 Section 20 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy, Volume 1 by John Tulloch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. Edward Stillingfleet, the Irenicum of a Comprehensive Church, Part 1. The life of Stillingfleet does not belong to our subject. His main activity, as a theological writer and as a churchman, is associated with the Church of the Restoration and Revolution, to the defense and maintenance of which he brought something of the tolerant and enlightened spirit which he had learned at Cambridge, and which finds expression in the Irenicum, but with whose narrowness and meanness of policy he was upon the whole identified. In a certain measure he remained true to his early convictions, as the length and preface to the treatise on the unreasonableness of separation shows. He had nothing to do with the act of uniformity, his youth happily saved him from this, or with any of the persecuting acts of the reign of Charles II. And in his controversy with Owen and Baxter he cannot be said to have occupied the illiberal side. But with all he lacked vitality of liberal conviction, and a generous trust in his own principles to save and bless the church for which he was so zealous. He was a specimen, in short, of many men, both churchmen and politicians, whose early liberalism degenerates with their advancement in life, under the pressure of those class feelings which grow with the growth of all but the most open, honest and rational natures. Their liberalism is the result of education, or of temporary enthusiasm, or the excitement of the times in which they live. But it never works thoroughly into their reason so as to illuminate, control, and guide it. Traditionalism, in consequence, by and by regains ascendancy over them. The snares of office, or the deceitfulness of party, choke the good seed of liberal feeling, and gradually it wears away. And men of this stamp, who gloried in their youth in bearing some banner of reform, often become at last the most jealous guardians of official dogma, and the most unreasoning critics of new ideas. If stilling fleet cannot be accused of formal apostasy from his early principles, his career as a rising churchman, his natural temper, and his somewhat cold, hard, and argumentative, rather than rational turn of mind, easily inclined him to the winning side in his time, and made him in his later years look back upon the ironicum as a mere youthful essay conceived rather out of tenderness towards the dissenters than in the interests of truth and peace. FUTNOTE A book written twenty years since with great tenderness towards dissenters before the laws were established, prefaced to the unreasonableness of separation, 1680, and FUTNOTE. This is not the language of a man who thoroughly understood and reprised the principles of religious liberty, nor does the life which narrowed rather than broadened in sympathy and which grew more limited and precise instead of more profound and comprehensive in its intellectual range mingle in the thread of our history. The following bare statement of facts, therefore, must suffice as an introduction to our review of the ironicum. Edward Stilling Fleet was a native of Cranbourne, in Dorsetshire, where he was born in the year 1635. He was educated at St. John's College, Cambridge, and distinguished himself by his singular ingenuity and constant improvement. His course of study extended from 1648 to 1655 when the new school of Cambridge Divines, represented by Wichcote and John Smith and Cudworth, was in the full height of its activity. This of itself is sufficient to account for Stilling Fleet's liberal leanings. Cambridge was now, rather than Oxford, the centre of the liberal theological movement. The wave of rational thought had, in the course of ten eventful years, passed from one university to the other, and there taken a wider shape and influence, extending not merely to ecclesiastical questions, but to the whole field of religion and the sources of philosophical and moral truth. The rise, progress, and results of the school known as the Cambridge Platonists await investigation. In the meantime, it is enough to fix and mark the significance of the fact that Stilling Fleet was educated in the midst of it. He could not help catching something of the spirit which pervaded the place, and if he did not come under its deeper influences, yet both the origines Sacre and Irenicum show that his mind had been thoroughly awakened to the religious problems of his time and that he had learned something of the rational Christian eclecticism, through which alone these problems could have been solved fairly and the country saved from the disgraceful iniquities of the restoration. Stilling Fleet passed from Cambridge to be tutored to the family of Sir Francis Burgoyne in Warwickshire, and subsequently to Nottingham, as tutored to the eldest son of a Mr. Purepoint, connected with the Marquess of Dorchester. Here he is said to have begun, presumably in 1656, the Irenicum. It was not completed, however, till three years later, and probably he made little progress with it till settled as Rector of Sutton, to which living he was appointed by his earliest patron Sir Francis Burgoyne in 1657. He was episcopally ordained by Dr. Brownrig, one of the ejected bishops, a fact of which much is made by the panagyrical biographer who has sketched his life in very dull and unmeaning outline as an introduction to the folio edition of his works. The young Rector of Sutton was in the full flush of his well-trained faculties fresh from the generous intellectual life of Cambridge, with his mind keenly alive to the ecclesiastical difficulties of the age. He felt that he could do something to help these difficulties. The Irenicum was the result. It was published in 1659 on the eve of the Restoration, and reprinted three years later, in 1662, the year in which the act of uniformity was passed. This was the answer which the age gave by a severe irony of criticism to his eclectic proposal. In the same year appeared his origines sacré, or a rational account of the Christian faith as to the truth and divine authority of the scriptures and the matter therein contained. The chief events of Stilling Fleet's life, henceforth, are summed up in his successive promotions and controversies. He was appointed Rector of St. Andrew's, Holborn, in 1665, first a canon, and then Dean of St. Paul's, 1680, and finally Bishop of Worcester, 1689. He distinguished himself in conflict with the papists, the deists and atheists of the time, the Sosinians, and the new school of philosophy represented by Locke. It is impossible not to admire, with Clarendon, the strength and vigor of raciocination and the clearness of style and expression in his several writings. He is a skillful, well-trained, powerful controversialist. Whether he appears as a pseudonymous assailant of the papal religion and policy, or as an advocate of the foundations of Christian belief, or as a defender of the doctrine of the atonement or the doctrine of the trinity, which he considered to be imperiled by Locke's theory of ideas, he shows the facility, vigor, and hopefulness of a well-disciplined intellect and a copious store of argumentative resources. He is a theological champion, an ecclesiastical giant-killer who watches continually from the sacred ramparts for the foes of the church, papal, separatist, philosophical, and goes forth with elate and joyous heart to meet and overthrow them. But with all his vigor and clearness there are none of his writings which have much life of thought. They are clever, able, and were eminently successful in their day, but they lack the vital interest which only some spark of nature, some fire of passion, or some glow of meditative or speculative genius can give to theological polemics. His youthful essay is, in many respects, his highest work. It possesses nearly all the argumentative force, the masterly logic of his later writings, while it is distinguished above them all by catholicity of spirit, by rapidity, animation, and consinity of treatment. The full title of the essay is, quote, Irenicum, a weapon sav for the church's wound, or the divine right of particular forms of church government, discussed and examined according to the principles of the law of nature, the positive law of God, the practice of the apostles and the primitive church, and the judgment of reformed divines, whereby a foundation is laid for the church's peace and the accommodation of our present differences. Close quote. The keynote is effectively struck in the succession of mottos which follow on the title page, first from the epistle to the Philippians, let your moderation be known unto all men, then from the letter of Isaac Casalban to Carnal Perron, and lastly, from the treatise of Grosius on the relation of civil and ecclesiastical authority, pointing to the great distinction between state use divinum in the church and an authority which is merely regulative or expedient. The year 1659, in which the Irenicum was published, was a year of political perplexity and of the forecasts of coming change. The great protector had died in the previous autumn and the reigns of government were already falling from the hands of his feeble son. Before the spring was over he had signed his demission and retired into the private life for which alone nature had fitted him. The parliament and the army once more shared, but with very divided and jealous councils, the supreme authority. It was obvious that the period was a transitional one. Cromk was already meditating his march from Scotland. Common apprehensions were drawing the Presbyterians and the older royalists together. They remembered the miseries of misgovernment through which the country had come before the strong hand of Cromwell was laid upon it, and the special humiliations which they had both endured at the hands of military and parliamentary officers who valued neither Presbyterian nor Episcopacy. They began to feel the necessity of common action and even of softening in some degree their mutual asperities. It was in such