Minister of religion

“ The minister is the teacher of the church; not a master; a servant to teach. A normal church is a body of men, assembling to promote religion, piety, and morality. Its business is, first, protective at home—to promote piety and morality in its own members ; and, second, it is diffusive abroad—to promote piety and morality in all the world according to its strength: for duty is proportionate to power to do; and where the power is little, so is the duty, where much, there great. So a church must protest against all wrong which it knows to be wrong; promote all right which it knows to be right. ”

“ And especially as a minister of religion would he be entitled to every protection in his efforts to suppress vice and ameliorate the public morals, even although he might in the warmth of feeling and language, express sentiments which should not be otherwise than painful to individuals addressed. ”

“ The minister was of the same opinion, but yet he wished some religion, it being well understood that his was the best. I say his, because he was neither a Methodist, a Protestant, nor a Catholic—not even a Christian; he maintained that a Jew, a Turk, or an Idolatar may be as agreeable as any other in the sight of God. ”

“ With all the consequence and arrogance which assumed infallibility can induce, he maintains that none ought to be teachers of religion but those who are authorized, or otherwise specially inspired of God. According to his definition, an authorized minister is one who has passed through the ordeal of episcopal ordination, and what constitutes that authority is, the regular succession [Pg 92] from the times of the apostles to the present period. ”

“ The term was applied generally to the clergy about the time of the great rebellion, since which time it has been used to denote the preacher of any religion. Joseph Mede protested against our calling presbyters ministers of the Church, or of such or such a parish: we should call them, he observes, ministers of God, or ministers of Christ, not ministers of men, because they are only God’s ministers, who sends them, but the people’s pastors, to teach, instruct, and oversee them. Were it not absurd to call the shepherd the sheep’s minister? ”

“ The great principle of duty belonging to the minister in the pulpit, belongs to him everywhere; and the great principle of duty belonging to the minister, belongs to every man, woman, and child. There is not one religion for the man when he is in the temple, and another religion for the man when he is in the parlor or in the street. ”

“ The minister preaches to grown men––a large proportion of them members of the Church––not a few of them office-bearers in its service, and competent, in consequence, to judge respecting both the doctrine which he exhibits and the mode of its exhibition; but it is children, immature of judgment, and extremely limited in their knowledge, whom the religion-teaching schoolmaster has to address. Nay, more: in choosing a minister, we may mistake the character of the man ”

“ Religious ministers that take over or resign from the positions of main minister at a religious activity centre, once approval has been given by the religious association for the respective religion, shall be reported to the county-level or higher People's government's religious affairs department. ”

“ The truth is, under a government like ours, presumably Christian, all political questions have a moral phase, and to a greater or less extent involve the question of religion. In other words, every question in politics touches at some point the work of the pulpit, therefore it is right and proper for the minister to discuss before his people, prudently, of course, the moral bearings of all these issues. ”

“ Clement Sclater—the minister of her parish, recently appointed. He was a man between young and middle-aged, an honest fellow, zealous to perform the duties of his office, but with notions of religion very beggarly. How could it be otherwise when he knew far more of what he called the Divine decrees than he did of his own heart, or the needs and miseries of human nature? ”

“ The truth is, there is the greatest possible vagueness of belief, or rather opinion, respecting the Christian Ministry, in our times and country especially. There is, perhaps very generally, an indistinct impression, that something is required to make a man “a minister of the Gospel;” ”

“ Ministers are warned that they must attend to their own business, which is preaching the Word of God not so concretely or practically as to offend the “pillars.”
Just what is it, I wonder, that a minister may preach without hazarding his job? It is said persistently that the trouble with the church at the present day is that the ministers no longer preach the Word of God; that if Christian Truth were again taught with the old vigor, people would hear it gladly. ”

“ And most wisely, and most truly, does our Church separate ordination from the two Christian sacraments, as an institution far less solemn, and conferring graces far less important: for the difference between a Christian and a Christian minister is but one of office, not of moral or spiritual advancement, not of greater or less nearness to God. One is our master, even Christ; and all we are brethren. Words which certainly do not imply that all members of the church are to have the same office, or that all offices are of equal importance and dignity ”

“ His argument for the right of the Christian Minister to a temporal maintenance is wholly derived from the analogy of the Jewish Priesthood; this would, then, be no argument, if there were no analogy. His words are, “Do ye not know that they which Minister about holy things, live of the things of the altar? even so hath the Lord ordained, that they that preach the Gospel should live of the Gospel.” Evidently the former Ministry is assumed to be the pattern of the latter. ”

“ Turn, for your comfort, to the Twenty-sixth Article of our Church, and you will see why I say so. It is headed, “Of the unworthiness of the ministers, which hinders not the effect of the Sacraments;” and it tells us of them, as to “their authority in ministration of the Word and Sacraments,” that “forasmuch as they do not the same in their own name, but in Christ’s, and do minister by His commission and authority, we may use their ministry, both in hearing the Word of God, and in receiving of the Sacraments. Neither is the effect of Christ’s ordinance taken away . ”

“ But yet this rather anomalous circumstance, that men who are generally supposed to be somewhat lax, at least, respecting the subject of an authoritative ministry, should also be often thought to give undue prominence to “the Sermon” of a minister, even beyond other means of grace; this, I say, only renders it the more important that we should understand clearly what men mean by a “ministry” in the Church,—what they consider its real powers and chief functions,—and what its special grace and blessing? ”

