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Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, once wrote to the empress Matilda, mother of Henry II. king of England, in these words:-God has drawn his bow, and will speedily shoot from thence the arrows of death, if princes do not permit his spouse, the church, for the love of whom he had deigned to die, to remain free, and to be honoured with the possession of those privileges and dignities which he had purchased for her with his blood on the cross. "Whoever has read the gospel," says the noble historian,* "must be astonished to hear, that an exemption for clergymen from all civil justice, was one of the privileges purchased by the blood of Christ for his church." He might have said further, Must be astonished to hear, as the words manifestly imply, that the church, the spouse of Jesus Christ, for the love of whom he died, is no other than the clergy, and that the heavenly blessings (for that his kingdom was not of this world he himself plainly declared) which were the price of his blood, were, secular dominion, earthly treasure, and an unlimited license in the commission of crimes with impunity. It is not easy to conceive a grosser perversion of the nature, design, and spirit of the gospel. Yet by means of the artful appropriation of some names, the word church in particular, and misapplication of others, such absurdities were propagated by one side, and believed by the other. Nay, the frequency of the abuse is acknowledged, even by such Roman Catholic authors as can make any pretension to discernment and candour. Fleury, the ecclesiastical historian, has pointed out the perversion of the term church in more places than one. "Peter de Blois," he tells us, "warmly recommended to the bishop of Orleans to remonstrate with his cousin king Philip, and warn him against laying any subsidies whatever upon the clergy in support of the war, even though a holy war for extending the dominions of the church; as nothing, he affirms, should be exacted from the clergy but prayers, of which the laity stand greatly in need." Further, he acquaints us, that this zealous man wrote also to John of Coutances, whom he exhorted to employ his credit with the king of England to maintain the dignity of the church. "She is free," says he, "by the liberty which

*Lord Littleton.

Jesus Christ has procured us; but to load her with exactions, is to bring her into bondage, like Hagar. If your princes, under pretence of this new pilgrimage, will render the church. tributary, every son of the church ought to resist, and die, rather than submit to servitude." The historian pertinently subjoins, "We see here the equivocal use made in those days of the words church and liberty; as if the church delivered by Jesus Christ were only the clergy, or as if our deliverance were from aught but sin and the legal ceremonies." Again, from the same hand, we are informed, that, in reply to a letter from Pope Boniface VIII., wherein, by the same perversion of words, the pontiff had appropriated the title church to ecclesiastics, King Philip of France amongst other things wrote to him,-" The church, the spouse of Jesus Christ, does not consist of clergy only, but of laymen also. He has delivered it from the slavery of sin, and the yoke of the old law, and has willed, that all who compose it, both clerks and laics, enjoy this freedom. It was not for ecclesiastics only that he died, nor to them alone that he promised grace in this life, and glory in the next. It is but by an abuse of language that the clergy arrogate peculiarly to themselves the liberty which Jesus Christ has purchased for us.” Which of the two, the king or the priest, was the greater statesman, I know not; but it does not require a moment's hesitation to pronounce which was the better divine. The inferiority of his Holiness here, even in his own profession, compared with his Majesty, in a profession not his own, is both immense and manifest.

But amongst a rude and ignorant people, in ages of barbarity and superstition, it was easy to confound, in their minds, the cause of the priest with the cause of God, in every quarrel which the former happened to have with the magistrate. I shall here remark in passing, and with it conclude the present discourse, that it is doubtful whether the word ɛxxλnoia ever occurs in the New Testament in a sense wherein

* On voît ici les equivoques ordinaires en ce tems-là sur les mots d'Eglise et de Liberté; comme si l'Eglise delivrée par Jesus Christ n'étoit que le clergé, ou qu'il nous eut delivrez d'autre chose que du peché et des ceremonies legales. L. lxxiv. chap. 15.; L. lxxxix. chap. 144.

