Dr. Morell on Church Authority. T is impossible that a thinking read the history of the Christian that the cause lies deeper, and that the ambition of the pastor of the church at Rome would have done as little harm to the great body of Christiaus as obscure enthusiast, had he attempted spiritual conquest, armed only with spiritual authority. Whether his succession to the Apostle Peter were real, or pretended, he could never have persuaded the Christian world to bend beneath his supremacy, had he not found more efficient support in temporal authorities, than in his boasted apostolic succession. It was the coalition of civil, and ecclesiastical powers that first broke down the freedom of the Christian Church, and made it pass under the yoke,—that most degrading yoke, which bows down the soul itself in voluntary slavery. It is lawful, and may not be useless to imagine what might have been the history of Christianity, had its ministers never been admitted into civil alliance. Intolerant spirits would have existed, for positive and severe men will be bigots; but wanting the instrumentality of the secular arm, their intolerance would only have wasted the heart that cherished it. Errors would have sprung up; but as they could not have twined their parisitical fibres round the pillars of the state, they would not long have sustained themselves where the growth of truth was unchecked by power. Sophistry would have been combated by argument, assertion by fact, ignorance by knowledge, and error by truth; and he must think meanly of the power of truth, who can doubt what would be the issue of an open conflict in a duration of many centuries. If uniformity of opinion had not been produced, it is probable that discussion unbiassed and unawed would have gained a much nearer approach to it, than authority has been able to compel. At all events, that sickening uniformity of darkness, which was extended like a pall over the middle ages, could never have covered the people, to whom the scriptures gave their light. The curfew of prelatical tyranny could never have rung out the signal that was to shut them in a long night of ignorance and terror. The sword of the magistrate, placed out of the grasp of the ecclesiastic, might have protected the rights of Christians, and of men, from the violation of misguided zeal and church-policy; and law, regarding as it ought with indifference all opinions, that neither weaken the obligation nor impede the practice of justice, would have interfered between contending sects for no other purpose but to chain down violence and keep the peace. Hence if the cry of heresy were raised, the magistrate not being coupled with the priest,-for the sake of good order the chase must have been made a bloodless one. Had the Church never been incorporated with the State, her sentences of excommunication would not have become as destructive to the estates and bodies of men, as they were terrible to their imagination and fears but that association being once established the civil power was soon brought to think, that he who was rejected by the Church had forfeited the protection, and even incurred the heaviest penalties of the State. The Christian has often triumphantly contrasted the early propagation of his religion with the ferocious conquests of Mahomet and his successors; and he has reason in his triumph. The gospel made its way unaided by arts or arms: it had established itself in the conviction and hearts of men long before the stratagems and weapons of this world were employed in the service of the cross; and none more than the enlightened Christian condemns, and deplores the officious and fatal interference of civil policy and power, after the time of Constantine, in the conversion of pagan nations to Christianity. The soldier usurped the office of the missionary; the diplomatist became evangelist; and the kingdom of Christ was forced into an alliance and abused into a resemblance to the kingdoms of this world. The hand of blood was laid upon the sacred ark: its purity was fled, and a dark and debasing superstition succeeded to the pure, and undefiled religion of Christ. The Gothic tribes that broke into the south of Europe, brought with them better morals than they found. Rude they were, and fierce, rapacious often and cruel; but the vices in the train of luxury had not wasted the powers of the soul, and destroyed the elements of future good. Intrepid, and clear-sighted, and remote from the country of Odin, they were not fitted to move long in the fetters of the northern superstition. Had this race of men fallen among Christians, such as Christians were in the first ages of the church, and such as might have succeeded to them but for the pollution of secular connexion and worldly ambition, to accomplish their conversion to genuine Christianity had required no refinements of policy, no exertion of force. The sword of Charlemagne could only compel a feigned assent, where a band of zealous, faithful and truly evangelical missionaries would have planted Christianity in the mind, and in the heart. In those countries of Germany which were first roused from their long stupor by the voice of the Reformer, what noble materials existed for carrying up the Christian edifice! At the time when the rude but manly inhabitants were vanquished into a spurious religion, and driven at the point of the spear to the baptismal fonts of the Roman Church! And had England been brought into culture by such men as first preached the gospel in Britain, and happily escaped the pestilential blight from the Tyber, what a vineyard had she stood, thus planted and trained by labourers, who resembled the lord of the vineyard! It may be said, that although, had the Church never been incorporated with civil governments its history would no doubt be different from what it is; yet it does not follow that it would be better. On the contrary the abandonment of the religion of Christ to the guardianship of the people would have issued in greater evils, than any that have resulted from placing it under the patronage and advancing it into a participation of Dr. Morell on Church-Authority. secular authority:-Heresies innumerable would have choaked the orthodox faith; absurd opinions, which so easily establish themselves in the ordinary and uneducated mind, would have ejected Christian doctrine: some base plebeian superstition would have triumphed over Christian worship; or that most overwhelming curse that can fall upon the earth, universal scepticism would have quenched