CHAPTER II. PRESBYTERY REPUBLICAN BOTH IN ITS DOCTRINAL AND ECCLESIASTICAL SYSTEMS. SECTION I. What denominations are included under the term presbytery in the present argument. We are now to show that these republican principles are found embodied and carried out in the doctrines and order of the presbyterian church. We wish it, however, to be again borne in mind, that, while we shall take, as our model, our own standards and discipline, that nevertheless, we include under the term presbyterian, all denominations which are governed by ministers who are recognized as of one order, and who, as well as their other officers, are chosen, are removable, and are supported, by the people; who acknowledge the right and duty of confederated associations among the churches, composed of lay and clerical delegates, for mutual advice, direction, and control; and who, while republican, are not strictly democratical, or congregational. Our remarks, therefore, will substantially apply to the Baptist churches, who meet in associations;-to the Lutheran church; to the Reformed church;-to the Dutch Reformed church; to the Protestant Methodist church;-and to the whole body of the New England Puritans, although now generally denominated congregationalists. This, however, is not their true character. They are essentially presbyterian in their ministry; in their church officers, who are substantially ruling elders;—in their mode of educating, licensing, calling, ordaining, and installing pastors;-in their mode of trial and appeal, before ecclesiastical councils, composed of delegated members; —and in their associations or consociations, which meet at regular periodic times, and exercise all the powers of our synods. The Cambridge and Saybrook platforms, which are still acknowledged by them, are almost identical with the Westminster standards. Any thing 'savoring of independency,' was in time past treated as something new and unheard of.'* President Dale, of Yale College, told Dr. Lang, he had never heard of their *See Dr. Lang's Relig. and Educ. in America, p. 56, where he quotes Dr. Worcester's Disc. p. 53. being designated by any other name than presbyterians in that State, till he was thirty years of age. The pilgrim fathers of New England distinctly repudiated the system of pure independency, originally established in England. This will appear from the valuable work of Cotton, edited by the celebrated Thomas Godwin and Philip Nye, and recently reprinted in Boston. These authors maintain that Christ gave 'unto the elders or presbytery, in each congregation, a binding power of rule and authority peculiar unto them;' that syonds, composed of 'a communion or association of churches sending their elders,' is also an ordinance of Christ and has 'authority to determine, declare, and enjoin such things as may tend to the reducing of such congregations to right order and peace;' and that their scheme of church government is the 'middle way between that which is called Brownism and the presbyterial government.'§ The present deacons of congregational churches are substantially the ruling elders of presbyterian churches, their councils our presbyteries, and their consociations our synods. All, therefore, that is good in the present system, or the past working, of New England puritanism, we claim for presbyterianism; and all its evils, and the present dangerous symptoms of departure from the faith of their fathers, by a portion of their churches, we attribute, in part, to the undue preponderance of the democratic over the republican principle.* SECTION II. Presbytery republican in its doctrines. Now that our doctrines are in their spirit and influence most conformable to the principles of republicanism, has been already tIbid. p. 58. See the whole of the chapter. The Keys of Heaven, Boston, 1843. Ep. to the reader, p. 7, &c. *Dr. Owen argues against the alleged democracy of congregationalism. See works, vol, xx. p. 480. See also Dr. Lang, ibid, pp. 64, 65. See also Neal's History of the Puritans, vol. ii. pp. 184, 186. Dr. Hodge's Hist. of the Presb. Ch. vol. i. ch 1. The present congregationalists of England are also adopting the essential principles of presbyterianism. They have their county unions. In cities they manage their common interests by a committee appointed for that purpose. 