the new possessor, whenever he performed a fresh act of ownership. But the principle asserted by these signs, we affirm to be perpetual. The Spirit of God, by a wonderful demonstration, declares that He is dwelling among men; that an organised body of men has been provided for His habitation; that through this body His blessings are to be transmitted to the world; that through a portion of this body, His blessings are to be transmitted to the rest. Everything on this great day of spiritual inspiration speaks of preparation, order, distinction, unity. No chance or casual moment is selected, but the period of an ancient festival; no secret place, but an upper chamber in the temple; no chance individual, but men who have been for years openly preparing for the work. Whatever system, then, teaches that a minister is not publicly, and openly, and once for all endowed with certain powers and faculties for his work, these powers being sustained within him by the constant presence of Him who bestows them; whatever system conveys the notion, that the minister, being such by virtue of his inward call, is either then invested with the requisite gifts, or receives them afterwards, from time to time, by sudden movements and inspirations, we affirm is essentially an Old Testament system. And the consequences of such a system must infallibly be these:—The mere spiritual faculty, which is awakened in him by the voice of the Spirit of God, will be confounded with that Spirit himself; His personality will be forgotten in His operations; there will be a fearful confusion between the human speaker and the invisible power which speaks in him, alternating with a continual attempt to separate them; the intellectual faculties and endowments will first be despised because they are supposed to have no connexion with the Spirit; and then will be confounded with the faculty which is truly Divine and spiritual in man, when both are found to proceed from the same source, and the former to be the means of evoking the latter. I say, if we considered wherein the Old Testament system was defective, and how the blanks are filled up in the New; and then heard of a scheme in which these blanks were restored, without, however, a restoration of those other portions of the old system, which prevented that which was necessarily imperfect from being evil, we should look for all these mischiefs as the fruits of it. And the actual history of the Quakers fulfils every one of these predictions. The belief in the Personality of the Spirit, in His difference from the spiritual life which He originates, has been that truth which they have found it most difficult to realise, and which has been continually slipping away from them. Their ministers, even in the best age of their society, were almost idolized. They have veered continually between contempt for the intellectual powers generally, and a vast over-appreciation of them, when they seemed to be under spiritual guidance. And all these contradictions are now reaching a head, and threatening the extinction of their body.
The Presbyterian
1. We pass to those whose objections are principally and expressly against Episcopacy. Some of these turn upon the idea of the Church, some are derived from the letter of Scripture, and some are founded upon experience. The first take this form—‘Christ is the only Bishop of His Church. All attempts to substitute another overseership for His, are founded upon a misconception of our relation to Him. The words, “Call no man your father upon earth, for one is your Father which is in heaven,” though they do not interfere with the acknowledgment of spiritual fathers in some sense, for St. Paul constantly calls himself one, do assuredly confound all such pretensions to fatherhood as the Bishops by the very nature of their office put forth. Assumption and domination, the very opposite qualities to those which should appear in a ministry, are applied in the conception of this function. And secondly, it is not borne out by the least warrant of revelation. That the word ἐπίσκοπος is to be found in the Acts of the Apostles, no one will dispute. But it is found in such connexions as shew that the officer whom it denotes was not distinguished from the Presbyter—that the Apostles, at all events, did not look upon the distinction as in any wise connected with the being of the Church. If, then, we would have a Church upon a scriptural platform, framed according to Apostolical precedent, there seems little doubt that Bishops would find no place, or a very unimportant place in it. But, thirdly, it may be said that we cannot return strictly to those precedents, that the Church has a principle of life and authority in itself, and that we are to consider the way in which institutions have actually developed themselves. Very well; then look at all the cruelty, usurpation, pride, secularity, which have been manifested by these spiritual fathers. And then say, whether the history of the Church be not as conclusive a witness against them as the words of inspiration.’
It is evident that the objection which is founded upon the constitution of the Church, does not merely affect the principle of Episcopacy. Its application is very wide indeed. Presbyterians in general have perceived that it strikes at the notion of any human priesthood. If the fact that Christ is the universal Bishop, interfere with the existence of earthly Bishops, the fact that He is the Priest of His Church, of course makes it impossible that any inferior person should usurp that name. Probably the last case will be felt to be stronger than the first; at all events, many persons are found to denounce the use of the words ἱερεύς and Sacerdos in the Divine economy, who will contend stoutly for the importance of Bishops. Now I wish it might be considered, that if these phrases be on this ground denied to the ministers of the Church, they must on the same ground be denied to the members of it. The words, ’We are made Kings and Priests unto God,” which are so often quoted to confute the pretensions of a particular caste or ministry, are themselves profane and dangerous words. They are appropriating to the servants the acts and offices which, according to this doctrine, exclusively appertain to the Lord. Nor can the argument stop here. There must be a careful weeding out in theological books, and above all, in the Book of Revelation, of every phrase which, being first used to describe the head of the body, is afterwards applied to the body itself, or to any of its members. I beseech anyone calmly and seriously to reflect upon the effect which such a change must produce—I do not say in the dialect of Christianity, but—in its deepest and most essential principles. For surely, if it have one principle which more essentially belongs to it than another, this is the one, that the language which makes Christ known to us, is the only language which can fitly make the Church known to us. Not merely Catholic divinity, but Puritan divinity, recognizes the identification of offices in Christ and in His faithful members, as involved in the very idea of the Gospel. Where, I ask, is the line to be drawn?
Whence arises the propriety of the doctrine, that the state of the whole Church, and of each member of the Church, is the image of His state who has redeemed it; and the impropriety of the doctrine, that every office in the Church is the image of some office performed by Christ in His own person—is the means by which that office is presented to men, and made effectual for them through all time?