circumstances that the old idea of accommodation which Usher had conceived and Hales and Chillingworth would have welcomed once more revived, and that Stillingfleet became its expositor. The character of the political situation suggested anew to thoughtful minds the possibility of an ecclesiastical compromise. Could not the advantages of Episcopacy and Presbytery be united on some rational basis of expediency? Is there anything so exclusively divine in either as to prevent this? Is there any use divinum in church government at all in such a sense as to hinder wise men from acknowledging the force of circumstances and composing their religious differences? This was the important question which, in the face of approaching changes, Stillingfleet set himself to re-examine. In his preface he draws a highly colored picture of the evils which the long protracted religious discord had produced. Quote, Controversies about religion had increased till they had brought religion itself into a controversy. Religion hath been so much rarefied into airy notions and speculations by the distempered zeal of men's spirits that its inward strength and the vitals of it have been much consumed. Curiosity that green sickness of the soul whereby it longs for novelties and loaths sound wholesome truths hath been the epidemical distemper of the age we live in, of which it may be as truly said, as ever yet of any, that it was Seicolom Fertile religione sterile pietatis. I fear this will be the character whereby our age will be known to posterity, that it was the age wherein men talked of religion most and lived at least. Men being loath to put themselves to the trouble of a holy life readily embrace anything which may dispense with that." And hence enrol themselves as parties and attach a religious importance to the most trifling party distinctions. All the several parties among us, he continues, Quote, Have given such glorious names only to the outward government of the Church, the undeniable practice of the Apostles, the discipline of Christ, the order of the Gospel, and account only that the Church where their own method of government is observed. Close Quote. From this monopolizing of churches to parties hath preceded the uncharitableness which was constantly breaking out into open flame, and the most violent heart-burning and contentions, the only effectual remedy appeared to Stillingfleet to be, Quote, An infusion of the true spirit of religion, the revulsion of the extravisated blood into its proper channels, thereby taking men off from their eager pursuit after ways and parties, notions and opinions, and bringing them back to a right understanding of the nature, design, and principles of Christianity. Close Quote. He explains Christianity as a religion of peace and tolerance, and sets forth, in the spirit of Chillingworth and Taylor, that the design of Christ was to ease men of their former burdens and not to lay on more. For the Church, therefore, to require more than Christ himself did, or make other conditions of her communion than our Saviour did of discipleship, is wholly unwarrantable. Quote. What possible reason can be assigned or given why such things should not be sufficient for communion with a church which are sufficient for eternal salvation? And certainly those things are sufficient for that which are laid down as the necessary duties of Christianity by our Lord and Saviour in his word. What ground can there be why Christians should not stand upon the same terms now which they did in the time of Christ and his apostles? Was not religion sufficiently guarded and fenced in by him? The grand commission the apostles were sent out with was only to teach what Christ had commanded them, not the least intimation of any power given them to impose or require anything beyond what himself had spoken to them, or they were directed to by the immediate guidance of the Spirit of God. It is not whether the things required be lawful or no, it is not whether indifferences be determined or no, it is not how far Christians are bound to submit to a restraint of their Christian liberty which I now inquire after of these things in the treatise itself, but whether they do consult for the church's peace and unity who suspend it upon such things. Without all controversy the main inlet of all the distractions, confusions, and divisions of the Christian world have been by adding other conditions of church communion than Christ hath done. Would there ever be the less peace and unity in a church if a diversity were allowed as to practices supposed indifferent? Yea, there would be so much more as there was a mutual forbearance and condescension as to such things. The unity of the church is a unity of love and affection, and not a bare uniformity of practice or opinion. There is nothing the primitive church deserves greater imitation by us in than in that admirable temper, moderation, and condescension which was used in it towards all the members of it. It was never thought worth the while to make any standing laws for rights and customs that had no other original but tradition, much less to suspend men her communion for not observing them." On the contrary, the greatest latitude was allowed in the church of the First Ages, and he appeals with confidence to the well-known testimony of Sozomen, of Cyprian, Augustine, Jerome, and others. Footnote. The passage from Sozomen to which reference is made is often quoted. Stillingfleet translates. They judged it, and that very justly, a foolish and frivolous thing for those that agree in the weighty matters of religion to separate from one another's communion for the sake of some petty customs and observations. For churches agreeing in the same faith often differ in their rights and customs. End Footnote. The first, he says, who break this order in the church, were the Arians, Donatists, and Circumcellians, while the true church was still known by its pristine moderation and sweetness of deportment towards all its members. He expresses a hope that the Church of England may events its conformity to the primitive Church. Not so much in using the same rights that were in use then as in not imposing them, but leaving men to be one by observing the true decency and order of churches, whereby those who act upon a true principle of Christian ingenuity may be sooner drawn to a compliance in all lawful things than by force and rigorous imposition, which make men suspect the weight of the thing itself when such force is used to make it enter. Events of such sound wisdom and sense, uttered by a clever young ecclesiastic on the eve of the Restoration, show how far a higher spirit prevailed in many minds at this time. A rational theology had not been without its effect upon the country. Amidst the strife of opposing factions, its voice had been heard. For stilling fleet is not to be supposed a man standing very much above or apart from his age, of independent and exceptional thoughtfulness. He was rather then, as he always was, a man with his eyes open to the signs of his time, and the influences moving men's minds. We may fairly conclude, therefore, that there was not merely in Cambridge, but amongst many of the more generous and active minded of the younger clergy everywhere at this period, and earnest desire for some compromise amongst religious parties, whereby peace might be secured, and the Church reconstructed upon a larger and a firmer basis than ever. The government of the Church was, as it had been since the Reformation, the special difficulty, an unhappy controversy to us in England, stilling fleet says, if ever there were any in the world. And this chiefly he adds, because so few really, quote, understood the matter they so eagerly contended about. For the state of the controversy, as it concerns us, lies not here, as it is generally mistaken, what form of government comes the nearest to apostolical practice, but whether any one individual form be founded so upon divine right that all ages and churches are bound unalterably to observe it." This is the important question. Let it only appear that there is no form of Church government unalterably binding, and the way is cleared for a compromise on the basis of expediency. Quote, Certainly they who have espoused the most the interest of a used divinem cannot yet but say that if the opinion I maintain be true it doth exceedingly conduce to a present settlement of the differences that are among us. For then all parties may retain their different opinions concerning the primitive form, and yet agree and pitch upon a form compounded of all together as most suitable to the state and condition of the Church among us, that so the people's interest be secured by consent and suffrage, which is the pretense of the congregational way, the due power of presbyteries asserted by their joint concurrence with the bishop, as it is laid down in that excellent model of the late incomparable primate of Armagh, and the just honor and dignity of the bishop asserted as a very laudable and ancient constitution for preserving the peace and unity of the Church. This was the ideal of a Church advocated by many, and amongst others by the learned Casabon in a passage which he quotes. Footnote. The passage is from the elder Casabon, of course, and will be found in his Exorcita Tiones de Rebus Sacris et Ecclesiastes, published at London 1614. End footnote. Such is the general design of the treatise. To show that, quote, there can be no argument drawn from any pretense of a divine right that may hinder men from consenting and yielding to such a form of government in the Church as may bear the greatest correspondency to the primitive Church, and be most likely to heal the divisions of the Church of England. Abuses must be removed, and he, quote, dare not harbor so low apprehensions of persons enjoying so great dignity and honor in the Church that they will in any wise be unwilling of themselves to reduce the form of Church government among us to its primitive state and order by retrenching all exorbitances of power and restoring those presbyteries which no law