'But,' says Dr. Vaughan, (Congregationalism, p. 54, 55,) it is only within the last ten years that we have availed ourselves of this liberty so fully, as in the organization of this union-the one central union, made up of nearly all the county unions of England and Wales. It is well known that the object we have thus realized, is precisely that which was contemplated by Dr. Owen, and other fathers of independency in England before the restoration. It was to form a union of this nature, that a large number of ministers and laymen were at that time convened, from all parts of the country, in the Savoy Palace; and the platform of a congregational union, embracing all the congregational ministers and churches in the land, was agreed upon, and made public. But with the restoration came the end of religious liberty, and an end, of course, to the possibility of perpetuating this enlarged association of our body.' manifested. Liberty of conscience, liberty of opinion, the right and duty of private judgment, and the liberty of expressing freely the views and opinions of the mind; these principles of republicanism are found written among the cardinal verities of our faith, as with the point of a diamond.* The pulpit was to the church in other ages, what the press is to the world now. This was the last refuge of down-trodden truth, the last bulwark of an enslaved people against their spiritual oppressors. To the pulpit, and the freedom of discussion which it allowed, do we owe all the reforms that have ever rescued the church from her debasing corruptions. Here Wickliffe aroused a slumbering nation. Here Luther thundered, Zuingle persuaded, and Calvin taught. Here Knox and Melville achieved for Scotland, what had been accomplished for Europe. What calumny is more constantly uttered against the fathers of presbyterianism, and the system generally, than their unwarrantable liberty of speech.§ Neither was it without cause, that arbitrary monarchs and despotic prelates raged against this freedom, and by all possible artifices endeavored to gag and choke its free utterance. 'Persons,' says Dr. McCrie,+ may declaim at their pleasure on the insufferable license in which the preachers indulged; but it will be found, that the discouragement of vice and impiety, the checking of the most crying abuses in the administration of justice, and the preserving of common peace and order in the country, depended on the freedom of the pulpit, to a degree which no one, who is not particularly acquainted with the state of things at that period, can conceive. But, without going into any general analysis of doctrines, we would remark that there are three principles which lie at the basis of our presbyterian system, doctrinally considered, and which will, wherever fully sustained and carried out, secure by their necessary tendencies, civil and religious liberty. To these we more especially advert, because they are the very points selected by bishop Hughes, as proof of the opposition of the doctrines of our church to the principles of civil and religious †See ch. i. § 4, p. 35, &c. *See Dr. Miller on the Min. ed. of 1830, p. xxxvi. Scottish Chr. Herald, 1838, p. 231. Brown's Vind. of Presb. Ch. Govt. pp. 15, 17, 18, 33. Presb. Defended, pp. 176-179. Gillespie's Aaron's Rod Blossoming, pp. 176-182. §An anecdote is told of James commanding Bruce, when raging at his majesty's conduct, to come down from the pulpit, or to speak sense, and of Bruce declaring that he would do neither. Life of Melville, ii. 76. See also vol. i. pp. 302, 304, for some very fine remarks. See also Dr. Aiton's Life and Times of Alexander Henderson, p. 46, where Dr. Cook is quoted as saying, 'we must, if we calmly investigate the history of the period at present under review, be satisfied that we, in a great degree, owe to the intrepidity of the clergy the liberties which we enjoy, and that, had they remained silent, not branding the measures which they saw to be pregnant with the heaviest evils, the king would either have destroyed every vestige of fredom, or what was more likely, his throne would have been subverted, and Scotland delivered into the hands of a merciless and bigoted tyrant.' * liberty. One is the supreme authority of holy scripture, as the only infallible rule of faith and practice, and the only authoritative promulgator of heaven's will, and this, without any intervening authority of the church, in its fathers, councils, popes, or prelates. Another is the doctrine of grace, the freeness, efficacy, and unencumbered sufficiency of that justification, which is obtained through the imputed righteousness of Christ, and received only by faith in his finished work, and once offered sacrifice. Animated by these principles, no man can be a slave to the spiritual despotism of a hierarchy. Redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled from all necessary dependence, for either the knowledge or the enjoyment of God, upon any fellow being, man, in the faith of these doctrines, stands erect in his own proper stature. He feels his individual responsibility, and his infinite obligations to God. He ceases to be an ignorant devotee, and becomes a spiritual worshipper of that Being who is a Spirit. And while he bows reverently