I have no more earnest desire than that the proposition which I have put forward: ‘If the Incarnation mean anything, if the Church be not a dream, all offices exercised by her on behalf of humanity must be offices first exercised by Christ,’ should be set side by side with the Presbyterian proposition, ‘It is profane and wicked to apply to ordinary human creatures, the names which designate the works and offices of Christ,’ that each should be pushed to its furthest consequences, and that each should be submitted to the judgment of the holiest men among those whose educational prejudices would lead them to reject Episcopacy. I have no fear as to the result; and I am quite sure that a great collateral advantage would follow from this method of considering the subject. We are constantly asked how we dare to lay so much stress upon an outward ordinance, as if it had anything to do with the great essential truths of the Gospel. Is it not at best a mere outwork of Christianity? Our answer is derived from this great Presbyterian argument. That cannot be a trifle which involves the most opposite conception of the whole order of the Church and of human society. If the objection we have been considering be a true one, the language which the most earnestly religious men have been using at the times when they were most religious, when they were striving to express the most spiritual and fundamental truths, is inconsistent language, and must be abandoned. If, on the other hand, our principle be a true one, it must be a question of the highest practical moment, whether the idea of Christ’s Episcopacy or of His Priesthood can be preserved among men, when that, which upon this hypothesis is the Divine method for preserving them, has been rejected.
2. ‘But this view, however it may be defended by theories, receives no justification from Scripture.’ I admit at once, that if the Acts of the Apostles were set before me, and I were desired to make out from them alone what the office of the Overseer was, as distinguished from that of the Presbyter, I should decline the task as hopeless. Nor do I think, that if I were allowed to add to the hints which this book supplies, all that I could gather with respect to these particular names from the Epistles, I should be much nearer to satisfaction. My difficulty, I confess, is to understand how, from these scattered notices, the Presbyterian has been able to arrive at the clear and satisfying conclusion, that the whole Church for thirteen centuries, and the greater part of the Church for sixteen centuries, has been utterly wrong in believing that such an officer as the one who is understood by the word Bishop is meant to exist in it. I should be sorry upon such evidence to condemn the very paltriest ceremony which could allege a similar prescription in its favour. Of course, therefore, I should be equally sorry to put in such evidence as supplying the original title-deed of the institution. For, were there no other, I should scarcely know how to state the question which is to be settled. The Presbyterian would not allow me to word it thus: ‘Did there exist in the time of the Apostles an order of priests distinct from that of Bishops?’ for he does not admit that there is an order of priests any more than one of Bishops, nor should I be at all anxious to ascertain how soon the functions which I attribute to the priest became separated from those which I suppose belong to the Bishop. The only point, therefore, which could be brought into debate, would be whether the word ἐπίσκοπος always means, in the language of the New Testament, the pastor of a number of congregations, and the word πρεσβύτερος always means, in the same language, the pastor of one; a question which I should be inclined to answer in the negative. But when I turn again to these Acts and these Epistles, I find a name which puzzles me much more than either of these; one which meets me at every turn, one which is implied in every sentence of them, one of which I must get a solution somewhere if I can. What manner of people are these Apostles whose acts are recorded in the work of St. Luke, whose letters are preserved for the perpetual instruction of the Church? It may be answered, ‘They were the persons selected by our Lord to be with Him in His temptations while He was upon earth, and to bear witness of His resurrection after He had left the world.’ No doubt these were the functions of the first twelve disciples. The Incarnation of Christ was to be the ground of the new kingdom; it was needful that there should be persons who had seen and handled the Word of life. About this matter there is no dispute. The question is, first, whether the fruits of the Incarnation ceased with the time when our Lord left the world, or whether they only then began to shew themselves; next, whether the form which Christ Himself gave to the infant kingdom, was the form which it was to retain through all the future circumstances of its development; and therefore, 3rdly, whether the office of the Apostles was to be defunct when the particular circumstances which made the name appropriate had ceased to exist. If the apostleship were inseparably connected with its first accidents, it would seem strange that St. Paul, whose calling was of an altogether different kind from that of the twelve, who had not been with our Lord during His stay upon earth, who was expressly a witness of that state of glory in which we believe that Christ is now, as much as when He stopped the persecutor on the way to Damascus, should have so eagerly asserted for himself the position and the powers of an Apostle. It would seem strange, too, that those powers, in virtue of which the other Apostles were able to go forth witnessing of their Master’s resurrection, were not those which they derived from Him while He was upon earth, not those even which they received from Him immediately after His resurrection, but were those which came upon them after He had gone out of the sight of men, and was ascended on high that He might fill all things. The question, therefore, to be decided when this evidence is brought before us, is simply whether there was or was not to be continued in the Church, any office corresponding in its essential characteristics to that one which we judge from the New Testament to be the distinguishing one of the Church at its foundation. The common opinion is, that by the perpetuation of this office the Church has been perpetuated; the connexion of different ages with each other realised; the wholeness and unity of the body declared. The changes which have taken place in the condition of this office we suppose to be changes as to name, as to the number of the persons filling it, as to the limits of their government; changes, some of them presupposed in the very existence of a body which was to have an unlimited expansion; none of them affecting its nature or its object. The Presbyterian says that no institution of the kind does exist in the Church; that is to say, that the platform of the Church in the present day is not the apostolic platform. Yet he says this in the same breath with which he protests against our departure from the simplicity of the New Testament practice, and calls upon us to abandon all ecclesiastical precedents for the sake of conforming to it.