hath forbidden but only through disuse have been laid aside. He is sanguine enough not only to anticipate such self-denial and Christian prudence on the part of the bishops, but to believe that the dogmatic presbyterians and congregationalists will be thereby so softened as to look with respect to an order which they have hitherto the most slighted. There is something pathetic in this dream of the youthful rector of Sutton in the light of the facts which so soon followed. If anything could make us think worse than we do of the restoration bishops, and of all the legislation of that unhappy time, it would be the thought that there may have been many who then shared stilling-fleet sentiments who honestly desired to see the Church of England reconstructed not on a hierarchical but on a practically efficient basis. The presumption we fear must be that, after all, the wise and moderate Churchmen were greatly outnumbered by the violent, the arbitrary, and the ignorant. So it has always hitherto been at every great crisis, and the dream of a truly Catholic Church which should give play to every healthy energy of government as well as to every honest instinct of faith remains a dream. Stilling-fleet was haunted with the idea of failure even while he wrote, I make no other account but that it will fall out with me as it doth commonly with him that offers to part affray. Both parties will perhaps drive at me for wishing them no worse than peace. My ambition, he adds in a spirit of apostolic meekness, shall willingly carry me through this hazard. Let them both beat me, so their quarrel may cease. I shall rejoice in those blows and scars which I shall take for the Church's safety. CHAPTER I Stilling-fleet's argument is conducted in two parts, the special purport of each of which will appear in the sequel. In the first chapter, which is properly an introduction to the whole argument, he lays down his plan in a somewhat abstract manner, raising the question of what constitutes the nature of a divine right from the foundation and following out the general train of thought to its close with a view to all his subsequent course of discussion. The nature of a divine right, according to him, is twofold. Use is first that which is Eustom. Whatever is just, men have a right to do it. In order to make a thing lawful or a right to men, it is not necessary that it be expressly commanded, but only that it be not expressly prohibited. According to the sense of use, to use his own language, those things may be said to be ure divino, which are not determined one way or other by any positive law of God, but are left holy as things lawful to the prudence of men, to determine them in a way agreeable to natural light and the general rules of the word of God. FUTNOTE The addition quoted throughout is that of 1662, printed at the phoenix in St. Paul's churchyard near the little north door. And FUTNOTE Having laid down this principle, he runs out into special illustrations of it anticipatory of his argument in a somewhat confused manner. His conclusion, however, is pertinent and forcible, namely that the reason or ground of church government, the Ratio Regi Manis Ecclesiastici, is of divine right, but that the special mode or system of it is left to human discretion. In other words, it is a thing for ever and immutably right that the church should be under a definite form of government. This is undoubtedly Eustom. In no other way can the peace and unity of the church be secured. But it is by no means equally indubitable what this form of government must be. The necessary end may be secured under diverse forms, as in the case of civil government. Though the end of all be the same, yet monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy are in themselves lawful means for attaining the same common end. So the same reason of church government may call for inequality in the persons acting as governors of the church in one place, which may call for superiority and subordination in another. But use is not only that which is Eustom, a thing lawfully within man's power, but, moreover, that which is Eustom, a thing ordered to a man, and so made a debitum, or constituted a duty by the force and virtue of a divine command. And it is in this sense of a used convenum Stillingfleet admits that the special controversy before him lies. He proceeds, therefore, to expound the nature of a divine right in this sense. Such a right presupposes both legislation and promulgation. There must be an authority entitled to issue the law or command, and the fact of its issue must be beyond doubt. Quote, Whatsoever binds Christians as a universal standing law must be clearly revealed as such. Nothing is founded upon a divine right, nor can bind Christians directly or consequently as a positive law, but what may be certainly known to have come from God, with an intention to oblige believers to the world's end. Close quote. There are only two ways in which a thing may be thus clearly known to come from God, with an intention to bind all perpetually, fizz either by the law of nature or by some positive law of God. The law of nature binds indispensable as it depends not upon any arbitrary constitutions, but is founded on the intrinsical nature of good and evil in things themselves. Reason is the chief instrument of discovering the necessary duties of human nature, and hence Aristotle defines a natural law as that which has everywhere the same force, yet it is not bare reason which enforces such a law, for every natural obligation is expressive of an eternal law and deduces its true force from thence. Such a law, quote, if we respect the rise, extent, and immutability of it, may be called deservedly the law of nature. But if we look at the emanation, efflux, and original of it, it is a divine law. For the sanction of this law, as well as others, depends upon the will of God, and therefore an obligation must come from him. Whatever, therefore, can be deduced from the preceptive law of nature is of divine right, because it is thereby clearly apparent, from the very nature of the law, that it is the divine intention to oblige all persons in the world by it. God's positive laws are to be traced to his revealed will in scripture. But it does not follow that all divine commands in scripture are immutable, and hence of the nature of a divine right. It must, moreover, be clear that it is the divine will that they should always continue. This is illustrated by the case of the Jews and the ceremonial law. It is necessary, therefore, to determine certain criteria or notes of difference whereby to learn when positive laws bind immutably, when not. The following are the criteria he enumerates. Viz. First, when the original reason of the law continues to subsist, and the Sabbath is given as a special illustration of this case. Secondly, when God has expressly declared any law to be binding immutably. And thirdly, when the law or thing commanded in particular is necessary to the existence of the church, the being, succession, and continuance of such a society of men professing the gospel as is instituted and appointed by Christ himself. It will afterwards appear, he says, how much these things concern the resolution of the question proposed. Finally, he examines under this general preparatory head of discussion certain pretenses which are brought for a divine right. Scripture examples, divine acts, or divine approbation. He shows conclusively in the case of all of these that they have not necessarily any binding force in themselves. Insofar as they are binding, they involve either moral considerations of universal force, or carry with them an explicit sanction binding us to follow. It is unnecessary for us to enter into his illustrations of these several pretenses. One must suffice of the nature of a divine act. Being it be granted, he says, that the apostles had superiority of order and jurisdiction over the pastors of the church by an act of Christ, yet by no means follows from this that it was Christ's intention that superiority should continue in their successors. This intention must be specially proved before it can be allowed. Any binding force, in short, that such a divine act has, must be derived from a special declaration of the divine will, and so any law or obligation there may be in the act falls back under one of the general criteria or tests of a divine right already admitted. Such is the sum of Stillingfleet's discussion as to the nature of a divine right. It is a very good specimen of the philosophical temper and skill which he had acquired at Cambridge under the influence of the new school of thought there. It is also for the most part just and admirable in itself. In the opening of his second chapter he restates his special inquiry, viz, how far church government is founded upon divine right as thus explained by him. But he is still detained from immediately entering upon it by a further statement of principles or hypotheses necessary to enable him to carry on his argument. These principles are, some of them, self-evident and must be summarized in the briefest form. They may be expressed as follows. 1. That the law of nature where it is clearly intelligible is paramount and cannot be superseded by any positive human or divine enactments. It is part of the law of nature, for example, that God be worshipped. No human law can set this aside. If the law of nature did not bind indispensably or absolutely, nothing could bind, for all human authority comes primarily out of this law. Men yield obedience to any law only in virtue of the law of nature which binds them to stand to their compacts. Nor is it less true that the clear law of nature is irreversible by divine enactment, for although God's power is infinite he cannot change the nature of moral obedience. He cannot make good evil or evil good. In confirmation of which statement he quotes a succession of pregnant sentences from origins' treatise against celsus. 