the light of truth, and involved the world in worse than Stygian darkness. But who that has looked at all into Church history does not know, that the heresy of one century or climate has been the orthodox faith of another, and that the Christian world has continually divided and subdivided on every article of popular belief? And as to absurd tenets, could the dullness of vulgar and unlettered men have fabricated any of grosser quality than have been spun by subtile schoolmen, woven into creeds by learned dignitaries, and stamped with the great seal of Church-authority in ecclesiastical councils, though held by princes and composed of prelates? They cousulted their Urim and Thummim, and gave out oracles that confound the reason of the believer, or baffle the ingenuity of the interpreter to the present day. To suppose that the faith of Christians would have been wrecked and lost, had not political men kindled the beacons that warn them from infidelity, carries in it an implication, not the most respectful to the evidences of the Christian revelation. Besides, scepticism is not natural to man. Few and cold are the hearts to which it can be dear. A being who is conscious of powers which assure him of an invisible power, who feels that he has but a dependent existence, and whose regrets, while they surround the tomb of affection, throw their shadows across the way that leads to their own, such a creature is not naturally irreligious. The sentiment of piety is latent in all the social feelings of his heart, and the affinity is too strong to be generally destroyed even in the dissolution of civil society. This law of God written in the heart does not require to be registered by human jurisprudence in her courts of record. To preserve this sacred fire from exfinction there needs no college of priests, no order of vigilants, no decree of the state. Man is prone to superstition, but he is rarely, and with difficulty perverted into scepticism. If the state could render any service to religion by taking her ministers, as such into a communion of power, the most likely service appears to be, that of restraining both priest and people in that descent to superstition, or those starts into fanaticism, which seem to be so easy to them. But the fact is, that princes and men in power have been for the most part either as unenlightened as the mass of society in matters of religion; or anxious only to perpetuate the dominion of truth or error, superstition or religion, indifferently, from the dread of innovation. It is not difficult to find in their codes of law penal statutes, condemning to fines, confiscation, imprisonment and death, men, who could not believe without evidence, and would not subscribe what they did not believe, who refused to worship they knew not what, in ways more Pagan than Christian: And it were easy to shew that articles of faith too absurd to be believed, and rites of superstition, too childish to be performed honestly by any but the most uninformed members of the state, have continued to be the law of the land for a considerable time after they have been abandoned by the body of the people. When the multitude of Christians have suffered themselves to be surprised or seduced into spiritual chains, the civil power has not refused to rivet them on; but the force which has burst the bonds asunder has proceeded from themselves. The reformation of opinion has, as was to be expected, dictated the reformation of law; and governments have rarely become tolerant, till the spirit of the times has ceased to be intolerant. At this moment the lily, which has been so often steeped in the blood of the reformed, though it has been long preserved on a Protestant soil, and lately re-planted by Protestant hands, is become the inauspicious signal for a religious persecution in the south of France. It may be said that the association of civil and ecclesiastical powers sets a limit to spiritual authority; and that in fact the first step to the reformation from popery in this country was, the union of these powers in the sovereign. when Henry VIIIth. caused himself to be constituted head of the church. If Christianity cannot flourish without a hierarchy it is no doubt necessary both to civil and religious liberty, that it be allowed to exercise no authority independently of the will of the State; still the association is not without danger. To what cause was it owing, that, before the reformation all Christendom was trodden under foot by ecclesiastics? And how did they contrive to raise themselves above the civil jurisdiction, till they were able to set prince and people at defiance? The priest was first placed on the same bench with the temporal judge: thence he soon found means to step over the head of his lay-colleague, and the magistrate, who planted him at his side, had his own folly to blame for the consequence. Thus the fable of the horse and his rider was naturally enough exemplified in his experience; he meant to be the ruler, but his more dextrous coadjutor made him the slave. One step more will take us to the grand source of the usurpation, intolerance and corruption, that darken the retrospect of the Christian church. The opinion to which I allude is well expressed in the following extract from a Consecration Sermon, preached by Dr. Graves, in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin, July, 1806. "To suppose," says he, "that when the apos tles were removed from their ministry, all authority to govern and direct the church of Christ was to expire along with them, and that the regulation of that society so extended, so important, so sacred, was to be abandoned to the caprice of individuals, the unruliness of multitudes, the mere casual exertions of transitory feelings, and undirected efforts, is as contrary to the dictates of reason, the analogy of nature, and the general economy of Providence, as to the direct declarations of scripture, aud the clearest records of ecclesiastical history." If the Church has governors, who derive their authority either by succession or ordination from the apostles, two things are necessary; first, that the authority shall have been well defined by the apostles themselves, for the apostolic authority could not survive the office and the men : 2dly, That the governors of the church posBess together with the authority the means to make it respected and obeyed. As to the first, it would be difficult to produce the passages, or passage, in the New Testament, in which the authority of the rulers of the