3. One of the main reasons which he gives for this exhortation, is the gross corruption and secularity which have been the result of the Episcopal system wherever it has been established. I neither meet this charge by saying that there is no foundation for it, nor by explaining away the instances which are brought forward in support of it; nor by resorting to the seldom satisfactory common-place, that the abuse of an institution is no argument against its use. I might with far more reason and success produce the facts, which prove that in nearly every case in which the Church has enlarged her borders, in which the commission, “Go ye into all nations,” has been really acted out, Bishops have been the instruments of fulfilling the command and obeying the promise. But I would rather place the argument on another ground: I would undertake to shew, and I would go through all ecclesiastical history in support of the position, that the secularity of Bishops has been in all cases the effect of their not believing in the dignity and divinity of their own ordination; that the assumption of any particular Bishop has always been the effect of his denying the dignity and effect of his brethren’s ordination. You shew me a Bishop who is in all respects a splendid feudal lord, with his hounds and his falcons, his sumptuous table, his armed retainers. Well! I see a man who feels about his office, just as you do, that it carries with it no Divine authority; that he is under no responsibility for the exercise of it except to the class in which he moves, and to the civil power which has added certain honours to it. My wish is to cure him of the habit of feeling which you would rivet in him. But you will say, perhaps, ’Were he a Christian minister he would not be tempted to this secularity. What do you mean by such words? Do you mean that he would not be tempted to any secularity—that the parochial clergyman, comfortably settled in his manse, has not the temptation to sink into the habits of an ordinary member of the middle class; that the mendicant friar, or the itinerant Protestant preacher, is not liable to be infected by the set to whom he ministers, and by whom he obtains his livelihood? You cannot say this without outraging the authority of Scripture and the witness of experience. Secularity of some kind (of what kind the character of the age, of the man, of his company, determines) has assailed, and must always assail every man in this world; and I believe there is no deliverance from it for any man, but in the belief that he has a vocation. Whether it is in accordance or not with the order of Providence, that the ministers of Christ’s flock should be also ministers of the nation, and that each class of the nation should feel the influence of some one of its classes, I shall consider in a future section. On the subject of Episcopal assumption, I need only refer to the history of popes and patriarchs for a proof, that the occasion of it is ever an exaltation of some advantage of place or circumstance connected with the order above the order itself.
Objections to an absolving power in ministers
I have said that the main principle of the Presbyterian argument is as directly opposed to the idea of a priesthood as it is to the idea of Episcopacy. In dealing with the one question, then, I have implicitly discussed the other. Moreover, the doctrine of a priesthood is so much involved with the doctrine of sacrifice, that my last section may be looked upon as a sufficient statement of my views respecting it. Still there is so much horror in many minds of that absolving power which I have attributed to the Christian Bishop and to those whom he endows with it, and their complaints involve consequences of so practical a character, that I think I should be wrong not to give them a separate consideration. I do not class them under the head of Presbyterian objections, because there are many Episcopalians who appear to share in them. They may be expressed thus:
‘According to St. Paul, those who believe in Christ are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses. Ambassadors are sent forth to declare Christ’s Gospel to men, in order that they may not be prevented from believing by the want of hearing; in order that if they believe they may receive this justification and freedom of the conscience. This is the true office of the minister; all others are accidental and subordinate to it. He may own orders and governments in the Church, Presbyterian, Episcopal, Apostolical, what you will; but the preaching of Christ is his true and essential function: his commission is to do this, this first, this above all things. When he pretends that he has some other way of relieving the conscience than this; when he says that he has the power of pardoning and absolving,—that he may pronounce men free from their sins,—he is not only committing a fearful usurpation upon the rights of Christ, he is actually misunderstanding and denying the true character of his own office. He deprives himself of his true power, in his eagerness to grasp a power which has never been given him by God, and can never be of the least use to man.’
There is one point which is very important to take notice of in reference to this subject. According to the idea which has always existed in the Christian Church, the same person to whom the function of absolving is committed has also the function of administering the Eucharist. These two duties never have been separated, and it is most needful that they should be contemplated in their relation to each other; for if the Eucharist be that act in which the worshipper is especially brought into direct communion with his Lord, that act in which the mere human and visible agent is most entirely lost and forgotten, or only contemplated as one who bears witness that He whom he serves is a living and actual person, we must suppose that this is a key to the whole character of the office, in whatever way it may be exercised. If, again, the Eucharist involve at once a confession of sins on the part of the receivers, a thankful acknowledgment of a state of fellowship and blessedness with their Lord, into which they have been brought, though they may have walked most unworthily of it, the acceptance of a pledge of forgiveness for the past, strength for the present, a strength only to be realised by union with the invisible Lord, a promise of future blessings, to be attained in the same way and in no other, this would seem to determine the nature of that particular function which the minister presumes to exercise when he pronounces absolution. His whole object is to present Christ to men and men to Christ really and practically. Suppose him in the congregation, he is there to represent its unity, to offer it before God as a whole body, to confess the sins which its members have committed by separating themselves from the body. Then he is a witness of Christ’s continual intercession for the entire Church. Suppose him alone, with any particular member of the congregation, he is with him to preserve him in the unity of the Church, to present before God his tears and contrition for having lived unworthy of his position in it. Then he is a witness of Christ’s distinct intercession for every member of his flock. But still this can be but half his duty. The incarnation means very little, the kingdom of God is a mere delusion, if there be not a voice speaking from heaven as well as one crying from earth: if the one be not an answer to the other, if the minister may not say to the congregation, ‘God has heard your petitions, rise up as pardoned men, with strength to offer up praises and prayers, with strength to do your work,’ the confession is but half real, the Gospel is not real at all. And if he may not say in like manner to the sick and solitary penitent, God accepts thy tears and pardons thy sin, I do not see what he means by saying that he has authority to preach forgiveness of sins. He preaches forgiveness to those who will accept it, understanding its nature and purpose; receiving it not as a licence to the conscience, but as a deliverance of it. He delivers forgiveness under precisely the same conditions. How many of the congregation are in a state of mind to claim their fellowship with Christ and each other, and so to take the mercy which is freely given them, whether the individual man can do this, God only knows. The absolver at all events has spoken the truth; he has acted out his commission; the rest he must leave. His public preaching, his private exhortations, are all intended to remove some stumbling-block out of the way of those to whom he has been sent; to explain to them the meaning of their confession and of his absolution; to prevent their offering the one or receiving the other in vain; to hinder them from turning either to an evil account.