to the will and authority of God, he spurns from him that interference of a fellow mortal, which would claim a dominion over his faith. These are doctrines, as has been ably remarked, with which no forms of superstition, no spiritual despotism, will ever be made to consist; and which doctrines, while in their aspect toward man, individually as a sinner, they afford the only ground of hope; so, in their less direct, but inevitable influence over the condition of man in society, constitute the unobtrusive, but effectual guarantee of national liberties. They do so, as well by the firm moral tone which they impart to the social system, as by the necessity they involve of a constant appeal to the supreme authority of scripture:-for this very appeal implies religious liberty; and religious liberty secures political liberty. With the reception or rejection of these doctrines stand or fall, asceticism, superstition, and despotism, or, as they may be otherwise termed, monkery, demonolatry, and hierarchical tyrannythose powerful ingredients in all the various forms of human corruption and debasement. The testimony of Bancroft to this truth is very striking.† 'Years are to 'fools' as days in the providence of God, and in the progress of the race. After long waiting, an Augustine monk at Wittemberg, who had seen the lewd corruptions of the Roman court, and who loathed the de *See Breckinridge and Hughes's Discussion, Philad. 1836, pp. 285, 286, &c. Even this wily sophist, however, does not pretend to found his argument upon what these doctrines are, in themselves, but upon certain most illogical and most absurd consequences, which he deduces from them,—a practice, which, of itself, betrays the cloven foot of that despotism, which condemns men by constructive evidence, where there is no positive proof. Isaac Taylor, in Pref. to Life of Luther. London Chr. Ob. Aug. 1840, p. 503. ceptions of a coarse superstition, brooded in his cell over the sins of his age, and the method of rescuing conscience from the dominion of forms, till he discovered a cure for its vices in the simple idea of justification by faith alone. With this principle, easily intelligible to the universal mind, and spreading, like an epidemic, widely and rapidly, a principle strong enough to dislodge every superstition, to overturn every tyranny, to enfranchise, convert, and save the world, he broke the wand of papal supremacy, scattered the lazars of the monasteries, and drove the penance of fasts, and the terrors of purgatory, masses for the dead, and indulgences for the living, into the paradise of fools.' * Not less remarkable is the estimate of these doctrines, made by Sir James Mackintosh.* 'It was fortunate also,' he says, 'that the enormities of Tetzel,' (the pope's retailer of indulgences,) found Luther busied in the contemplation of the principle, which is the basis of all ethical judgment, and by the power of which he struck a mortal blow at superstition;' namely, 'men are not made truly righteous by performing certain actions which are externally good, but men must have righteous principles in the first place; and then they will not fail to perform virtuous actions.' He calls it 'a proposition equally certain and sublime;' and adds, that Luther, in a more special application of his principle, used it to convey his doctrine of justification by faith.' And again he says, 'in justice to him, the civil historian should never omit the benefits which accrued to the moral interests of society from this principle.' This principle is the merit of Christ, made ours by the power of God, working faith in us; and by union to Christ, making us free from guilt and pollution. To this christians are, by God's decree, predestinated. This secures moral liberty, and moral rectitude; makes a man 'a law unto himself'—and therefore a good citizen; the freest, noblest, and most just of men.' Such are the views of philosophers, in giving an impartial verdict on the influence of presbyterian doctrines upon civil and religious liberty. But the doctrine of predestination remains to be considered, upon which, and its implied principles, the objector mainly relies. Now it would be easy to show how this doctrine, properly understood, lays the axe to the very root of all human pride, and establishes, upon an immovable foundation, the doctrine of human equality; the utter nothingness of all human distinctions; and the perfect independence of every man upon every other man, for eternal life, and for all spiritual blessings. We are, however, able to present the testimony of Mr. Bancroft, who cannot be supposed by any one to cherish favorable sentiments towards this doctrine, as to its actual results. *Hist. of Eng. vol. ii. pp. 120, 121, and Breckinridge and Hughes', Discuss. p. 309. |