Ecclesiastical government

“ Others sought to bring about changes in ecclesiastical government, not only in the "reforming councils" but through efforts at the papal court and in the strong bishoprics. Had the church listened to these cries of the laity and zealously availed itself of the many opportunities presented, possibly the religious revolution would not have come. ”

“ He would have them disciplined inwardly on the presbyterian plan, the worshippers delegating their spiritual government to an oligarchy of pastors and elders, power of excommunication being reserved to 'the whole congregation itself.' But he would subject no congregation to any ecclesiastical jurisdiction save 'that which is within itself.' To prevent as far as possible the action of the state from being warped by ecclesiastical control, he would enact that no clergyman should hold any office of civil authority. ”

“ The Church, and the several presbyteries ecclesiastical, meet not as civil judicatories, for civil acts of government, as making civil statutes, inflicting civil punishments, &c., but as spiritual assemblies, for spiritual acts of government and discipline: as preaching, baptizing, receiving the Lord's supper, prayer, admonition of the disorderly, &c. 5. What gross absurdities would follow, should not these two societies, viz. church and commonwealth, be acknowledged to be really and essentially distinct from one another! For then, 1. There can be no commonwealth where there is not a Church ”

“ All those whose ecclesiastical offices for church government, under the New Testament, were instituted by Christ, before any formal visible Christian Church was gathered or constituted, are the first and immediate receptacle or subject of the power of the keys from Jesus Christ. ”

“ He may grant and protect the public exercise of that power within his dominions; but designation of particular persons to the office and power, is from the Church; the donation of the office and power only from Christ himself. So that magistracy doth not formally nor virtually comprehend in it ecclesiastical power for church government; for a magistrate, as a magistrate, hath no inward ecclesiastical power at all belonging to him. ”

“ I. The light of nature and right reason may discover to us (though more dimly) the divine warrant of the greater presbyteries, and of their power for the governing of the church. For,
1. There are many ecclesiastical matters which are of common concernment to many single congregations, as trial of church officers, ordination and deposition of ministers, dispensation of censures, judicial determination of controversies, resolution in difficult cases of conscience, ordering of things indifferent, &c. ”

“ In that instrument the powers of government, instead of being divided as they are in the United States, and other civilized countries, into legislative, executive and judicial, are divided into military, ecclesiastical and civil, and these two first are fortified with exclusive privileges, and made predominant. It is specially declared that the Roman Catholic religion is, and forever shall be, the established religion of the land. ”

“ Nor can We hope for happier results either for rehgion or for the civil government from the wishes of those who desire that the Church be separated from the State, and the concord between the secular and ecclesiastical authority be dissolved. It is clear that these men, who yearn for a shameless hberty, Hve in dread of an agreement which has always been fraught with good, and advantageous alike to sacred and civil interests. ”

“ As to ecclesiastical parties, we may observe, that, in all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty; [3] and, it is certain, that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded on fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking, and of expressing our thoughts, is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded; and, by an infallible connection, which prevails among all kinds of liberty, this privilege can never be enjoyed, at least has never yet been enjoyed, but in a free government. ”

“ It was under a solemn consciousness of the dangers from ecclesiastical ambition, the bigotry of spiritual pride, and the intolerance of sects, thus exemplified in our domestic, as well as in foreign annals, that it was deemed advisable to exclude from the national government all power to act upon the subject. ”

“ Although many things are introduced here in the topic of Ecclesiastical Power, with greater bitterness than is just, yet it must be declared that to most reverend bishops and priests, and to the entire clergy, all ecclesiastical power is freely conceded that belongs to them by law or custom. ”

“ As the real founder of the ecclesiastical state, he must be held mainly responsible for the evils which resulted from the policy of the church in exalting the ecclesiastical over the secular authority. ”

“ Nothing can be more perfect than the analysis by which the two ruling powers are separated from each other, and the ecclesiastical set above the secular." [263] If this is not quite borne out, one can hardly help feeling that more care should have been taken to mark out the limits of ecclesiastical authority, and to show that the power of ministers and elders was as distinctly limited by the laws of Christ as that of kings and magistrates ought to be by the laws of the land ”

“ God hath commanded, that unto the civil power every soul, or all members of the commonwealth, of what condition and estate soever, be subject; for what have we to do with the Papists, who will have them whom they call the clergy or ecclesiastical persons, to be free from the yoke of the civil magistrate? The ecclesiastical power extends itself to none other subjects than unto those which are called brethren, or members of the church. ”

“ And the Church, on her part, the above principle having been adopted by the State, acknowledged in the head of that State, the King, her temporal head; investing him with that general supremacy in ecclesiastical affairs, which he already possessed in civil. But we are not thence to infer that she gave, or that she could give, to an earthly monarch, or to his temporal legislature, the right to interfere with things spiritual, with her Doctrines, with her Liturgy, with the ministration of her Sacraments, or with the positions, relative to each other, of her Bishops, Priests, and Deacons. ”

“ And they have no shame in avowing openly and publicly the heretical statement and principle, from which have emanated so many errors and perverse opinions, "that the ecclesiastical power is not, by the law of God, made distinct from and independent of the civil power, and that no distinction, no independence of this kind can be maintained without the Church invading and usurping the essential rights of the civil power." ”

“ Whereupon oftentimes the worldly princes do grant the bare use of the church, and oftentimes use power to exercise justice, which the clergy cannot; exercise by any ecclesiastical minister, or any other person of the clergy. ”