Supposing this to be the case, it would seem that there is no greater peril in this doctrine, than in the one which makes preaching the main work and office of a minister. As to misconstruction, there is, at all events, no greater likelihood of it in the case of words which are not our own, which are spoken in the name of God, and on the most solemn occasion, than in the case of words, which, under whatever teaching from above, we have composed, which must be mixed with our own peculiar modes of expression and habits of thought. So much I think must be admitted by everyone who considers the subject without prejudice. And the question which such a person might be inclined to ask, would perhaps be this: ‘Where is the great difference? You mean by your absolving power just what others mean by preaching the Gospel. Let this be clearly understood, and then no Christian would object to your statements any longer.’ My answer is, I cannot make this explanation, because it would not be a true one. I do conceive, there is very great difference between the notion that the act of absolution which the minister pronounces in the name of the Church is that act which interprets the object of his preaching, and the notion that he is sent to preach, and that because he preaches, he may, in a certain sense, absolve. The difference seems to me to be this: in the former case the minister presents Christ actually and personally to his congregation. His office is a witness of Christ’s presence among them, of Christ’s relation to them. It is grounded on the acknowledgment of an actual union between the body and its Head. In the other case there is much speech—it may be eloquent, it may be true speech about Christ, his work, and his offices. But it is
a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean;
a description of what is very good and beautiful, and what man wants, but not the thing itself, not the reality. I appeal to the history of modern preaching whether this be not the case, and to the complaints of men in all directions, whether it is not felt to be the case. And if so, it must be a serious question in what way those ends may be best accomplished, which I fully believe that the objectors I am now addressing sincerely desire, the end of bringing men more directly in contact with the true and unseen Absolver; the end of making His ministers understand that they are nothing except as representatives of Him, that they do nothing, except as they lead men to the knowledge of Him. Let it be considered patiently and calmly, whether a priest, who habitually believes, that as he may confess in the people’s name, so he may absolve in Christ’s name, must not have a humbler sense of his own insignificance, a greater confidence in an invisible kingdom, a more serious conviction that all men are meant to be members of it, than one who believes that he has ever so many gifts, merely bestowed for the purpose of enabling him to announce the message of salvation. And do we not find, in fact, that the best of those men, whose education and theories would induce them to adopt the latter opinion, have been led in practical life, in the conduct and discipline of their flocks, in their intercourse with them as well as in their discourses to them, to act upon the former?
The followers of Mr. Irving
Out of the heart of Presbyterianism have arisen a class of persons, whose objections to our Episcopacy assume the most opposite form possible to that which we were just now considering. A few words respecting this modern development of ecclesiastical feeling will throw great light upon the whole subject.
In answering the Quaker argument respecting the relation of the Old to the New Testament ministry, I have maintained the idea of ministerial Succession to be one which is justified by the analogy of God’s dealings, and which has not been made obsolete by any of the new conditions which the Gospel dispensation has introduced. The difference in the mode of presenting or manifesting the idea seems to be clearly determined by the difference between a national and a universal kingdom: the hereditary tradition, accompanied with a solemn consecration, expresses the character of the one; make consecration the substance of the tradition, and abolish the family limitation, we have the true nature of the other. This conclusion is so obvious, and has been so much assumed in the history of Christendom, that there would seem to be no occasion for disputing about it, except with those who, like the Quakers, reject outward ordination altogether. Admit ordination, and you admit the principle of succession; you admit the improbability of that succession having been, in any important instance, infringed by those who habitually recognized it; at all events, you admit that the onus probandi lies upon those who allege such an infringement, to shew when it took place and wherein it consisted.
This, I say, would be the natural state of the argument, supposing no other consideration to intervene. But the sons of those who had abandoned Episcopacy came to feel that a great link—if my view of Episcopacy as the great bond of a Christendom life be the correct one, the great link—between them and the older Church had been cut off. They were therefore much more concerned than their fathers, who were not equally conscious of this severance, could be, to prove: first, that there was some flaw in the idea of succession as it obtained among Episcopalians generally; secondly, that they possessed some adequate substitute for this idea. The flaw was easily found. The whole Church, to say the least from the time of Hildebrand, but most likely from a much earlier time, down to the Reformation, had been, with the exception of a few witnesses in the valleys of Piedmont, a popish and corrupt Church; through the Bishops of this Church and no other the transmission of powers and gifts must have come to those who claimed them in later day. But secondly, it was said that the reformed bodies had lost nothing by the breach of formal ministerial connexion with the first ages, seeing that they had preserved the really important succession; they had inherited the pure apostolical doctrine.
Now just so long as men could calmly acquiesce in the notion that Christians form a sect professing certain sound opinions, more probable and more useful than those of Mahomet or of Confucius—just so long as this notion was felt to correspond with the descriptions which our Lord and the Apostles give of the purposes for which they came into the world—these two statements seemed reasonable and satisfactory. It was nothing strange that the sect should almost cease for a time, or be only preserved in a few men, about whose very names there is great confusion, about whose opinions and practices a much greater; nothing strange that identity of opinions (though it might be somewhat hard to establish in a court of law the identity of the dogmas of the New Testament with those which prevailed in Scotland and Germany during the eighteenth century), should be received as the one sign that the sect had reappeared. But the moment anyone was awakened to the fact that the Gospel spoke of a kingdom—a kingdom actually to be set up among men—they became exceedingly perplexed. At first it was easy to treat these words as belonging to the future, as pointing to that which shall be after a second appearing of our Lord, not to that which was the effect of his Incarnation and Ascension. But there was much which could not bear this construction; and supposing there was to be a Church in the world at all between the first and second advent, it must be something answering to these words, it could not be something wholly different in kind from that which they set forth. But a sect professing certain dogmas, would be something wholly different in kind from the Church therein spoken of. There was still an escape to the idea of a purely spiritual body, but that escape was fairly open only to the Quakers, and with them the Presbyterians had no sympathy. They had admitted an organisation; they had said the spiritual life of the Church ought to express itself through this organisation; they had looked upon the ministry as forming an indispensable part of it; they had constantly referred to the Scriptures as exhibiting the model and idea of the Church’s constitution.
