* . * THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 4 A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF ITS DOCTRINE, WORSHIP, AND POLITY BY THE REV. W. M. MACPHAIL M.A. (EDIN.) GENERAL SECRETARY OF THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH OF ENGLAND, FORMERLY CLERK OF SYNOD HODDER AND STOUGHTON LONDON MCMVIII TO THE HONOURED MEMORY OF A. B. BRUCE, D.D. J. S. OANDLISH, D.D. G. 0. M. DOUGLAS, D.D. AND HENRY DRUMMOND, AND TO PRINCIPAL T. M. LINDSAY, D.D., SOLE SURVIVOR OB 1 THE PROFESSORS OP GLASGOW FREE CHURCH COLLEGE, TO WHOSE INSTRUCTION COUNSEL AND EXAMPLE I OWE MY PREPARATION FOR THE PRESBYTERIAN MINISTRY; AND TO THE CONGREGATIONS OF CARGILL CHURCH, MAYBOLE AND TRINITY CHURCH, STREATHAM, IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE OF TWENTY-FIVE HAPPY YEARS SPENT IN THEIR SERVICE AND FELLOWSHIP 2067112 PREFACE fTlHE writer of this book would not have taken up the task, urged upon him though it was by those whose wish is for him almost a command, if it had been necessary to treat the subject in any spirit of narrow sectarianism. Nothing could have been more inopportune than a defence of Presbyterianism written in such a spirit. The present position calls not for the justification of divisions, but for combined and strenuous efforts for their healing. Church union is the watchword of the hour. Presbyterianism itself, so long a byword for its tendency to divide and subdivide, is everywhere closing its ranks. The Presby- terian Church of England was formed in viii PREFACE 1876 by a union which left outside its pale only a bare dozen of Presbyterian congre- gations in England. The legal consequences of the step have called the world's atten- tion to the union in 1900 of the two lead- ing non-established Presbyterian Churches of Scotland, a union which is proving well worth all the sacrifices it involved ; and every day makes it more certain that before long we shall see the long-divided forces of Scottish Presbyterianism re-united in one great national Church. Through recent unions each of the principal British colonies Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa has now a united Pres- byterian Church. Recent unions have sub- stantially reduced the number of distinct Presbyterian Churches in the United States. Other denominations notably the Metho- dists, who have rivalled the Presbyterians in the variety of their divisions have been going through a similar process of con- solidation, at home and in the colonies. PREFACE ix The air is also full of projects for union between denominations, in which Presby- terians are taking a willing and prominent part. In Canada the negotiations for uniting the Methodist, Congregational, and Baptist Churches have reached an advanced stage. In Australia the same denominations are approaching each other with a view to union ; and in that colony most remark- able phenomenon of all negotiations for union have been opened between the Presbyterian and Anglican Churches. In New Zealand there is a movement for union between the Methodists, Baptists, and Presbyterians of the colony. These mutual approaches of the daughter Churches in the colonies have greatly strengthened the desire for union among the parent Churches at home, which, so far as the Nonconformist Churches are con- cerned, have for years been brought closer and closer together in the Federation of the Free Churches. A change is coming over x PREFACE the attitude of the Churches to one another, which justifies the conviction that the national Christian Church of the future in England will be created not by the wholesale conversion of the people to Presbyterianism, or Episcopacy, or Congregationalism, or Methodism, but by the ultimate union of the Churches, and in the meantime, as a preparation for that union, by the gradual assimilation of the Churches to one another in creed and worship and polity. Why, then, it may be asked, choose such a juncture for a fresh exposition of the distinctive principles of a particular denomi- nation? The answer is twofold. 1. Because the process towards union will be not hindered, but hastened, by the recognition that each of the separated Churches has had something in its dis- tinctive principles worth witnessing for, even at the cost of a temporary sacrifice of the Church's outward unity. Each must recognise that it has something to learn PREFACE xi from the others. Each has its own contri- bution to make to the Church that is to be. That means that the points that still divide us must not be ignored. They must be studied and understood and appreciated. 2. Because to add a plea in defence of this denominational apologia in particular the more practical the quest for unity becomes, the more evident does it become that it is on something like Presbyterian lines that, as regards one important ques- tion that of Church government the union of the Churches must be brought about. For these reasons it is hoped that the appearance of an exposition of Presbyterian principles, written in this spirit, if it exerts any influence at all, will prove helpful to the cause of union between the Churches. The writer can honestly say that, with all his pride in and devotion to the Church of his birth and baptism and ordination, he would rather have left his book unwritten than find it regarded merely as an attempt xii PREFACE to glorify the denomination to which he belongs, and not as the fruit and proof of a genuine desire to serve the infinitely larger and more sacred interests of the kingdom of God. W. M. M. October 1, 1908. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE INTEODUCTOEY WOELD-WIDB PEESBYTEBIANISM I ITS HISTORY AND PEESENT STEENGTH . 1 CHAPTEB II PEESBYTEEIAN DOOTEINE . , . 31 CHAPTEB III PEESBYTEEIAN WOESHIP . . . . 105 CHAPTEB IV PEESBYTEEIAN POLITY . . . . 125 CHAPTEB V PEESBYTEBIANISM IN ENGLAND , . . 223 ziii TEXTS PAGE Gen. xii. 23 74 xvii. 7 74 Num. xxxv. 12 167 Josh. xx. 4, 6 167 Ezek. xxxvi. 25 68 Matt. xvi. 13-19 153 xviii. 15-18 153 xviii. 17 166 xviii. 20 79, 153, 171 xxviii. 18-20 63 xxviii. 20 79 Mark i. 10 69 vii. 4 69n x. 14 71 xvi. 16 72 Luke xxii. 19 77, 79 John v. 40 95 vi. 35, 40, 47, 51, 53, 54,55 84n vi. 37, 39, 44, 65 90 xvii. 2, 6, 9, 11, 12, 24 91 xx. 21-23 153 xxi. 16 189 Actsi. 21 173 i. 24 155 ii. 39 71 ii. 44 217 iv. 4 216 v. 6, 10 185 v. 12 217 vi. 1-6 175 vi. 2 217 PAGE Actsvi. 2, 3 206 vi. 2, 4 175 vi. 9, 10 207 viii. 38, 39 69n ix. 31 218 x. 41 173 xi. 27 209 xi. 30 177 bis., 183 xii. 17 191 xiii. 1 209 xiii. 1-3 190 xiv. 14 208 xiv. 23.. .172, 173, 177, 196 xiv. 27 216 xv 189,214 xv. 2, 6, 23 168 xv. 4 216 xv. 4, 12, 22, 30.. .169, 217 xv. 13 191 xvi. 15, 33 73 xviii. 7 217 xviii. 27 219 xix. 9 217 xix. 10, 22 218 xx. 17 177, 179, 216 xx. 28 154, 179, 187 xx. 28-31 194 xxi. 8 175, 207 xxi. 18 191 Rom. viii. 28 95 xii. 8 206 xvi. 1 219 xvi. 5 216 xvi. 7 208 XVI TEXTS PAGE ICor. i. 2 216 v. 2-7 167 v. 3-5 168 vii. 14 71 x. 16 82 x. 17 86 xi. 24 66, 80, 82 xi. 25 66, 80, 82 xi. 26 63 xi. 27 82 xii. 28 206,207,208 xiv. 23 217 xiv. 34 217 xvi. 19 216,217 2 Cor. i. 1 218 iii. 1-3 219 Gal. i. 19 191 ii. 9 219 ii. 12 191 iii. 27 66 Eph. ii. 20 209 iii. 5 209 iv. 11, 12 59, 154, 164 Phil. i. 1 176, 179 ii. 12, 13 95 Col. ii. 11,12 70n ii. 12..., ,...69n PAGE 1 Thess. iv. 10 218 v. 12 155 1 Tim. iii. 1-13 179 iii. 2 207 iii. 8-13 176 iv. 14 189 v. 13, 14 160 v. 17 155, 207, 209 v. 17-19 179 2 Tim. i. 6 160, 189 i. 13 194 iv. 2 194 Titus i. 5 172, 173, 194 i. 5-7 179 i. 13 194 ii. 15 194 iii. 5 66 iii. 12 195 Heb. xiii. 7 209 xiii. 17 155 1 Peter v. 1 188 v. 1,2 180 v. 2,4 189 2 John 1 188 3 John 1 188 Rev. ii. 1 .. ... 216 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM : ITS HISTORY AND PRESENT STRENGTH Presby. Ch. 2 ;3 PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH. A Brief Account of its Doctrine Worship, and Polity. By the REV. W. M. MACPHAIL 8ix5i' /L + 283. Hodder and Stoughton. 5s. [This exposition of Presbyterian piinciples is written by the general secretary of the Presbyterian Church of England. He ! hopes that it may further the cause of religious union, which demands a recognition of distinctive denominational principles. and must probably, in the matter of Church government proceed on something like Presbyterian lines.] The strength of Presbyterianism not to be judged by its visibility in England. 1. The Presbyterian Churches Of Scotland, Ireland, and Wales. Of the British Colonies. Of the United States of America. 2. The Presbyterian Churches of the Continent of Europe. Influence of Calvin as the shaper of organised Protestantism. The Presbyterian Churches Of Switzerland. Of France. Of the Netherlands. Of Germany. Of Poland, Bohemia, Hungary, Denmark, Greece, Spain, and Italy (the Waldensian Church). 3. The Presbyterian Churches outside of Europe. The Presbyterian Churches of Persia, Japan, Brazil, Mexico. Native Presbyterian Churches on the Foreign Mission Field, in South Africa, Jamaica, India, and China. 4. The Presbyterian Alliance. Statistics of world-wide Presbyterianism. CHAPTER I INTRODUCTORY WOBLD-WIDE PEESBYTEEIAN- ISM : ITS HISTORY AND PRESENT STRENGTH nnHE special object of this little book is to provide readers who belong to other sections of the Christian Church in England with a brief account of Presbyterianism, and of the principles for which it stands in doctrine, worship, and polity. For reasons which we shall consider in our closing chapter, Presbyterianism is numeri- cally weak in England to-day. The Presby- terian Church of England musters only 350 congregations and 86,774 members, and the addition of the congregations of the " Scottish Synod in England," connected with the (Established) Church of Scotland, 4 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM brings the figures for Presbyterianism in England up to 363 congregations and 89,368 communicants. But the first request we have to make of our readers is not to judge the strength of Presbyterianism by its visi- bility in England. England is, after all, only a little corner of the world ; and it is claimed for Presbyterianism by the most daring of its champions that it constitutes the strongest section of Protestant Christen- dom. This is undoubtedly an exaggeration, but in point of catholicity, of the number of nationalities to which its votaries belong, and the variety of languages in which its services are conducted, it is probably sur- passed only by the Church of Rome.* * An interesting historical account of modern Presby- terianism will be found in " The Presbyterian Churches " (Guild Text Books, R. & R. Clark), by the Rev. J. N. Ogilvie, M.A. WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 5 THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES OF THE BRITISH ISLES. Scotland is, of course, the stronghold of Presbyterianism. To describe the origin, growth, and triumph of Scottish Presby- terianism is to tell the story of the Scottish Reformation. The State Church of that country is Presbyterian, with 1,679 congre- gations and 702,075 members. Almost its equal in size is the United Free Church of Scotland (constituted in 1900 by the union of the Free Church and the United Presby- terian Church), with 1,631 congregations and a membership of 506,088. There are also four smaller denominations, which make the totals for Scottish Presbyterianism over 3,660 congregations and 1,230,000 members. Probably 90 per cent, of the people of Scot- land are Presbyterians. Presbyterianism was introduced into Ire- land by colonists from Scotland* and first * Dr. Walter Travers, who went from England to Ireland in 1594, and was Provost of Trinity College, Dublin, 6 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM took shape there in 1613, when the liberal- minded Archbishop Usher invited twelve Presbyterian ministers from Scotland to look after the spiritual welfare of their fellow-countrymen in the Green Isle. In 1660 there were 100 Presbyterian congrega- tions in Ulster. The Irish Presbyterians were persecuted under the Stuarts, protected by William of Orange, and persecuted again by the dominant episcopacy of Queen Anne's time. Only in 1780 were the disabilities imposed by the Test Act of 1704 removed. The Presbyterian Church in Ireland, formed in 1840 by a union between the Secession Synod and the Synod of Ulster, has now 567 congregations and 106,000 members. There are three minor bodies, bringing the figures for Irish Presbyterianism up to 625 congre- gations and 112,000 members. It is calculated that throughout Ireland Episcopacy and Presbyterianism are of about equal strength. was a Presbyterian, and greatly influenced Usher (see p. 235). WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 7 In Ulster the Presbyterians are in a large majority. Irish Presbyterianism has always been noted for its theological and ecclesias- tical conservatism. The Presbyterianism of Wales is of purely native growth. Its origin strikingly re- sembles that of Methodism in England. A revival movement, dating from about 1735, led to the formation of societies within the parishes of the Church of England in Wales, and these societies, discouraged by the Bishops, were forced to organise themselves outside the Church, and did so spontaneously on lines which were afterwards discovered to be strictly Presbyterian. Thus was formed the powerful Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, which has on its roll 1,380 congregations and 188,000 members. It has adopted "The Presbyterian Church of Wales" as an alternative title and is in close federal relations with the Presbyterian Church of England. 8 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM ENGLISH-SPEAKING PBESBYTEEIANS OUTSIDE THE BRITISH ISLES.* We turn next to the British Colonies. The Presbyterianism of Canada is mainly of Scottish origin, and until 1875 reproduced the divisions of Scottish Presbyterianism, but in that year the various sections were united to form the Presbyterian Church in Canada, which has now 1,815 congregations and 222,000 members. In the Dominion the Presbyterian, Methodist, and Episcopalian communities are about equal in numerical strength. It is probable that in the near future a union will be effected of the Pres- byterian, Methodist, and Congregational Churches of Canada. In Australia each independent colony had until recently its separate Presbyterian * The statistics of the Presbyterian Churches outside the British Islands are taken from the Eeports presented to the last meeting of the Presbyterian Alliance, in 1904 (see p. 29). The author is greatly indebted to the Rev. Dr. G. D. Mathews, General Secretary of the Alliance, for revising the facts and figures in this chapter. WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 9 Church, Scottish in origin, the Church of New South Wales dating from 1826 and that of Victoria from 1842 ; but the Churches of the six colonies are now united in the Presbyterian Church of Australia, with 539 congregations and 50,000 members. In New Zealand two Presbyterian Churches, also founded by Scottish emigrants, one in 1848 and the other in 1856, formed a premature union in 1881, which was soon dissolved, but they have recently been united again in the Presbyterian Church of New Zealand, which has 194 congregations and 28,000 members. In British South Africa the Dutch Re- formed (Presbyterian) Church, founded by Dutch settlers at the Cape in 1652 and reinforced by Huguenot exiles from France at the end of the seventeenth century, is the predominant Church of the country, embracing the Boer population of the four colonies, and numbering (with the much smaller " Christian Reformed Church in 10 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM South Africa ") 297 congregations and 190,000 members. Presbyterianism among the Eng- lish-speaking population of the Colonies dates from the sending out of eleven ministers by the Church of Scotland in 1822. There are now over 11,000 members in 68 congregations, which recently united to form " the Presbyterian Church in South Africa." Passing from the British Colonies to the United States of America, which started on its career as a British colony, we find in that country the greatest development of Presbyterianism that has taken place in modern times. Episcopacy, introduced by the English settlers in Virginia in 1604, established itself in the Southern States. The Pilgrim Fathers who settled in the New England States from 1620 onwards were mostly Independents, although of the 22,000 who arrived before 1640 it is calcu- lated that 4,000 were Presbyterians. The Presbyterian minority from the first were WORLD-WIDE PBESBYTERIANISM 11 disposed to fall into line with the majority, and formally declared themselves Indepen- dents at the Synod of Cambridge in 1646. After the Restoration of the Stuarts in 1660, Presbyterians from Scotland and Ulster emigrated in large numbers to America and settled for the most part in the central colonies, the catholic-minded Quaker, William Penn, giving them a warm wel- come to his colony of Pennsylvania. The first Presbytery was formed at Philadelphia in 1706. Bancroft, the American historian, bears ungrudging testimony to the influence exercised by the Presbyterian settlers on the national history. "These Scottish Pres- byterians," he writes, "of virtue, education, and courage, blending a love of popular liberty with religious enthusiasm, came in such numbers as to give to the rising commonwealth a character which a century and a half has not effaced." "The Presbyterian Church of the United States of America," by far the largest Pres- 12 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM byterian Church in the world, has nearly 9,000 congregations, over 1,300,000 members, and 12 nourishing Colleges. Until recently it was confined to the Northern States, but its area and numbers have been largely extended through its union with the Cum- berland Presbyterian Church of the Southern States (the distinctive feature of which was its abandonment of the more severe tenets of Calvinism). A minority of the Cum- berland Church refused to enter the union and maintains a separate existence. The more conservative Church of the Southern States ("The Presbyterian Church in the United States") has 2,171 congregations and 268,733 members. There are 10 minor Pres- byterian bodies, including the Dutch and German Reformed Churches, and altogether the Presbyterians of the United States muster nearly 18,000 congregations and over 2,000,000 members. Striking though these figures are, several of the other forms of Protestant Christianity WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 13 can show figures more striking still, if we confine our attention to the English-speak- ing world. But, as we have already re- marked, Presbyterianism is distinguished by its international and cosmopolitan character. PRESBYTERIANISM ON THE CONTINENT OF EUROPE. The Presbyterian type of Protestantism is not of British origin. It was introduced into this country from the Continent, where the great majority of the Churches that threw off the yoke of Rome at the Refor- mation became Presbyterian and remain Presbyterian to this day. Throughout Europe the titles "Presbyterian Church" and "Reformed Church" are synonyms, be- cause, with few exceptions, this was the form which the Christian Church took, wherever it escaped from what Luther called the "Babylonish captivity" of Romanism and went back to the New Testament for its doctrine and discipline and government. 14 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM Of the three great leaders Luther, Zwingli, and Calvin John Calvin exercised by far the most widespread and enduring influence on the Churches of the Reformation. Luther supplied the movement with its initial spiri- tual energy. But in the work of recon- structing the Church his influence was almost entirely confined to Germany. It was Calvin who recognised that if Protes- tantism was to survive the counter-Refor- mation which took shape in the delibera- tions of the Council of Trent and the foundation of the Jesuit order, reorganised Romanism must be confronted with an organised Protestantism. His "Institutes of the Christian Religion," published in 1536, was intended to provide the Church with a creed and a polity based on a fresh study of the Scriptures. Remarkable in itself as the product of the solitary studies of a young man of twenty-seven, the work is still more remarkable because of the in- fluence it exerted on the subsequent develop- WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 15 ment of Protestant Christianity. Viscount Morley, in his " Life of Cromwell," speaks of Calvin as having "shaped the mould in which the bronze of Puritanism is cast," and the same impartial student of history has quoted with warm approval the declaration of the late Mark Pattison that "Calvin's influence alone enabled the Reformation to make headway against the terrible repres- sive forces arrayed against it," and that " Calvinism saved Europe." The first attempt to establish a Church on the lines laid down in the " Institutes " was made by Calvin himself after his arrival in Geneva in 1536. Calvin's principles were, however, only imperfectly carried out in the constitution of the Genevan Church, owing to difficulties placed in his way by the civil rulers of the city, who had organised the Church in 1535 and were unwilling to aban- don its control, but the experiment attracted universal attention among the Reformed communities in Europe. Calvin was brought 16 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM by correspondence into touch with the leaders everywhere and became the recog- nised adviser of the Churches. Refugees from the countries where persecution pre- vailed spent their time of exile in the free air of Geneva, studying the working of the Church there. And when in 1558 the famous Theological Academy of Geneva was opened, with Theodore Beza as its Rector and Calvin himself as one of the lecturers, it was crowded by some 800 students from all countries, who went back to their own lands full of enthusiasm for all they had seen and heard and eager to have their own Churches organised on the Genevan model. Before tracing briefly the spread of the Presbyterian system in other lands we may note that in Switzerland, which may be called the land of its birth, it met with but partial acceptance. Of the 10 Protestant Cantons 7 followed Zwingli, only 3 Geneva, Vaud, and Neuchatel adopting Calvin's Pres- WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 17 byterian system. In each of these three Cantons a spiritual revival at the end of the eighteenth century was followed by divisions and the formation of a Free Evangelical Church, distinct from the National Church. The Free Evangelical Churches of Geneva, Vaud, and Neuchatel, associated throughout Christendom with the names of D'Aubigne", Vinet, and Godet re- spectively, have recently formed a Federa- tion, with 29 congregations and 17,560 members. The adherents of the National Churches are more numerous. The National Church of Geneva abandoned its Presby- terianism and became Zwinglian in 1874. Among the disciples of Calvin was John Knox, who spent several years of exile at Geneva, and through his influence Geneva supplied the model for the Presbyterianism of Scotland, Ireland, the United States, and the British Colonies, to which reference has already been made. Calvin was a Frenchman, and it was only Preslry. Ch. 3 18 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM fitting that the first Reformed Church to adopt the Genevan system should be the Church of his native France. In 1555 the Protestant congregation of Paris was con- stituted on the Genevan pattern, and within three years 2,000 similar congregations were formed in France, and the first National Synod, composed of 150 delegates, met in 1559 and adopted the Confessio Gallica drafted by Calvin. It is supposed, though the point is involved in obscurity, that it was from the fact of their adhesion to the Genevan Constitution that the French Presbyterians were called Huguenots (Eidgenossen, "oath-comrades"). The Re- formed Church of France was the most aristocratic of the Churches of the Refor- mation. Nowhere in Europe did so many in the upper ranks of society throw in their lot with the Reformers. The leaders of the great House of Bourbon, Anthony, Louis, and Henry of Navarre, the Duke of Conde\ and Admiral Coligny were among WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 19 the early champions of the Reformed Church. The close association of the Pro- testant cause with the Bourbon political interest no doubt partly accounts for another distinguishing feature of the Reformed Church of France that it was pre-eminently the martyr Church of the Reformation. It was persecuted first and worst and longest of all the Reformed Churches. Two events stand out conspicuously in its history. The implacable enmity of the family of Guise, the great rivals of the Bourbons, brought upon the Huguenots the horrors of St. Bartholomew's Day, 1572, when 70,000 of them were slain. The Revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 by Louis XIV. confronted the Protestants of that day with the alternative of death or exile. Those who refused to leave the country like the Camisards of the Cevennes were almost extirpated, and over a quarter of a million of the flower of the people of France, including thousands of her most skilled 20 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM artisans, fled to England, Ireland, Germany, Holland, America, and South Africa, greatly to the commercial benefit of those lands and the strengthening in many cases of the Presbyterian Churches which welcomed them. But to this hour France feels the loss of her banished children, and the Reformed Church has never recovered from the blow. In view of the tragic history of that Church, a pathetic interest attaches to the fact that the emblem of the bush, burning but not consumed, which is now in general use among Presbyterian Churches, appears to have been first chosen by members of the French Reformed Church. Civil rights were not restored to the Presbyterians of France till 1795, and only in 1872 was the National Synod of the Reformed Church allowed to meet. Before that date, in 1848, a division had taken place, the Evangelicals withdrawing from the Reformed Church and sacrificing the State endowments conferred on the ministers of that Church by Napoleon I. WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 21 The Act of 1905, separating Church from State, affected Protestants as well as Catho- lics, and all sections of French Presbyteri- anism are now dependent on the resources of their members. " The Reformed Churches of France" embrace 533 congregations and 86,000 members, and "The Union of the Free Evangelical Churches of France" has 37 congregations and 4,500 members. In the Netherlands the earliest reforming movement was of Lutheran origin, but the influence of the Reformed Church of France soon predominated. The Confessio Belgica, modelled on the French Confession, was drawn up in 1559, and a Presbyterian con- stitution was adopted by the Synod of Ant- werp in 1563. By the Treaty of Utrecht, which in 1579 brought to a close the struggle for civil and religious liberty against the tyranny of Charles V. and Philip II. and the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition, the seven northern provinces became the Dutch Republic under William of Orange, and the 22 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM Presbyterian Reformed Church became the State Church. The Colleges of the Netherlands were in the seventeenth century the chief theological schools of the Reformed Churches of Europe. Most of the English and Scottish refugees found an asylum in Holland, and English- speaking congregations were formed in Ley- den, Middelburg, Amsterdam, and Rotter- dam. The three last-named still survive and retain their connection with the Church of Scotland. The Synod of Dort, which in 1618 settled the "five points" of the con- troversy between Calvinists and Arminians, was the nearest approach to an (Ecumenical Council in the history of the Reformed Churches, being attended by 28 foreign deputies from Germany, Scotland, and England. The decision of the Council, which was against the Arminians, led to the formation by them of the Remonstrant Church, which to-day has a membership of about 5,000. The spread of Rationalism in WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 23 the State Church led to two Evangelical secessions, in 1837 and 1886, the two bodies being now united in "The Synod of the Reformed Churches of the Netherlands," which has 684 congregations and 190,000 members. The National Church ("The Re- formed Church of the Netherlands") has become more orthodox of late years. It has 1,350 congregations and 200,000 members. The Dutch colonists have established strong Presbyterian Churches in America, South Africa, Ceylon, and the East Indies. It was in the southern provinces, as we have seen, that the Reformed Church of the Netherlands was first organised, but while it established itself permanently in the northern provinces, it became almost extinct in the southern provinces, which, under stress of persecution, relapsed into Romanism. In recent years, however, two Protestant Churches have arisen in Belgium, both Presbyterian "the Union of Evangeli- cal Churches in Belgium," with 17 congre- 24 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM gations and 4,000 members, and " the Missionary Christian Church of Belgium," with 36 congregations and 6,500 members. At the Diet of Augsburg in 1555 Pro- testant Germany was divided between Lutherans and Calvinists on the principle cujus regio, ejus religio each State was to follow the faith of its prince. The influ- ence of the Elector Frederick III., an enthusiastic disciple of Calvin, led to the adoption of Presbyterianism in the Rhine Provinces, and it is still strong in Western Germany. The Heidelberg Catechism, pre- pared for local use in 1563, was adopted by many of the Presbyterian Churches on the Continent. In the Duchies of the Lower Rhine the planting of Presbyterian- ism was largely the work of refugees from Holland, France, and England. "The Reformed Churches of the East Rhine " have 9 congregations and 2,600 members, and " the Evangelical Reformed Church of the Province of Hanover" has 121 congrega- WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 25 tions and 25,000 members, and "the Re- formed Church of Alsace and Lorraine " 38 congregations and 24,500 members. At the Tercentenary of the Reformation (1817) Frederick William II. of Prussia secured the union of the Lutheran and Reformed Churches in his dominions under the title " The National Evangelical Church of Prussia," each Church retaining its own standards and polity. The result has been that in matters of creed and worship the Reformed section has been greatly influ- enced by Lutheran theology and Lutheran forms of service, while, on the other hand, so far as the secular power would allow them to do so, the Lutherans have approxi- mated towards the Presbyterian form of government. In Poland the German element in the Protestant population became Lutheran, but many of the nobility favoured the Reformed doctrine and discipline, and in that region of Europe Presbyterianism is represented 26 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM to-day by "the Reformed Church of War- saw," with 11 congregations and 4,000 members and "the Old Reformed Churches of Bentheim and East Friesland," with 11 congregations and 1,285 members. One of the most interesting " anticipa- tions" of the Reformation was the rise of the brethren (unitas fratrum) in Bohemia, the land of Huss and Jerome, towards the close of the fifteenth century. The National Church, constituted, through their influence, on lines partly Episcopal and partly Presby- terian, established close relations with the Genevan Church after the Reformation. The Synods of Bohemia, Austria, Galicia, and Moravia now form together " the Church of the Helvetic Confession in Austria," with 93 congregations and 81,000 members. In Hungary the Protestants of German blood became Lutheran, while the Magyars and Slavs became Presbyterian. The best elements of the nation are still Protestant and Calvin- istic, "the Evangelical Reformed Church of WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 27 Hungary" being by far the largest Presby- terian Church on the Continent of Europe, with over 2,000 congregations and 280,000 members. This Church supports a splendid system of schools and colleges, with a staff of 5,000 teachers and an attendance of 300,000 pupils. The ancient Waldensian Church, which has come forth from its Alpine valleys to evangelise Italy, and has now throughout the peninsula 66 congregations and 20,500 members, is a Presbyterian Church. There are Presbyterian Churches also in Lutheran Denmark, in Greece, and in Spain. OTHER PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. Beyond Europe Presbyterianism is repre- sented by such Churches as " the Syrian Evangelical Church of Persia" with 16 con- gregations and 2,500 members ; " the Church of Christ in Japan" with 70 congregations and 11,000 members ; " the Presbyterian 28 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM Church of Brazil" with 75 congregations and 6,000 members; and "the Presbyterian Church of Mexico" with 80 congregations and 5,000 members. Not the least striking feature of the recent history of Presbyterianism is the readiness with which the system has been adopted, and the effectiveness with which it has been carried out, by native Churches in the Foreign Mission Field. Basutoland and Kaffraria, in South Africa, have fully organised Presbyterian native Churches, the former with 17 congregations and 10,000 members. In Jamaica there is a native Presbyterian Church of 67 congregations and 12,000 members, and in the New Hebrides one with 24 congregations and 3,500 members. In India the native con- gregations connected with the various Presbyterian Missions have been united to form "the Presbyterian Church of India," with upwards of 53,000 communicants and baptized adherents, and a similar move- WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM 29 ment in China has resulted in the forma- tion of "the Presbyterian Church of Christ in China," with 50,000 members. THE PRESBYTERIAN ALLIANCE. In the year 1877 there was organised an " Alliance of the Reformed Churches through- out the world holding the Presbyterian system." It has met, at intervals of three or four years, at Edinburgh, Philadelphia, Belfast, London, Toronto, Glasgow, Wash- ington, and Liverpool (June, 1904), and embraces 83 Churches in 44 different coun- tries. It has a roll of 32,260 congre- gations, 27,447 ministers, 135,492 elders, 5,137,328 communicants, and 3,817,711 Sun- day scholars, and the annual contributions of its Churches amount to 8,042,835. The Churches of the Alliance have on the Foreign Mission Field 964 ordained mis- sionaries, 213 medical missionaries, 6,395 native agents, and 319,475 native members. It is estimated that the Presbyterian portion 30 WORLD-WIDE PRESBYTERIANISM of Protestant Christendom numbers not less than 24,000,000 souls. There are other forms of Protestantism that can boast of more adherents the world over, but it is doubt- ful if any other system has commended itself to peoples of so many varieties of race and language. It is surely, therefore, a question worth asking : What are the distinctive features of this wide-spreading and fruitful branch of Protestant Christianity? In the follow- ing pages an attempt is made to supply the answer to that question. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE Eelevancy of this part of our inquiry. The Eeformed or Calvinistic Theology : its Confessions. The Westminster Confession of Faith: its history and influence. Eelation of the Church to its Subordinate Standards. 1. The Standards as proclaiming the Church's Faith. Finality not claimed for them : the duty of Kevision. Note on the Scottish Church Case of 1904. 2. The Standards as a bond of union and test of orthodoxy. Adhesion to them required of office-bearers only. Methods of relief adopted by various Churches. Contents of the doctrinal system, so far as characteristic of Presbyterianism. 1. Doctrine of the Sacraments. Emphasis on the Sacraments as means of grace. 2. Doctrine of the Sovereignty of God's Grace. Ruling idea of Calvin's " Institutes," and adhered to generally by Presbyterians. Recognition that the Confession of Faith, while asserting man's freedom and responsibility does not give sufficient prominence to that side of Biblical truth. Declaratory Statements drawn up to remedy this E.g., Act of the Free Church of Scotland (1892). Note on the Scottish Church Case of 1904 in this connection. CHAPTER II PRESBYTEBIAN DOCTRINE RELEVANCY OF THIS PART OF OUR INQUIRY. "T"TTHAT is distinctive of Presbyterianism is, as its name implies, its system of Church government. On this ground the late Rev. John Macpherson, in his excellent handbook on "Presbyterianism,"* confines his attention exclusively to the Presby- terian polity, and complains (p. 4) that the inclusion in some of the best-known treatises on Presbyterianism of chapters devoted to such subjects as the doctrine and the worship of the Presbyterian Church is "unfair and irrelevant." Now, to deal at * Edinburgh : T. & T. Clark (Handbooks for Bible Classes). Presby. Ch. 4 a 34 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE present with only one question, that of doctrine, it is quite true, as Mr. Macpher- son points out, that there is no necessary connection between Presbyterian government and any particular form of creed, and that, in point of fact, Calvinist doctrine is held by Churches that are not Presbyterian, as, for example, by the Church of England, whose thirty -nine articles are as Calvinistic as the Westminster Confession of Faith. But it is equally true, in point of fact, that the Presbyterian Churches, almost without ex- ception, hold substantially the same creed. And while a writer on Presbyterianism may perhaps excuse himself, on the plea of relevancy, from dealing with doctrine, that plea is scarcely available for one who is writing about the Presbyterian Churches. Church government is, after all, not an end in itself, but only a means towards the end of enabling the Church to live its life and do its work ; and those who wish to know what Presbyterians stand for will PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 35 naturally expect to be told, not only how their Church government is carried on, but also if the information can be given what creed they hold and what gospel they preach. The question can be answered, for, with exceptions that are insignificant, all Presby- terians the world over occupy substantially the same doctrinal position. Their theology is of the Calvinistic or Reformed type. The very title of the Pan-Presbyterian Con- federation recognises this fact. It is " the Alliance of the Churches throughout the world, holding the Reformed faith and organised on Presbyterian principles." THE REFORMED OR CALVINISTIC THEOLOGY : ITS CONFESSIONS. Lutheran theology was expounded once for all in the Confession of Augsburg (1530), and Zwinglian theology in the first Helvetic Confession (1536), but the more international and catholic character of the 36 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE Reformed type of Protestantism is reflected in the number and variety of the Con- fessions to which it gave birth. All are based upon Calvin's " Institutes of the Christian Religion," published in 1536. Before the end of that century appeared the Gallican Confession (1559), the Scottish Confession (1560), the Belgic Confession (1561), the Heidelberg Catechism (1563), the second Helvetic Confession (1566). In the next century, as the outcome of theo- logical controversies within the Reformed Churches, appeared the Canons of the Synod of Dort (1619) and the Westminster Con- fession of Faith (1647). This last has been described by Dr. Schaff, the historian of the Reformed Confessions, as " the ablest, clearest, and fullest statement of the Calvinistic system of doctrine." It was drawn up by divines of the Church of England (and six delegates from Scotland) at the request of the English Parliament, with the object of providing a common PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 37 creed for the Reformed Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland. That object was not realised, as the Church of England eventu- ally adhered to her thirty-nine articles, drawn up in 1563. But the Westminster Confession, adopted by the Scottish Church in 1647, is the Confession of all the Presby- terian Churches in the United Kingdom, the British Colonies, and the United States in short, of the Presbyterians of the English-speaking world. A more popular statement of the doctrine of the Con- fession is found in the Larger and Shorter Catechisms, prepared by the West- minster Assembly. The Presbyterian Church of England, while retaining the West- minster Confession, has expressed in briefer form its understanding of what is of the substance of the Reformed faith in its Twenty-four Articles of the Faith approved by the Synod of 1890. Similar Articles have been adopted by the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America. 38 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE BELATION OF THE CHURCH TO ITS CONFESSION. The question of the relation of the Church to its Confession is one on which a good deal of misunderstanding exists, owing to a failure to recognise what is the main object of the Church in framing a Confession. The Confession serves as a bond of union for the Church and as a guarantee to its members of the orthodoxy of its teachers, but its main purpose is, as its name indicates, to proclaim the Church's faith. The Church owes it as a duty to its Lord, on the one hand, and to the world, on the other, to proclaim to the world what it believes to be " the truth as it is in Jesus." But it can give to its Con- fession so issued, and can claim for it, only the authority of a " Subordinate Standard." Its supreme standard is the Bible. "The Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- ment are the word of God, the only rule of PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 39 faith and obedience." * "The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of religion are to be determined, and all decrees of Coun- cils, opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men and private spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in the Scripture."! The "Subordinate Standards" of the Church set forth its interpretation of the Scriptures. The Church stands between the Scriptures and the Confession, below the one, which is its supreme rule of faith and duty, and above the other, which is its own creation, and which it is not only free but bound to amend and improve from time to time, if that be possible, so as to make it a more accurate expression of the Church's growing understanding of the Divine revela- tion enshrined, once for all, in the Scriptures. The Bible is to the theologian what the * Larger Catechism, Question 3. f Westminster Confession of Faith, i. 10. 40 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE heavens are to the astronomer, the object of his study, his field of investigation. And the Church is no more entitled, when it makes a Confession of its faith, embody- ing its present convictions as to Divine truth, to claim finality for its statement of the truth of God and bind the Church of the future to retain the propositions of that statement unchanged, than an astrono- mer or a society of astronomers would be entitled, in issuing a treatise setting forth the latest results of astronomical inquiry, to stereotype that treatise and declare its contents to be the last word of the science of astronomy. Here, as everywhere, and here more than any other where, "the last word must be left to the last man." Even if the framers of the Confession were, as individuals, convinced that, in point of fact, their work was incapable of im- provement, they must recognise at least the abstract right of the Church which adopted the Confession, and not only its PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 41 right, but its bounden duty, to amend that Confession, or to issue a new one, if by further study of God's Word, under the guidance of God's Spirit, it should ever come to believe that its Subordinate Standard gave at any point an inaccurate or inade- quate representation of the teaching of the supreme standard. The Reformed (Hugue- not) Church of France subjected its Con- fession to an annual revision, and in so doing emphasised what was universally recognised by the Reformed Churches to be the Church's relation to its Subordinate Standards. The Westminster Confession ex- pressly disclaims infallibility for itself or its framers when it says: "All Synods or Councils since the apostles' times, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred ; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as an help in both" (xxxi. 4). This disclaimer implies the right and the duty of the Church to revise and amend 42 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE its own Confession. Any other attitude to the Confession would make the inter- preting Confession rather than the inter- preted Scriptures the supreme standard of the Church, and would be inconsistent with the Church's faith in Christ's abiding presence with His people, and the Church's recognition of His absolute authority in things spiritual. And as the Church is not to be fettered by its own previous attempts to interpret the Scriptures, so it has no right to accept either State patronage and support or private endowments, on conditions which would involve a renunciation on its part of its liberty to follow Christ whitherso- ever He may lead His people, in fulfilment of His promise to guide them into all Truth. NOTE ON THE SCOTTISH CHURCH CASE. The House of Lords, in its judgment in the case of Thor- burn v. Overtoun, delivered on August 1, 1904, decided, by a majority of five judges to two, that the majority of the PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 43 Free Church of Scotland had, by entering into union with the United Presbyterian Church in 1900, forfeited their right to the property possessed by the Free Church at the time of the union. This decision was given on the ground that in the articles of union the Free Church majority had abandoned the principle of the lawfulness of Church Establishments, not, indeed, by expressly renouncing it, but by agreeing that in the United Church it should be regarded as an open question. The decision, which was fraught with practical con- sequences of a momentous character for the ecclesiastical and spiritual life of Scotland, and involved issues vitally affecting the legal status of all non-established Churches, largely turned on the question of the Church's liberty to alter its constitution. The judgment of the House of Lords did not affirm that a Church cannot change its principles. It dealt only with the effect of such a change on its tenure of its endowments. Nor did it affirm that a Church cannot alter its creed and retain its property. What it did lay down, in point of law, was that a departure from the original principles of the Church entails the loss of its endowments, unless the constitution of the Church reserves to the Church the right to modify that constitution. The decisive issue before the House of Lords was not any point of law, but a question of fact, viz., whether by its con- stitution the Free Church possessed the power to change its tenets. The Church did not claim a liberty which the law refused to recognise. The law was not satisfied that in this case the Church claimed that liberty. The majority of the judges in the House of Lords were not convinced that, by its constitution, the Free Church had reserved to itself the right to modify its standards. The judgment laid great stress on the fact, that in the 44 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE documents issued by the founders of the Free Church at the time of the Disruption, there is no express assertion of this right. But it was unreasonable to look for it in those documents. The men who threw off the State connec- tion in 1843 had no idea that they were setting up a new Church which needed a brand new constitution. It was to be henceforth the Church of Scotland Free, but it was the Church of Scotland still, retaining unchanged, save in the respects specified in the Disruption documents, the tradi- tional constitution of the Scottish Church. The Disruption documents dealt only with the points involved in the Church's pre-Disruption controversy with the State. The right of the Church to modify it constitution, at least to the extent involved in the action which the majority of the Free Church had taken in entering into the union of 1900, was recognised by the unanimous judgment of the Scottish Bench, which was reversed, on appeal, by the majority of the House of Lords. The Scotch judges and the judges of the House of Lords were agreed as to the points of law raised by the case. They differed on the question of fact, as to the legislative powers actually claimed by the Supreme Court of a Scottish Presbyterian Church. And it may be said that the Free Church of Scotland was deprived of its legal right to the accumulated resources of sixty years, because it was impossible to get into the minds of the majority of the judges in the House of Lords that conception of the constitution of a Presbyterian Church, which to the minds of the Scottish judges, familiar with the history and genius of Scottish Presbyterianism, needed no demonstration. The point which concerns us here is the bearing of this decision of the Supreme Civil Court on the principles of Prosbyterianism in general. The House of Lords held that PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 45 no Church possesses, in the eye of the law, the right to modify its constitution unless that right is explicitly reserved. So far at least as Churches of the Presbyterian order are concerned, this exactly reverses the actual position. According to the principles of Presbyterianism, that right is implied in the recognition of Christ's Headship over His church, and must be assumed to exist in any Church which does not explicitly renounce it. THE CONFESSION AS A STANDARD OF ORTHODOXY. The main object of the Subordinate Stan- dards is to proclaim the Church's faith. They also constitute a bond of union and a test of orthodoxy. NOT A TEST OF MEMBERSHIP. In regard to this use of the Standards, it is to be noted, in the first place, that adhesion to them is not required of members of the Church. That would be inconsistent with the principle of the unity of the Church catholic, which is firmly held by Presbyterians. As the invisible Church on earth consists of all those who are united to Christ by faith, so "the 46 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE visible Church consists of all those throughout the world who profess the true religion, and their children." * Every Church, therefore, by whatever other name it may be known, is first and foremost a branch of the one Church of Christ, the one society of believers, and is bound to throw open the full privileges of its membership to any one who professes personal faith in Jesus Christ. More than that no Church which bears Christ's name has any right to demand of applicants for membership. In some denominations it is the custom to receive into membership only those who have satisfied the officials of the Church that they are genuine Christians. The Presbyterian Church does not lay on its officials the responsibility of forming such a judgment. " The Lord knoweth them that are His." He alone is the judge of the hearts of men. The one legitimate test of membership in the visible Church is a credible profession of that faith which * Confession of Faith, xxv. 2. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 47 makes a man a member of the Church invisible. LIMITS TO ADHESION EEQUIBED FOR OFFICE. In the second place, it is to be noted that while adhesion to the Subordinate Standards of the Church is required of office-bearers, it has come to be recognised in most Churches of the Presbyterian order that it is unreason- able and impolitic to insist that members in accepting office shall bind themselves by every phrase and word to be found in these venerable documents, which cover so wide a field with deliverances of so detailed and minute a character, and which, in the selec- tion and treatment of the subjects dealt with, reflect so strongly the passing phases of contemporary controversy. With the exception of the Presbyterian Church of the United States, which has made one or two unimportant verbal altera- tions in the Westminster Confession of Faith, none of the Churches adhering to that 48 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE symbol has ventured to submit it to a process of revision. The methods of relief adopted have been of various kinds. 1. Several Churches have issued authorita- tive explanations of the sense in which specified passages in the Confession are to be understood. In the Declaratory Acts adopted by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland (1879) and the Free Church of Scotland (1892), those Churches repudiated any interpretation of the Calvinism of the Confession which regards it as inconsistent with belief in God's free offer of salvation and in man's responsibility for his acceptance or rejection of the Gospel, and also renewed their previous disclaimers of the " persecuting principles" alleged to be taught in the chapter on the Civil Magistrate (xxiii. 3). When the two Churches were united in 1900 the continued validity of both Declaratory Acts was affirmed. A Declaratory Act was adopted by the Church of Victoria in 1882, and one of the results of the recent Revision PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 49 movement in the Presbyterian Church of the United States has been the adoption of a similar Act.* A Declaratory Act was approved by the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England in 1886, but was not formally adopted. 2. Another method of relief adopted by several Churches is that of requiring adhesion only to the body or system of doctrine contained in the Confession^ as dis- tinct from its details. Precedent was found for this step in the terms in which the Scottish Parliament in 1690 expressed its adoption of the Westminster Confession " as containing the sum and substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches." The formula in use in the Presbyterian Church of the United States of America, affirming adherence to the Confession of Faith " as containing the system of doctrine taught in * This step removed the obstacles to a union between that Church and the Cumberland Presbyterian Church of the Southern States (see page 12). Presby. Ch. 5 50 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE Holy Scripture," has been in force since 1788. At the union between the Free Church and the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1900, for the old formula of the Scottish Church (drawn up in 1711), binding the signa- tories to " the whole doctrine contained in the Confession of Faith," was substituted a form requiring the office-bearer to declare that he " sincerely owns and believes the Doctrine of this Church, as set forth in the Confession of Faith." The Presbyterian Church of England in 1892 adopted the form : " Do you sincerely own and believe, as in accordance with Holy Scripture, the body of Christian doctrine set forth in the Subordinate Standards ? " In 1889 the (Estab- lished) Church of Scotland omitted the word " whole " from the formula of 1711, and now binds its ministers simply to "the doctrine therein contained." Parliament in 1905 gave that Church power, while retaining the Westminster Confession as the Confession of its Faith, to adopt any terms it pleases PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 51 in the formula denning the relation of its ministers and office-bearers to the doctrine of the Confession. The decision of the Church as to the use it will make of this power is awaited with great interest. 3. The method of relief just described inevitably raises the question, How much is meant by the body of Doctrine in the Confes- sion, as distinct from its details $ In the Presbyterian Church of England that ques- tion has been practically answered by the adoption of the "Twenty-four Articles of the Faith " (1890), and the same purpose is served by the " Brief Statement of the Reformed Faith " issued by the Presbyterian Church of the United States. Other Churches have left the distinction between essentials and non-essentials to be drawn in each case as it emerges. Thus the United Free Church of Scotland, at its formation in 1900, adopted the Declaratory Acts of the two uniting Churches, both of which allow diversity of opinion on "such points in the Confession 52 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE as do not enter into the substance of the Reformed Faith," the right of the Church being reserved "to determine, as occasion may arise, what points fall under this de- scription." Very similar to this was the method of relief adopted by the (Established) Church of Scotland previous to the Act of 1905. Finding itself precluded by its alliance with the State from issuing a Declaratory Act or materially altering the formula of ordination without the sanction of Parlia- ment, it had to be content with a deliver- ance of the General Assembly of 1901, expressing confidence "that the office-bearers in the Church will so exercise its jurisdiction as not to oppress the consciences of any who, while owning the sum and substance of the doctrine of the Reformed Churches, are not certain as to some less important determinations also contained in it."* * The reader is referred, for a full account of the "present relation of British Churches to the Westminster Confession of Faith," to a paper read by the Eev. Principal Dykes, D.D., PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 53 CHARACTERISTIC FEATURES OF PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE. With regard to the particular contents of the doctrinal system adhered to with prac- tical unanimity by the Churches of the Pres- byterian order, it is necessary for Presby- terians, in England especially, to emphasise the fact that they are Trinitarians. Con- fusion on this point has arisen from the retention in many parts of England of the Presbyterian name by the descendants of those English Presbyterians who in the eighteenth century lapsed into Unitarianism. These " Presbyterians " are Presbyterian neither in creed nor in polity.* of Westminster College, Cambridge, before the Eighth Council of the Presbyterian Alliance at Liverpool in June, 1904 (Proceedings, p. 105), and to the report of the sub-committee on that subject (Proceedings, Appendix, p. 31). A complete report on the Creeds and Formulas of Subscription in Presbyterian Churches will be found in the Proceedings of the Second Council of the Alliance which met at Philadelphia in 1880. (Appendix, p. 965). * For the facts of the case and a statement of the griev- ance constituted by them, see a pamphlet by the Kev. Dr. 54 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE The doctrinal position of Presbyterians may be further described as Evangelical. Their Subordinate Standards embody the general system of doctrine which was common to all the Reformed Churches of the sixteenth century, and which claimed to be in harmony with the creeds of the ancient undivided Church. Calvin, for example, gave to his " Institutes of the Christian Religion " the form of an exposition of the Apostles' Creed. It will be necessary, therefore, for our present purpose simply to note the points at which there may be said to be something dis- tinctive in the Presbyterian type of Evan- gelical Protestant doctrine.* A. H. Drysdale " The Use of the Name ' Presbyterian ' by Unitarians : a Chapter in English Church History " (London : Presbyterian Publication Office, 21, Warwick Lane, E.G.). The desire to repudiate all connection with Unitarianism no doubt accounts for the fact that the local designation of " Trinity Church " has been so frequently adopted by the congregations of the Presbyterian Church of England. * In the year 1898 a Committee of the National Council of Evangelical Free Churches in England and Wales, con- sisting of Congregationalists, Wesleyan Methodists, Primi- PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 55 There are two subjects in regard to which Presbyterians are commonly repre- sented as occupying a distinct position, viz., the Sacraments and the Sovereignty of God's grace. THE SACRAMENTS. The Presbyterian doctrine of the Sacra- tive Methodists, Methodist New Connexionists, Methodist Free Churchmen, Bible Christians, Baptists, and Presby- terians, with the late Eev. Hugh Price Hughes as Chairman, drew up a Free Church Catechism (London : Thomas Law, Memorial Hall, Farringdon Street, E.G.), " to express the Christian doctrines held in common by all Evangelical Free Churches." " Students of history will be aware that no such combined statement of interdenominational belief has ever previously been attempted, much less achieved, since the lamentable day when Martin Luther contended with Huldreich Zwingli. In view of the distressing controversies of our forefathers it is profoundly significant and gladdening to be able to add that every question and every answer in this Catechism has been finally adopted without a dis- sentient vote " (Preface). The first draft of the Catechism was made by the Rev. Principal Dykes, D.D., of West- minster College, Cambridge. A striking proof that unity in the essentials of belief prevails over an even wider area than English Nonconformity, with all its divisions, is found in the fact that this Free Church Catechism has been blessed by Bishops and taught, under Episcopal authority, in Anglican schools. 56 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE ments is often spoken of as if it were decidedly "higher" than that held by the majority of Evangelical Protestants. But if there is a sense in which that is true, it is not true in any sense which implies that Presbyterians have any sympathy with what is commonly known as Sacramen- tarianism, or with its corollary, Sacerdotal- ism the theory which ascribes a priestly character to the Christian ministry. Presby- terian Scotland has, indeed, been described by Mr. Buckle as, "next to Spain, the most priest-ridden country in Europe." But the point of that gibe lies only in the prominent part which, as a matter of fact, has been played by ministers of religion in the life of the Scottish nation. No degree of priestly authority has ever been claimed by them- selves or ascribed to them by the most devoted of their followers. The point, again, of John Milton's famous line, in which he expressed his keen dis- appointment with the practical working of PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 57 the brief regime of Presbyterianism in the Church of England " New Presbyter is but old Priest writ large," lies in the interesting fact that, literally, new " Priest " is but old " Presbyter " writ small. The word "priest" (prtre) is etymo- logically a contraction for " presbyter." This fact, however, affords no ground for suspecting Presbyterianism of any sacerdotal taint on the contrary, it stamps sacer- dotalism as an illegitimate development from primitive Christianity. The sacerdotal development in the post- Apostolic age was partly the outcome of the distinction between clerical and lay morality which was drawn with ever increasing sharpness by a generation of Christians which compounded for its own laxity of morals by insisting the more on a saintly life in its clergy ; partly it was a reaction from the unsuccessful Montanist 58 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE revolt against ecclesiasticism, which first provoked ecclesiasticism to heighten its pretensions and then, failing in its assault, left ecclesiasticism, with its claims thus magni- fied, in possession of the field; partly, it was the result of a gradual accommodation on the part of the Christian Church, at a time when its vitality was enfeebled, to the sacerdotalism of surrounding heathenism. Tertullian, at the beginning of the third century, was the first to speak, in hesitating fashion, of the ministers of Christ as Priests. It was Cyprian, his younger con- temporary (d. 258), who boldly claimed for them that title, basing his arguments on the analogy of the Old Testament priest- hood. It was impossible to find authority for his theory in the New Testament. The New Testament Church is the successor not of the Jewish Temple but of the Jewish Synagogue, which knew nothing of sacer- dotalism. The New Testament is indeed PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 59 full of priestly terms, drawn from the Old Testament, but these are applied either to Christ, the Great High Priest, the one mediator between God and man, or to the whole body of believers, who, through Him, have direct access to God at all times, with the New Testament sacrifices of praise and prayer and personal consecration. The New Testament was written by men brought up in the atmosphere of sacerdotalism, but not once does any one of them apply a priestly term to any official of the Christian Church. The New Testament officials are ministers, aids to the Christian life, gifts bestowed upon the Church "for the perfecting of the saints, for the building up of the body of Christ" (Eph. iv. 11, 12). Bishop Gore, in his "Church and Minis- try (p. 84)," claims for the New Testament ministry not a vicarious, but a represen- tative priesthood. The Church is a sacerdotal society. Free access to God belongs to the Church as a whole, the one body of Christ. 60 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE But, he argues, this one body has different organs through which the functions of its life are discharged. " The Church cannot dispense with the priestly services of its ministry, any more than the natural body can grasp without a hand or speak without a tongue." But the insuperable objection to even this modified sacerdotalism is that the New Testament nowhere represents the priestly functions of the Church as being thus localised in the ministry. Such a con- ception of the ministry is wholly at variance with both the letter and the spirit of the New Testament. In these circumstances it is unfortunate that our translators of the New Testament had no English word to use for hptvq (sacerdos), but " priest." That word is just "presbyter" writ small, and is, etymologi- cally, quite free from sacerdotal associations. But the non-sacerdotal character of the English word "priest" is now lost beyond hope of recovery; and many divines of the PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 61 Church of England, from Hooker to Light- foot, have deplored, on this account, its use in the Prayer Book of that Church for "presbyter." It is etymologically correct, but it is a departure from the English of the Bible, and its practical effect has been, not to rehabilitate the word " priest " by rescuing it from its unhappy sacerdotal associations, but to bring the Prayer Book itself under suspicion of a sympathy with sacerdotalism, of which, at this point at least, it is entirely innocent. Along with the sacerdotal theory of the ministry goes Sacramentarianism, which regards the sacraments, duly administered, as the chief, if not the sole, means by which supernatural grace is conveyed to men, and which, naturally, multiplies these ordinances, so that each important juncture in life may have its appropriate sacrament. With Evan- gelical Protestants generally, Presbyterians reserve the name "Sacrament" for the two symbolical ordinances instituted by Our Lord 62 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE Himself Baptism and the Supper ; and with regard to these follow the New Testament in refusing to ascribe to them any efficacy which would make their observance a sub- stitute for, or rival of, personal trust in Jesus Christ as the one way of salvation.* One body of Evangelical Christians the Friends have gone so far in their revolt against Sacramentarianism as to abandon the observance of Baptism and the Supper. They maintain that the Church of Christ is, or was intended to be, too spiritual a society to be dependent in any degree on the observance of such ceremonies. But, with the vast majority of Christians, Pres- byterians regard the fact that He who so invariably exalted the spiritual over the ceremonial in religion, nevertheless Himself instituted these two ceremonies, as giving * For a full treatment of the subject from the Presby- terian point of view, see " The Sacraments," by Professor J. S. Candlish, D.D. (Bible Class Hand Book, T. & T. Clark). PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 63 them a peculiarly sacred character. That Our Lord intended them to be of universal and permanent obligation on His followers seems clear in regard to Baptism, from His associating it, in the moment of its institu- tion, with the world-wide, age-long mission of His Church (Matt, xxviii. 18-20) ; and in regard to the Supper, from the declaration, in Paul's account of its institution "As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death, till He come " (1 Cor. xi. 26). These words probably belong not to Christ's institut- ing formula quoted by the apostle, but to the apostle's comment thereon ; but on this matter Paul claimed to have the mind of Christ. Both these passages bring out one great purpose served by these two ordinances ; the one, submitted to once for all, on pro- fession of faith, the other, observed habitu- ally during that profession. They constitute badges of Christian discipleship, serving "to 64 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE put a visible difference between those that belong unto the Church and the rest of the world" * But while their observance means this on the believer's part, their institution means something on Christ's part. In them, "by sensible signs, Christ and the benefits of the New Covenant are represented sealed and applied to believers " t What is distinctive of Presbyterian doctrine is the stress it lays on this side of the meaning of the Sacra- ments, and particularly on their function in applying the Divine grace to believers. That the difference between Presbyterians and other Evangelical Protestants, at this point, is only one of proportion and emphasis, may be illustrated by the fact that the Free Church Catechism, already referred to, while, strangely enough, omit- * Confession of Faith, xxvii. 