“ The royal placet or right of permitting or refusing, is required for all clerical enactments which are not purely inter-ecclesiastical but refer to mixed matters; the theological endowments are subject to state control and joint administration; boys’ seminaries are not allowed; clergymen appointed to office must submit to state examination; according to consuetudinary rights, about two-thirds of the benefices are filled by the king, one-third by the bishops on reporting to the civil court, which has the right of protest; clergy who break the law are removable by the civil court, etc. ”

“ If we regard the Constitutions as a production of the third century, (containing remnants of earlier compositions,) the work possesses a certain kind of value. It contributes to give us an insight into the state of Christian faith, the condition of the clergy and inferior ecclesiastical officers, the worship and discipline of the Church, and other particulars, at the period to which the composition is referred. The growth of episcopal power and influence, and the derivation of the episcopal authority from the apostles, is here clearly shown. ”

“ Whatever may be the ecclesiastical system, whether papal, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or congregational, the State abuses its strength when, without the assent of the faithful, it abolishes their systems or imposes a new one upon them. ”

“ In Catholic nations the civil authority has always, or almost always, been prone to encroach on the authority of the church, and to attempt to control her external discipline or ecclesiastical administration; but, in the nations that were carried away by the so-called reformation, the civil authority assumed in every instance complete control over the national church, and prescribed its constitution, its creed, its liturgy, and its discipline. This for them completely humanized religion, and made it a department of state. ”

“ In resenting the prohibition of Napoleon III to promulgate the Syllabus in France, the Civiltá spoke thus of the error which misled politicians—
It proceeds from the belief that it is the civil authority which permits the Church to exercise within its territory her jurisdiction over the faithful. Nothing is more false. The faithful, wherever found, are subject to the Church by the will of Christ, and not by the will of the State. They must necessarily be governed by two authorities, by the civil and the ecclesiastical, each freely acting within its proper circle ”

“ The general council of Christians alone has the authority to forbid the marriage of priests, bishops, and other clergy, and to make other laws concerning ecclesiastical discipline, and that council or the one to whom it delegates its authority alone may dispense with these laws. ”

“ All independent Governments claim and exercise the right to regulate and manage their own affairs, and when this right is lost, from whatsoever cause, their independence is brought to an end. Yet this author lays it down as a settled principle of ecclesiastical law that the Church—that is, the pope—possesses the exclusive authority to decide its own jurisdiction over spirituals and temporals. ”

“ So entirely have political ideas and jealousies infected our mode of judging of spiritual things—to such a degree is our peculiar civil liberty made the standard of Church government—that it is necessary to insist again and again on what to Christians ought to be a first principle, viz., that "all power and jurisdiction in the Church, like the Church herself, ought to rest not upon natural and human authority, but on the divine authority of Christ. ”

“ The debt which the English church owes to him cannot easily be overestimated. He secured its unity and gave it organisation, subdividing the vast bishoprics, coterminous with kingdoms, and basing its episcopate on tribal lines, on the means of legislating for itself, and on the idea of obedience to lawfully constituted ecclesiastical authority. ”

“ The immediate need of our Church is, in our opinion, a tolerant recognition of divergent ritual practice; but we feel bound to submit to your Grace that our present troubles are likely to recur, unless the Courts by which ecclesiastical causes are decided in the first instance and on appeal can be so constructed as to secure the conscientious obedience of clergymen who believe the constitution of the Church of Christ to be of Divine appointment, and who protest against the State's encroachment upon Rights assured to the Church of England by solemn Acts of Parliament.... ”

“ His theory, which marks the culminating point of English sacerdotalism, represents the episcopate and episcopally ordained clergy as a spiritual power co-ordinate with the temporal power, and associated with it in a federal union, the regal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical being treated as a mere derivative from the papal usurpation. ”

“ I doubt if the Catholic Church has ever abrogated or ignored her old right to meddle in the politics of a state or nation. I do not know, nor do I believe, that the Catholic clergy in this our country take it upon themselves to instruct the people in their political duties. ”

“ They lay hands on the goods of the clergy, contending that the Church cannot possess property. Lastly, they treat the Church with such arrogance that, rejecting entirely her title to the nature and rights of a perfect society, they hold that she differs in no respect from other societies in the State, and for this reason possesses no right nor any legal power of action, save that which she holds by the concession and favor of the government. ”

“ The Puritans demanded on these grounds their right to reject the old ceremonial of the Established Church, and in the place of those empty forms, the right to choose their own minister; the right to worship God in spirit and in truth, and the right of deciding for themselves their form of Church government. ”

“ That the Holy Catholic Church is artfully constituted to subjugate all secular and ecclesiastical power under its authority, and that its object is not to advance the interests of moral goodness, but to acquire temporal dominion, must be admitted by every one that fully comprehends the principles upon which its religious Orders are organized. These Orders were founded by Catholic saints and Bishops. ”

“ The remarks which we have made in reference to the Protestant clergy in general, apply, of course, to our General Assembly, in so far as it rests its pretensions on its clerical character. As a clerical community, it has by Divine right no sphere of supreme spiritual jurisdiction: it does not hold from God any authority which the whole believing nation does not equally hold from God.
II. In proof that the General Assembly cannot hold an exclusive spiritual supremacy from the state. ”