CHAPTER XI.

The Branches of the Church separately responsible for

the Joint-Trust.

66 THEN SHALL THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN BE LIKENED UNTO TEN VIRGINS, WHICH TOOK THEIR LAMPS, AND WENT FORTH TO MEET THE BRIDEGROOM: AND FIVE OF THEM WERE WISE, AND FIVE WERE FOOLISH."-Matth. xxv. 1, 2.

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ALL THE CHURCHES SHALL KNOW THAT I AM HE WHICH SEARCHETH THE REINS AND HEARTS; AND I WILL GIVE UNTO EVERY ONE OF YOU ACCORDING TO YOUR WORKS."-Rev. ii. 23.

We have, in the last chapter, considered the Church in her descent through successive generations of men, who in different ages of the world constitute her body; and we now proceed to view her in her ramifications over the surface of the globe, for the purpose of ascertaining whether her responsibility be a collective one of all the branches conjointly, or whether any single branch, possessing the entire trust, and sufficient powers for its administration, be separately responsible to the full extent of the trust. In the main the issue of this question must depend on the general

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principles laid down at the opening of the preceding chapter, in reference to the necessary connexion between power and responsibility; but before those principles can be brought to bear upon it, a preliminary point must be determined, which could not, from the nature of things, arise as between different generations of the church succeeding each other in time, but which obviously suggests itself, when the question turns upon the responsibility of different cotemporary branches of the church catholic. With regard to these it may be, and it has been, argued, that their responsibility may be discharged by the conjoint exercise of the authority vested in them all; nay, that it can be properly discharged only by such joint exercise. No such plea can be set up in respect of successive generations of the church, for the simple reason that one generation only exists at each time; that the different generations cannot take counsel together; and that therefore each of them must of necessity exercise a separate discretion in the performance of the various offices connected with the authority vested in the church.

There are two grounds on which the necessity of a conjoint exercise of the authority of all the branches of the church catholic, in order to render the acts done by the church valid, has been, and still is, maintained by a large portion of the

nominal professors of Christ's religion. The first of these grounds is taken by many in our own church, defensively against the usurpations on the one hand of the church of Rome, and against the encroachments on the other hand of the so-called right of private judgment; and the position assumed by them is substantially this: that the universal church, whenever she does exercise her united judgment, is infallible; and not only so, but that an infallible and binding decision on any disputed point can be obtained only by an appeal to this infallible judgment of the universal church. The second ground, against which our church has entered her solemn protest, is that taken by the Roman church, according to whose doctrine the Bishop of Rome, as the head of the universal church, not only has the sole authority of calling forth the voice of her infallible judgment, but, by virtue of his supremacy, conserves this infallibility of judgment in all those branches of the church, which remain in communion with him, and subject to his sway, against all other branches, which may repudiate his supremacy, and withdraw from his communion; in other words, communion with and subjection to the Bishop of Rome is, according to this view of the church, catholicity; separation from his communion and denial of his authority, is schism.

As regards this latter, or Roman, doctrine of church unity and infallibility, it is unnecessary here to enter into the question farther than simply to point out, that the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome over the church catholic, which is the very root and essence of that doctrine, is an assumption wholly unsupported by Scripture, and flatly contradicted by ecclesiastical documents of unquestioned authenticity. First, as to Scripture dismissing for a moment from our minds the obvious sense already touched upon in the preceding parts of our inquiry, of the celebrated passage, in which" the power of the keys" is conferred by our Saviour upon St. Peter, and allowing, for argument's sake, that St. Peter and his successors were thereby invested with supremacy over the whole church, and with an arbitrary power of receiving into, and excluding from, the body of Christ's church upon earth, individuals as well as entire ecclesiastical bodies, we have as yet not a particle of evidence in support of the claim preferred by the Bishop of Rome; on the contrary, with such a view of the power of the keys we are constrained to award the supremacy to the church at Jerusalem, the first church

Matt. xvi. 17-19. See, with regard to the sense in which the church is built upon St. Peter, ch. ii. and iii.; and with regard to the power of the keys, ch. ix.

founded by St. Peter, not only because the canonical records of the apostolic labours show him to have maintained a leading position in her, but because no church was so well fitted as the church at Jerusalem, for perpetuating the prerogative of him to whom "the apostleship of the circumcision was committed;" or if we must needs cast off that church which confessedly was the mother of all the churches, and, forsaking Israel of old, the stock into which the Gentile branches of the spiritual Israel are grafted, award the supremacy to a Gentile church, our eyes would naturally be directed towards Cæsarea, where St. Peter founded the first of all the Gentile churches; but in no case should we be led to associate St. Peter's pre-eminence with the see of Rome, which is not once mentioned in Scripture in connexion with that Apostle,* an omission wholly unaccountable, if it be true that the supremacy of the Roman pontiff is of the very essence of Christianity. But while Scripture thus furnishes not even the shadow of a pretence for such

y Gal. ii. 7, 8.

Some, indeed, conjecture that in the passage 1 Pet. v. 13, the Apostle designates Rome under the disguised appellation "Babylon;" but even if this interpretation were as legitimate, as it is untenable, we apprehend the Bishop of Rome loses more than he gains by it, considering the character, so broadly marked, especially in the New Testament, of the typical Babylon.