quence of a series of hard struggles on the part of other communions, that the example of Virginia, in establishing the voluntary system, was acted upon in Massachusetts, and the old congregational establishment of that state entirely overthrown. And it is only ten years ago, or in the year 1830, after the voluntary system had been in operation for half a century in Virginia, and in most of the other states of the Union, that it was at length fully established in Massachusetts, and an entire separation effected, throughout the Union, between church and state.'* It is a fact also worthy of consideration,† that when the assembly which framed the Cambridge platform, in 1660, adopted the Westminster Confession of Faith, they made no exception of those clauses which relate to the power of civil magistrates in matters of religion, while they did except those parts 'which have respect unto church government and discipline.' Whereas, our synod, in adopting the same formula in 1729, made no objection to what related to church government; while they objected to what referred to the power of civil magistrates. Such are the facts in the case-facts, clear and indubitable, as any other facts in our whole history. They put to silence the slanderous imputations of our foes. They demonstrate the innate, hearty, and resolute republicanism of presbytery. And they prove beyond contradiction, that the analogy which we have now traced between every essential principle of republicanism and the principles of presbyterianism, is not imaginary or fortuitous, but founded in the very nature of things. To conclude. The constitution of the presbyterian church, observes the late Dr. Rice, of Virginia, ‘is fundamentally and decidedly republican; and it is in a very happy measure adapted to that particular modification of republican institutions, which prevails in the United States. This is too plain to require demonstration; the slightest attention being sufficient to convince any one that our ecclesiastical constitution establishes in the church a representative government. Hence, the more decidedly a man is a prebyterian, the more decidedly is he a republican. So much is this the case, that some christians of this society, fully believing that presbytery is de jure divino, consider this as decisive evidence that republicanism is of divine institution; and are persuaded that they should grievously sin against God by acknowledging any other form of civil government.§ *Bib. Repertory, July, 1840, p. 334. †Such is the judgment of Dr. Lang, himself, a European. Relig. in America, p. 308. Dr. Lang, pp. 308, 309. Illustrations of the Char. and Conduct of the Presb. Ch. in Va. by John Holt Rice, D. D. CHAPTER III. THE REPUBLICANISM OF PRESBYTERY ATTESTED BY HISTORY. SECTION I. The analogy which has been proved to exist, between republicanism and presbytery, may be fully attested, and therefore strengthened, by an appeal to history, as embodying the opinions of men in different ages, concerning presbytery, and its actual working as a system. For the first three hundred years, the christian church was essentially prebyterian, and as certainly republican in its form of government. The original form in which christianity existed in Ireland and in Scotland, was, as has been fully established, presbyterian.* Nothing could be more perfectly analogous in all fundamental principles, than the system of the ancient Culdees-the primitive christians of Ireland, of Scotland, and ultimately of England also-and presbyterianism. Now among the charges made against the Culdees, by their inveterate enemies, the Romanists, were these, 'their exclusive devotedness to the authority of scripture, their rejection of the Romish ceremonies, doctrines, and traditions, the nakedness of their forms of worship, and THE REPUBLICAN CHARACTER OF THEIR ECCLESIASTICAL GOVERNMENT.'† SECTION II. The form of government among the Waldenses, who have always been thorough presbyterians,** was as purely republican. We have also noticed the existence, during succeeding centuries, of various individuals and bodies, who advocated the doctrines of presbytery, and who raised their loud protest against the encroachments of spiritual and civil despotism. *See the proof of this, in the author's Presbytery and not Prelacy the Primitive and Scriptural Polity. B. iii. ch. ii. § 8-10. † Pictorial Hist. of England, vol. i. p. 245. B. ii. ch. ii. Among these, one of the most remarkable was Arnold, of Brescia, who, in the twelfth century, stood forth as a most daring opponent of clerical ambition, and of all oppression. Arnold commenced his stormy career, as a preacher, in the streets of Brescia. The kingdom of Christ he ventured to describe as not of this world; secular honors and possessions, he also dared to maintain, could justly belong only to the laity. On the total relinquishment of such anti-christian appendages, by every gradation of ecclesiastics, he loudly insisted as being the claim of the gospel, and as essential to their salvation, even to that of their accredited head. His followers at length fixed upon the desperate resolve, to unfurl the standard of revolt in the very city of Rome. Familiar alike,' says Dr. Vaughan,‡ 'with the civil and religious history of Rome, Arnold dwelt with a commanding eloquence on the exploits of the Bruti, the Gracchi, and the Scipio's, and on the saintly character of the martyrs who had perished in the cause of her ancient and her better christianity. With a glow of patriotism, and we must presume of piety too, he urged the restoration of the forgotten laws of the republic, and required, as a measure strictly essential to produce a return of the purity and the triumphs of religion, that all authority in the pontiffs and the clergy should be limited to the spiritual government of the christian commonwealth.' 