Pressed by these difficulties, the late Mr. Irving, in his commentary on the Book of Revelation, betook himself to the belief that the Kirk of Scotland had preserved a succession of ministers in its Presbytery; at the same time maintaining, as stoutly as any one of his countrymen could, that a human Episcopacy is incompatible with the idea of Christ’s universal lordship. But it could not escape a person of so much reflection and honesty as Mr. Irving, first, that whatever succession of a ministerial kind had been foretold in the Scriptures, or believed in any age of the Church, was an Apostolical succession; that is to say, a succession of persons possessing the essential part of the Apostolical functions. And it was equally clear, that by his own argument he denied the descent of any such function upon the Scotch ministers. His position, therefore, could not be long tenable, and either Mr. Irving himself, or certainly his followers, soon abandoned it for another. They admitted, to a certain extent, the truth and validity of the Episcopal succession which had been in the Church hitherto; they admitted, at any rate, the importance of the idea of such a succession; but they said that something was yet wanting, and had been wanting ever since the first ages, to give the Church its true completeness: viz. a distinct order of Apostles, who should either supersede the present order of Bishops, or, at least, to whom they should do homage, and from whom they should derive their authority.
Now setting aside all questions which are merely collateral to this doctrine, as to the way in which the persons of these Apostles are to be ascertained, &c., the reader will see at once how much plausibility there must be in it, to men in the state of mind I have described. They have been taught that the Church for many centuries was in a kind of abeyance; they know from experience that no part of it is in a right condition now; they think that the faults they see are faults arising from disorganisation; if they can discover a defect of organisation which has existed from the very first ages, how easily are these facts explained, how evident the origin of them! In like manner, the habit which they have received from their instructors, of looking to the Scriptures as the true guides to all notions respecting the nature of the Church; and the conviction which they have acquired in their maturer years, that the Scriptures derive their explanation from the history of the Church, are by this hypothesis reconciled. They do homage to the plain letter of Scripture, and yet it is a letter which means nothing except in reference to the progress of Christ’s kingdom. Thus, too, they are able to connect the idea of a restoration of spiritual life and spiritual gifts to the Church, with the strongest recognition of its organic and visible character. When there are such inward reasons for acquiescence in this faith, there is little use in making assaults upon its outworks. Men are not likely to be laughed out of an opinion which seems to bring all their other thoughts into harmony, merely by being told that they are paying a superstitious homage to the number twelve, or that the sudden recovery of an apostolic order after an intermission of eighteen centuries is most improbable. They will say, in answer to the first objection, that even if there be no meaning and mystery in numbers, they have the warrant of Scripture for attaching this number to this particular case. And in answer to the second, they will say that if it be the purpose of God to uphold His Church in the world, and to heal the breaches in it, they think it reasonable to believe that He will, by any means or by any interference, renew that which seems indispensable to it.
Nor can I help perceiving that the arguments by which Episcopacy and Episcopal succession are sometimes defended, have a tendency to strengthen these convictions. As Presbyterians have been the persons with whom writers on this subject have chiefly held controversy, they have in a manner assumed the existence of two orders in the Church, and tried, by such means as they had, to prove that a third was also necessary. Now this method of resolving the Church ministry into deacons and presbyters plus an episcopate must certainly leave an impression on the mind of any careful student of the New Testament, that this episcopate can have no close connexion with that apostolic order which is evidently the root of all others, and in which they all originally dwelt. Again, from certain ways of speaking respecting the Episcopal succession which have been prevalent among us, the feeling has certainly been communicated to many minds that it is necessary, because the first Apostles had an ordination from Christ Himself, and because the effect, or a certain portion of the effect, of that ordination has communicated itself through a series of hands to those who represent them in later ages. I do not say that any defender of the succession would state the reason for it in this form, but certainly the contemners of it must suppose that it is intended; otherwise they would not resort to their jokes about a virus which must have lost its power by repeated inoculations, or about gifts which must have been spoiled through the unclean hands that have transmitted them. And supposing such a feeling in any degree to prevail, we can conceive how utterly shocking it must be to men whose belief is that Christ is still present in the Church, and that He would still communicate actual powers to His ministers if their faithlessness did not interfere.
But supposing it were calmly represented to those who have adopted this theory, that, according to the doctrine which has always prevailed in the Church, the episcopate does contain in it the administration of the sacraments, the delivery of absolution, the preaching of the Gospel, the ministering to the sick and poor—all the functions, in short, which were at any time committed by our Lord to His immediate disciples; and that the Bishops have, and ought to believe they have, all needful powers for performing these functions: 2ndly, that their connexion with previous ages and with the first Apostles is maintained expressly as a witness of the permanent constitution of the Church, and therefore of the continued abiding of Christ in it, and of each Bishop in each age being His servant and the receiver of gifts and powers directly from Him—they may begin perhaps to view the whole subject somewhat differently. They may examine somewhat more carefully into the grounds upon which they have rested their belief of a super-episcopal order, and if they should be convinced that any charm which there may have been in the number of the Apostles had reference to their Jewish position, and was broken by the act of Christ Himself when He called Paul to the same dignity, and through him destroyed the middle wall between Jews and Gentiles; that it was, at least, more likely, a priori, that an office which had been established with so much solemnity would be upheld by Divine power, than that it would be destroyed by human unbelief; that in all other cases unbelief displays itself in doubting and denying the existence of powers, and mistaking the character of a function actually possessed; that such unbelief will account for all the painful phenomena which the history of the episcopate presents; they may ask themselves with some anxiety, whether there be any reason to expect that an order will be introduced by signs and wonders which seems to be already in being, whether there be anything to justify them in standing aloof from the body of Christ’s universal Church, and in not submitting to those whom He has Himself placed over it.