1. Hence probably the name "Sacraments" given to them in the early Church, " Sacramentum " being the oath of allegiance taken by the Eoman soldier. f Shorter Catechism, Question 92. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 65 ting from its definition of the Sacraments all reference to that confessional function which some of the Churches represented by its framers are commonly supposed to regard as the sole or at least the chief use of the Sacraments, describes their efficacy in terms strikingly similar to those employed in the Westminster Symbols. The Sacraments are defined as "sacred rites, instituted by Our Lord Jesus, to make more plain by visible signs the inward benefits of the Gospel, to assure us of His promised grace, and, when rightly used, to become a means of conveying it to our hearts" (Question 41). Calvin or Knox would have had no fault to find with that definition. And if Presbyterians have laid emphasis on the Sacraments as means of grace, they have done a service to Evan- gelical Protestantism. They have guarded it from the unjust reproach of having substituted for the extreme doctrine of the mechanical or magical efficacy of the Sacraments the equally extreme doctrine that they are Presby. Ch. Q 66 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE merely symbols and pledges of a grace that does not make the Sacrament itself the occasion and channel of its operation, but is to be obtained only at other times and in other ways. To infer, as Sacramentarians do, from the language used of the Sacraments by Our Lord when He says, " Take eat : this is My body " (1 Cor. xi. 24), " This cup is the New Covenant in My blood " (1 Cor. xi. 25), and by the Apostle Paul when he says, "As many of you as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ (Gal. iii. 27), "He saved us by the washing [laver] of regeneration and renew- ing of the Holy Ghost" (Tit. iii. 5), that saving grace is inseparably annexed to the Sacrament and inevitably conveyed by it, is to ignore the common figure of speech by which "the name and the effects of the things signified are attributed to the out- ward sign"* But, on the other hand, such language, employed by Our Lord and His * Confession of Faith, xxvii. 2. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 67 apostles, of the Lord's Supper and Baptism, does imply that the Spirit of God can and does make the Sacrament a means of actually imparting the grace it symbolises ; not to all partakers indiscriminately, but " to such as that grace belongeth unto," as the Confession of Faith puts it in one place (xxviii. 6) when regarding the matter from the point of view of the Divine pur- pose, or, "to worthy receivers," as the Confession puts it in another place when regarding the matter from the point of view of the partaker's receptivity.* BAPTISM. With regard to Baptism, Presbyterians agree with the majority of Christians in disputing the position taken up by their Baptist brethren as to the proper mode and the proper subjects of baptism. 1. As to the mode of baptism, the Con- * Cf. " when rightly used," Free Church Catechism, Ques- tion 41 as above, and Confession of Faith, xxvii. 3. 68 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE fession of Faith does not say that Baptism by immersion is wrong, nor does it deny that immersion may be the ideal mode. All it says is, that "dipping of the person into the water is not necessary; but baptism is rightly administered by pouring or sprink- ling water upon the person." That pouring or sprinkling is sufficient is suggested by the fact that the baptism of the Holy Spirit is invariably described in the Scrip- tures under the figure not of immersion in the Spirit, but of a pouring out of the Spirit upon the recipients, and that sprink- ling was a recognised symbol of cleansing in the Old Testament ritual, and also in prophetic imagery, as where God is repre- sented as saying "I will sprinkle clean water upon you, and ye shall be clean" (Ezek. xxxvi. 25). Presbyterians agree with those who regard the quantity of water employed in the act of baptism and the mode of its application as immaterial; just as in the other Sacrament it is not con- PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 69 sidered necessary for the partaker to make of it an actual Feast or Supper. * 2. As to the proper subjects of baptism, the Confession of Faith says, " not only those that do actually profess faith in and obedience unto Christ, but also the infants of one or both be- lieving parents are to be baptized " (xxviii. 3). * The Baptist position is not established by the fact that /3anriw means literally " to dip," for the word is used in the New Testament for any mode of washing, as, e.g., the cere- monial washing of tables (Mark vii. 4), which would certainly not be by dipping ; nor by the fact, so often appealed to as if it were conclusive, that Jesus is said to have " come up out of the water" (Mark i. 10) after He was baptized, for it is said of Philip and the Eunuch on a similar occasion that " they went down both into the water and he baptized him. And when they were come up out of the water," &c. (Acts viii. 38, 39). That cannot mean that both the baptizer and the baptized went under the water. It must mean that both stepped down into and stood in the water during the ceremony. There is nothing in the language of the narra- tive to show that the ceremony did not consist in Philip's stooping, while both stood in the water, and taking up water in his hands or in some vessel and pouring it on the bowed head of the Eunuch. The oft-quoted passage in Col. ii. 12, " buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with Him," may indicate that immersion was the usual mode of baptism in the primitive Church, but it certainly does not prove that it was the only mode in use. 70 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE The strong point of the Baptist position here is that its advocates are able to plead that, in restricting baptism to those who are capable of making, and do make, a personal profession of faith, they are em- phasising the confessional function of bap- tism. But it is held, on the other hand, that even for that use of the Sacrament, the believer's own baptism ought to be supplemented by the baptism of his child- ren. Under the Old Testament, Abraham's confession was sealed by the administration of the sign of the Covenant to his children as well as to himself, although his children were as little capable of entering into the spiritual significance of the rite of circum- cision as the Christian's children are of understanding the meaning of their baptism.* But the circumcision of the children of the Old Testament believer was not only the * See, for the identity in meaning between circumcision and baptism, Col. ii. 11, 12. Both signify the putting away of sin, in the one case by cutting away, in the other by washing away. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 71 seal of the parent's faith, it was also, and even more prominently, the seal of God's promises to the parent. Abraham's children were circumcised along with himself, as a token of the place they had in the covenant of grace, because God had said to Abraham, "I will establish My covenant between Me and thee and thy seed after thee, in their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be a God unto thee and to thy seed after thee" (Gen. xvii. 7). The portion of the children in the Divine purposes is not less clearly assured under the new covenant than under the old (see Mark x. 14 ; Acts ii. 39 ; 1 Cor. vii. 14). If, therefore, baptism is not to be administered to the children of believers, the New Testament ordinance is inferior to that of the Old Testament, leaving unexpressed a permanent and vital element in the covenant of grace. Indeed, Infant Baptism, so far from being a ques- tionable application of the ordinance, really comes nearer to the ideal of that ordinance 72 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE than Adult Baptism. The chief significance of baptism lies not in our submission to it as a pledge of our repentance and faith, but in God's provision of it as a pledge of His purpose of grace; and that is brought out more strikingly in Infant Baptism than in Adult Baptism just because the persons baptized are passive and even unconscious of what is being done to them. Never is the Divine love, that loves first and waits to be repaid with love, more impressively revealed and pledged to us than when in this sacred ordinance the Divine hand of blessing is laid not only upon our heads but also upon the heads of our unconscious little ones, and they, because they are our children, are solemnly baptized into the name of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. The absence in the New Testament of any directions, positive or negative, on this subject is an argument not against but in favour of Infant Baptism. When the formula " believe and be baptized" (Mark xvi. 16) was substituted PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 73 for the formula " believe and be circumcised,' converts from heathenism were being received into the Jewish Church daily all the world over, and in every case the children of the converts received the sign of the covenant. That had gone on for two thousand years, and there is no hint that any intimation was given to Christian preachers and Christian converts that the new sealing ordinance, unlike the old, was not to be administered to the children of believers. Is not that omission inexplicable, if so important a change was actually made ? And, on the other hand, what is told us of Lydia, that after the Lord opened her heart, under Paul's preaching, " she was baptized and her household " (Acts xvi. 15 ; cf . ver. 33, of the jailer, "he and all his, straightway"), reads most naturally as an account of something that followed necessarily on her personal change of faith, showing that the practice enjoined in connection with the Old Testa- ment ordinance was continued, as a matter 74 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE of course, in the administration of the Christian Sacrament. If Lydia's " household " does not necessarily mean her children, it is only because it might mean her domestic and business staff, her slaves. But that also was exactly parallel to what was prescribed and what happened in the case of Abraham (Gen. xvii. 12, 23); and if her baptism was accompanied by the baptism of those for whom, as her dependents, she was to a certain extent morally and spiritually responsible, much more, as in Abraham's case, would the same principle involve the baptism of her children, if any were included in her " household." In Churches of the Presbyterian order, therefore, the sealing ordinance of baptism is administered to the children of believers as part of the parents' profession of faith, and also in recognition of the place and standing of the children " born within the Church." * * Westminster "Directory for the Public Worship of God " : "Of Baptism." PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 75 Nor is the character of the ordinance as a means of grace lost sight of. "Baptismal regeneration," the doctrine that "grace and salvation are so inseparably annexed unto" the ordinance " as that all that are baptized are undoubtedly regenerated " is emphatically rejected.* But the administration of the ordinance is accompanied by the prayer that the grace pledged in baptism may be actually bestowed, and, inasmuch as " the efficacy of baptism is not tied to that moment of time wherein it is administered " t any subsequent change of heart and life, in the case of a person baptized in infancy, is regarded as the answer, however long delayed, to the prayers offered in the hour of baptism. On that account, those seeking admission to the full membership of the Church on profession of personal faith are not re-baptized, if they have been baptized in infancy. Re-baptism would imply that the * Confession of Faith, xxviii. 5. t Ibid. 6. 76 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE first baptism was of no value. Those, however, who are thus received into full membership are reminded that through their personal profession of faith an element hitherto lacking in the ordinance has now been supplied, and that baptism, in their case, has only now received its full meaning. THE LORD'S SUPPER. It is specially on the subject of the Lord's Supper that Presbyterian Sacramental doc- trine has been alleged by its critics and some- times claimed by its exponents to be "higher" or "fuller" in character than that of the majority of Protestants. But here, too, the difference is mainly one of emphasis. It is now generally recognised that the ascription to Zwingli, of the view that the Lord's Supper was intended by its Founder to be simply a memorial ordinance, is unjust to the Swiss Reformer. In his revolt from the Romish doctrine of the Mass, and his opposition to what he held to be Luther's PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 77 dangerous compromise with that doctrine, no doubt Zwingli laid great stress on the commemorative character of the Supper as its primary feature. And in this the Con- fession of Faith and the Shorter Catechism do not differ from him. Both give the first place to this aspect of the ordinance, " Our Lord Jesus instituted . . . the Lord's Supper, to be observed in His Church unto the end of the world, for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself in His death," * " The Lord's Supper is a Sacrament, wherein by giving and receiving bread and wine, according to Christ's appointment, His death is showed forth." t And just as Presbyterians agree with Zwing- lians in regarding the observance of the Supper as, first and foremost, an act of obedience to the dying Master's wish, " This do in remembrance of Me" (Luke xxii. 19) so Zwinglians agree with Presbyterians that the Supper is more * Confession of Faith, xxix. 1. t Shorter Catechism, Question 96. 78 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE than a memorial feast. It is common doctrine that it was intended by Christ to be a pledge on His part of His redeeming love, as well as a pledge on His disciples' part of their love and loyalty to Him. He instituted it, the Con- fession of Faith says, "for the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself in His death, [and] the sealing all benefits thereof unto true believers" (xxix. 1), while Zwingli calls it " a seal of our redemption." It is also common doctrine that the Lord's Supper is, when observed in a right spirit, a means of grace, imparting a present benefit. Those who acknowledge Zwingli rather than Calvin as their leader are sometimes re- presented as holding that the benefit obtained in the act of observance is confined to the salutary moral impression made by the ceremony on the mind and heart of the com- municant. But this "moral theory" of the efficacy of the Sacrament is warmly dis- claimed by Zwinglians. It is really not the Zwinglian, but the Socinian theory ; and it PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 79 is incredible that it should be held by any one who believes in the possibility of direct spiritual intercourse between Christ and His disciples, and in the reality of His continual presence with them.* He who said, "Lo, I am with you alway " (Matt, xxviii. 20) and " where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst " (Matt, xviii. 20), cannot be absent when His disciples come together by His express command to "do this in remembrance of Him." The doctrine of the " Real Presence " of Christ in this Sacrament is no monopoly of any section of the Christian Church. The ordinance is called the " Communion " because in it the followers of Christ believe them- * Zwingli himself says: " If I have called this a com- memoration, I have done so in order to controvert the opinion of those who make it a sacrifice " ; and again : " We believe that Christ is truly present in the Lord's Supper : yea, that there is no Communion without such presence. . . . We believe that the true body of Christ is eaten in the Communion, not in a gross and carnal manner, but in a spiritual and sacramental manner, by a religious, believing and pious heart" (Confession, addressed to King Francis). 80 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE selves to be in communion not only with one another, but also with their Lord. They are gathered not round His grave, but at His Table. They are His guests, He is their Host, and whoever may be absent when His Table is spread, He is there. Communion ivith Him is the essence of the Sacrament. It is as to the mode of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament that Christendom is divided in belief. There are those who take literally the words our Lord used in distributing the bread, "This is My body," and the corresponding words used by Him in handing the cup to His disciples. The Church of Rome teaches that the elements are, at the moment of conse- cration, changed into the actual body of Christ which suffered, and the actual blood of Christ which He shed upon the cross (Tran- substantiation). The Lutheran Church (with a large section of Anglicans, whose doctrine of the Real Presence is not easily distinguishable from the Lutheran) teaches that while the PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 81 elements remain unchanged, there is present with them, after consecration, the glorified body of Christ (Consubstantiation). Both hold that the benefit obtained by the com- municant is an actual partaking of the very body of Christ, " in, with, or under the bread and wine." * To this "superstition" Presbyterians, like all Evangelical Protestants, are wholly opposed, as "repugnant, not to Scripture alone, but even to common sense and reason." f It constrains us to ask, with all reverence, what it would profit us if we did partake, in this material fashion, of the actual body and blood of Our Lord ? It rests on a literalism of interpretation, which, if con- sistently applied, would compel us not only to identify the bread on the Communion Table with Christ's body and the wine with His blood, but also to identify the cup used in the Sacrament with the covenant of grace. * Confession of Faith, xxix. 7. f Ibid. 6. Presby. Ch. f 82 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE "This is My body . . . This cup is the new covenant in My blood." The words of the apostle, "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the com- munion [partaking] of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ?" (1 Cor. x. 16), must mean that in some sense we, in this Sacrament, partake of the body and blood of Christ. But a little further on the apostle uses the phrase " the body and blood of Christ" again, when he declares that " whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be guilty of the body and blood of the Lord" (1 Cor. xi. 27). That can only mean that the unworthy partaker crucifies the Lord afresh. He is guilty of Christ's death. There is no ground for doubting that in his previous use of the phrase, " the body and blood of Christ," the apostle was using it in the same sense, simply as a figurative expression for the death of Christ. In the Lord's Supper we PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 83 partake of His body and blood in the sense that we partake of His death, we are made sharers of the redemption His death has secured for us. Presbyterian doctrine on this point has sometimes been expressed in a manner that suggests a belief that Christ's body and blood are present in some more mysterious and literal sense than this. Thus in the Shorter Catechism (Question 96) it is said that " worthy receivers are made partakers of His body and blood, with all His benefits, to their spiritual nourishment and growth in grace." It is explained that it is " not after a corporal and carnal manner, but by faith " they are made partakers of His body and blood. But perhaps it would have been better to have explained also that "Christ's body and blood," symbolised by the bread and wine, is itself a figurative expression, or, better still, to have substituted in plain words for that figurative expression what it is taken to signify. 84 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE There is no doubt that the Presbyterian view is that " the body and blood of Christ " means simply His death, " the sacrifice of Himself in His death and all benefits thereof," * or " Christ crucified, and all benefits of His death." f That is the object of Christian faith, represented by the bread and wine, and the act of eating and drinking of the bread and wine represents the act of faith in accordance with the symbolism so frequently employed by our Lord in His teaching. | * Confession of Faith, xxix. 1. t Ibid. 7. I E.g., notably in the discourse recorded in John vi. The striking language there used by Jesus, " Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink His blood, ye have no life in you" (ver. 53), is often adduced in support of the Sacramentarian view of the Real Presence in the Supper. But it seems incredible that in that critical hour of His ministry, when He was setting before the wavering multitude the conditions of true discipleship, He should have told them that the essential thing for them to do was something which they could not do until the Lord's Supper, of whose future institution He gave them no hint, was established. Whatever eating His flesh and drinking His blood meant it meant something which His hearers could do there and then. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 85 But the Lord's Supper is not merely a vivid representation and reminder of Christ's redeeming sacrifice on the one hand, and of the personal faith by which alone its benefits can be appropriated on the other. It is the occasion, when rightly observed, of an actual present communion between Christ and the soul. Christ is present as really as the com- municants are present, as really as He was present at the institution of the Feast, not on the Table in the elements, but at the Table with His disciples. He is present at every observance of the Supper, handing to His guests, once more, the bread and wine of His providing, bidding them "take" and "eat And a comparison of vers. 51, 53, 54, 55 with vers. 35, 40, 47 shows that in insisting on their eating His flesh and drinking His blood He was insisting, in an arresting and impressive way, on the necessity of personal faith in Himself and His redeeming love. His words here could have no direct reference to the Lord's Supper. But on both occasions Our Lord set forth the same great truths, under the same striking symbolism, in the one case by the use of symbolical speech, in the other by means of a symbolical ceremony. 86 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE and drink " of these, and at the same time offering and conveying anew to their quick- ened faith that of which the bread and wine are the symbol and the pledge the great salvation purchased by His death yea, Himself, as their crucified Lord and Saviour. It is in this Scriptural form that Pres- byterians hold the doctrine of the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament of the Supper, and it is probable that the vast majority of Evangelical Protestants would cordially adhere to it as thus ex- plained. It may be added that Presbyterians take part in the Communion Service, not kneeling, but seated, as at a supper, and seated side by side, so that the handing of the elements by one to another may bring out more forcibly the subsidiary but valuable function of the ordinance as a symbol and pledge of Christian fellowship (1 Cor. x. 17). For the same reason, when the ordinance is observed in a PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 87 sick-room, care is taken that the invalid shall be joined by other communicants.* THE SOVEREIGNTY OF GOD'S GRACE. The chief characteristic of Presbyterian doctrine is the emphasis which it lays on the sovereignty of God's grace. Belief in that aspect of Divine truth has, indeed, come to be popularly identified with Calvinism, owing to the fact that in his " Institutes of the Christian Religion " Calvin, on the principle that everything is to be explained by its purpose, expounds Chris- tianity throughout from this point of view, as the working out of God's purpose of redemption. Calvin's applications of this principle, at various salient points in his system, were repudiated in the supposed interests of the individual's freedom and * Confession of Faith, xxix. 4 : " Private masses, or receiving this Sacrament by a priest or any other alone . . . [is] contrary to the nature of this Sacrament and to the institution of Christ." 88 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE responsibility by Arminius and his followers, but were upheld by the Synod of Dort (1618), and the Presbyterian Churches of to-day are, as a whole " Calvinistic," the Cumberland Church of the United States * constituting the only considerable exception. The doctrine of the absolute sovereignty of God, in the matter of man's salvation, was, however, no invention or discovery of Calvin's. It was held just as strongly by Luther and Zwingli as by Calvin. It is as emphatic- ally taught in the thirty-nine articles of the Church of England as in the West- minster Confession. Nor did the Council of Trent include it among the anathematised dogmas of Protestantism. The controversy between Arminians and Calvinists in the Reformed Church had its counterpart in the conflict between Molinists and Jansenists in the Church of Rome, and the Jansenists, in their championship of the Divine sovereignty, were only repeating the arguments by which * See p. 12. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 89 Augustine, the great founder of Catholic theology, had confounded the Pelagians and semi-Pelagians of his day. Gibbon, when recording in the thirty-third chapter of his History the death of Augustine, makes playful reference in a footnote * to the identity of Calvinism with Augustinianism. "The Church of Rome has canonised Augus- tine and reprobated Calvin. Yet, as the real difference between them is invisible even to a theological microscope, the Molinists are oppressed by the authority of the Saint, and the Jansenists are disgraced by their resemblance to the heretic. In the mean- while the Protestant Arminians stand aloof and deride the mutual perplexity of the disputants." " Perhaps," he adds, " a reasoner still more independent may smile in his turn, when he peruses an Arminian com- * Quoted by Principal Marcus Dods in his Lecture on Augustine (" The Evangelical Succession a Course of Lectures," 1st series, Edinburgh : Macniven and Wallace, 1882), where the Calvinistic position is expounded and defended with much clearness and force. 90 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE mentary on the Epistle to the Romans." For, in truth, the first exponent of Calvinism was not Augustine, the father of Catholic theology, but Paul, the father of Christian theology. Nay, the followers of Pelagius and Arminius have to reckon with a greater authority even than Paul. Nowhere is man's salvation ascribed more absolutely to the will and purpose of Grod than in the teaching of Our Lord. This is seen, notably, in the great discourse recorded in John vi., " All that the Father giveth Me shall come to Me " (ver. 37) ; " This is the Fathers will which hath sent Me, that of all which He hath given Me I should lose nothing " (ver. 39) ; " No man can come to Me, except the Father which hath sent Me draw him " (ver. 44) ; "No man can come unto Me, except it were given unto him of My Father " (ver. 65) ; and in the great prayer recorded in John xvii., "Thou hast given (the Son) power over all flesh, that He should give PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 91 eternal life to as many as Thou hast given Him " (ver. 2) ; " The men which Thou gavest Me out of the world : Thine they were and Thou gavest them Me" (ver. 6); "I pray for . . . them which Thou hast given Me " (ver. 9) ; " Keep . . . those whom Thou hast given Me " (ver. 11); " Those Thou gavest Me I have kept, and none of them is lost " (ver. 12) ; " Father, I will that they also whom Thou hast given Me be with Me where I am" (ver. 24). Thus the doctrine of God's absolute sovereignty in the matter of man's salva- tion rests on the clear teaching of Scripture. It is also borne out by the experience of those concerned. Believers are agreed in ascribing the beginning and the continuance of their spiritual life to the Divine grace. Their salvation, they proclaim, is all God's doing. It has often been pointed out that, how- ever men may differ theologically on these matters, when they are face to face with God, at their devotions, they speak but one language. The Arminian, when he kneels to 92 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE pray to God, or stands to hymn His praise, vies with the strongest Calvinist in acknow- ledging his utter dependence upon God's sovereign grace. On the other hand, it is equally true that when the Calvinist goes forth to preach to his fellow-men the Gospel of God's grace, he uses the same language of appeal as the Arminian. Bunyan and Spurgeon and Moody preached as free a Gospel, and laid on their hearers the responsibility of accepting or rejecting it, as clearly as did John Wesley. Calvinism does not deny or limit mans freedom and responsibility, in the supposed interests of God's sovereignty, any more than it will consent to deny or limit God's sovereignty, in the supposed interests of man's freedom and responsibility. The Confession of Faith, speaking of God's eternal decree (chap, iii.), says, " God from all eternity did, by the most holy and wise counsel of His own will, freely and unchangeably ordain what- PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 93 soever comes to pass ; yet so, as thereby neither is God the author of sin, nor is violence offered to the will of the creatures, nor is the liberty or contingency of second causes taken away, but rather established." How this can be, how God's will can be sovereign and at the same time man's will be free, we may not be able to explain, but we can see how unreasonable it is to expect that we should be able to explain it. God's will and man's will are not two entities independent and mutually exclu- sive in their operation, so that what the one does there is no need and no room for the other to do. God and man are so related that God's will can act in and through man's will. The difficulty experi- enced here is one that besets the philosopher as well as the theologian. It is the problem of the relation between the infinite and the finite, which presents itself wherever the Divine and the human meet, and is nowhere to be solved by regarding the two 94 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE elements as dividing the field between them. In Christ, the Word was made flesh ; His person was not partly Divine and partly human, but wholly Divine and yet wholly human. In regard to the Word of God written, it is impossible to say that the Bible is partly of Divine and partly of human authorship ; it is in all its parts both human and Divine. So man's salvation is not partly God's work and partly man's own, but wholly God's work and yet wholly man's own. In Scripture the same process is ascribed at once to the will of God and to the will of man. The history of the soul's salvation is represented now as the history of a Divine purpose and a Divine operation, and now as one of human resolve and effort and attainment. The human explana- tion and the Divine explanation of the same facts are set forth side by side, with no attempt to reconcile them, and with no hint that the speaker or writer is aware PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 95 that they need to be reconciled. He who declares that no man can come unto Him except the Father draw him, yet holds men responsible for their refusal to come. "Ye will not come to Me that ye might have life" (John v. 40). " All things," writes Paul, " work together for good to them that love God " which is something we all can do, and ought to do, and cannot but do, when we understand and in the next breath he adds, " who are the called of God, according to His purpose" (Rom. viii. 28). Further, not only is no inconsistency recog- nised between the two ways of accounting for the facts ; the appeal for decision and effort on man's part is based on the truth of the Divine activity. "Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling," the apostle urges, "/or it is God who worketh in you, both to will and to do of His good pleasure" (Phil. ii. 12, 13). The fact that our salvation is God's work is the ground at once of the necessity and of the possibility 96 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE of our working out our own salvation. If God is to do it, we must do it. For God can do it only by using our powers and faculties, by making us to will and to do of His good pleasure. Divine grace can secure the end of our salvation only by first securing the means our own resolution and care and effort. Thus faith in God's sovereignty is distin- guished from an immoral fatalism, which would encourage men to believe that God predestines His favourites to salvation, no matter how they live. Nor is it a paralysing faith. On the contrary, it brings just the assurance which is needed to inspire hope in those who have been compelled to recognise the impossibility of their being able to redeem their own lives. When Christ told the man with the withered arm to stretch it forth, and the life-long cripple to rise and walk, when He bade the blind see and the dumb speak and the dead rise from the bed or the bier or come forth from the PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 97 tomb, His command had to impart, and did impart, to them both the will and the power to do the impossible. And the spiritual life is possible for us only because He who calls us to it also works in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure. History has amply proved that Calvinism produces a moral and spiritual temper far removed from fatalistic despair on the one hand, and fatalistic presumption on the other. " Calvinism," writes Viscount Morley, in his "Life of Cromwell," "has proved itself a famous soil for rearing heroic natures, . . . Calvinism exalted its votaries to a pitch of heroic moral energy that has never been surpassed. They have exhibited an active courage, a cheerful self-restraint, an exalting self-sacrifice that men count among the highest glories of the human conscience." Froude, an equally impartial witness, bears the same testimony. "Whatever exists at this moment in England and Scotland of conscientious fear of doing evil, is the Presby. Ch. g 98 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE remnant of the convictions which were branded by the Calvinists into the people's hearts." * The Confession of Faith, however, while recognising and asserting man's freedom and responsibility, follows Calvin's "In- stitutes" in bringing its whole statement of Christian doctrine under the form of an exposition of the Divine purpose. Several Presbyterian Churches have felt that on that account the Confession does not give sufficient prominence and emphasis to the other side of Biblical truth, and have drawn up "Declaratory Acts or Statements" to remedy that defect in the Confession. Such Acts have been framed by the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland (1879), the Church of Victoria (1882), the Presbyterian Church of England (approved by the Synod of 1886, but never made operative), and the Free Church of Scotland (1892). * " Short Studies on Great Subjects," vol. ii., " Calvinism," p. 55. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 99 We may select the last-named for de- scription, as it is the latest in date, and came into prominent public notice in connec- tion with the Scottish Church case of 1904. The last two paragraphs disclaim the " intolerant or persecuting principles " which the Confession may be supposed to teach, and declare that, while diversity of opinion is recognised in the Church on such points as do not enter into the substance of the Reformed Faith, the Church retains full authority to determine, in any case which may arise, what points fall within that description. The whole of the other paragraphs have as their object to enforce and illustrate the contention that the Calvinism of the Confession is not inconsistent with whole- hearted belief in the free offer of the Gospel to all men, and the responsibility of every man for the reception or rejection of that offer. These paragraphs are as follows : "In holding and teaching, according to 100 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE the Confession, the Divine purpose of grace towards those who are saved, and the execution of that purpose in time, this Church most earnestly proclaims, as stand- ing in the forefront of the revelation of grace, the love of God Father, Son and Holy Spirit to sinners of mankind, mani- fested especially in the Father's gift of the Son to be the Saviour of the world, in the coming of the Son to offer Himself a pro- pitiation for sin, and in the striving of the Holy Spirit with men to bring them to repentance. "This Church also holds that all who hear the Gospel are warranted and required to believe, to the saving of their souls ; and that in the case of such as do not believe, but perish in their sins, the issue is due to their own rejection of the Gospel call. This Church does not teach and does not regard the Confession as teaching the foreordination of men to death irrespective of their own sin. PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 101 "It is the duty of those who believe, and one end of their calling by God, to make known the Gospel to all men everywhere for the obedience of faith. And while the Gospel is the ordinary means of salvation for those to whom it is made known, yet it does not follow, nor is the Confession to be held as teaching, that any who die in infancy are lost, or that God may not extend His mercy, for Christ's sake, and by His Holy Spirit, to those who are beyond the reach of these means, as it may seem good to Him, according to the riches of His grace. "In holding and teaching, according to the Confession of Faith, the corruption of man's whole nature as fallen, this Church also maintains that there remain tokens of his greatness as created in the image of God ; that he possesses a knowledge of God and of duty ; that he is responsible for compliance with the moral law and with the Gospel ; and that, although unable with- 102 PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE out the aid of the Holy Spirit to return to God, he is yet capable of affections and actions which in themselves are virtuous and praiseworthy." It may be arguable for it has in point of fact been argued in the civil courts of the realm that the teaching of this Declaratory Act and of the similar Acts framed by other Presbyterian Churches is inconsistent with the teaching of the Confession of Faith of 1647 ; but these Acts at any rate clearly show what the Presbyterians of to-day stand for in the matter of doctrine.* * It was part of the case put before the House of Lords in 1904 by the successful appellants in the Scottish Church case that the statements of the Declaratory Act quoted above involved an abandonment of the Calvinism of the Confession. That contention was upheld only by a minority of the judges, and therefore cannot be said to have formed part of the ground on which the judgment of the House of Lords was based. The Lord Chancellor, however, again and again gave it as his opinion that the Declaratory Act was inconsistent with the Confession, inasmuch as it is impossible to believe in Election and also in Free Will. In support of his opinion, he quoted at length the opposing positions taken up by Calvinists and Arm in i an s PRESBYTERIAN DOCTRINE 103 at the Synod of Dort, and insisted that throughout the discussions and in the decisions of the Synod those positions were treated as absolutely irreconcilable. The flaw in this argument is obvious. The Lord Chancellor assumed that the doctrine of the Declaratory Act is Arminianism, whereas it is very good Calvinism. Calvinlsts do not quarrel with Arminians for asserting man's freedom and responsibility, but only for asserting that, in the interests of man's freedom and responsibility, it is necessary to deny the absolute sovereignty of God's grace. PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP New Testament simplicity of worship based on the universal priesthood of believers. Extreme Puritan position of Knox modified. Presbyterian attitude To Liturgies. To Hymns. To Instrumental Music. To Church Festivals. CHAPTER III PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP A S there is no necessary connection between Presbyterianism, as a system of Church polity, and any particular form of creed, so Presbyterianism cannot, strictly speaking, be identified with any particular mode of worship. But just as, in point of fact, the Presbyterian Churches of the world hold substantially the same creed, so they may be said to stand, on the whole, for New Testament spirituality and simplicity in the matter of worship. They remain loyal to the protest of the Reformers against the mediaeval conception of worship as an elaborate performance transacted by the priest on behalf of the people. They 108 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP carry the principle of the universal priest- hood of believers into the service of the sanctuary, and are jealous of the introduc- tion into the worship of the congregation of devotional forms in which it is impossible or difficult for every worshipper to take an intelligent part. THE PURITAN IDEAL MODIFIED. The Puritans, in their thoroughgoing re- action from the ornate ritual of the pre- Reformation Church, insisted that a positive New Testament warrant must be produced for every ceremony used in Christian worship; and this has been held to be the Presbyterian principle, in contra-distinc- tion to the Lutheran and Anglican rule that all ceremonies are permissible that are not expressly forbidden in Scripture. John Knox certainly, in the first sermon which he preached at St. Andrew's when he broke with the Church of Rome (1546), and again when he was put on his defence at New- PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 109 castle for opposing the Mass (1550), laid down this sweeping principle, that " all worshipping, honouring, or service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without His own express commandment, is Idolatry" The Larger and Shorter Catechisms both appear to deduce the same stringent rule from the Second Commandment. " The sins forbidden in the Second Commandment are, all devising, counselling, commanding, using, and any wise approving any religious worship not instituted by God Himself" * " The Second Commandment forbiddeth the worshipping of God by images, or any other way not appointed in His Word" f The Confession of Faith, however, recog- nises (i. 6) " that there are some circum- stances concerning the worship of God and government of the Church, common to human actions and societies, which are to be ordered by the light of nature and * Larger Catechism, 109. t Shorter Catechism, 51. 110 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP Christian prudence, according to the general rules of the Word, which are always to be observed." Thus modern Presbyterians have defended the use of organs (now almost universal) on the ground that " instrumental music, as an accompaniment to the voice, is a 'circumstance common to the human action ' of singing among all nations." * The form now generally given to " the Calvinistic rule for worship" is the sufficiently elastic one, that positive Scriptural warrant must be produced for " every substantial element or feature of the worship," the details being regulated by Christian common- sense. * Bannerman's "The Worship of the Presbyterian Church" (Edinburgh: Andrew Elliot, 1884), which see for a competent statement of the more liberal Presbyterian attitude on questions of worship, especially in relation to Liturgies. On the latter subject, see for the other side " Liturgical Proposals to Presbyterians in England, tried by History, Experience, and Scripture," by S. E. Macphail and J. M. Douglas (London : James Nisbet & Co., 1891). PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 111 ATTITUDE TO LITURGIES. It is a mistake to suppose that the use of a liturgy is inconsistent with the principles of Presbyterianism. After the Reforma- tion all the Churches of the Presbyterian order continued the use of liturgical forms, not to the exclusion of, but along with, "free" prayer. Among all the Pres- byterians on the Continent of Europe, except the Reformed Church of Hungary, this optional use of a liturgy still prevails. The Presbyterian Churches that use liturgical forms are thus much more numerous than those that do not use them. But the Pres- byterians who do not use liturgies are in a large majority, owing to the fact that the Scottish Church, early in its history, aban- doned its liturgy, and the Presbyterian Churches that grew up under its influence in Ireland, England, the British Colonies, and the United States adopted its non-liturgical form of worship. 112 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP Not only, however, had the Scottish Church at first a liturgy of its own ; it had a hand also, through its founder, John Knox, in the shaping of the liturgy of the Church of England. That beautiful liturgy, indeed, owes much to Presbyterian sources. King Edward VI. and Cranmer, unable to rely altogether on the co-operation of the bishops and clergy in their efforts to make thorough work of the Reformation of the Church of England, brought over from the Continent Presbyterians like Peter Martyr and Martin Bucer, who assisted in, among other things, the preparation of the Prayer Book. Materials were also drawn from the liturgy which was used in John a Lasco's Church of the Strangers (German, Dutch, French, and Walloon refugees) in London, and which was almost identical with the service book drawn up in 1543 by John Calvin for the Church at Strassburg, to which he ministered during his banishment from Geneva. From this book was taken, for example, the General PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 113 Confession at the opening of Morning and Evening Service. Among other portions of the Book of Common Prayer derived from Presbyterian sources,* are the Confession, Absolution, and Post-Communion Thanks- giving, the responses to the Commandments, the Baptismal services, the words used in the distribution of the bread at the Supper (from Calvin), nearly all the Marriage Service, and much of the Order of the Burial of the Dead. John Knox during his stay in England (1549-54) was one of the six chaplains to King Edward VI. who, by the terms of their appointment, were not tied down to the use of the liturgy. As a king's chaplain he had to report on the Forty -Two Articles of the Faith, promulgated in 1550 (reduced under Queen Elizabeth to thirty-nine), and was consulted in the preparation of the second Prayer Book of Edward VI., which came into use in 1552. * See Baird's " Chapter on Liturgies," London, 1856. Presby. Ch. Q 114 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP In regard to the latter, Knox was most concerned about the Communion Service. When preaching before the Court at Windsor he strongly urged that the posture at Com- munion should be changed from kneeling to sitting, and he wrote a memorial to the Privy Council on the subject. But the pro- posal did not commend itself to Cranmer, and in the end a compromise was agreed to. Kneeling was retained, but a Rubric, pre- pared by Knox, was added to the Com- munion Service, warning communicants that by the kneeling " no adoration is intended unto the sacramental bread and wine or unto any corporal presence of Christ's natural flesh and blood." This Rubric, known as the "Black Rubric," still appears in the Prayer Book. Seven years after its adoption in the second Prayer Book of Edward VI., Dean Weston, disputing with Latimer, at Oxford, complained that "a runagate Scot did take away the adoration or worship of Christ in the Sacrament, by whose procurement that PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 115 heresy was put into the last Communion Book, so much prevailed that one man's authority at that time." In 1554-55, while ministering to a congre- gation of English refugees who worshipped in the French Church at Frankfort, Knox had to mediate between his flock who wished to use the English Prayer Book in its entirety and their French hosts who insisted that certain portions of it should be omitted, so as to bring it into line with the simpler liturgy of the French Reformed Church. Calvin, while expressing his surprise that the framers of the English Prayer Book " delighted so much in Popish dregs," advised Knox to treat them as "tolerable fooleries." Knox's own opinion was that the English Book was too much of a " mingle-mangle," and in 1556, when minister of the congrega- tion of English refugees at Geneva, the mother-Church of Elizabethan Puritan Non- conformity in England, he, with the help of Calvin and others, drew up for their use a 116 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP "Book of Common Order," modelled on the Genevan Book of Order of 1543. Knox's "Book of Common Order" came into use in Scotland in 1559, and was formally adopted by the Scottish Church in 1562. It was recommended for use especially in the many congregations which were without a regular ministry and were dependent on the services of those who could do no more than read the Scriptures and the prayers. But its use was not made obligatory on any minister, and those ministers who did use it were enjoined to lead the people also in " free " prayer. The Book was in general use in Scotland for eighty years. The Scottish people resisted the attempt of Charles I. to introduce Laud's liturgy, not because it was a liturgy, but because it was imposed on the Church by the Crown, because it pre- scribed fixed forms for all the services, to the exclusion of "free" prayer, and because it was Popish in character (" an ill-said Mass in English," King James had called it). The PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 117 Morning Prayers from Knox's " Book of Common Order," had been read as usual in St. Giles's, Edinburgh, by Mr. Patrick Henderson on the morning of July 23, 1637, when Jenny Geddes, later in the day, flung her stool at the Dean's head for daring "to say the Mass at her lug." The optional use of Knox's book continued until 1645, when the Westminster Directory of Public Worship was adopted in its place by the Scottish Church. Puritan England, in its reaction from the use of a sacerdotal Prayer Book, enforced by civil pains and penalties, had, under the Commonwealth, repudiated all liturgies. The Assembly of Divines, which met at Westminster to lay the foundation of a United Reformed Church for all the three kingdoms, and in which only six Scottish Commissioners sat, drew up the Directory, which, without denying the lawfulness of an optional liturgy, pro- vided no set forms of prayer, but merely topics for "free" prayer. The 118 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP Scottish Church in 1645 adopted the Direc- tory in place of its own "Book of Common Order," as it adopted the Westminster Con- fession in place of its own Scottish Confes- sion, not because it judged the new standards to be superior to the old, but for the sake of unity.* Thus it has come about that among Scottish Presbyterians, and Presbyterians the world over who have constituted their Churches on the Scottish model, "use and wont," are now against the employment even of an optional liturgy, and in most of these * "We have resolved . . . not to be tenacious of old customs though lawful in themselves, and not condemned in this Directory, but to lay them aside for the nearer uni- formity with the Kirk of England, now nearer and dearer to us than ever before ; a blessing so much esteemed and so earnestly longed for among us, that, rather than it fail on our part, we do most willingly part with such customs and practices of our own as may be parted with safely and with- out violation of any of Christ's ordinances or trespassing against Scriptural rules or our solemn covenants " (the Scottish Assembly's answer to the Bight Eeverend the Assembly of Divines in the Kirk of England, in reference to their acceptance of the Westminster Directory). PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 119 Churches uninstructed defenders of what was apologised for as an innovation in Scot- land in 1645 are found who maintain that the use of liturgies is inconsistent with the principles of Presbyterianism ; while among those who agree in recognising the lawful- ness of liturgical forms a standing con- troversy exists as to the expediency of their use.* The movement in favour of providing such forms for optional use is certainly growing among the Presbyterians of the English-speaking world. ATTITUDE TO HYMNS. The question of liturgies is not the only question relating to worship which has divided English - speaking Presbyterianism, and in which the vis inertice of long "use and wont" is to be traced back to the self- * Bannerman puts the arguments for an optional liturgy very clearly and forcibly in " The Worship of the Presbyterian Church." The considerations on the other side are admir- ably stated in a lengthy footnote by the late Prof. A. B. Bruce in his " Training of the Twelve " (p. 56, 2nd edition, 1877). 120 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP sacrificing loyalty displayed by the Scottish Church to the, as it unhappily proved, imprac- ticable ideal of the unity of the Reformed Churches of the three kingdoms. It was not Scotch Presbyterians, but English Independents (Brownists), who in- vented the idea of singing only psalms in public worship. And it was to meet their prejudices that the Scottish Church gave up its hymns along with its liturgy, and adopted, with some considerable alterations, the metrical version of the Psalms which had been prepared by Mr. Francis Rous, Provost of Eton and member of the Long Parliament, for the Westminster Assembly of Divines. His version was modelled on the version used by the Church of the English Refugees at Geneva, to which John Knox ministered. Thus it came about, by the strange irony of history, that this English version of the Psalms, adopted by the Scottish Church as the sole material for praise, to please the English Puritans, has been known ever since as the PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 121 " Scottish Psalms," and lovers of hymns in the Presbyterian Churches of the Scottish type have had in recent times to battle, with the whole dead-weight of "use and wont" against them, for a mode of praise which the Scottish Presbyterians of 1650 reluctantly abandoned in deference to the prejudices of their English brethren. Hymns, like organs, are now found in almost all Presbyterian Churches. A few Churches, however, chiefly American, still keep to the so-called " old paths," and to meet their views nothing is sung at the meetings of the Presbyterian Alliance but the " Scotch " metrical Psalms, without musical accom- paniment.* * A few years ago the chief Presbyterian Churches in Scotland united to produce a book of praise, "The Church Hymnary," for their common use. It has been largely adopted also by the Presbyterian Churches in Ireland and the British Colonies. An effort was made to persuade the Synod of the Presbyterian Church of England in 1905 to adopt the "Hymnary," but it resolved by a majority to produce instead a revised edition of its own book, " Church Praise." 122 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP ATTITUDE TO CHURCH FESTIVALS. The Scottish Reformers and the English Puritans were agreed in making short work of the abuses connected with the observance of the Festivals of the Christian year in the Church of Rome, by abandoning the obser- vance of all such days and seasons, except the Lord's Day. In recent years Presby- terians in England have come to feel it to be unnatural that they, in their worship, should appear to be oblivious to the pre- occupation of the religious community around them at certain seasons with certain great verities of the common Christian Faith, and have begun to hold special services at Easter and at Christmas, and in some cases on Good Friday. To a smaller extent, similar observances are being introduced in some of the Presbyterian Churches in Scotland. PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP 123 THE PRESBYTERIAN IDEAL IN WORSHIP. It is indisputable that in the matter of worship Presbyterians of to-day are mani- festing a growing eagerness to redeem their form of service from the reproach of bald- ness and irreverent slovenliness. But at the same time there is ground for believing that in general they are anxious that their form of service shall never lose the charac- teristic features which so convinced a high Anglican as Mr. Gladstone never ceased to admire in the worship of the Church of his fathers. "I hope," he wrote in 1883 to a Presbyterian minister in Scotland, "that the tendency in Scotland to an increase of ritual will not be indulged without reserve; for there was a solemn and stern simplicity in the old form of Presbyterian worship which was entitled to great respect, and which was a thing totally different from the mean nakedness and the cold worldliness and indifference so widely 124 PRESBYTERIAN WORSHIP dominant in English services fifty years ago." * * Letter to Rev. Andrew Duncan, quoted by Bannerman in " The Worship of the Presbyterian Church," p. 66. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY Its mode of government the distinctive mark of Presby- terianism. Main features of the system 1. Government by a Council of Elders. 2. Organic unity of the Church, through a gradation of representative courts. Comparison with alternative systems, Episcopacy and Congregationalism The test of expediency. The test of Scriptural sanction. The New Testament Church substantially Presbyterian. 1. The government by Elders. 2. Organic unity of the Church. Polity only a means to the great end of the Church's existence. CHAPTER IV PRESBYTERIAN POLITY ~l |~ERE we come upon the distinctive feature of Presbyterianism its form of Church government. Presbyterianism is so called because it is the system that entrusts the rule of the Church to Presbyters, i.e., Elders, "Presbyter" being a translitera- tion of the Greek word TrpwflvTtpos, an Elder.* * In " Janet's Repentance " George Eliot makes Mr. Dempster maintain in the bar of the " Red Lion " at Melby that Presbyterians derive their name from " John Presbyter, a miserable fanatic who wore a suit of leather and went about from town to village and village to hamlet inocu- lating the vulgar with the asinine virus of Dissent." It would be interesting to know whether this bogey was a creature of the novelist's imagination, or really existed at one time in the minds of good "Church people" in her part of England. 127 128 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY " Presbyterianism " might, so far as the word goes, mean the rule of one Presbyter, but it is of the essence of the system that the rule is always exercised by a Presbytery or Council of Elders, and it has been sug- gested that such a title as " the Conciliar system " would indicate more accurately the distinctive features of Presbyterianism, which are as follows : I. GOVERNMENT BY A COUNCIL OF ELDERS. The spiritual oversight of each congre- gation is committed to a body of Elders chosen by the members from among them- selves. This congregational Presbytery is called in this country " the Session," and on the Continent of Europe the Consistory. The minister has his own duties to perform as teacher and preacher, but in the matter of rule he has no individual authority, but acts as permanent Chairman or Moderator of the Session, with no deliberative but a casting vote. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 129 The equality of Elders (ministerial and " lay ") is a cardinal principle of the system. John Knox wished the non - ministerial Elders to be released from secular occupa- tions and give their whole time to the service of the Church, but the rapacity of the Scottish nobles, who laid hands on a great part of the patrimony of the disestablished Romish Church, made it im- possible to provide the necessary salaries. Presbyterianism has probably had no reason to regret this failure to disturb the arrange- ment by which the spiritual rule is committed to a body the majority of whose members are saved from ecclesiastical-mindedness by having, like the Apostle Paul, to find time for their Church work in the after-hours and Sabbath days of a strenuous business life. The financial affairs of the congregation are administered by elected Deacons or Managers, the Elders being in most cases either ex-officio members of this subordinate court or eligible for places in it. Preaby. Ch. JQ 130 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY II. ORGANIC UNITY OF THE CHURCH. Its representative system of govern- ment enables Presbyterianism to maintain the unity of the Church over a wide area. A country is divided into so many districts, in each of which all the congregations, the strong and the weak, are bound together under the common administration of the District Presbytery once known as the Classis, but now generally called simpliciter " The Presbytery "which is composed of the minister and one or more* Elders, elected by the Session, of each congregation within the bounds. An appeal lies from all deci- sions of a Session to the Presbytery. The ministers are elected by their respective *The Presbyterian Church of England allows a con- gregation which has more than 250 members in full communion to send two Elders to- the Presbytery. The 350 congregations in England are divided into 12 Pres- byteries (London North, London South, Bristol, Birming- ham, Manchester, Liverpool, Yorkshire, Durham, New- castle, Northumberland, Berwick, and Carlisle). PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 131 congregations, but they hold office by authority of the Presbytery, and are accountable to the Presbytery alone for the discharge of their duties. Similarly, the Presbyteries are grouped together to form Synods. In some cases, e.g., in the Presbyterian Church of England, the Synod embraces all the Presby- teries and is the Supreme Court of the Church, being generally composed of all the ministers and a representative Elder from each congregation throughout the Church. Where there are more Synods than one, as in the Scottish Churches, they combine to form the General Assembly, which in most cases consists of the ministers and representative Elders of a certain pro- portion a half or a third or a fourth of the congregations in each Presbytery, in rotation. The Supreme Court, whether Synod or Assembly, meets in nearly all cases once a year, and is the final court of appeal, v - 132 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY its decisions and acts being binding on the whole Church. In many Presbyterian Churches the "Barrier Act" is in opera- tion, as a safeguard against hasty legis- lation. It requires that every proposal which contemplates a material change in doctrine, worship, government, or discipline must, after its approval by the Supreme Court, be sent down to Presbyteries for their consideration, and only with the consent of a majority of the Presbyteries can the Supreme Court, at its next meeting, make it part of the law and constitution of the Church. The Second Book of Discipline of the Scottish Church (1581) made provision for the completion of the system by the estab- lishment of a " General Council of the whole Kirk of God"; and more than a century later Steuart of Pardovan, the leading eccle- siastical authority of that time, suggested * * In his standard exposition of the Presbyterian system, " Collections and Observations," Book First, Title xviii. 3. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 133 that such a Catholic Council should be held once in seven years, and be composed of a minister and Elder from every hundred parishes. Such an (Ecumenical Council has never been held, the Pan-Presbyterian Council being a purely voluntary association without any authority over the Churches represented at its meetings. The practical difficulties standing in the way of any further extension of the system have limited Presbyterians to the establishment of national Churches. But the fact remains that through its gradation of representative courts the Presbyterian polity enables the Church to maintain its organic unity over the widest area desirable. ALTERNATIVE FORMS OF GOVERNMENT. What are the rival forms of Church Government ? Leaving out of account those Churches in which the governing body is appointed by the civil power State or muni- cipality as in the Lutheran and, to a large 134 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY extent, in the Zwinglian Church polity, we may say that the question of Church Government divides Christians into three sections : (1) the Congregationalists, among whom the government is exercised by the members of the Church directly ; (2) the Presbyterians, among whom the rule is en- trusted to a Council of Elders elected for that purpose from among the members by the members ; (3) the Episcopalians, or Prelatists (including the Roman Catholic Church, the Greek Church, and the Anglican Church), among whom the government of the Church over a defined district is exercised by one man, the bishop of the diocese. Broadly speaking, we may say these are the possible systems of Church government ; and if the classification does not appear to be exhaustive, that is partly because some Churches derive their separate existence and their distinctive names from considerations superior, in their judgment, to questions of polity e.g., the Baptists, who might con- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 135 ceivably be Presbyterians or Prelatists, but are in fact Congregationalists in polity. Partly it is due to the fact that in some Churches the three types of government are combined. In the Methodist Churches, for example, Episcopal and Presbyterian elements are combined in varying proportions, from the Methodist Episcopal Church of the United States, which is predominantly Episcopal, at one extreme, to the Welsh Calvinistic Methodist Church, which is practically Presbyterian in its constitution, at the other. Each of the three systems must be prepared to justify itself firstly, on the ground of expediency, and secondly, on the ground of Scriptural authority. THE TEST OP EXPEDIENCY. First, let us see what the Presbyterian system has to say for itself on the ground of expediency of reason and experience. Presbyterianism, with its government by 136 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY elders chosen by the members of the Church for that purpose, occupies a middle position between Congregationalism, where the mem- bers of the Church retain the direct rule in their own hands, and exercise it at a Church meeting, and Episcopacy, where the spiritual rule over a wide district is entrusted to one man. Reasonable Presbyterians will recognise that each of the two other systems is the embodiment of a valuable principle Episco- pacy, of the advantages of centralisation ; Congregationalism, of the sacredness of the individual Christian's personal responsibility and his corresponding rights. Presbyte- rianism's claim is that, standing between these two systems, it seeks to combine the advantages of both. It is open to others to show and a Bampton Lecturer has asserted that it combines the faults and misses the advantages of both the other systems; and it is certainly possible for Presbyterians so to work their system as PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 137 to expose themselves to that condemnation. But Presbyterianism may claim to be judged on its merits, by its principles ; and in theory it stands between Congregationalism and Episcopacy, and seeks to combine the two great principles which these systems repre- sent, bringing in the one principle to balance the other, so as to secure unity without over-centralisation and liberty with- out anarchy. COMPARISON WITH EPISCOPACY. I. On the one hand, as contrasted with Episcopacy, Presbyterianism aims at pro- viding against the risks attending the rule of one man, which is apt to lead either to chaos where the one man is inefficient, or to tyranny where the one man is wilful and masterful. In Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and the Colonies lay representatives are associated with the bishops in the government of the Episcopal Churches, but in the mother- 138 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY Church of Anglicanism the bishop is the sole ruler of the diocese, and there is no appeal from the bishop's decision, except to the law courts of the land, when it is alleged that he has exceeded his powers. Against his errors of judgment there is no appeal. A council of bishops is a merely voluntary gathering with no ecclesiastical authority. And in the Roman Catholic Church, in which this monarchical system is carried to its logical conclusion and the worldwide Church is one vast diocese under one bishop, the final appeal is to the judgment of one man. For this hierarchy of solitary rulers the Presbyterian system substitutes a hier- archy of councils, with right of appeal from a lower to a higher court. A second great point of difference is that the governing councils of the Presbyterian Church are composed entirely of elected representatives, while under the Episcopal system the bishop receives his office and authority from previously existing bishops, PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 139 and the parochial clergy are ordained and installed by the bishops on the nomination of the legal patrons, without the parishioners being even consulted. The Episcopal Churches of Ireland, Scotland, the United States, and the British Colonies have improved, in this respect also, upon the constitution of the mother-Church, their clergy being chosen by the communicants and their bishops by the clergy. But in the Church of England it is not so. The members of the Church at Jerusalem, it has been remarked in this connection, were consulted in the choice of an apostle, but the members of the Church of England are not trusted even to select a curate. COMPARISON WITH CONGREGATIONALISM. II. Thus in contrast with Episcopacy, which is a system of autocratic or, at the best, oligarchic government, and identifies the Church with the clergy, Presbyterianism gives practical recognition in its government 140 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY to the New Testament principle of the universal priesthood of believers, and is essentially a democratic system. But so also is Congregationalism, even more emphatically. Congregationalism is a system of pure democracy, its government by the members in Church meeting corresponding to the primitive system which survives in the political sphere in some of the smaller Cantons of Switzerland, where the affairs of State are discussed and settled at a mass meeting of the citizens. Similarly, under the scheme of local government recently adopted in England, a parish which is not large enough to have a Council has all its business transacted at an annual meeting of the ratepayers. The Presbyterian system corresponds to the system of government that prevails in the national affairs of this country, and also, with the inconsiderable exceptions just referred to, in its local administration the system of representative government, where the power in the hands PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 141 of the people is delegated by them to certain of their number, duly chosen for the purpose. There is, however, a flaw in the parallel so far as modern Presbyterian practice is concerned. A recent writer,* criticising an Episcopalian's description of Presbyterianism as an " oligarchical rather than a democratic system," says, "It is neither. It is, like our British Constitution, a representative democ- racy." But, under the British Constitution, the representative rulers have to submit themselves for re-election at least every seven years. John Knox's plan was even more democratic than that. He would have had the ruling elders elected only for one year. But the prevailing practice is that they are elected for life. In this way it is possible for the spiritual affairs of a congre- * The Rev. Professor C. Anderson Scott, M.A., in his " Evangelical Doctrine Bible Truth " (Hodder and Stough- ton, p. 234), a very thorough and able criticism of the High Anglican position from the point of view of New Testament Evangelicalism. 