Church, whether bishops, or councils, or pres byteries, is defined either expressly or by implication. Let the instruc tions and credentials be fairly made out and established, and the authority shall be acknowledged; till then it is right to question it. Suppose it, however, established; what means have the successors to the episcopal authority of the apostles (for more than that is not pretended out of the Church of Rome) to make their government ef ficient? Inspiration has ceased; miracles are no more; and though personal qualities may be respected, yet, for enforcing obedience in large communities, the homage which is paid to them can never supply the place of that submission which is at once enforced by power and won by rank and splendour. Divested of powers, authority is but a name; it must have them either absolute or dependent. The Catholic Church had them at first in dependence on the magistrate; but it soon found means to convert them into a freehold ; and that, into an impious tyranny. To restore the dependence was the labour of the reformation; and in Protestant countries this was at length happily effected. If church-authority must exist, the safety of the world requires that it be ingrafted upon a civil stock, which may mitigate its sourness, and impart to it the flavour of humanity. The compound of the churchman and the man of the world is less dangerous, both to the civil and religious interests of mankind, than the mere ecclesiastic; for the participation of secular distinctions, and civil powers may introduce principles of liberality into church-government, which are not indigenous in any hierarchy: hence, less spiritual oppression is to be apprehended from an Episcopal or Presbyterian church, incorporated with the State, than from either of them, invested with independent powers. The radical mistake in all these matters appears to be, the assumption of a churchauthority, which is divine, of a legitimate Christian hierarchy, which is founded upon the Christian code.Grant that such a right of rule exists, and it cannot be denied, that there Dr. Morell on Church-Authority. much good sense and knowledge of mankind in such remarks as the following: they occur in a Consecration Sermon, which was preached in the Chapel of Lambeth, 1807, by the Rev. Charles Barker, and published by command of his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury. "They who talk of apostolical simplicity and lowliness, and contend that even now the same simplicity would best become the ministers of Christianisty, forget, or conceal from view, the real state of the apostolical character. They conceal from view the high and unattainable superiority over other men with which at all times, and in all places the apostle was personally gifted; his inspiration, his power of working miracles, and the immediate and irresistible operation of such endowments whether for the formation of a Christian church, or for its rule and governance when formed. In their day and for their purpose these were no defects; or if they were (while the choice of such men for such an office was designedly made to confound the pride of human wisdom) they were amply compensated by the constant and demonstrable interposition of God himself. With whatever rank and influence the incorporation of religion with the State, and with the order of society, has since invested the ministers of the gospel, the greatest and wealthiest, nay the best and wisest of those ministers' possesses no substitution for the decisive and commanding authority of the humble fisherman who could heal the sick and raise the dead." I shall add one more extract, which is in strong contrast with the spirit and doctrine of the last; but which, while it breathes more of the spirit of primitive simplicity, betrays a want of that practical knowledge, which is not so well acquired within the inclosure of a sect: it is taken from a charge delivered to the clergy of the Episcopal Communion of Edinburgh, 1807, by the Right Reverend Daniel Sandford, D. Ď. their bishop; and consequently a Dissenter on that side of the Tweed. "It has often afforded me," says he, "great satisfaction to contemplate the resemblance, that the Christian society of which we are members bears, in its external condition, to the church of Christ, as it existed every where, before the conversion of the Emperor Constantine. During that period, indeed, the Church was frequently exposed to secular persecution, from which, blessed be God, we, enjoying as we do, a free and perfect toleration from the state, are mercifully exempted. But, as far as can be intended by the comparison our case is the same with that of our forefathers in the Christian faith, in ages which we are accustomed to consider with peculiar veneration. At that time the Church, unconnected with the State, subsisted by her own internal and inherent powers. Irenæus, Cyprian, Cornelius, and indeed all who held the office of a Bishop for the three first centuries, were possessed of no other authority, and probably encompassed with no more outward dignity than he who now addresses you; and this authority was preserved by the filial affection of the clergy, over whom they respectively presided. God forbid that I should ever have the presumption to compare my own talents, or my own zeal, to the talents or the zeal of those burning and shining lights, to which every succeeding age of the Church has looked back with reverence, inferior only to that which is due to the immediate apostles of our Lord. I mention them only because their history furnishes an incontrovertible proof that episcopacy can subsist, and bishops who are deserving of respect be highly respected, though destitute of the splendid but adventitious panoply of a legal establishment." It appears from this passage, that the Bishop derived great pleasure from contemplating the episcopal communion over which he presided, as unconnected with the state; though he might not, perhaps, think secular connexion a sufficient ground of dissent from an Episcopal Church. Indeed with the Protestant Dissenters of England the incorporation of the Church with the State is neither the sole nor the ultimate ground of dissent. I suppose the greater part of them consider church-authority under every form as a usurpation: many of them are persuaded that it is the only enemy from which Christianity ever had or ever will have any thing to fear; that it has acted like a poison, and not a very slow poison, wasting and corrupting, as it has circulated |