The Philosophical Objector
Between this class of reasoners and the one with whom I am next to engage, there seems to be not one point of mutual understanding. The modern rationalistic philosopher admits that the word ‘priest’ is one which contains much historical significance; nay, which even yet is not obsolete, and may have a good meaning. The error which men generally commit in this, as in all other cases, is that they do not distinguish between the essential truth and the fleeting applications of the word, that they do not see wherein the real and valuable power of the priest consisted, and who inherit that power in our day. Churchmen boast, it is said, that priests were the conservators of letters, and that they led men into the belief of a government which is not outward but inward, not over the body but over the mind. True, they did so; and for this we are to remember them with gratitude. But they who possess their name, and pretend to a formal succession from them, have no such influence; they do not preserve science or letters, they are afraid of both; they are anxious only to keep up their religious system. The real men of letters and of science, those who make us feel what are the bonds of spiritual intercourse between persons of different nations and kindreds, those who lead us to the apprehension of fixed laws—these are the true priests, these possess the faculty, the true insight, to which men involuntarily pay homage; the more they have been recognized, the less has the outward ordination and the nominal priesthood been regarded; ultimately they alone will be honoured; the counterfeit thing will be cast out as withered and worthless.’
There are indications in this language of a desire, which I, at least, cannot regard without the greatest sympathy—a desire to discover that which is real, and to separate it from whatever is artificial, temporary, and insincere. I shall not inquire whether this desire dwell deeply in the hearts of all who adopt the phrases which express it; whether these phrases may not be as easily learnt by rote, and as glibly repeated as any others; whether they may not offer to some the promise of an easy and comfortable substitute for any zealous efforts to disengage their own minds from the frivolity and falsehood which they so eloquently denounce. Such questions each person may fitly propose to himself: I would much rather deal with these words as they came forth from the person who utters them with the least self-deception, with the most inward longing to be honest himself and to make his neighbours honest. To such a person I would at once concede that this main proposition is right. The man of letters and the man of science, I believe, are called of God to the work in which they are engaged; they are His ministers—I would earnestly wish that they might feel themselves to be so. I will go further; I will admit that their function, especially that of any one who has a real poetical gift, does answer in several most important respects to that of the ancient prophet; that they may, without any impropriety, be said to perform a similar office, and to be endowed with powers which correspond to the circumstances of their different periods. In what sense they do not correspond, in what respect the words of the Jewish prophet have become a Scripture and are taken out of the circle of ordinary words, I hope to consider in the next section. Now I am speaking of them as living, acting, speaking men, and, looking at them in this light, I think it far more important to mark the grounds of their essential resemblance, than the occasions of their difference. So far from wishing the modern poet or philosopher not to consider himself as possessing a high vocation and a real inspiration, it is the feeling which I should most wish to awaken and cultivate in him. What I dread is that he should not feel this, that he should think his words are his own; that he should glorify himself on his powers, and so inevitably deprave them and abuse them. The misery of the last age, of its poets especially, was that they utterly cast away this belief. When they talked about a Muse speaking to them and teaching them, they did not mean what they said; it was a phrase merely which they adopted because Homer had used it and Virgil had copied it. There was not even the least sense of the words having been once spoken honestly; the poor old singer to the maidens of the Greek isles had, forsooth, invented a very clever and cunning machinery. And those who could write edifying critiques on “Paradise Lost,” could suppose that Milton had solemnly invoked that Spirit, who prefers before all temples the upright heart and pure, with the same profaneness, to assist him in a task of the same kind. What could an age which cherished such thoughts have produced, but ingenious satires upon the follies of the day, and elaborate efforts to clothe the ancients in its laces and ruffles?
By all means, then, let those who feel their gifts strong in them, train themselves to an awful and humble acknowledgment of them, and of the source from which they proceed. It is not the inclination which the students and artists of our land shew to put forth these claims on their own behalf, which should make any religious man tremble. Just so far as they do this, they have taken a great step out of the infidelity of the last generation. What is alarming is the pretension which accompanies these claims; the loud talk about powers and faculties not derived but inherent; the practical evidence which our men of talent furnish by their scorn and contempt of others that they do rest upon these inherent powers, and do not recognize any sustaining, quickening inspiration. Now I cannot think that men who indulge in this language are likely to be prophets themselves, or to recognize the prophetic gift in their brethren. It seems to me, therefore, most needful for the sake of our men of letters and of the world, that both they and it should be reminded, by some clear and visible tokens, what they are, whence their power comes, under what conditions it must be exercised, who renders it effectual for the good of men. But no one desires that they, in their own persons, should receive a visible designation. Such a designation would be incompatible with the character of their office, and it would convey little instruction to other men respecting their own position, seeing that they regard the poet or man of letters as a person of a peculiar order, following an impulse different from that which they obey, and pursuing a different class of objects. But supposing there existed any set of men who were occupied about the most obvious and interesting circumstances of humanity, those which are common to the tradesman and mechanic with the man of genius, those which are most strange but yet are continually recurring, about marriage and sickness, life and death; and supposing that while thus dealing with that which belongs to all men, they were yet dealing with it as related to those awful and inward feelings which carry us out of the visible into the unseen world; supposing they even connected these earthly accidents with certain fixed and eternal laws of that region, this class would seem to be one, which from the general, continuous, and practical nature of their duties, might well be selected as signs and instances to all men of the meaning and derivation of all power; to the sage, of the meaning and derivation of those powers with which he is especially entrusted. Such a class would be the natural link between those who are continually liable to lose their sense of a Divine government in the monotony of daily occurrences, and those who are liable to lose it in the consciousness of their own energies. And if it should come to pass that the selected class should itself lose sight of its position by falling into either of these temptations, if it should merely court an outward distinction, and occupy itself in a round of outward services, forgetting its mysterious meaning; or if, in the desire to assert its difference from other vocations, it should become proud and self-exalting: then I know not what better or more terrible witness can be borne against these sins, what more terrible prophecy of the effects which must flow from them, than that ordination which has marked it out for the highest and lowest ministries; which has declared, that we exist for the sake of men, that all our authority is from God, that our only safety is in forgetting ourselves, our highest privilege to be instruments in connecting the members of our race with each other and with their Lord. Abolish our ordination, and you lose the strongest testimony which you have against our sins. You lose, too, I am well persuaded, one of the greatest securities against the degradation of our poets and men of learning, through sensual contamination or through spiritual pride.