the word church is very common with us, as a name for the place of worship. There are only two passages that I remember, which seem to convey this sense. They are both in the eleventh chapter of the First Epistle to the Corinthians. The first is verse 18. When ye come together in the church, συνερχομένων ὑμων εν τη εκκλησια. Here, however, the word is susceptible of another interpretation, as a name for the society. Thus we say, "The lords, spiritual and temporal, and the commons, in parliament assembled;" where parliament does not mean the house they meet in, but the assembly properly constituted. The other is verse 22. Have ye not houses to eat and drink in, or despise ye the church of God? ons exxλncias τε θες καταφρονειτε: where it is urged, the opposition of εκκλησια to ɑzia, the church to their houses, adds a probability to this interpretation. But this plea, though plausible, is not decisive. The sacred writers are not always studious of so much accuracy in their contrasts, nor is it here necessary to the The apostle's argument, on my hypothesis, stands thus: What can be the reason of this abuse? Is it because ye have not houses of your own to eat and drink in? Or is it because ye despise the Christian congregation to which ye belong? This, though it do not convey so exact a verbal antithesis, is, in my judgment, more in the spirit and style of the New Testament, than to speak of despising stone walls. But as to this I affirm nothing. To express the place of meeting, we find the word cuvaywyn, as observed above, used by the apostle James. In ancient authors, the words first adopted were εκκλησιαςήριον, εκκλησιας οικος, and κυριακο», whence the words kirk and church. At length the term exxλno, by a common metonymy, the thing contained for the thing containing, came to be universally employed in this acceptation.

sense.

LECTURE XI.

THE steps I have already mentioned and explained, advancing from presbytery to parochial episcopacy, thence to prelacy or diocesan episcopacy, from that to metropolitical primacy, and thence again to patriarchal superintendency; together with those methods I have pointed out to you, whereby the ministers of religion distinguished themselves from their Christian brethren; insensibly prepared the minds of the people for the notion, that in ordination there was something exceedingly mysterious, and even inscrutable. It came at length, not to be considered as a solemn manner of appointing a fit person to discharge the duties of the pastoral office amongst a particular flock or congregation, and of committing them to his care, but to be regarded more especially as the imprinting of a certain character, or unperceivable and incomprehensible signature on a person; a character which, though in consequence of human means employed by the proper minister it was conferred, could by no power less than Omnipotence be removed. And though, at first hearing, one would be apt to imagine, that by this tenet they derogated as much from the ecclesiastic power on one hand as they enhanced it on the other, since they maintained that the persons who gave this character could not take it away, the effect on men's conceptions was very different. If a single ceremony, or form of words, could with as much facility withdraw as confer a gift in its nature invisible, nobody would be impressed with the conception, that any thing very wonderful had been either given or taken. The words or ceremony of ordaining would be considered as nothing more than the established mode of investing a man with the right of exercising canonically the sacred function; and the words or ceremony used in the deposition, as the mode of stripping him of that right or privilege, so that he should no longer be entitled to exercise it. In this way he would be under the same canonical incapacity he lay under before his ordination, which answers to what was, for many ages, called in the

N

church, reducing a clergyman to lay communion. There would be nothing more extraordinary here, than the creating of a lord high-steward, for instance, by certain solemnities accompanying the delivery of a white baton into his hands, and placing him on an eminent seat, and his putting an end to his office, by publicly breaking the baton, and coming down from his seat; whereas, for a man to do a thing, which nothing less than Omnipotence can undo, and which even that, in fact, will never be employed in undoing; to imprint a character-a something which, in spite of angels, men, and devils, shall, to eternity, remain indelible, appears the result of a power inconceivable indeed, and little less than divine.

Whence ideas of this kind originated,-ideas that do not seem to quadrate with the so much boasted power of the keys, which implies alike that of opening and that of shutting, admitting and excluding, binding and loosing,—ideas, of which the apostles and evangelists have nowhere given us the slightest hint, and of which it is plain they had not themselves the smallest apprehension, is a matter of curious inquiry, and closely connected with the subject of the hierarchy. I shall therefore endeavour briefly, in this lecture, to trace the rise and progress of so strange a doctrine.

Ecclesiastical degrees were not instituted originally under the notion of dignities, pre-eminences, or honours, as they became afterwards, but as ministries, charges, and what the apostle Paul called gy, works, 1 Tim. iii. 1. “If a man desire the office of a bishop," says he, “he desireth a good work." Consequently, if in any thing denominated the office of a bishop there be no work to do, it cannot be the office whereof the apostle speaks; for the misapplication of the name can never alter the nature of the thing. The persons accordingly possessed of such offices were styled, both by our Lord and by Paul his apostle, gyarα, labourers, workmen. “The labourers are few," says the former, and "the workman is worthy of his meat :" the latter recommends it to Timothy to acquit himself as "a workman that needeth not be ashamed."

For some time, indeed, it could hardly enter into the mind of any man to think himself entitled to decline executing personally, whilst able to execute, a trust solemnly committed to

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