2. Things clearly deducible from the law of nature or agreeable to it may be practiced in the church unless otherwise lawfully determined. In other words, men are perfectly free to do what the law of nature dictates except in those cases where a lawful authority has put restraints upon their natural liberty. And the very existence of men in society implies such restraints. Good and evil thereby receive special meanings. Property is regulated and civil order established, and the restrictions which thus arise are lawful determinations of man's natural liberty. The church is just a society under such special conditions and has its own appropriate restrictions binding all who enter into it. 3. A principle of determination or of lawful authority being recognized in the church the question comes to be as to its character and extent. The divine will, when clearly manifest, is an undoubted example of such an authority. And the third hypothesis, accordingly, is that, quote, where the law of nature determines a thing and the divine law determines the manner and the circumstances of the thing, we are bound to obey the divine law in its particular determinations by virtue of the law of nature in its general obligation. Close quote. The law of nature, for example, binds us to worship God. And quote, as we are bound by nature to worship him, so we are bound by virtue of the same law to worship him in the manner best pleasing to him by sacrifice or otherwise. Close quote. Sacrifice appears to our author unaccountable except by some expressed divine command. This principle, or hypothesis, is equally clear with the two former, supposing only the will of God is plainly made manifest. In such a case there can be no question of disobedience. All the difficulty consists in making it clear that the will of God has really declared itself and to what effect. Four. Supposing that it has done so as to the substance and morality of certain matters, the question arises as to others left undetermined or as to the special circumstances of those so far determined. All the practical difficulty as to church government and worship, Stillingfleet sees very well lies here in this indeterminate region, indeterminate at least insofar as any clear revelation of the divine will is concerned, and hence his next hypothesis which leads him into a lengthened discussion. In such a case, he says, it is in the power of lawful authority in the church of God to determine circumstances left undetermined either by natural law or divine positive law. The lawful authority is the authority of the magistrate. But this is a position he is well aware much controverted, some denying the magistrate any power at all in matters of religion, others granting a defensive protective power of that religion which is preferred according to the law of Christ, but denying any determining power in the magistrate concerning things left undetermined by the scripture. And so he feels himself landed in a field of controversy. It is strange, he adds, that, quote, the things men can least bear with one another in are matters of liberty, and those things men have divided most upon have been matters of uniformity, and wherein they have differed most have been pretended things of indifference, close quote. He would aim by his discussion to beget a right understanding between the adverse parties, rather than to make his way through any opposite party. He then proceeds to define the magistrate's power in religion, first in its character, and secondly in its extent. It is a power pertaining to religion as publicly professed and not to religion in itself, which is entirely an affair of the conscience. Men may hold what opinion they will in their minds, but the magistrate must have the power of restraining the utterance of opinions inimical to the national religion or the public good which are identified, quote. As a liberty of all opinions tends successfully to the subverting of a nation's peace and to the embroiling it in continual confusions, a magistrate cannot discharge his office unless he hath power to restrain such a liberty, close quote. So far Stillingfleet does not contribute much to the settlement of a difficult point, but he was, at this time at least, fully on the level of his age as to the principle of toleration. The magistrate's power is, secondly, external and objective about matters of religion and not internal or elicitive, quote. The internal elicitive power lies in the authoritative exercise of the ministerial function in preaching the word and administering the sacraments, the external objective power in a due care and provision for the defense, protection, and propagation of religion, close quote. Thirdly, the power is not nomothetical but administrative. It does not consist in making or imposing upon the church new laws, but in carrying out recognized divine laws. The magistrate cannot alter or repeal any positive divine enactments. He cannot add to these of his own accord, but he may incorporate them into the law of the land. Finally, in things undetermined concerning the polity of the church, he has the power of determination agreeably to the word of God. It is the business and duty of pastors and governors of the church to consult with and advise the magistrate. But it is from the magistrate alone that any power of coercion or legal obligation comes, quote. The great use of synods and assemblies of pastors of churches is to be as the counsel of the church unto the king in matters belonging to the church as the parliament is for matters of local government, close quote. All power to oblige, all force of law is alone derived from the civil magistrate. How far then does the power of the magistrate extend? What are the matters left undetermined by the word of God which he may determine in order to the peace and government of the church? Stillingfleet does not give any clear or complete answer to these questions. To have done so would have been to anticipate many of his subsequent conclusions. As it is, there is an anticipatory tendency in much of this general discussion which is somewhat confusing. He contents himself with maintaining that there are things left undetermined or matters of indifference which may be lawfully subject to the determination of the magistrate without any real restraint being put upon religious liberty. A due observance of prescribed rights when the observance is rationally understood as merely a deference to constituted authority which may vary in varying places and circumstances fetters no principle of freedom. The very character of the restriction in such a case implies the freedom which lies behind it. The very diversity of the ritual indicates that it is freely subject to regulation as may be most convenient, and hence the golden rule of Augustine, in reference to religious rights, that every man should observe those of the church he was in. He knew no better course for a prudent Christian, for, quote, whatsoever is observed neither against faith or manners, is a matter in itself indifferent, and to be observed according to the custom of those he lives among, close quote. This Christian rule he derived from Ambrose, who pithily expressed it, when at Rome I fast on the Sabbath, when at home, at Milan, I do not. The liberal sentiments of these great fathers inspire Stillingfleet to break forth suddenly with some of his ideas of accommodation. How happy might the nation be if the spirit of these blessed saints only animated it? How might a church be built up, imposing nothing but what is clearly revealed in the Word of God, requiring nothing which, from its indifferent nature, may not be rendered, leaving the service of God free even from particular requirements that may seem agreeable to the Divine Word when these requirements may give offence, inflicting no mulkts or penalties on dissenters till it be seen whether it be willful contempt and obstinacy of spirit or only weakness of conscience which influences them, and, lastly, divesting religion of a multitude of ceremonies. The ideal is fine, but, after all, he does not help us much to see how it can be worked. One interesting piece of antiquarianism he uses as an illustration. He is sure that it is contrary to the primitive practice to impose penalties for nonconformity in habits, gestures, and the like. According to Wallafritas Strabo there was no distinction of habits used in the primitive church. The presbyters did not at first wear any distinct habits from the people. It was only gradually that the Pallium philosophicum became a distinctive clerical vestiment. Even so late as the time of origin it had not done so universally. Only when Christianity began to lose in height what it got in breadth did the former simplicity of their garments as well as manners change amongst Christians. Not that he would thereby condemn any distinction of habit for mere decency and order, but only show that it was contrary to the primitive times to impose any necessity of these things upon men, or to censure them for the disuse of them. After his lengthened discussion about the magistrate's power Stillingfleet reverts to the principles or hypotheses which he was unfolding, and in a few sentences adds two others to the series, viz that whatever is determined by lawful authority on the church binds the conscience of all within the church, in other words subject to its authority, and lastly that the determinations of this lawful authority are not unalterable but may be revoked, limited, and changed according to circumstances. This finishes his elaborate preliminary matter, his foundation as he calls it, and he is at length at liberty to proceed with his inquiry how far government in the church is founded upon an unalterable divine right. First in respect of the law of nature, and secondly in respect of scripture or positive divine law. No fewer than six chapters are devoted to the examination of the subject in the first of these points of view. We can only indicate in the briefest manner his course of argument. All real interest is concentrated in his final treatment of the question how far any definite polity of church government is laid down in the New Testament or in the practice of the Primitive