The Romish System
It remains that I should explain wherein the views I have expressed on the subject of the Christian ministry differ from those of the Romanists. It will be obvious at once, that on some most important points, I must be in agreement with them. For I have spoken of ministers as representing Christ to men; I have maintained that the absolving power is not a nominal but a real one; I have maintained that the Apostolic functions and authority still exist in the Church; I have admitted that the Judaical institutions have their counterparts in the new dispensation. Let us inquire under each of these four heads, what points of similarity there are between that which I have asserted to be the Catholic principle, and that which is acknowledged to be the Romish one.
1. First, I have spoken of ministers as representing Christ to men. Long before there was the assertion of a supreme vicar of Christ upon earth, there was a feeling in men’s minds, that the office of the priest is vicarial, that ministers are deputed by our Lord to do that work now which He did Himself while He was upon earth. This notion has gone into the heart of the Romish system. I believe it has created the system. Now those who laugh at the notion of a man like Athanasius contending to the death about an iota, will, of course, be much amused by my affecting to discover an important difference of signification in the words representative and vicarial. And, certainly, if the difference between the Nicene Fathers and the Arians was a difference about a word and not about a reality, those who contended upon either side were very weak and vain men. And if I suppose any charm to reside in these two words, so that the one which I reject might not be used in a good sense, and the one which I adopt in an evil one, I shall be exhibiting a less pardonable instance of folly. But I will endeavour to shew that the difference to which I allude, whether it be rightly or improperly expressed by these particular phrases, is as essential and practical a one as it is possible to conceive of. In the word vicarial, the Romanist means to embody his notion that the priest is doing the work of one who is absent, and who, only at certain times and under certain conditions, presents himself to men. By the word representative, I mean to express the truth that the minister sets forth Christ to men as present in His Church at all times, as exercising those functions Himself upon which He entered when He ascended on high. Now it must be felt, I think, that this is a radical difference, not about a word, but about the most solemn question upon which the mind of man can be occupied. And it will be seen that it is no isolated difference. It stands in the closest connexion with all those which we have been taking notice of in former sections. The principle of the Catholic Church which I have endeavoured to develop in reference to Baptism, the Eucharist, the Creed, the Forms of Worship, is the principle of a direct, real, and practical union between men and their Lord. The doctrine of the Romish system, which we have discovered in each and all of these cases, is that the veil between us and the invisible world is not yet withdrawn; that offices and ordinances are not the organs through which men converse with their Lord and He with them, but are mere outward things, which He has stamped with a certain authority and virtue, or mere pictures which exhibit Him to the imagination. Happily, this system has never fully realised itself; there seems an impossibility in the nature of things that it should. The moment it becomes or nearly becomes that which it is always striving to be, it so entirely loses its meaning, it becomes such a merely oppressive phantom, that the judgments of God, and the faith as well as the infidelity of man, appear together to confound it.
2. It follows from what I have said, that the absolving power which I claim for the Catholic priest is altogether a different one from that which is claimed by the Romish priest. I do not say that it is a less power, it seems to me a much greater one. He who can, in Christ’s name, declare to a man that the state of union with Christ, which was assured to him in baptism, is his state still; that he has committed evil by living inconsistently with it; that this evil shall not be imputed to him, though it may perchance be sorely punished for his good, if he turn to God and claim the better life which is his, in his Lord; that he shall have strength from Him to be His servant and do His will; that he shall know Him, and that this knowledge shall make him free: he who can pronounce these words confidently, because they are true and because he has received a commission to declare them to such and such men—neither their truth nor his commission being in the slightest degree affected by the unbelief and the consequent unrepentance of those to whom they are addressed—has a power of absolution affecting the past, the present, and the future, which he would be sorry indeed to exchange for any which have ever been exercised by those who claim it vicarially as their own, not representatively as their Lord’s. For he must perceive, if he know anything of history, that this vicarial power has been one which did not absolve the human spirit, but bound it with heavy chains, giving it no sense of the glorious liberty which Christ has purchased for it; not only leaving it but teaching it to grovel when God has provided wings wherewith it may soar. How could penances ever have been translated from their proper and legitimate use, as means whereby those evil habits may be subdued which make the spirit proud, and hinder it from being free, into heavy shackles and torments of the conscience, into checks upon all holy and thankful devotion, into instruments of pride and self-exaltation, if those who enjoined them had really felt that they were acting on behalf of the great Redeemer and Absolver; if they had not said within their hearts, “The Lord delayeth His coming,” and therefore had thought themselves privileged to beat the menservants and the maid-servants, while they themselves ate and drank and were drunken? How could the monstrous thought of indulgences ever have crept into the minds of men who had not lost the sense of their direct subjection to an invisible Lord, and therefore of necessity had become the slaves of those whom they professed to rule, obliged to cater to their fleshly and worldly appetites, in order that they might keep them in bondage? These may be very old stories, but they are written legibly upon the history of the world, not to be exaggerated, doubtless, for the sake of establishing Protestant conclusions, but also not to be erased by any chicanery of another kind; not to be overlooked, because we may choose to fancy that other facts of an opposite kind concern us more nearly. Facts cannot contradict each other. The records of the miseries which the Romish system has produced cannot contradict those which prove even to the satisfaction of the most thoughtful Liberals of our day, that the Catholic Church has conferred innumerable blessings upon mankind. If we only understand both they must confirm and illustrate each other. What we want to discover is the point of their connexion.