'In Rome, for nearly ten years, the influence of the monk of Brescia presided, while several contemporary pontiffs trembled within its walls, sunk beneath the cares of their tottering empire, or resorted as exiles to the adjacent cities. It was long, however, since the voice of freedom had echoed among the seven hills; and her authority, in the present instance, was precarious, and of short duration.'* Pope Adrian accused Arnold to the emperor, when he labored to show that the heresy of Arnold was not less hostile to political, than to ecclesiastical government. It is unnecessary to add, that he was soon commended to the tender mercies of the fagot, having perished at the stake in 1155. His influence, however, did not die with him. For, being driven in his exile to Zurich, he is presumed to have left the seeds of his doctrine to vegetate there, until, in the age of Zuinglius, it sprung up in the harvest of the reformation. Wickliffe was, we have seen,§ the reviver of presbyterian principles in England;—and was he not, also, the great champion of civil and religious liberty? 'In English history,** Wickliffe is known as the first man who dared to advocate the +Vaughan's Life of Wickliffe, vol. i. p. 139. Ibid, p. 140. *Vaughan's Life of Wickliffe, vol. i. p. 140. Presbytery and not Prelacy the Script. and Primit. Polity. B. iii. **Vaughan, ibid, p. 8. 6-VOL. II. free circulation of the scriptures in the vernacular tongue, the unalienable right of private judgment, and our complete deliverance from the wiles and oppressions of a papal priesthood.' 'And to his mind nearly every principle of our general protestantism may be distinctly traced.' This will be manifest to any one who will investigate the doctrines of Wickliffe, respecting the pope's temporal power; the secular exemptions of the clergy; the limits to the authority of the magistrate; the customs of patronage; tithes and ecclesiastical endowments; and other similar matters.* The Lollards, who were the followers of Wickliffe, adopted his principles, and by their opposition to the usurpations and tyranny of both church and state, paved the way for the English reformation; and for the present liberties of the English nation. The principles of Wickliffe were also adopted by Huss, who undauntedly declaimed against the clergy, the cardinals, the pope himself, and against all despotism, whether in church or state. He therefore taught,‡ that a 'prelate is no prelate, while he is in mortal sin; that a bishop is no bishop, while he is in mortal sin; and that if temporal lords do wrongs and extortions to the people, they ben traytors to God and his people, and tyrants of antichrist.' And Huss corroborated this opinion, by showing that it was held by St. Austin. For these labors, Wickliffe, Huss, and Jerome, of Prague, have been immortalized by Dryden. Of this great triumvirate,' he gives, as their common characteristics, an 'innate antipathy to kings.'§ It thus appears, that as the love of liberty has been ever considered the peculiarity of the Teutonic race,|| so has this spirit unfolded itself in a uniform resistance to spiritual as well as civil despotism. *See Vaughan's Life, vol. ii. ch. viii. p. 226, &c. †See Prelacy and not Presbytery, &c. as above. B. iii. Middleton's Evang. Biog. vol. i. p. 36. §Poet. Works, (Hind & Panther,) vol. ii. p. 24. ||Mackintosh's Hist. of Eng. vol. i. p. 10. SECTION III. The republicanism of presbytery fully developed by the refor mation. The reformation was an outburst of liberty against the priestcraft of Rome, and the civil bondage it had engendered.* It was a general emancipation of the human mind. The lightning spirit of liberty, which had been pent up for ages, now rent the heavens, renewed the face of society, and restored vitality to every department of human knowledge. It shook, as has been said, the seven hills; it broke the yoke of antichrist; it shivered the sword of the oppressor; it smote the shrine of superstition; it rent the garments from the shoulders of the Roman harlot; it awoke the consciences of men; it fixed a proper value upon man's soul; it enlightened Europe; it made error and ignorance a scandal and a curse. It unclasped the long-closed volume of divine inspiration. It thus put into every man's hand the standard of truth, and the touchstone of error. It made men once more hear the voice of God, and learn his truth directly from his own lips; not distorted, transmuted, concealed, falsified, by popes, priests, breviaries, or missals; nor wrapped up in a foreign tongue, as if to muffle or silence the voice of heaven!' It set free the fettered ministry which Christ had ordained in his church. It unloosed their bonds; and while stripping them of their idle trappings, and degrading them from the false exaltation which they had occupied, it elevated them to their true dignity and office, as ambassadors for Christ, and heralds of the great salvation. It taught men to disown them as priests, sacrificers, incense-burners, forgivers of sins, mediators; but it called on men to listen with most earnest and reverent heed to them, as witnesses of the one glorious high priest-proclaimers of the one perfect sacrifice.' It has also restored man's true responsibility to God, and with it man's true dignity and worth, both in his own eyes, and in the eyes of his fellow-men. The object of popery was, to supplant personal, by clerical or rather ecclesiastical responsibility, *Speaking of Luther's appearance in the Hall of the Diet at Worms, Carlyle (Lect. on Heroes, p. 218, Eng. ed.) says, "The people on the morrow, as he went up to the hall of the diet, crowded the windows and housetops, some of them calling out to him, in solemn words, not to recant. 'Whosoever denieth me before men!' they cried to him, as in a kind of solemn petition and adjuration. Was it not in reality, our petition too, the petition of the whole world, lying in dark bondage of soul, paralysed under a black spectral night-mare, and tripple-hatted chimera, calling itself Father in God, and what not.' 'Free us; it rests with thee; desert us not!' 'Luther did not desert us.' †See Presb. Rev. 1842, p. 33, and Brooke's Hist. of Rel. Lib. vol. i. pp. 208, 210, 211. |