Church. In the six chapters in which he views the matter on the basis of natural law he settles such questions as that there must be a church, a society of men joining together for the worship of God, and that this society must be governed in the most convenient manner. Both these propositions are dictates of nature and hence undoubtedly of divine right. The next thing which nature dictates is that all things pertaining to divine worship or the government of the church be performed with the greatest solemnity and decency that may be. It is quite unnecessary to enter into particular proof of such propositions. All who recognize a spiritual power at all will acknowledge these conditions of its recognition. The remaining three dictates of the law of nature in reference to the subject are not less unchallengeable, but one of them at least raises a more curious and difficult subject of inquiry. They are as follows. That there must be some arbiter of controversy in the religious society or church. That all admitted into the society must consent to be governed by its rules, and finally that it must possess a power of censuring all willful offenders against these rules and of expelling them if necessary. These are all equally conclusions of the natural reason regarding the government of the church. As the former conclusions were necessary to its constitution, these are necessary to its preservation. Nature dictates the existence of such a society, the general order of the government implying authority in some and subjection in others, but nature would be defective if it did not also imply a sufficient provision for the maintenance and preservation of the society thus formed. A power therefore to prevent mischief is as necessary in the church as a power to settle things. There must be some way of deciding controversies which will arise to disturb the peace of it. The necessity for some arbiter of religious controversy raises the usual question as to the limits of church communion and toleration, so admirably discussed by Hales and Chillingworth and Taylor. The views of Stillingfleet are identical with the views already examined of these writers, and are in fact directly borrowed from Hales, whose tract on schism is largely quoted. The matters which tend to break the peace of the church are of the nature either of heresy or schism, matters of opinion or practice. In reference to the former, Stillingfleet repeats strongly the opinion that mere diversity of opinion is no ground of heresy, laying men open to the censure of the church. It is only the, quote, endeavor by difference of opinion to alienate men's spirit one from another, and thereby to break the society into fractions and divisions which makes men liable to restraint and punishment. The unity of the church is that of communion and not that of apprehension, and different opinions are no further liable to censure than as men by the broaching of these do endeavor to disturb the peace of the church. Schism is a more deadly evil than so-called heresy, because more immediately destructive of church communion, and yet here he says, quoting Hales, it is also necessary to discriminate. One must be judged according to its grounds and reasons, for as it is a sin, on the one hand, to divide the church, so also it is an offense to continue communion when it is a duty to withdraw. The separatist is not necessarily the schismatic. He lays down the following conditions as to church membership. 1. Every Christian is bound to join in Christian society with others. 2. He is bound to maintain his church communion so long as he can do so without sin, and the causes of legitimate offense in a church warranting separation from it are construed very broadly. The churches of Galatia and Corinth are examples that even the rejection of an article of faith may not demand separation. It is not enough that the church be corrupt even in definite points of doctrine or practice. She must, moreover, require her members to own expressly these corruptions before a total and positive separation is lawful. This is the justification of separation from the Church of Rome, as explained in Chillingworth's Preface, to which our author refers. In order to be a member of this church, it is necessary to believe that all its doctrines are not only not errors, but certain and necessary truths, so that, in fact, to hold that there are errors in the Church of Rome is actually an ipso facto to forsake the communion of that church. He quotes with approval a lengthened passage from Hales that the best way to avoid schism is to avoid, quote, charging churches and liturgies with things unnecessary. To load our public forms with the private fancies upon which we differ is the sovereign way to perpetuate schism unto the world's end. Prayer, confession, thanksgiving, reading of scriptures in the plainest and simplest manner were matters enough to furnish out a sufficient liturgy. In this point of view, Stillingfleet strongly approves of the revival of the liturgy to meet the scruples of the Presbyterians. The Reformers, he argues, did not hesitate in composing the liturgy to have an eye to the Papists as the only party at that time whom they desired to draw into their communion, and the same reason should surely induce the authorities of the Church to alter or lay aside the things which gave offense to the Presbyterians at the Restoration. Having thus dwelt on the matters which lead to controversy within the Church, he dismisses, after a comparatively brief treatment, the ways prescribed by the light of nature for ending such controversy. The minority must yield to the majority, and a right of appeal must subsist to every accused or injured person, from the lower and subordinate powers to the higher and superior. This is all. And not much more remains to be said by any one. He urges strongly the necessity of appeal and a graduation of authority in the Church against the Congregationalists who would leave every particular society of Christians to order their affairs according to their pleasure. According to the light and law of nature it appears to him, quote, that no individual company or congregation hath an absolute independent power within itself, but that for the redressing of grievances happening in them appeals are necessary to the parties aggrieved and a subordination of that particular congregation to the government of the society in common, close quote. He is equally strong that, in a state church, quote, when the church is incorporated into the commonwealth, the chief authority in a commonwealth as Christian belongs to the same to which it doth as a commonwealth, close quote. In other words, as he has already asserted in treating of the power of the magistrate, the ultimate authority, ecclesiastical as well as civil, is in the state. End of Chapter 7, Part 2 Section 22 of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy, Volume 1 by John Tulloch. This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Chapter 7. Edward Stillingfleet, the Ironicum of a Comprehensive Church. Part 3. 2. We pass on to the second part of Stillingfleet's argument, which discusses the scriptural evidence of a divinely fixed form of church government. So far as positive divine law is concerned, there can be no other evidence for it, he maintains, but that of scripture. Quote. The word of God being the only code and digest of divine laws, whatever law we look for must either be found there in express terms, or at least so couched therein that everyone, by the exercise of his understanding, may, by a certain and easy collection, gather the universal obligation of the thing inquired after. Close quote. When the question is as to binding men's consciences, and not merely satisfying our historical curiosity, the appeal must be to scripture, to the authoritative words or actions of Christ or of the apostles. Traditions of apostolic practice gathered from succeeding ages may be very interesting, and may even throw real light upon the original constitution of the church, but they can never furnish sufficient ground to infer any divine law. It is not enough that the practice be authentic, but it must be further clear that it was the divine intention that it should continually bind the church. Though the matter of fact be evidenced by posterity, yet the obligatory nature of the fact must depend upon scripture. Nor is it enough that the apostles' intentions be built upon men's bearer surmises, nor upon after-practices, but that it be clearly shown that what they did proceeded from a divine command obligatory upon them as the church in all future time. He ridicules the reasoning of those who would infer the necessity of any form of church government because practiced by the apostles, and then prove the apostolic practice from that of succeeding ages. This, he says, is to prove the same thing by itself, to call a practice apostolic, and then pronounce it of divine authority because apostolic, whereas in any valid argument for a divinely fixed form of church government there are two distinct things to be proved. Viz. First, what the apostolic practice was, and secondly, what was its character? Was it designed to be universally binding or not? This last point, he declares, over and over again, is the really important point which it is the special object of his treatise to settle. The controversy had been hitherto on a wrong tack in trying to settle whether independency or presbytery or episcopacy came the nearest to apostolic practice. The really urgent question is not this, but whether any of these forms, quote, be so settled by a use divinum, that is, be so determined by a positive law of God that all the churches of Christ are bound to observe that one form so determined without variation from it. Close quote. We have put the question as between the three main forms of church government which contended for the mastery in England and Stillingfleet's youth, but in point of fact, he has already, by the course of his reasoning, reduced the question to one between presbytery and episcopacy. For he has already