“ To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even m purely physical matters — where faith is not involved — they would have us altogether abandon reason and the evidence of our senses in favor of some biblical passage, though under the surface meaning of its words this passage may contain a different sense. ”

“ Many ministers make great efforts to exorcise this demon of exclusiveness, but the effort is too severe for any but the few, and the success of it is of doubtful accomplishment.
The Christian minister is a representative of humanity, pure and simple, without recognition of its division into classes. He is neither rich nor poor, high nor low, in society nor out of it, elevated nor obscure. He is democratic, the friend of everybody, the servant of all, on terms of charity and sincerity with all men. ”

“ We give the substance of the canons as briefly as possible, but without any material omission, so that the reader may feel assured that he has the whole body of the legislation before him.
They decree that the ministers of God devoutly serve and minister to God, and intercede for all Christian folk; be faithful and obedient to their seniors (bishops, abbots, etc.) ; ready to help others, both Godward and manward; and be to their earthly lords true and faithful ”

“ Hence, wherever there is a true church, the right to elect and ordain ministers necessarily exists. Just as in a case of necessity even a layman absolves, and becomes the minister and pastor of another ”

“ I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead at his appearing and his kingdom. Observe, The best of men have need to be awed into the discharge of their duty. The work of a minister is not an indifferent thing, but absolutely necessary. Woe be to him if he preach not the gospel, 1 Cor. ”

“ So that they were truly ministers of Christ sent forth to minister in his name to all who would believe, and by means of this ministry, and power, they could build up the kingdom of Christ among men, and establish his cause in the world. The gospel that men preach in these days have no such ministry or priesthood: the priesthood of modern times has no such power or authority. ”

“ The government of the church is upon his shoulder, which no civil officer ought to attempt. And therefore magistrates have no power to limit a minister, either to what he shall preach or pray, or in what manner they shall worship God, lest hereby they shall advance themselves above Christ, and limit his Spirit. ”

“ Thus, in the more advanced forms of Protestantism, such as the Presbyterian or the Unitarian, the minister is scarcely more than a mere teacher; he has little or no more power to convey commands or intimations from God than any member of his congregation. ”

“ And though we believe, that none ought to take the Office of a Minister, but he that is elected and ordained thereunto, yet we believe also, that it is the duty of all private Christians, in a brotherly way, out of the common bond of charity, to build up one another in their most holy Faith. And therefore let those [149] that fear the Lord, speak often one to another, especially in these evil daies: and strive together for the Faith of the Gospel, standing fast in one spirit with one mind. ”

“ Were it possible for every man and woman who pretends to be a minister of Jesus, to pass six months in any of the Training Colleges of the Salvation Army, then there should be fewer ministers, but far more useful, in the betterment of the world, than many of them that are under the present conditions. ”

“ Sir, I take it upon myself to say, that in no country in the world, upon either continent, can there be found a body of ministers of the Gospel who perform so much service to man, in such a full spirit of self-denial, under so little encouragement from government of any kind, and under circumstances almost always much straitened and often distressed, as the ministers of the Gospel in the United States, of all denominations. They form no part of any established order of religion; they constitute no hierarchy; they enjoy no peculiar privileges. ”

“ Now, it is true that we hold, that an evil minister, incurring even deposition by our discipline, does not necessarily prevent the communications of divine grace to the souls of men in the ministration of the word and sacraments. ”

“ My earnest prayer is that you may soon be directed to the right man to be your minister, to one who shall unite all hearts and all hands, and carry forward the high and holy mission to which God has called you. He will find in me not a jealous critic, but a hearty ally in everything that he may regard for the welfare of this church. ”

“ Wherever he goes he has a pulpit. Whether he eat, or drink, or whatever he do, he must do all for the glory of God, and the highest glory of God is Christ, and the highest honor of Christ is in Him crucified. A minister must always respect the proprieties of life; in honoring them he knows that appropriate model Man who, rising from the tomb, wrapped up the napkin that was about His head, and laid it in a place by itself. ”

“ As baptism is as such our entrance into the universal church, and not into a particular; so is ordination to a minister an entrance only on the ministry as such.
2. Yet a man may at once be made a minister in general, and the pastor of this or that church in particular: and in kingdoms wholly inchurched and christian, it is usually fittest so to do; lest many being ordained sine titulo, idleness and poverty of supernumeraries, should corrupt and dishonour the ministry: which was the cause of the old canons in this case. ”

“ In the absence of the pressure of obligation which a pastoral charge brings, the minister is in danger of a secularized spirit, which weakens in him the sense of spiritual realities and impairs his power in the public ministration of the Gospel. ”

“ Bishop Ames all houses of worship belonging to the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, in which a loyal minister who has been appointed by a loyal Bishop of said Church does not officiate. It is a matter of great importance to the Government, in its efforts to restore tranquillity to the community and peace to the nation, that Christian ministers should, by precept and example, support and foster the loyal sentiments of the people. ”

“ During this as well as many other meetings for worship, I sat under religious exercise, but could seldom believe it required of me to take part in the public ministry. I often think, when many exercised brethren and sisters are present; there would be a danger of interrupting the true gospel order, if all were not careful to wait on the Great Minister of the Sanctuary. If we patiently abide under the rightly baptizing power, what we may apprehend preparing in our hearts for utterance may often be delivered by others, and we only have to say, as it were, Amen. ”