3. This point, I believe, is found in that Romanist application of the vicarial doctrine which has reference to the episcopal or apostolic authority. According to the representative doctrine all ministers exhibit Christ in that office to which they are called. The whole body of bishops—each bishop in his own sphere—present him to men as the bishop or overseer of the Church. Once make ministers vicarial, and it is evident that we have the seed of an entirely new scheme. The oneness and universality of Christ’s office of course distinguishes Him from each one of His representatives, and from the whole body of His representatives. But this oneness and this universality are utterly lost to the world, they are merely dreams—if Christ be absent from His Church. They must, therefore, be imaged somewhere, since they have lost their virtue as realities. Ministers must not only be vicars of Christ, but there must be a vicar of Christ; one who absorbs into himself, and exhibits in himself, his one and universal episcopacy. Here is the Popedom, an idea which may have been most gradual in its development, which could not come forth into actual manifestation as a Church idea, while one so very like it was openly realised as the idea of the World in the persons of the Roman emperors: but which, nevertheless, was latent in the minds of all ministers who assumed to themselves a vicarial character, in the minds of all laymen who acknowledged them in that character. The conception of an apostolical primacy in St. Peter, upon which it appears to rest, is evidently a mere creature of this idea, a harmless, it may be a legitimate, historical theory when considered in itself; but when it has received the vicarial virus, capable of supporting one of the greatest denials and contradictions recorded in the annals of the universe. For this view of the Popedom is not merely that which came under our notice, when we were considering how men had been led to look for a great dogmatist to give them right and safe opinions; this is that other aspect of the office, its kingly aspect, that in which it presents itself either as the true law of Christ’s kingdom, or as the flagrant transgression and violation of it. If Christ be really in His Church, if all the offices of the Church be declaring Him to men, then is the existence of a Pope the most frightful of all anomalies, then is his existence a key to all the other anomalies in the history of Christianity. If Christ be not really in His Church, if there be no real connexion between Him and those who speak in His name, or if that connexion be merely an individual one, and there be no spiritual constitution among men, then I own I do not see how the popish system can fail to commend itself to us as the most comprehensive, the most effective, the most practical, religious organisation ever conceived of. Nor will this conviction be materially weakened by any display of the evils which the system may have produced. All these will be described as excesses. We shall be asked, what is so good or so Divine, that it is not exposed to corruption from the corruption of the human will? We shall be asked, how we can account for the good that flowed in the Middle Ages, not from a certain idea of Christianity merely, but from that idea as expressed in the organisation of the Church? I think we are able to answer, as we have answered before, ‘This papal system is itself, in its simplest, best form, that result of the corrupt human will which you speak of. It is itself not the excess but the counterfeit of the Church constitution, the violation indeed of an idea, but also of the organisation in which that idea is embodied. Because it could not destroy that idea or that organisation the Church Catholic was able to diffuse some of those blessings which God meant it to diffuse. Just so far as the system prevailed, just so far as it did not contradict itself by asserting the principles it sets at naught, it has hindered God’s mercies from reaching the world, it has turned them into curses.’ Such language as this craves to be tried by Scripture, by history, by the conscience of papists themselves, by the truths which they profess, and which some of them, I am convinced, hold most dear. The other language which supposes that there is no spiritual constitution of Christ’s ministry, has, I believe, done more, and is, at this present time, doing more to promote and establish Popery than all its own most diligent efforts.
4. It must still allude briefly to the connexion which I suppose, and which the Romanist supposes, to exist between the Jewish and the Christian economy. We are agreed so far as this—we both believe the connexion to be a real one, we both believe that it has to do with an ecclesiastical economy, we both believe that the forms of the Jewish Commonwealth, so far as they were not merely national or oriental, were translated into corresponding forms, and not merely into spiritual notions. Wherein then do we differ? In this all-important point, that we look upon the Incarnation; the Resurrection, and the Ascension of our Lord, as declaring Him to be really and actually, not nominally or fantastically, head of the universal kingdom as the mortal High Priest had been of the peculiar kingdom, all the Jewish history being a preparation for the substitution of the one for the other. They believe that this High Priest has been succeeded in the new dispensation by one mortal and sinful as himself; that he is to preserve the doctrines of the Creed to the Church, while he practically and in his own person declares that those doctrines do not mean what they seem to mean; that a real connexion has not been established between man and God in the person of the Mediator; that the Church is not what her Creed affirms her to be, united to Him in His victory as well as in His humiliation. Again, then, we contend, and with so much more conviction and earnestness, as we approach nearer to the heart of the subject, that the Romish system and the Catholic Church, instead of being identical, instead of having any natural affinity for each other, are deadly opposites, one of which must perish if the other is to survive.
Notes
The case of Elisha may be considered an exception. But was not a prophet in Samaria in some sense a substitute for the priest, or, at all events, a witness for the institution?↩︎