settled, and he recurs to the question especially in the first chapter of the second part of his treatise, that neither the name nor the order of a church can be confined to particular congregations, but that, on the contrary, they apply with special propriety to a national society, comprehending in it many of such lesser congregations united together in one body under a form of government. Even if the primary political form of the church were acknowledged to have been that of a particular congregation, it is enough, he says, that there are other churches besides particular congregations. It is enough that whole nations professing Christianity have united themselves in the participation of religious ordinances. Such a nation is undoubtedly a true church of God, and hence it follows, quote, that there must be a form of ecclesiastical government over a nation as a church, as well as of civil government over it as a society governed by the same laws. Close quote. Having thus disposed of congregationalism or independency, he disposes, in a second chapter, of Quakerism, or the dream of a secular spirit to Sancti. First broached, he says, by the mendicant friars. He makes no dispute that the government of the church must be administered by officers of divine appointment. This, quote, is another thing I will yield to be of divine right. My meaning is that there must be a standing perpetual ministry in the church of God whose care and employment must be to oversee and govern the people of God and to administer gospel ordinances among them, and this is of divine and perpetual right. Close quote. It admits of no question that special officers were appointed in the primitive church, and the original grounds for their appointment, as enumerated in many texts of the New Testament, continue in equal force. The objects of the ministerial office, remaining of necessary and perpetual use, the office itself must be held of divine perpetuity in the church. The way, being thus cleared, he comes to the main subject of the present controversy. Divine either presbytery or episcopacy make out for itself a use divinum. His either form of church government, so determined by any positive law of God, has to bind unalterably all Christians to its observance. The only valid plea for such a divine right is some plain institution by Christ himself, or the obligatory nature of apostolic practice. All the pith of the argument lies within these two points, and indeed within the latter. He prefixes a brief discussion as to whether any of the Christians of the law have binding force under the gospel, and he appends an interesting chapter on the opinions of the church divines since the Reformation on the subject of church government. But the force of his argument is quite independent of these considerations. One. So far as any express command of Christ himself is concerned, there is nothing can be quoted bearing on the subject. It is of no avail to argue, as many had done, from the analogy of Moses that Christ must have instituted a special form of government for the church. Footnote. The absurd presumption of arguing in favor of a divinely constituted form of church government that it was necessary for Christ, like any other legislator, to appoint a definite constitution for the society which he established, is well ridiculed by stilling fleet as by Hooker, from whom he quotes an admirable passage on this point. Ecclesiastical polity. Book III. II. In matters which concern the action of God, the most beautiful way on our part is to search what God hath done and with meekness to admire that rather than to dispute what he in congruity of reason ought to do. Close quote. And footnote. Not to insist on the difference betwixt the law and the gospel, it is enough to say that not only has Christ not laid down any special rules for the constitution of the New Testament church, but that there are no such rules found in any part of the New Testament. There are indeed general rules of direction given in the apostolic writings of which the following four are enumerated by stilling fleet. All things to be done decently and in order. All to be done for edification. Give no offence. Do all to the glory of God. But the very statement of these principles in their extreme generality brings out in the clearest manner the scantiness of the New Testament information regarding the constitution of the church. All the laws occurring in scripture respecting church government may be applied with equal force to several forms of government. It is not designed to characterize or define the form, but only the spirit or principles which should animate the various officers in the discharge of their duties. Such rules, for example, as are contained in the epistles to Timothy and Titus, are moral and not institutional or ritual. They tell us what bishops and deacons ought to be in character, but they do not tell us the relation which these two classes of officers were to bear to one another, and still lest they tell us as to the relations of bishops and presbyters. It is plain, in fact, to every unprejudiced reader that the distinction of bishop and presbyter, as afterwards recognized by the church, had not then emerged. The author of these epistles would not have understood the question which agitated the seventeenth century and has not ceased to agitate the nineteenth. It is not to be denied that Timothy and Titus occupied special positions of superiority in the primitive church, and two indisputable inferences may be drawn from this which may be turned in favor of episcopacy, viz that the superiority of some church officers over others is not inconsistent with the New Testament, and secondly that it is not repugnant to the primitive church for certain officers to have power over more than one congregation. But upon the whole the examples of Timothy and Titus decide nothing definitely in favor of either of the disputed forms of church government. The mere fact that it is fairly questioned whether their office was that of temporary evangelists or of fixed bishops is enough to invalidate the authoritative character of their examples. If they acted not as bishops nothing can be drawn from their example necessarily enforcing the continuance of the superiority which they enjoyed. To those who argue that Timothy and Titus might ordain and appoint others to succeed them in their places, he replies that the question is not what they might do but what they did. Neither he adds is what they did the whole question, but what they did with an opinion of the necessity of doing it, whether they were bound to do it or not. If the former view be taken the binding law or command must be produced which will hardly be if we embrace only the received canon of scripture. Thus we see then, still Include concludes in very emphatic terms this part of his argument, that neither the qualifications of the persons nor the commands for a right exercise of the office committed to them nor the whole epistles to Timothy and Titus do determine any one form of government to be necessary in the Church of God. The special actions of our Lord which may be supposed to have any bearing on the subject are examined. The mission of the apostles, as described in the Gospels, Matthew 10, Luke 6, the alleged primacy of St. Peter, and the relation between the twelve and the seventy disciples, along with some other details, all are discussed with a similar conclusion. Nowhere is there any evidence of any intention on the part of Christ to fix the special form of government for the Church. Nothing is said or appointed by him which is not equally applicable to a diversity of particular forms. There is therefore nothing in any of our Lord's actions or in any special rules laid down in scripture which determines the necessity of a particular form of Church government. 2. The only remaining argument to be considered is that which arises out of the practice of the apostles. Stilling fleet has bestowed great pains upon this part of his argument, and not withstanding certain irrelevancies which mark more or less the whole progress of his reasoning, we do not know that there is anything in English theological literature at once more compact and exhaustive on the subject. It divides itself into two inquiries, what the apostolic practice really was, and secondly, how far it is binding upon us, or in his own words, how far they acted for the determining any one form of government as necessary for the Church. When carrying out the first of these inquiries it is especially necessary to free ourselves from prepossessions." Nothing has been a more fruitful mother of mistakes and errors than the looking upon the practice of the primitive Church through the glass of our own customs. In illustration of this he quotes the Roman Catholic use of the word Mesa whenever they meet with it as applying to the sacrifice of the altar, whereas it originally meant only the public service of the Church, so-called from the dismission of the people after it within Ite Mesa est, and was equally applied to the service of the Catechumens, Mesa Catechum honorum, and the service of the Communicants, Mesa Fidelium, which afterwards, the former discipline of the Church decaying, engrossed the name Mesa to itself, and when the sacrifice of the altar came up among the papists it was appropriated to that. In the same way the Romanists pervert the meaning of the word leitor gain, translating the phrase leitor gun ton auton sacrificantibus illis, although it be not only contrary to the sense of the word in the New Testament, but to the exposition of crisis-dom and others. But it is unnecessary, he says, to search curiously for examples of this abusive mode of argument. The subject itself is full of them, quote, as the argument for the popular election of pastors from the grammatical sense of the word kerotonia, for lay elders from the name presbuteroi, and modern episcopacy from the use of the word episcopos in scripture. Close quote. It is important, therefore, to discriminate accurately the use of names, and to draw conclusions only