142 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY gation to be in the hands of men a majority of whom have grown out of touch with the views and feelings of the members of the Church. This seriously qualifies the democratic character of Presbyterianism and reveals a weak point in the system as it is actually worked to-day : all the more because it is only on the rarest occasions that the govern- ing body consults the members of the Church before taking action. There is nothing, how- ever, in the principles of Presbyterianism to prevent the Session taking the congregation into its confidence when important matters are under consideration. In the Scottish Church, Henderson, Gillespie, and the other leaders of the Second Reformation secured from the General Assembly of 1641 the hearty recognition of the right of the people to be consulted on all matters of general interest and importance ; and it was only when Moderatism (Spiritual Indiffer- entism) gained the ascendancy in the Church PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 143 of Scotland that this recognition ceased to be acted upon.* With this proviso, that the elders shall take due care to secure for their action in all important matters the approval and consent of the people, Presbyterianism deems it best that the Church's self-government should be carried out through representatives chosen for the purpose. Opinions may differ as to whether in a congregation of a limited size the Congrega- tional system, of direct rule by the members in Church meeting, would not work equally well and is not nearer to the ideal of self- government, but it seems clear that the larger the membership the more cumbrous and in- effective will government by Church meeting become. And the most obvious weakness of Congre- gationalism is that it has many Churches but no Church in the wider sense, no organically connected Church beyond the limits of the * Macpherson, " Presbyterianism," p. 107. 144 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY local congregation. Congregationalism, or the direct rule of the members in each congre- gation, and Independency, or the absolute autonomy of each congregation, necessarily go together. It is claimed for Independency that it alone is a truly catholic system, inasmuch as, on the principle that each congregation is a Church complete in itself, any one of its Churches can recognise any other company of Christians, of whatever denomination, as a sister Church. But so can a Presbyterian congregation, if, as it ought, it puts its Christianity before its Presby terianism ; while Independency prevents the unity of the Church, beyond the limits of the individual congregation, from taking any organic form. This disability is inherent in Congregation- alism, for if a body of Christians cannot delegate its authority to representatives, any- thing like organic unity in the larger Church is unattainable. Nor is it easy to understand why the root principle of Congregationalism PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 145 the inalienable responsibility of the indi- vidual believer is not violated even by government by Church meeting. For the believer to submit to be out- voted at a Church meeting seems no less a surrender of the individualistic position than for the members to delegate their power of rule to chosen representatives, or for a congregation to accept the control of a wider ecclesiastical unity of which it forms a part. Fellowship of any kind involves limitation of the indi- vidual life for the further development and enrichment of that life ; and the Presbyterian polity affords the individual Christian life the means of finding its fulfilment in the larger life of the Church. THE "NATURAL" FORM OF GOVERNMENT. It has been claimed for Presbyterianism that it is the " natural " form of Church government, "the very method of govern- ment you would resort to if you were thrown on a desert island." It is certainly some Presby. Ch. 146 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY corroboration of this view to find a Prelatist of the Prelatists like Bishop Patteson giving the rule in the native Churches of his missionary diocese to a college of elected members, thus unconsciously lapsing into Presbyterianism ; and to remember that the Welsh Calvinistic Methodists, whose organisation was gradually built up on lines determined by the necessities of a national religious movement, and who are now in close federal relations with the Pres- byterian Church of England, did not know that they were Presbyterians until a visitor from Scotland, the late Principal Candlish, informed them of the fact. In this connection may also be noted the fact that the Society of Friends, with whom form is reduced to a minimum, has spontaneously, as it were, evolved an organisation very similar to the Presbyterian hierarchy of Church courts. It has its "monthly meetings," embracing from two to ten congregations in a locality, its "quarterly meetings" of representatives PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 147 from the " monthly meetings " of a county or group of counties, and its "national" or "yearly meetings" of representatives from all the " quarterly meetings " of the country, with, in certain matters, the right of appeal from a lower " meeting " to a higher. PRESBYTEBIANISM AND CIVIL SELF- GOVERNMENT. Mr. Gladstone said of the Presbyterian polity, " It has given Presbyterian communi- ties the advantages which in civil order belong to local self-government and repre- sentative institutions : . . . orderly habits of mind; respect for adversaries, and some of the elements of judicial temper ; the develop- ment of a genuine individuality, together with the discouragement of mere arbitrary will and of all eccentric tendency; the sense of a common life, and the disposition ener- getically to defend it ; the love of law, com- bined with the love of freedom; last, not least, the habit of using the faculty of speech, 148 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY with the direct and immediate view to per- suasion." Isaac Taylor calls Republicanism the Presbyterian principle. This relation between Presbyterianism in ecclesiastical polity and self-government in the civil and political sphere is not merely one of analogy and accidental similarity. The two have been intimately associated historically. On the Continent of Europe notably in France, Hungary, and Holland the founders of Presbyterianism were also the champions of "an ordered liberty" in State politics. In the history of Scotland it is impossible to distinguish Church from State in the battle-ground of the cause of self-govern- ment; and it may be that no small part of the explanation of the contrast between Scot- land's contented acceptance of the union of its Parliament with that of England and Ireland's unceasing protest against the loss of its Parliament lies in the fact that Scot- land, unlike Ireland, possessed a national PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 149 Church in whose government every member had his own share and whose General As- sembly constituted a representative national Parliament in whose proceedings and deci- sions the opinions and wishes of the people on the most vital of all questions found expression. James VI. of Scotland and I. of England would gladly have left Presby terianism behind him when he crossed the border. " You are aiming," he cried in alarm in the Hampton Court Conference, "at a Scots Presbytery, which agrees with monarchy as well as God with the Devil." And in spite of the fact that the leaders of English Presbyterianism were largely responsible for restoring his dynasty, in 1660, in the person of one of its most unworthy representatives, the issue proved that King James had not exaggerated the danger to monarchy, as understood by the Stuarts, that lurked in the Presbyterian principles and temper. " The Great Revolu- tion of 1688," writes Lord Macaulay, "which 150 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY gave liberty to England, was in great measure purchased by the labours, sacrifices, and blood of the Presbyterians of Scot- land." And across the Atlantic, the American Con- stitution, which succeeded in forming a nation out of a federation of self-governing States, bears no mere accidental resemblance to the ecclesiastical organisation familiar to the early Presbyterian colonists. "The framers of the Constitution of the United States," says one authority on the subject,* "borrowed very much of the form of our republic from that form of Presbyterian Church government developed in the constitu- tion of the Presbyterian Church of Scot- land." Presbyterians think, therefore, that on grounds of expediency of reason and ex- perience a good case can be made out for their form of Church government. * Chief Justice Tighman. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 151 THE TEST OF SCRIPTURAL AUTHORITY. But is this only a question o expediency ? Must not the Church be able to show that it has gone, for its polity as well as its creed, to the Scriptures ? Presbyterians maintain that their system can stand that test also. Candidates for office in the Presbyterian Church are required to affirm their belief that the Presbyterian system is "agreeable to and founded on the Word of God."* PRESBYTERIAN VIEW OF MINISTERIAL ORDERS. That form of words has been carefully chosen. Presbyterians do not unchurch those who are unable to find Presbyterianism in the New Testament. They do not make Presby- * The reader will find the teaching of the New Testament and the early Christian writers on the polity of the primi- tive Church, with the history of opinion on the subject, set forth and examined, from the Presbyterian point of view, but with conspicuous fairness and ability, by Principal T. M. Lindsay, D.D., in his Cunningham Lectures on " The Church and the Ministry in the Early Centuries " (Hodder and Stoughtou). 152 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY terianism an article of faith. It has no place, for example, in the Westminster Confession, and the Presbyterian Church of England has relegated the subject to an appendix of its Twenty-Four Articles. De jure divino Pres- byterians exist, but they are few in number. To the question whether any definite form of Church government is prescribed in the New Testament, as binding on the Church everywhere and for all time, most Presby- terians would give a negative answer. They do not mean by this, however, to affirm that the New Testament regards the matter of Church government, in general, as one merely of expediency. The Church is not a self-governing body, like a railway company or a social or political club. The Church is the household of which Christ is Lord, the flock of which He is the shepherd, the body of which He is the head. The Church, therefore, is not a self-governing, but a Christ-governed society. Its members can recognise no authority, no rule, but that of PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 153 Christ, its one Head and Lord. All authority asserted by one member over another, there- fore, must be authority delegated by Christ and exercised in His name. This authority Christ has delegated, in the first instance, to the Church itself, His company of believing people. The power of the keys given by Christ to Peter as representing the Twelve (Matt. xvi. 13-19), and to the Twelve as repre- senting the Church (John xx. 21-23), was also directly bestowed on the whole Church (Matt, xviii. 15-18) ; or, more strictly speak- ing, the Church's authority over its members springs from the continual presence of Christ Himself with His people. "Where two or three are gathered together in My name, there am I in the midst" (Matt, xviii. 20). That declaration of the Church's Lord con- stitutes at once the essential definition of the Church and the original charter of all ecclesiastical authority. The authority thus vested in the Church must, however, be exercised by certain of its 154 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY members. The authority of these Church officers is, in its human or ecclesiastical aspect, a delegation, to certain members, of the authority inherent in the Church as a whole. "It is the Church that makes the ministry, not the ministry that makes the Church." But there is another and a higher origin ascribed in the New Testament to the Christian ministry. Those who exercise rule within the Church are chosen and appointed by Christ Himself. They are His gifts to the Church (Eph. iv. 11). The Holy Ghost has made them overseers (bishops) to feed the flock of God (Acts xx. 28). It lies not with the flock, but with the shepherd, to appoint the under-shepherds ; not with the servants, but with the lord of the house, to appoint the stewards over the household. Therefore, on the one hand, the officials of the Church are not to regard themselves as mere delegates of their brethren. Their supreme aim in their work for the Church must be, not to please their fellow-members PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 155 but to please Him who has placed them where they are. And on the other hand, their fellow-members are enjoined to esteem, honour, and obey them, as those who are " over them in the Lord " (1 Thess. v. 12 ; 1 Tim. v. 17; Heb. xiii. 17). The reconciliation between these two apparently contrary aspects of the source and warrant of ecclesiastical office lies in the fact that the whole procedure of the Church in its selection of its officers has for its aim and object to ascertain whom Christ, the Head of the Church, has designated for this position. "Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all, show which Thou hast chosen " (Acts i. 24), was the Church's prayer when its members were called to carry out the first election, and every appointment to office must be made by the Church in the spirit of that prayer. The will of the Head of the Church in this matter as in all others is indicated by a combination of providential ordering and 156 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY inward leading, and particularly by His endowing those whom He designs for office with the equipment necessary for the position, and their fellow-members with the power of recognising that equipment. The essential ordination is ordination by the Holy Ghost. The Church's part is, by prayer and observation, to ascertain on whom that ordination has been bestowed, and in some orderly way to set apart for office those on whom it believes the choice of Christ has fallen. Presbyterians, while they believe their own system to be "founded on and agreeable to the Word of God," do not maintain that the New Testament definitely prescibes any one method by which the Church must fulfil that function. The theory of Apostolical Succession, first formulated by Cyprian about the middle of the third century, affirms that the Church's historical continuity is conditioned by a particular method of appointing its officers, PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 157 inasmuch as the right of ordination is re- stricted to the succession of bishops, by the transmission of the original pastoral authority delegated by Christ to His apostles. The theory was rejected by Hooker in a famous passage in his "Ecclesiastical Polity" (7-14). Its lack of New Testament warrant was admitted by the most competent exponents of Episcopacy of the last genera- tion, such as Bishop Lightfoot and Dr. Hatch. In recent years it has found a champion in Bishop Gore, who says in " The Ministry of the Christian Church," * " No ministry is valid which ... a man takes upon himself, or which is merely delegated to him from below. That ministerial act alone is valid which is covered by a ministerial commission received from above by succession from the apostles" (p. 74). "Churches which have dispensed with the episcopal succession have violated a fundamental law of the Church's life. ... A ministry not episcopally received * Rivington, 2nd ed., 1889. 158 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY . . . falls outside the conditions of covenanted security" (p. 344). Dr. Gore's special contribution to the defence of Apostolical Succession is his insistence on the distinction between a ministerial commission received " from beneath " merely and one received also "from above." But the distinction quietly begs the question at issue. How can a ministry to which a man is elected by his fellow-members be adequately described as " merely delegated to him from below," when the authority thus delegated to him is admittedly "from above," having been com- mitted by Christ Himself to the whole body of believers, which, as Hooker puts it, is " the true original subject of all power," and when the ground of the election is avowedly the recognition by the Church that he has received from the Church's Head the gifts fitting him for the ministry ? Ordination by the Holy Ghost is the only essential "minis- terial commission," and it is the only com- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 159 mission to which the description " from above " can fittingly be applied. To assume that the phrase also necessarily implies that the commission is invalid unless it is con- ferred by dignitaries to whom the sole right to ordain has been transmitted by an unbroken succession from the apostles is to confound the spiritual with the physical sense of the phrase " from above," and to make an assumption for which the New Testament affords no warrant. What is of special interest to Presbyterians in Dr. Gore's apologia for Apostolical Suc- cession is the fact that he is willing to recognise that succession in Presbyteries as well as in diocesan bishops. " The principle of the succession," he says, * " is of more importance than the form of the ministry. . . . Mon-episcopacy is not essential to the continuity of the Church. The continuity of the Church would not be broken if in any diocese all the Presbyters were con- * P. 73. 160 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY secrated to the episcopal office and governed as a co-ordinate college of bishops." Presby- terians, however, make no such claim for their orders. They believe that the ordinary rule in the New Testament Church was that ordinations were carried out by the Council of Presbyters, as representing the Church. But they do not believe that in the New Testament this procedure is pre- scribed as an essential condition of a valid ministry. There is one passage, indeed, which, if it stood by itself, might be quoted in support of the Divine Right of Presbytery. Paul writes to Timothy, "Neglect not the gift which is in thee by prophecy, with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery " (1 Tim. v. 13, 14 ; cf. 2 Tim. i. 6). But even this passage is easily interpreted so as to bring it into harmony with the general teaching of the New Testament, which represents the choice and call of the Head of the Church as the one essential qualification for office, and PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 161 ascribes to the Church the part simply of ascertaining and formally recognising His choice. The laying of the hands of the Presbytery on Timothy is stated to have been preceded by some revelation, through the possessors of prophetic gifts, that Timothy was divinely designated for the work to which the Presbytery proceeded to set him apart. Some such antecedent indica- tion of the choice of the Head of the Church was the indispensable condition of ordination, and the normal form of that indication was the manifest possession by the future officer of the gifts fitting him for the office. There is no trace in the New Testament of men being first chosen "from beneath," without their having given proof of their ordination " from above," and being thereafter endowed, by ordination at the hands of Apostle or Bishop or Presbytery, with the essential spiritual qualifications for the office. That endowment came first, and what the Church did was by prayer and observation and inquiry to ascer- . 12 162 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY tain who was thus designated by Christ for a particular office, and then to set him apart to the office in some orderly way. Of course, on the occasion of his ecclesiastical ordination, prayer was offered for his further and con- tinued equipment for his duties, but the whole proceedings assumed that he had been already divinely appointed and qualified. The laying on of the hands of those already in office, as representing the Church, generally formed part of the ceremony, as in Timothy's case. But this action implied no mysterious mechanical conveyance of grace. The laying on of hands was an action not confined to officials of the Church or to ecclesiastical occasions. It was used by Jacob when he blessed his grandsons, by Ananias of Damas- cus (an unofficial Church member, apparently) when he told Paul to receive his sight, and by Paul when he healed Publius of his fever ; it generally (though not invariably) accom- panied baptism, which was at first adminis- tered by ordinary Christians. At an ordination PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 163 it might perhaps symbolise the actual convey- ance to the person ordained of what alone the Church was able to confer the ecclesias- tical office. But, as regards supernatural grace, it was an impressive gesture, showing what the owners of the hands would do if they had the power, and what they asked God to do. It was on this occasion, as on most other occasions of its use, a natural accompaniment of prayer, indicating the direction which it was desired that the grace of God should take. "What is the laying on of hands," asks Augustine, "more than a prayer offered over a man ? " On this understanding, the laying on of hands is still observed in most Presbyterian ordinations. John Knox was of opinion that the practice should be discontinued.* Thus Presbyterians do not contend that Presbyterial ordination is essential to a valid ministry. They acknowledge the inherent right of any congregation of Christians to * First Book of Discipline, 1560. 164 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY take its own way of ascertaining and recog- nising those whom Christ has given to the Church for the work of the ministry (Eph. iv. 12). It was a Presbyterian who drafted the definition of a Christian minister adopted in the Free Church Catechism (Question 39) "One who is called of God and the Church to be a teacher of the Word and a pastor of the flock of Christ." THE NEW TESTAMENT CHURCH SUBSTANTIALLY PRESBYTERIAN. Presbyterians do not believe, then, that any form of polity is definitely prescribed in the New Testament; but at the same time they believe their own system to be " founded on and agreeable to the Word of God." They recognise that the Church of the New Testament, unfettered by the idea that uni- formity of organisation was essential to its existence, freely adapted itself, in the matter of polity, to the changing needs of its life. They do not dispute the legitimacy of the PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 165 appeal made by Congregationalists and Pre- latists to features in the constitution of the Church in New Testament times which may be held to favour their respective systems. But the contention of Presbyterians is that the constitution of the Church of the New Testament was essentially and in its broad outline Presbyterian. They can point in support of this conten- tion to the significant fact that all the " Reformers before the Reformation," like Wicklif and Huss, and nearly all the Churches of the Reformation, when they set aside the traditions of Popery and studied the Scriptures afresh in order to discover what was the primitive and apostolic Church polity, found Presbyterianism in the New Testament. The most important exception was the Reformed Church of England. And we shall see later that there are strong grounds for believing that that Church would have fallen into line with the others, had its leaders, who were Presbyterians by 166 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY conviction, received support enough from the people to overcome the opposition of the Crown and make the Reformation in England as thorough as it was in the other countries that threw off the yoke of Rome. Let us see, then, on what Scriptural basis the Presbyterian system, as distinguished from Congregationalism and Episcopacy, rests. I. RULE BY A COUNCIL OF ELDERS. Its central feature the government of each congregation by a council of elders chosen by the Church for that purpose and all of equal official rank and authority is traceable all through the New Testament. This is disputed on the one hand by Con- gregationalists, who claim superior Scrip- tural sanction for their system of direct rule by the members of the Church. They take literally our Lord's injunction, "Tell it to the Church" (Matt, xviii. 17), although those to whom the injunction was PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 167 first addressed were familiar, as members of the Jewish Church, with a mode of speech which regarded " standing before the elders " as equivalent to " standing before the con- gregation " (Josh. xx. 4, cf d. with ver. 6 and with Numb. xxxv. 12). Stress is also laid on the fact that the Apostle Paul in his Epistles to the Corin- thians blames the whole Church for the laxity of its discipline and exhorts the whole Church to purge itself of the evil leaven (1 Cor. v. 2-7, &c.). But such a form of address would be equally natural, whether the Corinthian Church dealt with such questions in Church meeting or left them to be disposed of by its officials. An outside friend, alarmed at the prevalence of certain abuses in the Presbyterian Church of England and wishing to expostulate with it on the subject, would naturally address his expostulations to the Church as such. It would be unreasonable to infer that he was ignorant of the fact that the represen- 168 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY tative courts of that Church are responsible in these matters. The form of process by which the Church would deal with the abuses complained of would very properly be ignored by the writer as entirely irrele- vant to his object. There is, however, one passage in which the apostle imagines him- self present in spirit with his readers when they are " gathered together " to deal with the offending brother (1 Cor. v. 3-5). This clearly implies at least that the process was to be carried on in presence of the congregation and with their concurrence. This corresponds with the procedure actually adopted at what is commonly known as the Council of Jerusalem, which was held to consider the relation of Gentile converts to Judaism, as described in Acts xv. It was to the apostles and elders the matter was referred (Acts xv. 2),- it was they who deli- berated upon it (Acts xv. 6), and the decree embodying the decision was drawn up and issued in their name (Acts xv. 23, where the PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 169 Revised Version reads " the apostles and the elder brethren " in place of the Authorised Version's "the apostles and elders and brethren"). But the deputies from Antioch on their arrival at Jerusalem were received "of the Church and the apostles and the elders" (Acts xv. 4). The discussion was carried on in the presence of " the multitude " (Acts xv. 12). The members seem to have taken no part in the deliberations (Acts xv. 12 states they "kept silence"), but they were present and listened, and in some way their concurrence in the decision was asked for and given, for "the whole Church" united with " the apostles and the elders " in choosing the men who were to carry the edict to Antioch* (Acts xv. 22). Calvin praises the apostles and elders at Jerusalem for their wisdom in thus asso- ciating the people with them in a matter * It is to be noticed also that on their arrival at Antioch these delegates were not contend with meeting the officers of that Church ; " having gathered the multitude together, they delivered the epistle" (Acts xv. 80). 170 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY which vitally affected their rights and privi- leges. There is nothing inconsistent with Presbyterianism in such practical recogni- tion of the body of Christ's believing people as "the true original subject of all Church authority." On the contrary, it is a weak- ness of present-day Presbyterianism that it takes too little pains to secure that the representative "courts" of the Church shall be kept in constant and close touch with " the multitude," so that the officials may be able to carry the membership of the Church with them in the discharge of their steward- ship. We saw before that there is a flaw here in the oft-drawn parallel between Pres- byterianism as we know it and the system of representative government in the political world. To this we must now add that at this point modern Presbyterianism also fails to reproduce a valuable feature of the con- stitution of the New Testament Church. But while this is so, it does not affect the main contention of Presbyterians that PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 171 the government of the New Testament Church was representative in character. The leading principle of Congregationalism that it is unlawful for the individual members of the Church to delegate their responsibility for the government of the Church to representatives is said to be implied in our Lord's promised presence with the "two or three gathered together in His name." But the logical necessity of the inference is, to say the least, not obvious, and, in point of fact, no feature of the New Testament Church is more clearly established than the distinction be- tween the body of Christian people and those who were " set over them in the Lord" men who were divinely designated for rule by their possession of the necessary gifts and were accordingly appointed by the Church to rule. It does not follow that the people never exercised directly the authority of which they were "the true original sub- ject." There is much to be said for the 172 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY inference from Paul's Epistles to the Corin- thians that in Corinth, whatever might be the case elsewhere, the members retained certain powers of discipline in their own hands, and thirty years later Clement of Rome speaks of the members of the Corin- thian Church as having deposed some of their office-bearers. But the fact remains that throughout the Church ecclesiastical authority was for the most part exercised by men called of God and the Church to the discharge of that duty. What we mean by the assertion that the New Testament Church was essentially Presbyterian in its polity is that spiritual rule was exercised by councils of elders. Paul and Barnabas on their first missionary journey "ordained them" (Revised Version, "appointed for them") " elders in every Church " (Acts xiv. 23). Titus was instructed by Paul to "ordain" (Revised Version, " appoint ") " elders in every city" (Titus i. 5). Elders were regarded as a necessary part of the equipment of an organised Christian congregation. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 173 There is no record in the New Testament of the procedure followed, in any instance of the appointment of elders. The word used in Acts xiv. 23, translated by " ordained " in the Authorised Version and "appointed" in the Revised Version, is not the same as that used in Titus i. 5. It means literally "appointed by show of hands." It would be no safer to give the word that literal meaning wherever it occurs than it would be to substitute "immerse" for "baptize" wherever it occurs on the ground that the word "baptize" means literally to immerse. Just as "baptize" came to mean any kind of washing, so this word came to be used for any method of appointing, and it is used in Acts x. 41, where certainly there was no show of hands. But when we remember that all the disciples at Jerusalem were called upon to take part in the filling up of the vacancy in the apostolate caused by the apostasy of Judas (Acts i. 21), and that when the apostles wished to be relieved of 174 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY the serving of tables they said to the brethren, " Look ye out from among you seven men . . . whom we may appoint over this business" (Acts vi. 3), it seems a safe inference that elders were appointed in much the same way. Indeed, Bishop Gore asserts* that until the end of the fifth century election by the people was as essen- tial a condition of office as ordination "from above." There is no room for doubt, there- fore, that the elders of the New Testament were appointed in the same manner as the elders in the Presbyterian Churches of to- day, who are chosen by the members of the Church and then ordained, or solemnly set apart to their work, by the elders already in office. THE FINANCIAL AUTHORITY. In the New Testament Church there existed alongside the elders, who exercised spiritual rule, another set of officials, who * " The Church and the Ministry," p. 93. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 175 served their Lord and His Church by looking after its financial and temporal affairs. The first step in the organisation of the Church under the direction of the apostles is recorded in Acts vi. 1-6, where we read that the Church, at the apostles' request, appointed seven men to relieve them of the serving of tables (the "tables" being those on which were laid the gifts of the worshippers, for distribution after- wards among the poor). The Seven are not called " deacons " in the account of their appointment, and when they are referred to later, in Acts xxi. 8, it is as "the Seven." The word " deacon" (Staicovoe) means one who serves in any capacity, and in the narrative in Acts vi. the apostles use SiaKovia and StaKovav alike for the "service of tables" (ver. 2) and for the "ministry of the word" (ver. 4). But in course of time the title SIO.KOVOG was reserved for those who "served tables" and attended to all matters of a similar kind. 176 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY The earliest use of the word in its official sense is in Phil. i. 1. The qualifications of a deacon are set forth in 1 Tim. iii. 8-13, following those of the elder. At a later time, when the distinction between clergy and laity was established on sacerdotal lines, the deacons were included within the clerical pale after the analogy of the Priests and Levites of the Old Testa- ment, and the New Testament office of deacon became extinct, until it was revived at the Reformation in the Churches of the Presbyterian order. Nearly all Presbyterian Churches have the two sets of officials the elders, who rule in spiritual matters, and the deacons, who deal with financial and business matters. The elders are not, however, excluded from the financial control. On the principle that the higher office includes the lower, the elders are, generally, members ex-officio of the Court of Deacons. New Testament warrant for this arrangement is found in PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 177 the fact that the first time elders appear in the New Testament they are handling money, on the occasion when the elders of the Church at Jerusalem received from Bar- nabas and Saul the money collected by the Church at Antioch for the poor saints at Jerusalem* (Acts xi. 30). PARITY OF ELDERS. To return to the elders. They are always mentioned in the plural (Acts xi. 30, xiv. 23, xx. 17, &c.). Presbyterians hold that government in the New Testament Church was by a council of elders, all of equal official authority. * In many congregations of the Presbyterian Church of England the financial authorities are called managers. Managers are not ordained for life like deacons, but appointed for a term of years, and the elders are not ex-officio members of the Board of Managers. This system prevails in the congregations which belonged to the United Presbyterian Church before the Union of 1876. The Synod has suggested for adoption, where possible, a system combining the use of the New Testament name deacon, with appointment for a limited term of years (see Book of Order, revised edition (1905), chap. iv.). Preaby. Ch. J3 178 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY Here they come into conflict with Epis- copacy, the system of one-man rule. It is not disputed that by the beginning of the third century of the Christian era, Prelacy, with its threefold ministry bishop, pres- byters, and deacons was more or less firmly established throughout the Church. The advocates of this system have been slow to accept the position that it arose only in the post-apostolic age. It is contended that it prevailed, in principle at least, in the New Testament Church. This is denied by Presbyterians. They maintain that, so far from there being any example in the New Testament of one man ruling over a diocese embracing many congregations, there is no instance of even a single congregation being ruled by one man. They hold that the elders were the rulers of the Church. There was no authority superior to the council of elders. 1. Bishops are mentioned in the New Testament, but they were not diocesan bishops. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 179 Bishop was simply another New Testament name for an elder. Paul at Miletus reminded the elders of Ephesus that the Holy Ghost had made them " overseers " (Gr. liriaKOTroi, R. V. " bishops ") (Acts xx. 28 ; cf . ver. 17). In the Epistle to the Philippians Paul addressed (i. 1) " all the saints . . . which are at Philippi with the bishops and deacons" obviously embracing in the greeting all the officers of the Church. If the elders had been a body distinct from the bishops the writer would surely have mentioned them. In 1 Tim. iii., Paul, dealing with the qualifica- tions for office in the Church, speaks first of bishops (1-7) and then of deacons (8-13), making no reference to elders; while, later in the same Epistle (v. 17-19), when he treats of the proper bearing of the mem- bers towards those who held rule in the Church, he speaks only of "elders." The inference is that " bishop " and " elder " were synonymous terms with Paul. He actually uses them as synonymous in Titus i. 5-7, 180 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY where he writes, "For this cause I left thee in Crete, that thou shouldest . . . appoint elders in every city, as I gave thee charge : if any man is blameless, . . . For the bishop must be blameless as God's steward." Similarly Peter writes (1 Pet. v. 1, 2), " The elders, therefore, among you I exhort . . . tend the flock of God which is among you, exercising the oversight [R.V., literally 'bishoping it'] not of constraint," &c. When these positive proofs of identity are taken along with the fact that elders and bishops are nowhere mentioned together as distinct officials existing side by side in the Church, the evidence is overwhelming that the New Testament elder and the New Testament bishop were one and the same. Corroboration of this conclusion is found in the extant Christian literature of the end of the first and the beginning of the second centuries. In the Peshito (the Syriac version of the New Testament) lirto-KOTroe is translated by the Syriac word for elder. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 181 Clement of Rome in his First Epistle to Corinth (xlii. 44), speaking of the officials of the Church in Rome uses " elder " and " bishop " as synonymous. The Didache, written to give instructions to all grades of the Christian ministry, mentions bishops and deacons in dealing with the local and resident, as dis- tinguished from the itinerant, ministry. It makes no mention of elders. Polycarp, writing to the Philippian Church, speaks only of two classes of officials, elders and deacons, as Paul in his Epistle to the Philip- pians speaks only of bishops and deacons. The earliest extant Commentaries on the New Testament also recognise the identity in the New Testament writings of " elder " and " bishop." Jerome (A.D. 380) argues from such texts as we have quoted above that '"elders' and 'bishops' were originally the same : the primitive Churches were governed by a council of elders." The same con- clusion was arrived at by his contempo- raries and successors, Chrysostom, Theodore 182 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY of Mopsuestia, Theodoret, and others, from their study of the New Testament Scriptures. Since the publication of Bishop Lightfoot's "epoch-making" excursus on the Christian ministry in his " Commentary on Philip- pians" (1868), the identity of "bishop" and " elder" in the New Testament has been fully recognised by Anglican scholars e.g., by Dr. Hatch (in his Bampton Lectures, "The Organisation of the Early Christian Churches," 1880), Sanday (in " The Conception of Priest- hood"), and Gwatkin (in "The Church, Past and Present"). Lightfoot's explanation of the use of the two names for the same officials is that " elder," the technical name for the office, was of Jewish origin, the name and the office (with the necessary modifications) being taken over by the Church at Jeru- salem from the Jewish Synagogue, which was ruled by a council of elders; while the Greek term " bishop " (" overseer ") was used first in the Churches of Gen- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 183 tile origin as descriptive of the duties of the office. The taking over of the eldership from the constitution of the Synagogue accounts for the omission in the Book of Acts of any reference to the institution of the office in the Church at Jerusalem. The elders are referred to for the first time in Acts xi. 30, as if their exist- ence needed no explanation.* The apostles, in fact, were Presbyterians before they were Christians, and established the Church on Presbyterian lines, as a matter of course. "Elders," however, is not a peculiarly Jewish title. The ytpovata of Sparta, the Senators of Rome, the Signoria of Florence, and our own Aldermen (Elder-men) remind us how widespread has been the tendency to describe the men of light and leading in a community by a designation which, * Bitschl infers from this absence of explanation in chap. xi. that the elders were identical with the Seven whose appointment is recorded in chap. vi. Lange thinks the first officials appointed (the Seven) were differentiated later into elders and deacons. 184 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY while not literally accurate in all cases as a mark of age, testifies to the fact that maturity and weight of character are gene- rally the fruit of years and experience.* Hatch accumulates proofs that the Gen- tile world was familiar with the use of the term " elders " for the directing committees of political, social, and especially religious guilds and confraternities, and questions the Jewish origin of the eldership in the Christian Church (see also Deissmann, "Bible Studies," 154 ff.). But later writers for the most part consider that Hatch's conclusion is hardly borne out by his facts, and are of opinion that while the constitution of such guilds prepared the Gentile congregations of the Church for the form of government intro- duced among them, yet the Christian elder- ship sprang, historically, from the Jewish * Similarly " the young men " of Acts v. 6, 10 have been identified with subordinate officials of the Synagogue whose work required physical strength and activity rather than ripe wisdom and character, and Mosheim finds their successors in the deacons of the Christian Church. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 185 Synagogue. So, for example, Professor Loofs, of Halle, with whom the course of modern discussion on the subject turns back prac- tically to its starting-point in Lightfoot's famous dissertation.* 2. A more plausible theory is that which * Hatch thinks that at first "bishop" and "elder" were not identical, though the distinction between the two was not the prelatical one of later times. He admits that all congregations were originally governed by a plurality of officers, all of equal rank. But he believes that the bishops were at first a distinct body of men from the elders, and were pure administrators, having charge of financial affairs. The bishops, he thinks, came naturally to be elected as elders, so that all bishops were elders, but not all elders were bishops. The appa- rent identity of the offices was really an identity only of persons holding the offices. Harnack, whose translation, with notes, of Hatch's Bampton Lectures (1883) first set German research to work on the ques- tion, and who wrote the article " Presbyter " in the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, has adopted and developed Hatch's views on this point. Harnack modifies Hatch's view by starting the theory that the elders were not at first officials at all, but simply the older members of the community, grave and trusted men who watched unofficially over the character and life of the members, and only gradually became a kind of standing committee, representing the congregation in matters of discipline, as the bishops and deacons (the original office- 186 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY finds the originals of the modern bishops not in the New Testament bishops, but in the apostles. We have already examined the doctrine of the Apostolical Succession that the Roman Catholic and Anglican bishops of to-day have succeeded by unbroken transmission to the authority originally con- ferred by our Lord on the apostles so far as concerns its claim to secure a monopoly bearers) represented it in matters of administration. It is to be noted, however, that Harnack in his inquiry does not treat the question " What does the New Testa- ment say?" as equivalent to "What was the original state of things in the Christian Church ? " When he affirms that there is no reference to elders as office- bearers in the Christian literature of the first century he is thinking only of the Didache, the Epistles of Clement of Rome, and the four great Epistles of Paul (Romans, Galatians, 1 and 2 Corinthians). The Book of Acts and Paul's Epistles to Timothy and Titus, the Books of the New Testament which most clearly identify elders and bishops, he places in the second century. It is a striking fact that, even with this selection of the wit- nesses, Harnack can point to no passage in which elders are mentioned along with bishops, which is strange indeed if they were not identical! On his ruling out of Acts and the Pastoral Epistles Gore shrewdly says "Harnack gave himself free scope for writing on the PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 187 of Divine sanction for the ministry whose orders are guaranteed by it. We have now to consider whether its account of the historical origin of Episcopacy is borne out by the facts of the New Testament. There is no proof, in the first place, that the apostles either were assigned or claimed for themselves such a position in the Church as the theory requires. origin of the ministry, by having abolished almost all the evidence." Another critic asks how, if elders as such were never bishops, Acts xx. 28, implying their identity, came to be written at any date ? Harnack's view of the passage implies that at some later time the existing identification of the two was read back by the writer of Acts into the first century, whereas, on Harnack's showing, the identification never existed. As to the general bearing of the question of the date of the New Testament books on the inquiry into the original constitution of the Church, it seems clear that the relevant passages in those books at least testify to the opinions as to the primitive order of things that were current when the books were written, and if they can only be taken as reflecting the state of things that existed when they were written, it follows that the later the date assigned to them the lower down in history must we place any departure from the order of things which they represent as primitive. 188 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY As the founders of the Church and the bearers of the original testimony to Christ's resurrection, their position was, of course, unique. It gave them special influence in the councils of the Church wherever they went an influence which they still exercise through their writings. In the exercise of that influence, which was of a personal character, they could have no successors. And everything in the New Testament goes to prove that they made no claim to be supreme over the elders in matters of Church government. It was as elders, and acting with the other elders, that they took part in the government of the Church. John calls himself "the elder" (2nd Epistle 1 and 3rd Epistle 1). Peter wrote (1st Epistle v. 1), " The elders which are among you, I exhort, who am also an elder." That was his claim to be heard. He goes on, also, to speak of the position and duties and responsibilities of the elders he is addressing, in precisely the same terms in which Christ had spoken PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 189 to him of his, when He said to him, "Feed My sheep " (John xxi. 16). " Tend the flock of God which is among you, bishoping it not of constraint but willingly, . . . and when the chief shepherd shall be manifested, ye shall receive the crown of glory that fadeth not away" (1 Peter v. 2, 4). The proceedings at the Council of Jeru- salem, already referred to (Acts xv.), show that the apostles did not claim absolute authority in the Church. Paul and Barnabas were at Antioch when the dispute arose, but they did not settle the matter them- selves, and at Jerusalem it was decided by the apostles and elders, deliberating together. Jerusalem was abundantly supplied with apostles, but the Church there was self- governing, electing its own officers and appointing deputies. Paul reminds Timothy that he was ordained by the laying on of the hands of the Presby- tery (1 Tim. iv. 14). It is natural to infer from the fact that elsewhere (2 Tim. i. 6) he 190 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY speaks of his own hands as having been laid on Timothy, that Paul had taken part with the elders in Timothy's ordination, and he would certainly not have described it in the First Epistle as the act of the Presbytery merely, if, in his view, the ordination by the Presbytery would have been invalid if he had not taken part in it. Acts xiii. 1-3 tells of the laying on of hands in the case of none other than Paul himself by a company which included no apostle in its number. Strictly speaking, it was not Paul's "ordination," but only his designation by the Church to a new form of service, but defenders of Episcopacy must admit this to be a case in point, for it is referred to as an act of ordination in the ordinal of the Church of England. There is no instance mentioned in the New Testament of an apostle alone ordaining, where the Church was equipped with elders who could take part in the ceremony. From these facts Bishop Lightfoot's con- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 191 elusion seems inevitable, that "it is not to the apostle we must look for the prototype of the [modern] bishop." It must in fairness be added that Light- foot sees an anticipation or foreshadowing of diocesan episcopacy in the position occu- pied by the Apostle James in the Church at Jerusalem (Acts xii. 17, xv. 13, xxi. 18; cf. Gal. i. 19, ii. 12). But Lightfoot recognises that James obtained his undoubted position of influence in that Church not simply qua apostle, but on personal grounds, as "the Lord's brother." This view is confirmed by the tradition preserved by Eusebius that he was succeeded in that position by one Symeon, a cousin of Our Lord. But what- ever might be the influence accorded to James as the most prominent member of the Church at Jerusalem, on account of his relationship to the Lord and his powerful personality, the fact remains that on all occasions he acted along with the elders of the Church. That he came to be called in 192 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY later generations the Bishop of Jerusalem goes for nothing, and the list found in Eusebius of an unbroken line of Bishops of Jerusalem from James downwards is now known to be unauthentic.* In the second place, even if it were agreed that the apostles as individuals were em- powered to exercise and did exercise authority over the elders, the further as- sumption underlying the theory of Apostolical Succession would also need to be substanti- ated, viz., that the apostles had the right to appoint and did appoint successors to themselves, with similar authority over presbyters and with the power to transmit their power to others. The main question here is, not What position did the apostles themselves occupy in the Church ? but What was the nature of the permanent constitution which was established in the Church by their authority ? There is no evidence that a higher order * C. H. Turner, Journal of Theological Studies, July, 1900. PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 193 than the elders was instituted in the New Testament Church, in succession to the apostles. There is no proof that the apostles were given authority to establish such a succession, or that they ever claimed that authority. There is no trace in the New Testament of the distinction between the ordination of presbyters which carried with it no power of ordaining others ; and the ordination of a higher order of officials which imparted to them at once the power to ordain presbyters and the power to ordain successors to themselves. The apostles organised the Church not on Episcopal but on Presbyterian lines. They committed the government of the Church to elders and made no provision for officers over the elders. Paul addressed the elders of Ephesus as those on whom the whole burden of responsibility would rest with regard to the future purity and peace of the Church over which they ruled, now that his influence was to be withdrawn. "Take heed unto yourselves, and to all the Presly. Ch. 194 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY flock in the which the Holy Ghost hath made you bishops. ... I know that after my departure grievous wolves shall enter in among you, not sparing the flock. . . . Wherefore, watch ye " (Acts xx. 28-31). Here, again, Lightfoot sees an anticipation of the modern Episcopate in the commission given by the Apostle Paul to Timothy and Titus, as described in his Epistles to them. The commission certainly carried with it authority to assume the same paternal atti- tude towards the brethren in Ephesus and Crete as Paul himself was wont to assume (2 Tim. i. 13, iv. 2 ; Titus i. 13, ii. 15), and Titus was explicitly instructed to " set in order the things that were wanting in Crete and appoint elders in every city " (Titus i. 5). But Paul certainly did not regard them as ele- vated by their commission to his own apostolic rank. His tone of admonition and injunction throughout implies that he looked upon them as his delegates, entrusted with duties which, had circumstances permitted PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 195 it, he would himself have discharged. They were appointed to no permanent office. Titus was instructed to return at a given time to the apostle at Nicopolis (Titus iii. 12). Their commission was manifestly a temporary one, somewhat analogous to that of the Superintendents who at John Knox's instigation were appointed in Presbyterian Scotland to assist in setting things in order at the beginning. A closer parallel, perhaps, is afforded by the position of the modern pioneer missionaries, as they go about the mission field organising the young Christian communities. Whatever may be the de- nominations to which they belong, the commission of such agents is and must be much the same in all cases. The differences appear when it is seen what form of per- manent constitution each establishes among the converts. Similarly the vital question with regard to Timothy and Titus is What form of government did they establish in the Churches of Ephesus and Crete? Govern- 196 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY ment by a council of elders was the system then in existence throughout the Church, and what they were instructed to do was to see that the infant Churches they visited were organised on that basis. Where elders already existed, Timothy or Titus would naturally act in co-operation with them ; and just as we believe that what Paul and Barnabas did when they " ordained them elders in every city" (Acts xiv. 23) was to superintend the orderly election of elders by the members, so we believe that Timothy and Titus simply encouraged and guided the con- gregations in the choice of elders. There is no sign that they were commissioned to bestow on certain members a ministerial status not otherwise obtainable. They organised the Churches on the lines on which the Churches might, had they been so minded, have organised themselves. The important thing to notice is, that they were told to see that the Churches were equipped with local elders. They were not told to appoint single PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 197 men to succeed themselves as rulers over the Churches, with power to transmit that authority to their successors. That is to say, Timothy and Titus, like the apostles, organ- ised the Churches with which they had to do on Presbyterian and not on Episcopal lines. It is clear, then, from the New Testament that at the end of the first century each congregation was ruled by a council of elders, assisted by a body of deacons. The New Testament affords no instance of a Church ruled by one man. Its evidence is confirmed by that of the other extant Christian writ- ings of that period. Professor Gwatkin says,* "It is as certain as any historical fact can well be, that there was no bishop in the important Church of Corinth when Clement wrote." Bishop Lightfoot says t " There is not the faintest hint that a Bishop of Rome existed at the time of Ignatius." Polycarp speaks of " the elders and deacons " at Philippi, as * " The Church Past and Present," p. 169. t " Apostolic Fathers," pt. i. vol. i. p. 383. 198 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY if they constituted the only officers of the Church there ; testimony which Bishop Gore can meet only with the supposition that the bishopric was vacant when Polycarp wrote, or that Philippi was in the diocese of Thes- salonica. The Episcopate was a later development, whose beginnings must be dated between the years 100 and 150 A.D. Those beginnings are lost in obscurity, because the period is one of the darkest in all the history of the Church. Almost no literature belonging to it has come down to us. But there is general agreement as to how the one-man Episcopate arose. Lightfoot refers to the position occupied by James, the brother of Our Lord, at Jeru- salem and to the commission given to Timothy and Titus, as if in them we find the New Testament germs of the one-man Episcopate. But in point of fact these were not steps on the way to Episcopacy. For, as Lightfoot himself tells us, that system arose PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 199 from another quarter altogether by a process of development from the eldership. " The Episcopate," he says, " was formed not out of the apostolic order by localisation, but out of the presbyterial, by elevation ; and the title which originally was common to all came at length to be appropriated to the chief among them." This is the ex- planation given by Jerome (A.D. 380) in the famous passage already partially quoted, where he argues "That 'elders' and ' bishops' were originally the same ; that the primitive Churches were governed by a council of elders; that little by little, for the sake of preserving order and preventing schism, the government came to be devolved on indi- viduals, and that the ' bishops ' in his own day ought to know that they were greater than the ' presbyters ' rather by custom than by the appointment of the Lord." The general tendency of all societies to have a head, reinforced by the necessity of avoiding the dangers of rivalry and division 200 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY in face of persecution and of the Gnostic heresies (especially in Asia Minor, where Episcopacy is believed to have developed earliest), and securing unity of doctrine and unity of discipline this and similar causes naturally and sufficiently account for the gradual evolution of the Episcopate, to which Jerome bears testimony. First, it became customary for the council of elders to have a President, and then that office became permanent, the presbyters sank into the position of a council supporting the bishop, and the bishop's consulting of his presbyters became more and more a matter of form, and then ceased altogether. Of the two names for the original office, " elder " and " bishop," the latter naturally became the name of the superior official, because the title bishop (" overseer ") more readily suggests superiority.* * Hatch and Harnack, who believe that the "bishops" and the " elders " were originally distinct, attribute the gradual assumption of supreme authority by one of the bishops to the inevitable prominence given to administra- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 201 In the third century, where the one-man Episcopate prevailed the rule was still, theoretically, exercised by the council of elders, with the bishop as President. Jerome contends for this and appeals in support of his contention to the case of Alexandria. "Even at Alexandria" he writes "from the time of Mark the Evangelist until the episcopate of Heraklas and Dionysius the presbyters always appointed as bishop one of their own number chosen by themselves, and set him in a more exalted position, just as an army elects a general or as deacons appoint one of themselves . . . archdeacon." It appears, then, that up till the third century the bishop ruled in consultation with the other elders. Nor had he any authority at first beyond his own congrega- tion and finance, of which the bishops, and not the elders, had control. This involved the presiding of one of their number at public worship and especially at the Lord's Supper, when the gifts for distribution to the poor were received, and gradually this honour was reserved for one particular bishop. 202 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY tion. The Diocesan Episcopate was a still later development. It arose through the Church in a city or district establishing daughter Churches in its neighbourhood, each of which was placed in charge of one of the presbyters of the mother-Church, very much as Vicars of charges carved out of a parish in the Church of England are under the Rector of the original parish church. Thus the bishop came to preside over a court consisting of all the local clergy. An interesting relic of that state of things exists still at the very heart of the Prelatical system. Every Cardinal on his appointment is made nominally a clergyman of one of the city churches in Rome, and the Cardinals elect the Pope. The Pope is thus technically the permanent President or Moderator of the Presbytery of Rome, elected by his fellow- presbyters. On the grounds now given, Presbyterians hold that the government of the Church in New Testament times was not Episcopalian, PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 203 but Presbyterian in principle, and that Epis- copacy was not fully established in the Church until after the third century. The theory of Apostolical Succession was an after- thought, and was advanced to reinforce with the sanctity of Divine prescription the already established supremacy of the bishop over the presbyters. It is further to be noted that the theory of Apostolical Succession set up by Cyprian was not the original form of this after- thought. Ignatius had previously spoken of the bishop as the representative not of the apostles, but of Christ Himself, and the presbyters as the representatives of the apostles, urging the people "to be obedient to the bishop as to Jesus Christ and to the presbyters as to His apostles." The two theories are, of course, quite inconsistent: the earlier cuts the ground from under the later. It makes not the diocesan bishops but the presbyters the successors of the apostles. 