from the undoubted practice of the apostolic times, if that can be made appear what it was. The only real guide to us in such an inquiry is the customs of the Jewish synagogue to which the apostles, beyond question, conformed in planting Christian churches. This is argued at great length, and the various points of analogy betwixt the Jewish synagogue and the primitive church brought out in detail. These are found to consist in the general character of the public service, the ordination of church officers, the formation of presbyteries in the several churches, and the mode of government of those presbyteries. The primitive order of public worship corresponded to that of the synagogue in the following essential particulars. One. Public fellowship. Koinonia. Two. Solemn prayers. And three. The well-known passage from the Second Apology of Justin Martyr, respecting the primitive worship, is quoted with a remark—what could have been spoken with greater congruity and correspondency to the synagogue abating the necessary observation of the Eucharist as proper to Christianity. The practice of ordination was plainly derived from the synagogue. Quote. The priests under the law were never ordained by imposition of hands as the elders and rulers of the synagogue were, and if any of them came to that office, they as well as others had peculiar designation and appointment to it. It is then a common mistake to think that the ministers of the gospel succeed by vows of correspondence and analogy to the priests under the law, which mistake hath been the original of many errors. Close quote. The application of the name of priests to Christian ministers, naturally following the usage of the term among both Jews and Gentiles, has led in process of time to all the sacrificial ideas connected with it and finally to the mass itself. So he argues. As the fact of ordination was derived from the synagogue, so the special mode of it, by the laying on of hands, the number of persons authorized to confer it and its supposed effect, were all drawn from the same source. These features of the Christian Church were originally nothing more than copies from the Jewish Church. The one grew out of the other in a natural manner. The younger institution out of the old, taking some of its most characteristic peculiarities and stamping them with a new life and meaning. The very same process of development was repeated in both cases. The right of ordination, for example, was at first common to any presbyter among the Jews. Every one, himself regularly ordained, had the power of ordaining disciples as Maimonides expressly affirms and also the Gemara Babylonia as quoted by Seldon. But in course of time this liberty was restrained and it was agreed that none should ordain others without the presence, or at least the sanction, of the Prince of the Sanhedrin, the Archisuna Gogos. The same change gradually sprang up in the Christian Church. At first, as Jerome tells us, the presbyters did rule the Church in common, Comunae Presbyterorum Concilio Ecclesiée Gubernantur. They enjoyed alike the power of ordaining other presbyters. Stillingfleet gives abundant evidence of this from patristic and even papal authority, and especially enters into a long discussion as to the consistency of Jerome and the true opinions of Arius, both of whom appear so prominent in the controversy respecting Presbytery and Episcopacy. There can be no fair question, he thinks, that Jerome consistently maintains the original identity of presbyters and bishops, while asserting at the same time that the superiority of the bishop was an apostolic tradition or a custom which might be traced to the apostolic age. The truth was that the exercise of the right of ordination by all presbyters alike had a tendency to create division, and so the right became restricted as previously among the Jews. The main controversy is where this restraint began and by whose act, whether by any act of the apostles or only by the prudence of the Church itself as it was with the Sanhedrin. But in order to our peace, he adds, I see no such necessity of deciding it, both parties granting that in the Church such a restraint was laid upon the liberty of ordaining presbyters, and the exercise of that power may be restrained still, granting it to be radically and intrinsically in them. To hold it expedient, notwithstanding this radical power of ordination in presbyters, that the right should only be exercised by a superior order in the Church, and to hold that Presbyterian ordination is in itself essentially unlawful, are two entirely distinct propositions, and the latter opinion he dares with some confidence assert to be a stranger to our Church of England, as he promises to show more fully afterwards. Concerning Arius, he maintains that his special heresy was not at all the assertion of the identity and order of presbyters and bishops, in which respect he only agreed with Jerome, Augustine, Ambrose, Chrysostom, Theodoret, Theophilact. But his having carried out this opinion to the extent of, quote, separating from bishops and their churches because they were bishops, whereas had his mere opinion about bishops been the ground of his being condemned, there can be no reason assigned why this heresy, if it were then thought so, was not mentioned either by Socrates, Theodoret, Sozomen, or Evagrius, before whose time he lived. But for Epiphanius and Augustine, who have listed him in the role of heretics, it either was for other heretical opinions maintained by him, or they took the name heretic, and it is evident they often did, for one who, upon a matter of different opinion from the present sense of the Church, did proceed to make separations from the unity of the Catholic Church, which I take to be the truest account of the reputed heresy of Arius. After dwelling briefly upon the number of persons required to perform the ceremony of ordination among the Jews and equally in the Primitive Church, three in each case, and also of the supposed effect of the reception of the Divine Presence or the Holy Spirit, Stilling Fleet proceeds to draw his argument to a close in three propositions which embrace at the same time, he says, the full resolution of all the points corresponding betwixt the Sanhedrin and the Primitive Church. He introduces his propositions by a statement as to the original meaning of Episcopos, the intention of which, he says, was to qualify the importance of the word presbyter to a sense proper to the gospel state. Primarily the word imported duty more than honor, and was not a title above presbyter, but rather used by way of diminution and qualification of the power implied in the name of presbyter. Having cleared this point, all that he has to say concerning the settlement of the Primitive Church by the apostles may be summed up as follows. First, that we have no such certainty of apostolic practices as can constitute a divine right. Secondly, that there is no evidence that the apostles bound themselves to any one fixed course in modeling churches. And thirdly, that even if it could be proved that they did this, their example would not necessarily bind us. He argues the first of these points at considerable length, from the equivalency of the names of bishop and presbyter in the New Testament, Acts 1130, 1423, 2817, 1 Timothy 3, 1, Titus 1, 5, from the defectiveness, ambiguity, partiality, and repugnancy of the records of the ages immediately succeeding that of the apostles. The clear impossibility of making out any use divinum for church government from scripture has driven controversialists, he says, quote, to follow the scent of the game into this wood of antiquity where it is easier to lose ourselves than to find that which we are upon the pursuit of, close, quote. He has perhaps colored strongly his picture of the uncertainty of ecclesiastical tradition, but those who have most critically examined the subject will be the most likely to agree with him. He speaks with peculiar force of the sub-epistolic age from the close of the Acts of the Apostles to the middle of Trajan as a tempus adelon in the words of Scaliger. Christian antiquity is then most defective unhappily when its light would have been most useful. The lists or catalogues of bishops set down by many ecclesiastical analysts are treated very slightly. Eusebius found it no easy matter to find out who succeeded the apostles in the churches planted by them. What becomes then of the unquestionable line of succession and the large diagrams made of the apostolic churches with everyone's name set down in his order? Irenaeus is found attributing the tradition of apostolic doctrine to the succession of presbyters which before he had done to bishops. He asserts not only the succession of presbyters to the apostles, but likewise attributes the successio episcopatus to these very presbyters. What strange confusion must this raise in any one's mind that seeks for a succession of episcopal power above presbyters from the apostles by the testimony of Irenaeus when he so plainly attributes both the succession to presbyters and the episcopacy too which he speaks of? But it is not Irenaeus alone who tells us that presbyters succeed the apostles. Even Cyprian, who pleads so much for obedience to the bishops as they were then constituted in the church, yet speaks often of his compresbyterae and in his epistle to Florentius Papianus he attributes apostolic succession to all that were prepositi, which name implies not the relation of bishops to presbyters as over them, but to the people, and is therefore common both to bishops and presbyters. Jerome saith that presbyters are loco apostolorum, and that they do apostolico gradiui succidere, and the so much magnified ignatius presbutoroi estopon sunedreonton apostolon that the presbyters succeeded in the place of the bench of apostles. The sum of his argument is that no clear line of episcopal succession can be traced in many cases. The claim of a use divinum for episcopacy implies that in all cases the apostles in withdrawing from the government of churches did substitute single persons to succeed them. But the evidence for this egregiously fails even in the most conspicuous churches. In Rome, for example, the succession is as muddy as the Tiber itself, for here Tertullian, Rufinus, and several others place Clement next to Peter. Irenaeus and Eusebius set Anacletus before him. Epiphanius and Optatus, both Anacletus and Cletus. Augustinus and De Masos, with others, make Anacletus, Cletus, and Linus all to precede him. What way shall we find to extricate ourselves out of this labyrinth so as to reconcile it with the certainty of the form of government in the apostles' times? Having shown how little certainty there is of any divinely fixed form of church government in the apostolic age, he proceeds to show how the apostles probably acted according to the several circumstances of places and persons which they had to deal with. He sketches, in other words, the formation of the Christian church according to the natural law of development which it appears to him to have followed. His idea is the genuinely historic one that the government of the church adapted itself to circumstances and the varying increase of the community of believers in different districts. A small number of believers did not require the same number of teachers and governors as a great church did. In some cases a single pastor, with deacons under him, was all that was needed, and every such single pastor was a bishop in the sense that he had none above to command him, but not, of course, in the special sense of having presbyters under him. In larger churches, consisting of a multitude of deacons, he supposes that the government was settled in a college of presbyters. This is his interpretation of the apostles, quote, ordaining elders in every city, and Paul's calling for the elders from Ephesus and his writing to the bishops, presbyters, and deacons of Philippi. We have many remaining footsteps, he says, of such a college of presbyters established in the most populous churches in the apostolical times. Close, quote. Among these presbyters some attended most to ruling, others labored most in preaching, but none of them were lay elders in the dogmatic presbyterian sense. For any presbyter in the New Testament sense is also a bishop, and is described as having pastoral charge over a flock which is inconsistent with the notion of a lay elder. So far he supposes the church to have developed in the apostolic age, and in a subsequent chapter he traces its further development in the constitution of a president or bishop in the special sense over each college of presbyters. In the second century this manner of government in the church appears clearly, quote. The bishop sitting as the ishna, prince or chief, in the San Hedron, and the presbyters, as Ignatius expressed with it, acting as the common counsel of the church to the bishop, the bishop being as the archon tes ecclesias, answering to the archon tes poleos, and the presbyters as the bole tes ecclesias answering to the bole cat et casten polin, as Origen compares them, whereby he fully describes the form of government in his time in the church, which was by an ecclesiastical senate and a president in it ruling the society of Christians in every city. Close quote. We need not trace further his historical picture, according to which churches gradually extended from cities to the surrounding villages, and then enlarged into dioceses and subsequently into provinces. The result of the whole is to bring out the varying human element which entered into the growth of the church. The government was the result not of any special divine law, but of a succession of laws springing up according to the several states and conditions wherein the church was. And as it gradually grew up so was the power of the church by mutual consent fitted to its state in its several ages. In further evidence of which it is found, as a matter of fact, that there were several churches such as the ancient Scottish church without any bishops for a long time, and other churches, he alleges, which discontinued bishops for a great while where they had been. The final strength of his argument yet remains. Even if a stronger case could be made out for a uniform apostolic practice as to church government, it does not follow that such a practice would be necessarily binding upon us. Many things were done by the apostles which were suitable merely to the exigencies of the primitive church, and carried with them no binding force after the occasion for them had passed away. Let any one consider but these few particulars, he says, and judge how far the pleaders for a divine right of apostolic practice do look upon themselves as bound now to observe them, as dipping in baptism, the use of love-feasts, community of goods, the holy kiss by Tertullian called signaculum or etionis, yet none look upon themselves as bound to observe them now, and yet all acknowledge them to have been the practice of the apostles. His concluding review of the opinions of reformed divines is extremely interesting, but we cannot do more than indicate its general purport. He shows, beyond all dispute, that the most distinguished divines of the English Reformation, Cranmer, Whitgift, Parker, Hooker, and later Cousins, Low, Bridges, Sutcliffe, and King James himself, were all of opinion that no definite form of church government was laid down in scripture or commanded to the Church of God. Very nearly Whitgift's words in his reply to Cartwright. He quotes the detailed opinions of Hales and Chillingworth to the same effect. He then adds the testimony of foreign divines in abundance and of learned men, particularly Bacon and Grosius. All these, quote, assert in terms that the form of church government does not depend upon any unalterable law but is left to the prudence and discretion of every particular church to determine it according to its suitableness to the state, condition, and temper of the people whereof it consists, and conducableness to the ends for which it is instituted. Others such as Calvin, Besa, Melanchthon, while holding Presbyterian parity to be the primitive form, yet approve of episcopacy in special circumstances as lawful and expedient. Others still, while judging episcopacy to be the primitive form, do not hold it to be unalterably binding, but that those churches which are without it are truly constituted churches and their ministers lawfully ordained by mere presbyters. This is given as the opinion, not only of Jewel, but of Field, Downum, Seravia, Andrews, and others. The Stoutest Champions for Episcopacy before their late unhappy divisions, he says, quote, acknowledged that ordination performed by presbyters in cases of necessity is valid, which I have already shown doth evidently prove that Episcopal government is not founded upon any unalterable divine right. Close quote. This closes his lengthened argument in which he believes that he has laid down a sure foundation for peace and union. The result of the whole has been to prove that the form of church government is a mere matter of prudence regulated by the word of God. Prudence, therefore, is the first principle which must be used in the resettlement of the church. The second principle is that that form of government is the best, which, according to principles of Christian prudence, comes nearest to apostolic practice, and tends most to advance the peace and unity of the church. What this form is, he does not presume to determine. But no better key to its discovery can be given than the advice of his late majesty of glorious memory to divines of differing opinions to, quote, lay aside private interests and reduce Episcopacy and Presbytery into such a well-proportioned form of superiority and subordination has made best resemble the apostolical and primitive times so far forth as the different conditions of the times and the exigencies of all considerable circumstances will admit. Close quote. The elements of such a church constitution are, one, the restoration of presbyters as the senate to the bishop, two, the contraction of dioceses and appointment of bishops at least in every county town, three, the constant preaching of the bishop and residence in his dioceses, four, the solemnity of ordinations with the consent of the people, five, the observation of provincial synods twice every year, six, the employment of none in judging church matters but the clergy, finally, whatever form of government is determined upon by lawful authority should be submitted to insofar as it contains nothing contrary to the word of God. The very fact that the determination of church government is a matter of liberty makes the government binding when once lawfully determined. Such was the ideal church of stilling fleet, probably of many of the younger and more thoughtful clergy, on the eve of the restoration. Unhappily their voice was unheard or at least uninfluential. The old parties represented by Baxter and Calomy on one side and Sheldon and Morley on the other, exasperated and hardened by their long struggle, continued for a time to wrangle with one another. Both Baxter and Calomy were in a certain sense moderate men, and if what is known as the Worcester Declaration, October 1660, had become law, they would have probably accepted the preferment offered them in the Church of England. But they had many narrow prejudices, and neither Calomy, had Breda, nor both at the Savoy Conference, can be said to have managed matters well in the interests of a comprehensive church. End footnote. Both were alike incapable of rising above the dogmatisms which enslaved them, and which had desolated the country. The end was sufficiently mournful, and bears mournful consequences unto this day. But the time may come when thoughts of wisdom and moderation will prevail on this as on other subjects, and we may see the end, as stilling fleet in his concluding sentence dares to hope, quote, of our strange divisions and unchristian animosities while we pretend to serve the Prince of Peace. End of Chapter 7 Part 3 End of Rational Theology and Christian Philosophy Volume 1 by John Tulloch