204 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY It is open, of course, to Episcopalians to argue that the development of Episcopacy in post-apostolic times out of the Presby- terianism of the New Testament Church, gives it as valid Divine sanction as if it had been the original polity of the apostolic Church. But that argument implies a theory of the relation between the Church and the Scriptures which is as much an after- thought, born of the necessities of the ecclesiastical position in the post-apostolic age, as the theory of Apostolical Succession itself. Presbyterians are satisfied if they can show that their system is "founded on and agreeable to the Word of God." It is also open to Episcopalians to argue that the development of Episcopacy out of the original Presbyterianism of the Church is not only capable of explanation, but also defensible on its merits as an improvement on Presbyterianism. But we have already dealt with the comparative merits of the two systems on the ground of expediency PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 205 and utility, and are now engaged simply in an inquiry into their comparative ability to stand the test of conformity to Scripture. POSITION OF THE MINISTER. Before we pass from the consideration of the New Testament warrant for the leading feature of Presbyterianism the placing of each congregation under the rule of a council of elders, all of equal rank and authority reference may be made to one point at which Presbyterians seem at first sight to depart from the principle of the " parity of presbyters " viz., the posi- tion assigned to the minister. The departure is only apparent ; for while the minister as minister has his own special duties to per- form, he has no more voice or responsibility in matters of spiritual government and dis- cipline than any other elder. Indeed, as permanent Moderator or Chairman of the Session of Elders, he has no deliberative but only a casting vote. 206 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY It must be admitted that in no respect has the Church, in the course of the centuries, moved farther away from the primitive position than in its mode of regarding the ministry of the Word. But this is no truer of the Presbyterian than of the other great sections of the Christian Church. At the beginning the ministry of the Word was not confined to any official class. It was the privilege and duty of the whole Church and of every member of the Church to preach the Gospel of God's grace to men. It was not a matter of office, but of gifts. Or, rather, it was recognised that special capacity for administration and special capacity for preaching were equally gifts of the Spirit (Rom. xii. 8 ; 1 Cor. xii. 28), and the posses- sion of the gift of preaching was recognised as a sufficient and imperative call to use it, whether its possessor was an official of the Church or not. The Seven (deacons?) were appointed " to serve tables " (Acts vi. 2, 3). That was their official duty, but one of them, PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 207 Philip, was also known as "the Evangelist" (Acts xxi. 8), and another, Stephen, was a great preacher (Acts vi. 9, 10). Some elders taught, and for every elder it was a desir- able thing that he should be "apt to teach" (1 Tim. iii. 2). Paul holds up to special honour those elders who not only " ruled well," but also "laboured in the word and in teaching" (1 Tim. v. 17). But that was not essential to the eldership. The ministry of the Word, in its public forms, was at first carried on by men of special gifts, who were not officials of any local Church. Paul begins with them his enumeration of God's gifts to the Church (1 Cor. xii. 28), " apostles, prophets, teachers." In the Didache the same three classes are given, and are described as itinerating from place to place, and distinguished from the bishops and deacons, the local resident officials. The title "Apostle" is used in the New Testament of others than the Twelve and Paul. It is applied to such as Barna- 208 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY bas (Acts xiv. 14), Andronicus, and Junias (Rom. xvi. 7). They were like our own foreign missionaries, preachers especially to the heathen and the unconverted, founders and organisers of new Churches. The Pro- phets of the New Testament were, like their prototypes of the Old Testament, not neces- sarily predictors of future events, but messen- gers from God, men pre-eminently endowed with the gift of magnetic speech. The Teachers possessed special gifts of know- ledge and exposition. These men, "who spake the word of God with power," whose ministry was not official but personal, and who approved themselves to their hearers by their heaven-sent gifts, Dr. Lindsay calls "the great creative agency in the New Testament Church." The authority of the ministry of the Word was supreme. Defer- ence to their message, when their "gift" was recognised, was acknowledged to be the primary duty of the Church. (Paul places them first in 1 Cor. xii. 28. See also PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 209 Acts xi. 27, xiii. 1 ; Eph. ii. 20, iii. 5 ; 1 Tim. v. 17; Heb. xiii. 7, &c.). The point for us to notice is that they belonged to the Church in general, and had no local ties. They came and went from Church to Church. The Didache even says that a prophet who stays a third day in one place is to be suspected of being a false prophet. They were not officers in any local Church. They interfered as little as possible with the administration or dis- cipline of the Churches they visited, and had no means of enforcing obedience to their exhortations but the persuasive power of the Word. After the second century they were gradually superseded in the ministry of the Word by the resident officials of the local Churches. As Dr. Hatch puts it, "the gift of ruling, like Aaron's rod, seemed to swallow up all other gifts." Dr. Gore, and other defenders of the theory of Apos- tolical Succession, suggest that the one-man Presby. Ch. 15 210 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY Episcopate arose through the localisation of the apostolate, the itinerant prophets being invited to settle in Churches they visited. But most investigators are agreed that what took place was that, as the specially gifted itinerant ministry died out, exhortation and instruction came to be supplied normally by the local officials. It is also suggested that it was when the " charismatic gifts " of exhortation and edification became ex- tinct that the prestige of the clergy was sustained by the newly discovered sanctions of Apostolical Succession and sacerdotalism. In the Presbyterian Churches of to-day the ministry of the Word and the ruling elder- ship are combined, the minister being a member of the Session of Elders and its permanent Moderator. Some authorities (Dr. Charles Hodge, for example) insist that the minister holds two distinct offices, as minister and elder. It is really little more than a matter of names, but the general view is that the ministry and the PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 211 eldership are one and the same office. The proper function of all elders is ruling. The minister does not hold an additional office, but possesses and exercises an addi- tional gift, with which it is expedient that one at least of the elders should be endowed. For the cultivation of that gift in these days training in scholarship is needed. It is re- cognised that the preaching or teaching elder must make a life - work of his ministry, while an elder who only rules needs no such professional training for his duties, and not only can engage in one of the ordinary callings of life, but is better fitted for exercising spiritual rule alongside the minister because he is so engaged. The Presbyterian Church may, without boasting, claim to be conspicuous for its high standard of professional training for its ministers. The rule is for candidates for the Presbyterian ministry, after a full University course in Arts, to devote three or four years to purely theological study. 212 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY II. THE ORGANIC UNITY OF THE CHURCH. To the Presbyterian principle which has to do with the form of Church government must be added another, which deals with the area over which that government extends. Presbyterianism regards the individual con- gregation as part of a wider whole, and by means of a gradation of representative courts extends the government of the Church by its elders over as wide an area as possible. Here Presbyterianism and Episcopacy are at one in principle. Congregationalists, on the other hand, assert the absolute inde- pendence of each congregation. Independ- ency, as we have seen, goes necessarily with Congregationalism. If a company of be- lievers cannot delegate its authority to officers chosen from its own membership, neither can its members submit to the authority of a larger unity of which it forms only a part. In asserting that this second principle of PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 213 Presbyterianism, like the first, is "founded on and agreeable to the Word of God," we do not mean that we can prove the congre- gations of the New Testament Church to have been organised under Presbyteries and Synods and General Assemblies, like the modern national Presbyterian Churches. The Church of the New Testament un- doubtedly presents the general appearance of a number of independent self-governing Christian congregations "tiny islands," as some one has described them, " in a sea of Paganism." But we do say that that is not the ideal of the New Testament. To assert, as Congregationalism does, that, according to the New Testament, " every company of believers is properly a Christian Church," * is to assert what cannot be denied. It is implied in Christ's assurance that wherever * See the " Declaration of the Faith, Church Order, and Discipline of the Congregational or Independent Dissenters, adopted at the Annual-Meeting of the Congregational Union, May, 1833," prefixed to every issue of the " Year Book of the Congregational Union." 214 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY two or three are gathered in His name, there He is. But to infer from that asser- tion, as Congregationalism does, that no two companies of believers which are accustomed to meet separately for worship can be brought under a common government, is to infer something which does not follow from that assertion, and which is contra- dicted by the facts of the New Testament, as we must now briefly show. 1. We begin with the proceedings of what is commonly known as the Council of Jerusalem, recorded in Acts xv. Difficulties arose in the Church at Antioch as to the relation of Gentile converts to the require- ments of the Jewish ceremonial law. The Church at Antioch sent a deputation to the Church at Jerusalem, submitting the matter to the judgment of that Church, which drew up and issued a decree whose prescriptions were binding not only on the Churches at Jerusalem and Antioch, but also on all the Churches throughout Syria and Cilicia. Now PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 215 this is far enough from being an exact parallel to an appeal, under the Presbyterian system, from a congregation to a Presbytery. The Church at Antioch was certainly not adequately represented in the deciding body, and the other Churches affected by the decision were not represented at all. It was obviously the case of a young Church referring its difficulties to the mother-Church at Jerusalem, in which the apostles were prominent members. But, at any rate, this incident shows that in the New Testament Church there was no sacred principle of Independency. The Church at Antioch sub- mitted to the judgment of an authority external to itself, and so did the Churches of Syria and Cilicia.* * Dr. B. W. Dale, in his "Congregational Principles," maintains that what the Church at Antioch wished to know was merely whether the Judaizers who had come from Jerusalem really represented, as they professed to do, the opinions of the leaders at Jerusalem. But it is clear that the Council discussed and decided on the merits of the question and drew up a decree on the merits that was intended to bind and did bind all the Churches. 216 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 2. Something may be gathered for our present purpose from the use of the words " Church " and " Churches " in the New Testament. Independents maintain that " Church " in the New Testament always means either the universal Church or a particular congregation of Christians, never anything between the two. Now, we read of "the Church" at Jerusalem (Acts xv. 4), at Antioch (Acts xiv. 27), at Corinth (1 Cor. i. 2), at Ephesus (Acts xx. 17; Rev. ii. 1), and of " the elders " of these cities. This, on the Independent reading, must mean that in each of these cities there was only one congregation. Is that credible ? In those days the Christians had no buildings erected for the purpose, but met for worship for the most part in private houses, and each gathering was a Church (e.g., the " Church in the house " of Aquila and Priscilla at Ephesus, and later at Rome 1 Cor. xvi. 19; Rom. xvi. 5). At one time there were in Jerusalem as many as 5,000 disciples (Acts PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 217 iv. 4); and although we read of general gatherings of the multitude (Acts ii. 44, v. 12, vi. 2, xv. 4, 12, 22), there must have been many " Churches in the house " in that city, distinct congregations, each forbidden, on Independent principles, to become a part of a larger whole, and yet there was " the Church at Jerusalem " and elders who acted in the name of that Church of the city. At Corinth, too, we read of " the whole Church" being assembled together (1 Cor. xiv. 23), but Paul, writing to that city, bids the women keep silence "in the Churches " (1 Cor. xiv. 34, R.V.), i.e., as most naturally understood, the Churches of the city. It is very improbable that the " house of a certain man named Justus " (Acts xviii. 7) remained the only meeting- place in Corinth. At Ephesus, we know of the Church " in the school of Tyrannus " (Acts xix. 9), as well as of the Church in the house of Aquila and Priscilla (1 Cor. xvi. 19). 218 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY It used to be said that we never read in the New Testament of the Church of a district, but in Acts ix. 31 we read (R.V.) "so the Church [not "the Churches" as in A.V.] throughout all Judsea and Galilee and Samaria had peace, and . . . was multi- plied." And although Paul does not speak of the Church of a Province, he groups the Churches according to the divisions of the Roman Provinces, and speaks of the Churches of Achaia, the Churches of Asia Minor, the Churches of Macedonia, the Churches of Galatia. It is to be noted also that he groups the Churches of Achaia round Corinth (2 Cor. i. 1), those of Macedonia round Thessalonica (1 Thess. iv. 10), and those of Asia Minor round Ephesus (Acts xix. 10, 22). Such a way of thinking of the Churches seems almost as inconsistent with Independency as the actual grouping of them in organic unity. 3. Unity was a more prominent ideal of the New Testament Church than Indepen- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 219 dence. Each congregation felt itself a part of the universal Church. A new word (^iXa^X^x'd) was coined for that love of the brotherhood which made the whole Church one. The apostles of Judaism gave the right hand of fellowship to the apostles of the Gentiles (Gal. ii. 9), and the Gentile congregations charged themselves with the care of the poor saints at Jerusalem. The emphasis laid on the grace of hospitality reminds us how constantly and with how little of the feeling that they were changing Churches members passed from one congre- gation to another. A letter of commendation from the Church he had left was a member's sufficient introduction to Christian fellowship in any part of the world (Acts xviii. 27 ; Rom. xvi. i ; 2 Cor. iii. 1-3). Official letters and messages were continually exchanged by the scattered Churches.* Most of the New * Professor Sir W. M. Eamsay (" The Church in the Eoman Empire ") traces the development of the episcopal office largely to the prominence necessarily acquired by the official who conducted a Church's correspondence. 220 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY Testament writings we owe to the inter- course of Church with Church. We have already seen that the ministry of the Word was for the most part discharged not by the resident local officials, but by apostles and prophets and teachers, who were re- garded as ministers of the Church at large. Their itinerant ministrations must have proved a powerful means of preserving and strengthening the sense of the oneness of the universal Church that pervaded the Christian community in New Testament times. To sum up. Presbyterians believe that what the New Testament testifies to is not the prevalence in the primitive Church of such a spirit of Independence as would forbid its organisation on Presbyterian lines, but such a spirit of unity as naturally suggests such unity of organisa- tion, and would, in all probability, have actually found expression in it, but for the conquest of the Church by an alien con- PRESBYTERIAN POLITY 221 ception of unity modelled on the ideals and institutions of Imperial Rome. The intro- duction of the representative system of government into the affairs of the indi- vidual congregation, for which there is unquestionable New Testament precedent, is the really vital matter. Its further application to the Church in the larger sense is thereafter only a question of ex- pediency and practicability. In this respect the Presbyterian system endeavours to give practical expression to the great New Testament ideal of the unity of the uni- versal Church by a legitimate and obvious development of the New Testament method of Church government. POLITY ONLY A MEANS TO AN END. Now that we have tried to set forth what the Presbyterian polity has to say for itself on grounds of reason and experience and on grounds of Scriptural precedent, it is well that at the close of our discussion 222 PRESBYTERIAN POLITY we should again emphasise the truth that polity, after all, is only a means to the great end of the Church's existence. It is not necessarily the Church possessing the best system of government the most reasonable and the most Scriptural that holds the place of honour among the sister Churches of Christ ; but the Church which, whatever name it bears and whatever methods it uses, is most filled with Christ's own spirit, and is most faithful and un- wearied in its efforts for the bringing in of His kingdom. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND The rise and growth of English Presbyterianism. Its short-lived ascendancy in the Church of England. Its initial predominance hi Nonconformity. Its decline in the eighteenth century. Its revival in the nineteenth century. Its present position, aims, and prospects. CHAPTER V PEESBYTEBIANISM IN ENGLAND TT remains, for the fulfilment of our plan, to give a brief sketch of the history of the Presbyterian cause in England.* Many may be surprised to hear that it has any history worthy of the name. It is a prevalent idea that the Presbyterian Church of England is a sort of Caledonian Asylum, a branch of the Scottish Church established south of the Tweed in recent years, to meet the peculiar religious needs and tastes of * The recognised authority here is the Kev. A. H. Drys- dale, D.D., of Morpeth, whose " History of the Presby- terians in England, their Rise, Decline and Revival " (1889) was prepared at the request of the Law and Historical Documents Committee of the Presbyterian Church of England. fresby. Cli. Jg 226 226 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND Scotchmen away from home. But English Presbyterianism is not of yesterday. It has a long history, and memories of which its adherents feel justly proud. They are a comparatively feeble folk to-day. But Pres- byterianism was once the most potent factor in the Protestantism of England. The force of circumstances gave greater pro- minence to questions of ritual and to the struggle between Papal and Royal supre- macy than to the matter of Church polity, in the earlier stages of the English Reforma- tion ; but the leaders of the Reformation movement in England, like the Reformers of Scotland and Switzerland and France and Holland and a great part of Ger- many, were Presbyterians. For one hun- dred years after the Reformation it was a question whether the Reformed Church of England would not be Presbyterian, like nearly all the Churches of the Reformation. Why, then, did she prove so striking an exception ? Was it because there is some- PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 227 thing in Presbyterianism alien to the genius of the English people ? On the contrary, it would be nearer the truth to say that its system of free and representative govern- ment is in fuller and happier accord with that genius than any other form of Church polity. The explanation would seem to be that the Reformation failed to establish Presbyterianism in England because in that country the Reformation succeeded only partially in establishing itself. "The con- stitution, doctrines, and services of the Church of England," says Lord Macaulay, "retain the visible marks of the compromise from which she sprang. She occupies a middle position between the Churches of Rome and Geneva." The leaders, who would fain have made thorough work of the Eng- lish Reformation, were not supported by the people as the people of the other countries supported their leaders, and so they were not able to override the personal opinions and prejudices of the monarchs, by which 228 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND the course of events was so largely deter- mined. And there arose at a certain critical point a party, under Laud, whose watch- word was that England must have a Reformation of its own. At first the Reformers of all countries regarded the movement as one. But England, the natural leader, deliberately withdrew, under Laud's guidance, from the concert of Reformed Europe, and, mainly for political reasons, made the retention of Episcopacy an essen- tial item of its separatist programme. THE RISE AND GROWTH OF ENGLISH PRESBYTERIANISM. Henry VIII.'s most notable and charac- teristic contribution to the cause of the Reformation was to get himself installed in place of the Pope as Head of the Church of England, an achievement of evil omen for the Reformation movement. But it is an interesting fact that during his reign, PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 229 in 1537, a treatise called " The Institution of a Christian Man" was prepared for him by Thomas Cromwell, Archbishop Cranmer, twelve other Bishops, and twenty-three Doctors of Theology and Professors of Canon Law. It was revised by the King's own hand, and thereafter approved by both Houses of Parliament. It was dedicated to the King's faithful subjects as a compendium of Christian doctrine. It contains the state- ment : " The truth is that in the New Testa- ment there is no mention made of any degrees or distinctions in orders, but only of Deacons or Ministers, and of Presbyters or Bishops." We have already referred to the fact that Edward VL, on the advice of Cranmer, brought over several eminent Presbyterian divines from the Continent among others, Martin Bucer, who was made Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and Peter Martyr, who was given a corresponding Professor- ship at Oxford. John Knox also, after his 230 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND release from the French galleys through King Edward's intervention, settled in England and served as one of the King's chaplains for five years at Berwick-on-Tweed, New- castle, and London. He declined the living of All-Hallows, London, and was afterwards pressed by the King to accept the Bishopric of Rochester, but declined it, chiefly because he did not believe in Episcopacy. When the Forty-two Articles of the Faith (reduced in Elizabeth's time to thirty-nine) were drawn up in 1550, by the Heads of Colleges and Professors at Oxford and Cambridge, most of whom were Presbyterians in principle, Bucer, Peter Martyr, and Knox were taken into con- sultation. These Presbyterian divines had also a great deal to do with the composition of the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. (1552), and helped to make it more Pro- testant in character than any English Prayer Book that preceded or succeeded it. The King in 1550 gave a special charter to a congregation m London of Presbyterian PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 231 refugees from the Continent, ministered to by John A'Lasco, a Pole. It was understood that Edward's interest in this Presbyterian congregation arose from his desire to use it as a model in reconstructing the Church of England. In 1552 Cranmer, the King's chief adviser, arranged for a conference of the leading Reformers of Europe, in order to promote the unity of the Reformed Churches, in face of the counter-Reformation then being organised by the Council of Trent. He invited to England for this purpose Philip Melanchthon, Luther's companion ; Bullinger, the friend and successor of Zwingli ; and John Calvin himself, who was then at the height of his power and fame at Geneva. The invitations were accepted, but political events unfortunately led to the conference being abandoned. Bucer, in 1551, drew up for King Edward a treatise "On the King- dom of Christ," setting forth the teaching of the New Testament regarding Church 232 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND government on Presbyterian lines. After studying it, the King prepared with his own hand a scheme of Church Reform, making each bishop the President of a Council of Presbyters, and arranging for Provincial Synods, with ecclesiastical authority, to meet half-yearly, but his death in 1552 prevented its being put into operation. No event in English history has been more universally lamented than the premature death of King Edward, in his sixteenth year. Probably few of those who have uttered and echoed these lamentations have realised that, had Edward's life been spared but a few years longer, Presbyterianism would undoubtedly have been permanently estab- lished in the Church of England. The persecutions during Mary's reign (1553 to 1558) drove very many of the Reformers to the Continent, where, being held at arm's length by Lutherans, on account of what were reckoned their lax views on the Sacra- ments, they associated chiefly with Presby- PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 233 terians, and under their influence were strengthened in their Presbyterian ten- dencies. At Frankfort-on-Main the English exiles attempted to form a congregation, and invited John Knox from Geneva to be their minister. At Calvin's urgent request Knox accepted the call, and laboured for two years (1554-55) at Frankfort. Owing to differences of view as to the use to be made of King Edward's Prayer Book, the Church was never definitely organised, and eventually Knox returned to Geneva, accompanied by most of the English exiles. It was at Geneva, in 1555, that the first English Presbyterian Church was established, with Knox as chief minister and Moderator of the Session ; two Englishmen, Christopher Goodman and Anthony Gilbey, as the colleague-ministers ; and among the elders, Whittingham (who married Calvin's sister, and was afterwards Dean of Durham, though he had never received any but Presbyterian ordination), 234 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND Sampson (who had been a Dean in King Edward's time), and Miles Coverdale (pre- viously Bishop of Exeter, and Tyndale's colleague in the work of Bible translation). Several of these English exiles helped Knox in the composition of the " Book of Common Order," commonly called "Knox's Liturgy." They also produced, under Coverdale's leader- ship, a new annotated English translation of the Bible (1560), introducing for the first time the division of the chapters into verses. It was known as the Geneva Bible, and was the version in popular use in England for two generations. On Elizabeth's succession in 1558, great hopes were built on her supposed attachment to the cause of Reform, but these were, in large measure, disappointed. Her love of power and her personal liking for ornate ritual made her as resolute an opponent of thoroughgoing Reformers on the one hand as of Romanists on the other. She sent her troops to fight for the Presbyterians PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 235 of Holland and Scotland, but did her utmost to suppress the Presbyterians in her own land. Calvin's influence, however, was still strong in the English Church. His "Insti- tutes " was used as a text-book at Oxford and Cambridge, and the leading English divines were in full sympathy with the principles associated with his name. The leader of the Presbyterian party in Elizabeth's reign was Thomas Cartwright, who, on account of his views, was removed by the Queen from the Lady Margaret Profes- sorship of Divinity at Cambridge, and once and again driven into exile. From the Conti- nent he carried on a controversy on Church matters with Whitgift, one of the Queen's champions and afterwards Archbishop of Canterbury. Whitgift did not answer Cart- wright's " Second Reply," and it was as a belated answer to the Presbyterian contro- versialist that " the judicious Hooker," twenty years later, wrote his " Ecclesiastical Polity." Another prominent Presbyterian was Walter 236 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND Travers,* Hooker's colleague in the Temple Church. In 1562 a scheme for reforming the Church in accordance with Presbyterian principles was lost in Convocation by one vote. The first " Separatists " from the Church of England were a number of persecuted Puritans, who secretly established a Classis (what is now known as a Presby- tery) in London, on the lines of the Book of Geneva. Their action was disapproved of by Knox and the Continental Reformers, on whose advice the great body of their sympathisers remained within the Church of England, working for its reform from within. The year 1572, signalised by the massacre of St. Bartholomew in France and the death of Knox in Scotland, saw the first English parochial Presbytery (the modern Session) established at Wandsworth by authority of the Classis of London. In the same year the Presbyterian party pre- * See p. 5 n. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 237 sented to Parliament an " admonition" praying for the reform of the Church, but this action failed, and the Queen adopted still more stringent measures against them, imprisoning two of the London ministers. In 1576 Elizabeth was reluctantly compelled, under pressure from the Huguenots of France, to jsanction the establishment of Presbyterian government and worship in the Channel Islands, which continued until James I. overturned it in 1625. For ten years after 1572 parochial and district Presbyteries were held privately throughout England, chiefly in London, Essex, and Northamptonshire, and by 1583 the " Great Directory of Church Govern- ment, or Presbyterian Book of Discipline," drawn up in English and Latin, had been signed by 500 of the clergy of the Church of England, including the leading Divinity Professors and Heads of Colleges at the universities, who bound themselves to strive to get the government and discipline of 238 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND the Church regulated in accordance with it. They were successful in 1584 in getting the House of Commons to petition the Queen in favour of their scheme, but failed to secure the co-operation of the House of Lords, and the Queen, by the prompt exercise of her royal prerogative, put a stop to these proceedings. The propaganda was con- tinued by means of pamphlets issued from secret printing presses, but after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, in 1588, the Queen and her favourites in Church and State were freer to deal with the Puritans, and adopted harsher means for their sup- pression. Cartwright and other leaders were subjected to prolonged imprisonment by authority of the High Commission and Star Chamber, and many were driven into exile. It was during Elizabeth's reign about 1581 that the rise of the Independents (popularly identified at first with the views of Robert Browne, a near relative of Lord Burleigh, and therefore often called PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 239 " Brownists ") divided and weakened the Puritan party. The hopes of the Presbyterians again revived on the accession of James I. in 1608, in view of his Presbyterian upbringing and professions. But they were again doomed to bitter disappointment. At the Conference at Hampton Court in 1604 James scouted the proposal to establish Presbytery in the Church. " Presbytery," he cried, " agreeth as well with Monarchy as God with the Devil. Let that government be once up, and we shall all have work enough and our hands full," and he dismissed the Con- ference with the words, " I will make them conform, or I will harry them out of the land, or worse." He kept his word, and was stimulated to the most strenuous prosecution of his policy by Archbishop Laud, who was ready to enforce, by the direst penalties, recognition of the Divine Right of the King in the State and the Bishop in the Church. When Laud, for the first time, defended 240 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND the principle of exclusive Episcopacy, his views were condemned by the authorities of the University of Oxford. But Laud would admit of no further discussion. Dr. Alexander Leighton (father of the saintly Archbishop) was subjected to cruel muti- lation and torture for his defence of Presbytery, " Zion's Plea against the Pre- lacy," as was William Prynne, an eminent lawyer, for his "Lord Bishops None of the Lord's Bishops" and other Presbyterian writings. Among the crowd of pam- phleteers who took part in the increasing battle over Church affairs was John Milton; and as we have quoted the famous line in which he registered his disappointment a few years later with the Presbyterians in the hour of their supremacy, we may quote now from his pamphlet of 1641 words in which he recorded his opinion of Presby- teriam'sm : " So little is it I fear lest any crookedness or wrinkle be found in Presbyterial Government, . . . that every PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 241 real Protestant will confess it to be the only true Church Government." The attempt of Charles I. and Laud to force Episcopacy on Scotland ended in the King's being compelled to give his assent in 1641 to an Act of the Scottish Parliament, declaring "the government of the Church by Bishops to be repugnant to the Word of God." In England also this attempt and its failure greatly strengthened the Presby- terian cause. Petitions in favour of the Presbyterian system were presented one after another to Parliament. And when, late in 1641, the Long Parliament assembled, its first act was to pass a Bill removing bishops from the House of Lords. It was the last Act of Parliament signed by the King (February, 1642) before Parliament declared war against him. THE WESTMINSTER ASSEMBLY. The next step taken by Parliament was to suggest that a special council or assembly of Presby. Ch. 242 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND divines should be called together by the King, to consider and advise as to the form of Church polity that should take the place of Prelacy. Three times over in 1642 the Lords and Commons passed a Bill for this purpose, which the King refused to sign. As the Civil War had now begun, the Parliament thereupon called the Assembly together on its own authority. Knights of the Shires were instructed to nominate 2 divines from every county in England, and Parlia- ment itself added 121 divines, 10 peers, and 20 members of the House of Commons 151 members in all. The King issued a proclamation forbidding the Assembly to meet, and most of the Prelatists who had been nominated withdrew. About 70 divines actually assembled at Westminster, the opening service being held in the Abbey on July 1, 1643. The ordinary meetings were held at first in Henry VII.'s Chapel, and afterwards in the adjoining Jerusalem Chamber. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 243 It was at first purely an English Assembly, composed of divines of the Church of England, University dignitaries, English peers and commoners, meeting to arrange for the future of the Church of England. Having appointed Dr. William Twisse, Rector of Newbury, its Prolucutor or President, the Assembly began to revise the Thirty-nine Articles. But soon the basis of the Assembly was altered. The war was going in favour of the King, and Parliament wanted help from Presbyterian Scotland. The House of Commons and the Westminster Assembly, meeting in St. Margaret's Church, West- minster, entered into a Solemn League and Covenant with Scotland. As the result of this Covenant, 20,000 Scottish troops marched south and joined the Parliamentary army. Six Commissioners from the Scottish General Assembly were added to the Westminster Assembly, and its instructions were enlarged it was now enjoined to draw up a scheme to secure uniformity of faith, worship, and 244 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND discipline for the national Churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland. It was still in substance an English Assembly. The Commissioners from Scotland numbered only six four ministers, viz., Alexander Henderson, Samuel Rutherford, Robert Balsillie (Principal of Glasgow University), and George Gillespie ; and two elders, Lord Maitland and Johnston of Warriston ; and these Commissioners had no vote. There were four parties in the Assembly (1) a majority of moderate Re- formers, Presbyterian in tendency ; (2) Pres- byterians of the more advanced or Scottish order ; (3) ten or twelve Independents, backed by a growing section in the Army and in Parliament, who followed Cromwell ; (4) A number of Erastians,* led by Selden, * Erastus (b. 1524) was a Professor at Heidelberg. His treatise setting forth the theory that discipline belongs to the State, not to the Church, was published in England by his widow hi 1589. In all the Reformed Churches, except that of Scotland, an Erastian party arose composed chiefly of lawyers. The standard work against Erastianism is " Aaron's Rod Blossoming," by Gillespie, one of the Scottish delegates at the Westminster Assembly. PRESBYTEEIANISM IN ENGLAND 245 who advocated the subjection of the Church to the civil authority. The Assembly during its sittings, from 1643 to 1649, prepared 1. The Form of Presbyterian Church Government, to take the place of the dis- carded Prelatical system. This was approved by Parliament in 1648, and ordered to be introduced throughout England. 2. The Directory of Public Worship, to take the place of the Prayer Book of the Church of England and the Scottish " Directory." This was passed by Parlia- ment in 1645, and ordered to be used in all the parish churches and chapels of England. 3. The Confession of Faith, to take the place of the Thirty-nine Articles and the Scottish Confession. 4. The Larger and Shorter Catechisms. The Shorter Catechism, which Dr. Samuel Johnson called "one of the most sublime works of the human understanding," was 246 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND the last work of the Assembly. It has since become so thoroughly identified with Scot- land, that it is difficult to realise that only one Scotchman sat on the Committee that drew it up Samuel Rutherford. The Con- vener of the Committee was at first Dr. Herbert Palmer, Head of a Cambridge College, and after his death Dr. Anthony Tuckney, Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge and Vice-Chancellor of the University. It was translated into Latin at Cambridge in 1656, and into Latin and Greek at Oxford in 1660. The results of the Assembly's work were accepted, in their entirety and permanently, only by the Scottish national Church, which, though it preferred its own formularies, gave them up for the sake of unity, abandon- ing even its own metrical version of the Psalms for the Assembly's version, now known all the world over as the "Scottish Psalms." PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 247 PBESBYTERIANISM ESTABLISHED. It was not until January, 1648, that the ordinance of the English Parliament "for speedily dividing and settling the several counties of this kingdom into classical Presbyteries and congregational elderships" came into force. But already, in 1646, London, with its population of 150,000, had placed each of its 139 parishes under a Session of Elders. The 139 parishes were divided into 12 Presbyteries, meeting monthly, and on May 3, 1647, the first Pro- vincial Synod of London met in the Con- vocation House of St. Paul's Cathedral. In the same year, 1646, Parliament, in response to a huge petition, had ordered the Pres- byterian system to be established throughout Lancashire. Its sixty parishes were divided into nine Presbyteries, and the first Pro- vincial Synod of Lancashire met at Preston in May, 1649. In Essex fourteen Presbyteries were established, and in Suffolk the same 248 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND number. The scheme, which was never completed, contemplated sixty Provincial Synods for England, with a yearly national General Assembly, London was from the first the strong- hold of Puritanism. It was enthusiastically Presbyterian, and it retained its Presbyterian organisation amid all political changes and turmoil until 1660 for fourteen years. Marsden, who was not a Presbyterian, says of Presbyterian London : " No European metropolis has ever displayed a higher character for purity of morals, for calmness in the midst of danger, for disinterested patriotism (even if it were misled), for a universal respect for religion, united with earnestness and zeal in the discharge of all its duties " (" Later Puritans," p. 109). FAILURE OF ESTABLISHED PRESBYTERIANISM. Thus for twelve years the established Church of England was Presbyterian. To the interesting question why the triumph of PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 249 Presbyterianism was so short-lived various answers have been given. 1. The people were hardly prepared for it. The ecclesiastical unity of the three kingdoms was too much to aim at ; even the covering of England with a new Pres- byterian organisation by Act of Parliament was too great an undertaking without a stronger popular movement behind it. " The branches," it has been said, " were wider than the roots." Such an enterprise, under such conditions, required prompt action, and Parliament and Assembly wasted precious months and years in debating. 2. The Presbyterians have been accused of intolerance in their hour of victory, and the people, it is said, resented being drilled into Presbyterianism. Hence Milton's disappoint- ment and his " new Presbyter is but old Priest writ large." There is, no doubt, some truth in this accusation. The Presby- terians, indeed, were probably not more 250 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND intolerant than most of their neighbours. Toleration was an undiscovered or forgotten virtue in those days ; men and parties demanded toleration for their own opinions, but drew very sharply the lines within which they were prepared to tolerate the opinions of others. In that respect there was little difference between the various sections of Church, Parliament, and people. But certainly in the matter of toleration, in theory and practice, the Presbyterians of that age compare unfavourably with Crom- well and the Independents. 3. The Assembly quarrelled with the Parliament that convened it, and that had to adopt and carry out its proposals. The Parliament was Erastian in spirit. It insisted on succeeding to the spiritual supremacy of the Crown, and on making provision for an appeal in all cases from the Church courts to the civil courts. The Church claimed self-government, and the Parliament refused it. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 251 4. The chief reason, perhaps, was that the Parliament was more and more dominated by the army which it had created. The methods of constitutional reform were over- borne by more revolutionary military methods. The army and its leaders had naturally a warmer side to Independency than to Presbyterianism. And when the defeated King fled for refuge to the Scottish Presbyterian army, Presbyterianism became still more obnoxious to Cromwell and his army. Milton, too, was estranged to a large extent by that incident in the con- flict. The Presbyterian Parliament, on the other hand, was never against the monarchy as such, only against its abuses. The Parlia- ment was for a constitutional monarchy, and after Charles's defeat in the field wished to disband the army and to treat, itself, with the King. Cromwell and his army coerced the Parliament. Pride's Purge drove the two hundred Presbyterian members 252 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND out of Parliament, and the Rump, with its fifty Independents, ordered Charles's execu- tion. Presbyterian London armed itself against Cromwell but had to surrender. The Synod of London protested against the execution, pronouncing it a gigantic blunder as well as a crime. Cromwell retaliated by refusing to allow the Presbyteries of London to meet. The Scottish Commissioners joined in the protest, in the name of Scotland, and the Irish Presbyterians did the same. After the King's execution the Scottish Parliament proclaimed Charles II. king a step which led to war between England and Scotland, and which further embittered Cromwell and the English army against Presby- terianism. The establishment of the Commonwealth and Protectorate arrested the reorganisa- tion of the Church on the Presbyterian system, although that system still in name enjoyed State sanction. This condition of paralysis continued until Cromwell's death PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 253 in 1658. His son Richard was of weak character, but he certainly was in sympathy with the Presbyterians. It was General Monk's influence that led to the restoration of the Long Parliament, with the Presby- terian majority in their places again. The Presbyterians, once more in the ascendant, were persuaded by their leaders, Richard Baxter, Calamy, and others, to fall in with Monk's proposal that Charles II. should be restored. Charles was pledged by his Declaration from Breda to respect the Solemn League and Covenant. The Presby- terians believed in his promises, in spite of the warning of John Milton : " Woe be to you Presbyterians especially, if ever any of Charles's race recover the sceptre! Believe me, you shall pay all the reckoning " ("Defence of the People of England"). Events soon justified Milton's prophecy. Charles, having regained the throne, dis- regarded all his pledges. Offers of a com- promise between the Presbyterian and 254 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND Episcopal systems, on the basis of a plan drawn up twenty years before by Arch- bishop Usher, were favourably entertained by Calamy, Baxter, and other Presbyterian leaders. But these offers were apparently intended only to give time for the prepara- tion of the blow that was to fall. In 1662 the " Pension " Parliament (so named because many of its members were in the pay of Charles. II. or of Louis XIV. of France) threw over the Solemn League and Covenant and restored Episcopacy. The Act of Uniformity was passed, giving incumbents three months in which to make up their minds. They were required, on pain of ejection, to abjure the Covenant, to give their assent to everything in the Prayer Book, and to sub- mit to Episcopal reordination. On the appointed day which was August 24th, "the famous day of St. Bartholomew, the patron saint of Christian enormities " (as Lord Morley calls it) two thousand ministers of the national Church, unable to accept the PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 255 conditions imposed by the State, gave up their churches and their homes, and cast themselves and their families on the pro- vidence of God. Among them were the noblest sons of the Church of England Richard Baxter, the elder Calamy, Dr. William Bates, John Howe, Dr. Manton, John Flavel, Matthew Poole, Philip Henry, to mention only a few. The best that can be said for this act of intolerance is that it was a reprisal for the ejection of a similar number of two thousand of the clergy which followed the abolition of Prelacy in the Church of Eng- land by Parliamentary authority in 1647. It has received more attention than the earlier expulsion, probably because it was permanent in its effects. From that hour England has been divided religiously into two camps, to the infinite loss of the Church and the nation. The name " The Church of England" has ever since been the monopoly of the section who conformed 256 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND to Charles's conditions and of their suc- cessors. These successors of the Conformists of 1662 have been accustomed too often to regard their Nonconformist brethren as without lot or part in the Church of Eng- land, mere ecclesiastical " bodies," of some inferior unauthorised type, that came into existence in 1662. But those who, in loyalty to conscience and conviction, gave up their livings at that crisis in the nation's religious history never thought that they were leaving the Church of England. It was because they dared not abandon the things which are essential to the Church's very existence and to its real continuity that they surrendered the advantages of the State connection. That was all they sur- rendered things which were unknown until three centuries after the Church of Christ was founded, and the abandonment or retention of which can never be the deter- mining factor of the Church's continuous identity in any land. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 257 PRESBYTERIAN PREDOMINANCE IN NONCON- FORMITY. Of these two thousand men, who left their Churches behind them, but claimed to have taken with them what was best and most precious in the Church itself, nq less than 1,500 were Presbyterians. Thus at the out- set the Presbyterians formed by far the most powerful section of English Noncon- formity. At meetings of deputies of the three denominations in the early days of Nonconformity the rule was that for one Independent and one Baptist there were two Presbyterian representatives. Those who came out did not represent the full strength of Presbyterianism in the Church of England. Many submitted to the terms of the Act of Uniformity. Said Sheldon (afterwards Archbishop), " If we had thought so many of the Presbyterian clergy had conformed, we would have made the door even straiter." And those who came Presby. Ch. Jg 258 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND out were followed up with a succession of disabling statutes the Conventicle Act, the Five Mile Act, and the Oxford Act^-all de- signed to make it as difficult as possible for Nonconformists to maintain their ground. Their terrible hardships are recorded in Baxter's " Own Life and Times " and (the younger) Dr. Edmund Calamy's " Account of the Ejected." Other reasons must be added to the diffi- culties created by their persecutors, to account for the dwindling of the numbers of the Nonconformists during the first quarter of a century of their history. Some of the dispossessed ministers retired into private life or preached only to private gatherings of their personal friends and followers, not seeking to form congrega- tions. It must be remembered, too, that the ejected were slow to abandon the hope that a way might be opened for their return. Their object in coming out was to get relief to conscience, rather than to found PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 259 a separate Church, and they were unwilling to do anything that would make the practical obstacles in the way of their return in- superable. Baxter and others sometimes worshipped in the parish churches to show what their attitude was. For the same reason they were chary of appointing successors when ministers died, and as Nonconformists were excluded from the Universities, it was impossible to secure a succession of ministers of adequate culture and training. From these causes the number of Nonconformist ministers had sunk to about 1,000 at the Revolution of 1688. The Presby- terians were, however, still in a large majority, numbering 600, as compared with 300 Independents and 100 Baptists. William III. was desirous of seeing a Bill of Comprehension passed, making room for Presbyterians, Independents, and Baptists within the Established Church, but the bitter opposition of the High Church party made this impossible, and he had to be satisfied 260 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND with the Toleration Act of 1689, which granted to Nonconformists freedom of worship. The Test and Corporation Acts, however, were still in force, excluding Non- conformists from civil office, except on intolerable conditions. In connection with the unsuccessful movement in favour of Comprehension a book defending Presby- terianism was written which created a great stir at the time " An Enquiry into the Constitution, Discipline, Unity and Worship of the Primitive Church." It was written by a young Presbyterian lawyer, Peter King, nephew of John Locke and afterwards Lord Chancellor. John Wesley is said to have become a believer in the Presbyterian polity through reading this book.* * Wesley, who was himself of Presbyterian stock, wrote in his journal (1746) after reading this book, " Episcopal Succession is a fable which no man ever did or could prove." Four years before his death he said, "As soon as I am gone, the Methodists will be a regular Presbyterian Church." And the Wesleyans are practically Presbyterians. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 261 The Act of Toleration did less for Presby- terians than for other Nonconformists, because it did not remove the interdict on meetings of Presbytery and Synod. It secured only freedom of worship for congregations. But it was followed by a rapid multiplication of Presbyterian congre- gations. Within the next twenty-five years 59 were formed in Yorkshire alone, and about 800 throughout England. In 1715 the number of Presbyterian congregations was quite double that of the Independent Churches. PERIOD OF DECLINE. Then came a period of rapid decline in English Presbyterianism. Fifty years later the Independent congregations largely out- numbered the Presbyterian. The separate congregations had to be maintained, as far as that was possible, on Presbyterian principles, without the advantages of as- sociation in Presbyteries and Synods, and in 262 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND course of time many of the Presbyterian congregations became Independent. There is not a county of England in which there are not to-day many instances of Congre- gational Churches which were originally Presbyterian. Many Presbyterian Churches also lapsed into Unitarianism, while preserv- ing the name " Presbyterian," so as to retain the valuable endowments which the Presby- terians, who were a comparatively wealthy community, had attached to their Churches.* A tide of Unitarianism swept over all the Churches in the eighteenth century, appearing first in the Church of England. Dr. Halley * The Lady Hewley Trust was founded in 1710 by an orthodox Presbyterian, but in the course of the century had fallen into the hands of Unitarian administrators. After a twelve years' suit in Chancery, the House of Lords in 1842 decreed that the Unitarian Trustees must give place to a joint board of orthodox Presbyterians, Inde- pendents, and Baptists. The Unitarians, anxious as to their tenure of other endowments and property of Presby- terian origin, obtained from Parliament the " Chapel Act" of 1844, making absolute the possession of ecclesiastical property that has been held for twenty-five years without challenge. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 263 maintains that the Independent Churches were largely preserved from defection by their democratic polity. But the Indepen- dents suffered severely, and certainly in the New England States of America the Inde- pendents were not saved by their system from drifting into Unitarianism. It is denied by Presbyterian historians* that English Unitarianism grew in any special proportion out of Presbyterian Noncon- formity, and if it is open to Independents to believe that their congregations were saved, so far as they were saved, from Unitarianism by their polity, it is equally open to Presbyterians to believe that the lapse of Presbyterian congregations, so far as they did lapse, into Unitarianism was largely due to the fact that the Presbyterian system was not allowed to be put into full operation. However that may be, it is indisputable * See " Presbyterianism in England in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," by the Eev. John Black (London : Presbyterian Church of England Publication Office, 1887). 264 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND that Unitarianism did make serious inroads into eighteenth century Presbyterianism. At a London Synod held at Salter's Hall in 1719, 57 voted against and only 53 in favour of requiring from ministers a specific declara- tion of belief in the Trinity. This led to a separation between the orthodox and the non-subscribing Presbyterians. In 1772 there were 400 Independent Churches in England, 300 Baptist, and 300 Presbyterian (150 orthodox and 150 non-subscribing). In 1812 the Independent Churches in England numbered 799, Baptist Churches 532, and Presbyterian 252, of which 152 were Churches retaining the name Presbyterian but really Unitarian, and only 100 were orthodox Pres- byterian congregations. Of these only four or five were in London, most were in the north of England, in Northumberland, Cumberland, and Durham, having been pre- served from defection no doubt by their geographical proximity to the robust Pres- byterianism of Scotland. PRESBYTBRIANISM IN ENGLAND 265 PERIOD OF REVIVAL. The remarkable revival of Presbyterianism in England during the last century has also been largely due to Scottish influences, al- though, as we have abundantly shown, it is a gross exaggeration to say that modern English Presbyterianism is simply an im- portation from Scotland. The first Church for Scottish residents in London was formed in 1672 at Founder's Hall (now Canonbury Church) ; others fol- lowed, and these, with several old English Presbyterian Churches, formed " The Scots Presbytery" in 1760.* As the result of the evangelical revival in Scotland, the Church of Scotland began early in the nineteenth century to provide Churches for its members who had removed to Eng- land. These, with some old English congre- gations, were formed in 1836 into "the * Mr. K. Macleod Black has written an interesting history of " The Scots Churches in England." 266 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND Synod of the Scottish Church in England." This Synod could not be incorporated with the Scottish Church, but had to maintain a separate existence, because it was within the territory of the sister State Church of England. It was joined by " The Scots Presbytery" referred to above, and by the Irish Presbyterians in England. After the Scottish Disruption of 1843 this Synod was broken up. Eighteen congrega- tions adhered to the Established Church of Scotland and are represented to-day by "the Scottish Synod in England"; the rest (63 in number, of which two-thirds were old English congregations, and 35 dated from before 1750) sympathised with the Free Church of Scotland, and were formed into " The Presbyterian Church in England," all reference to Scotland being now dropped, and the Church proclaiming itself to be the English representative of the worldwide Presbyterian Church. Meantime another Presbyterian Church PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 267 had grown up by its side. What is known as the Secession from the Church of Scotland had taken place in 1733 under Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine,* and the Relief Church was formed by a similar break-off in 1752. The Secession and Relief Churches came together in 1847 to form " the United Pres- byterian Church of Scotland." The Secession Church had begun operations in London and Newcastle in 1744, and formed Presbyteries of London and Newcastle in 1820, and a Presbytery of Lancashire in 1831 ; and the Relief Church had about 100 congregations in England. These were united with those of the Secession Church, after the union in Scotland; and in 1876 the English congrega- tions of the United Presbyterian Church, together with the old English Presbyterians they had rallied round them, were united with the Presbyterian Church in England * Their father, Henry Erskine, parish minister of Corn- hill, Northumberland, was one of the English Presbyterian ministers ejected from the national Church in 1662. 268 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND to form the Presbyterian Church of England, with 10 Presbyteries and 270 congregations, of which 68 date from before 1800, and 34 trace their history back to 1662, connecting the English Presbyterianism of to-day with the Presbyterianism of Richard Baxter and Matthew Henry, of Cartwright and Bates and Calamy, of Cranmer, Bucer, and John Knox. Thus, though modern English Presbyteri- anism owes much to reinforcements received from the sister Churches of Scotland, and also from those of Ireland and Wales, it claims to be historically one with the Pres- byterianism which in former days played a foremost part in the religious and ecclesi- astical life of England. PRESENT POSITION, AIMS, AND PROSPECTS. In the thirty-two years since the Union of 1876, the Presbyteries of the Presbyterian Church of England have increased from 10 to 12 (the number that existed in London alone when the national Church was Presbyterian), PRESBYTBRIANISM IN ENGLAND 269 its congregations from 270 to 350, its member- ship from 50,000 to 87,000, its annual income from 163,000 to 307,000. By means of its Central Sustentation Fund the minister of every congregation which sends in not less than 100 annually to that Fund is assured of a salary of 200 a year, paid from head- quarters. In a little over fifty years its Foreign Mission work in China, Formosa, and the Straits Settlements, begun by the apostolic William Chalmers Burns, has established a native Presbyterian Church, which is, to a large and ever-increasing extent, self-governing, self-supporting, and self-propagating. It has 10,000 communi- cants scattered over 300 stations, 40 native pastors supported entirely by their congre- gations, 300 native evangelists and teachers, and 100 native theological students. The Church's European staff on the Foreign Field consists of about 80 workers, 17 of these (including three ladies) being fully qualified doctors. 270 PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND The Church in 1899 removed its college for the theological training of its future ministers from London to Cambridge, re- naming it Westminster College, in memory of the Presbyterian Council which was once called to the great task of re-shaping the Church life of England, in the days when Cambridge was a stronghold of Presby- terianism. The place which Westminster College and its teachers have already made for themselves in Cambridge and in the wider world of theological letters and learning is a fresh illustration of the fact that the rejuvenated Presbyterian Church of England has, with the cordial consent of all the other branches of the Church of Christ in England, had a position given to it in the common work and life of the Churches far beyond anything to which its numerical strength would entitle it. This fact encourages us to believe that Presby- terianism and the Presbyterian Church of England have not only a past to be proud PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND 271 of, but also a future to live for and work for. The early Presbyterians of our country aimed at making England Presbyterian. They had good reason for cherishing that ambition, and more than once they almost succeeded in realizing it. English Presby- terians of to-day stand for a policy not so ambitious, but more practical and not less worthy. Their belief is that there is still room for them and need for them in England ; that there is a share for them to take in meeting the present spiritual needs of the people, and a part for them to play in the evolution of the Church of the future out of the Churches into which the Church of Christ in England is at present unhappily divided. INDEX AFRICA, South, Presbyterians in, 9, 28 Alexandria, Bishop and Pres- byters at, 201 Alliance, Presbyterian, 8n, 29, 35, 52 n, 121, 133 Antwerp, Synod of, 21 Apostle, use of the term in New Testament, 207 Apostles, the, their position in the Church, 186 ff Apostolical Succession, 156, 186 ff, 203, 209, 210, 260 n Arminianism, 22, 88, 102 n Articles, the Thirty-nine, 34, 37, 88, 113, 230, 245 ; Articles of theFaith(Piesbyienan Church of England), 37, 152; ditto, (Presbyterian Church of U.S.A.), 37 Assembly, the General, 131 Augsburg, Diet of, 24 ; Confes- sion of, 35 Augustine, 88, 163 Australia, Presbyterian Church of, 8, 48, 98 Austria-Hungary, Presbyterians in, 26, 111, 148 BAIED'S "Chapter on Liturgies," 113 n Balsillie, Principal, 244 Bancroft, 11 Bannerman's " The Worship of the Presbyterian Church" 110, 119, 124 Baptism, mode and subjects of, 67 ; Infant, 69 ; Baptismal Eegeneration, 75 ; Baptist polity, 134 Barrier Act, 132 Bartholomew's Day, St., 19, 236, 254 Bates, Dr. Wm., 225, 268 Baxter, Richard, 253, 254, 255, 258, 259, 268 Belgium, Presbyterians in, 23 Beza, Theodore, 16 "Bishop," in the New Testa- ment, 178 ff ; in early Chris- tian writings, 180 ff Black, Eev. John's " Presby- terianism in England in Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries," 263 n Black, Mr. K. Macleod's, " The Scots Churches in England," Presby. Ch. 19 274 INDEX Bourbon, House of and Presby- terianism, 18 Brazil, Presbyterians in, 28 Breda, Declaration from, 253 Brownists, 120, 238 Bruce, Dr. A. B., on Liturgies, 119 Bucer, Martin, 112, 229, 230, 231, 268 Buckle, T. H., 56 Bullinger, 231 Burns, W. C., 269 Bush, Burning (emblem), 20 CALAMY, Dr. Edmund (the elder), 253, 254, 255, 268 Calamy, Dr. Edmund (the younger) 258 Calvin, his place as a Reformer, 14; Lord Morley on, 15; Mark Pattison on, 15; his " Institutes of the Christian Religion," 14, 36, 54, 87, 235; at Geneva, 15; drafts the Confessio Gallica, 18 ; his Service Book, 112; on the English Prayer Book, 115; on the Council at Jerusalem, 169 ; invited to England, 231 ; influence in England, under Elizabeth, 235 Calvinism. 87 ff ; and Arminian- ism at Synod of Dort, 22, 102 n; in the Thirty-nine Articles, 34 ; and the Gospel, 48, 99 ; moral tendency of, 96 Canada, Presbyterians in, 8 Candlish, Prof. J. S., " The Sacraments," 62 n. Candlish, Principal, 146 Cartwright, Thomas, 235, 238, 268 Catechism, Heidelberg, 24, 36 ; Larger and Shorter, 37, 245 ; Free Church, 54 n, 64, 164 Channel Islands, Presbyterian- ism established in, 237 Chapel Act, 262 n Charles I., Presbyterianism under, 241 ; and the Scottish Presbyterians, 251 ; attitude of Presbyterians to his execu- tion, 252 ; ditto of Inde- pendents, 252 Charles II., restoration of, Pres- byterian attitude, 253 China, native Presbyterian Church in, 29 Chrysostom, 181 " Church " in the New Testa- ment, 216 ff ; Church visible and invisible, 45; Church's relation to its creed, 38 ff ; Church Establishments, 20, 21, 44, 256 Classis, the, 130 Clement of Rome, 172, 181,197 Commonwealth, Presbyterian- ism under the, 252 Comprehension Bill, 259 Confession, relation of Church to its, 38 ff ; duty of revision, 39 ; adhesion required to, 47 ff Conftssions, Presbyterian, 35; Gallica, 18, 36 ; Belgica, 21, 36 ; Scottish, 36 ; Second Helvetic, 36 ; Westminster (q.v.) 36 Conforming Presbyterians, 257 INDEX 275 Congregationalism, 134, 136, 166 ff, 212 ff ; and Indepen- dency, 144, 208. (See Inde- pendents.) Consistory, the, 128 Consubstantiation, 80 Corporation Act, 240 Council of the Kirk, General, 132 Coverdale, Miles, 234 Cranmer, 112, 229, 231, 268 Creeds of the Ancient Church, Presbyterians and, 54 Cromwell, Oliver, 244, 250, 251, 252 Cromwell, Bichard, 253 Cromwell, Thomas, 229 Crown, influence of, on English Reformation, 166 Cumberland Church of U.S.A., 12,88 Cyprian and Sacerdotalism, 58; and Apostolical Succession, 156, 203 DALE, Dr. E. W., 215 11 D'Aubigne, 17 Declaratory Statements and Acts, 48, 51, 98, 102 Deissmann, Prof., 184 Denmark, Presbyterians in, 27 Diaconate, the, 129, 174 ff., 183 n, 184 n Didache, the, 181, 207, 209 Diocesan Episcopate, origin of, 202 Directory of Church Govern- ment, the Great, 237 Directory of Worship, West- minster, 245; Scottish, 245 Discipline in the New Testa- ment Church, 167 Discipline, Second Book of, 132 Disabilities of English Presby- terians, 258, 261, 263 Disruption of Church of Scot- land, 44, 266 Divine Eight Presbyterians, 152, 159 Dods, Principal, 89 n Dort, Synod of, 22, 36, 88 Douglas, J. M., on Liturgies 110 n Drysdale, D. A. H.'s, " On the use of the name ' Presbyterian by Unitarians," 53 n; "His- tory of the Presbyterians in England," 22/ra Duncan, Eev. Andrew, letter from Gladstone to, 124 n. Dykes, Principal Oswald, 52 n, 55 n, 164 EDWARD VI., 112; Presbyterian- ism under, 229 ; effect of his death on Presbyterian pro- gress, 232 Elders, rule of, distinctive of Presbyterianism, 127; equality of, 129, 177, 205 ; in the New Testament Church, 166 ff mode of appointment, 173; origin of the New Testament office, 182; qualifications of 129, 211 Eliot, George, 127 n Elizabeth, Presbyterianism under, 234 England, Church of, and the Westminster Confession, 36 276 INDEX and the Free Church Cate- chism, 55 n ; its principle in worship, 108; why not Pres- hyterian, 165, 226 ff ; Pres- byterian for twelve years, 247 ff; heritage of Noncon- formists in, 255 ; the Thirty- nine Articles, 245 ; Knox's part in their preparation, 133, 230 ; the Prayer Book, 245 ; Knox's part in its preparation, 112, 113, 230, 233 ; his opinion of it, 115 ; Calvin's opinion of it, 115; Presbyterian ele- ments in it, 112. England, Presbyterianism in, 227 ff; its brief regime, 245 ff ; reasons for its failure, 248 ff ; predominance in early Nonconformity, 257 ff ; its decline, 261 ff; links between past and present, 264, 266, 268; its revival and present position, 265 ff England, the Presbyterian Church in, 266 England, the Presbyterian Church of, its formation, 267; statistics, 3, 268; its position and prospects, 268 ff ; its Twenty-four Articles of the Faith, 37, 51 ; its Declaratory Act, 49, 98 ; its formula of adhesion to the Confession, 50 ;" Church Praise," 121 n; its Synod, 131 ; its Presbyteries, 130 n ; its Diaconate, 177 n; train- ing of its ministers, 211, 270; its foreign missions, 269 ; its Sustentation Fund, 269 Episcopacy, 134, 136 ; varieties of its polity, 137 ; its Scrip- tural basis examined, 178 ff ; its historical origin, 198 ff ; abolished in England, 245, 247, 254; restored, 254; at- tempt to force it on Scotland, 241 Erastians in Westminster As- sembly, 244 ; in Long Parlia- ment, 250 Erskines, the, 267 Essex, Presbyterianism in, 247 Eusebius, 191, 192 FESTIVALS, Presbyterian atti- tude to, 122 Financial authority, the, 174 Five Mile Act, 258 Flavel, John, 255 Form of Presbyterian Church Government, 245 Founder's Hall, Scottish Church at, 265 France, Presbyterians in, 17 ; annual revision of its Creed, by reformed Church in, 41 ; Presbyterians and political freedom in, 148 ' Frankfort, English refugees at, 233 ; John Knox at, 115, 233 Free Church Council of Eng- land, its Catechism, 54 n, 64, 164 Friends, the Society of, atti- tude to Sacraments, 62; gradation of " meetings," 146 INDEX 277 Froude, J. A., on the moral tendency of Calvinism, 97 GEDDES, Jenny, 117