Episcopacy has been adopted by the State in England, has been established, and is patronised and supported. Presbytery has acquired the same status in Scotland, while Independency is unconnected with the State in both lands. But it is not essential to Episcopacy and Presbytery that they should be thus in alliance with the State; nor is it essential to Independency, that it should not be in alliance with the State.

The Churches founded by the Pilgrim Fathers in America on what was called the Independent platform, were in close alliance with the civil government, and received State support. We, Independents of the present day, may regard such alliance and support as a violation of one of our fundamental principles. And we are right in believing that principles which we hold very sacred, such as the purity and spirituality of our membership, cannot be practically maintained if dependent on State support or subject to State control. But that which constitutes the strict differentia between Independency and Episcopacy or Presbytery, is not that it may not, while they may be embodied in the form of a State Church.

Nor are we to look for the essential difference in the various forms of worship which have place among us. Episcopalians might abjure all liturgies, and yet their Episcopacy remain pure and absolute. Presbyterians and Independents might adopt a liturgical service, and not be in the least degree inconsistent with the distinctive principles of their respective forms of government. It may be very natural, but still it is a mistake, to assume that, because a liturgy is uniformly associated with Episcopacy in

VOL. I.-NEW SERIES.

It is thus evident at once, that the accidents of a form of government may be more important than its essence. It is an accident of any of the three forms we have named, and of which all others are modifications, more or less true to their central principle,— that is, it is not of its essence, whether, for example, it should be Trinitarian or Unitarian. But here the accident is more important than the essence. It is far more important that a Church should be Trinitarian than that it should be Episcopalian, or Presbyterian, or Independent; and hence a man, holding the Episcopalian theory of government, would not be acting inconsistently in forsaking a Unitarian Episcopacy to connect himself with a Trinitarian Independency. He would be only sacrificing the less to the greater, and equally so if the supposition be made of a Presbyterian, or Independent doing likewise.

It is not a thing to be wondered at then, nor within certain limits is it a thing to be condemned, that men's choice of a denomination, or of their ecclesiastical position, should be deter

E

essence.

mined rather by the accidents of Church government than by their The Established Church of England is Episcopalian, but very few leave it because of its Episcopacy. Should a man come to believe that Episcopacy does not rest on divine. authority, it will be his duty to connect himself with a Church whose government he believes does, provided he can find in connexion with that other Church the higher essentials of a true Church, sound doctrine and such means of grace as will strengthen the spiritual life in his soul. But it is more for other reasons than for this that men leave the Established Church. Some leave it because of its connexion with the State. They come to the conviction that this alliance is evil, and only evil. Instead of the Church's strength, they believe it to be the Church's weakness. Instead of finding in it a preservative of faith and godliness, they discover in it a source of corruption and error. The actual good which they know to be in the Church, they believe to be there, not because of, but in spite of, its connection with the State; and its severance from the State they would regard not as its destruction, but as the greatest blessing which its friends could desire, and the beginning and precursor of a reformation which is impossible so long as the State is its master. Meantime, as the Church will not be separated from the State they must separate themselves from the Church, even while they have no objection to its Episcopacy or its Liturgy.

Others reach the same practical issue in other ways. Some are affected by the indiscriminate mixture of doctrine, ranging from a system whose

shading off from Romanism is of the faintest character to a system that comes painfully near to infidelity, which is tolerated, and even obtains legal sanction within its pale. Some cannot away with the practical corruption of its fellowship. Some are scandalised by the way in which what is called the cure of souls is bartered, the right to appoint the pastors of the people being an article of public merchandise. Some have no other reason for leaving the Established Church than that its formularies teach, that in baptism children are regenerated and made children of God and heirs of His kingdom. Some do not find a Liturgy conducive to their devotion, and seek a spiritual home in which free prayer is offered; while others have no reason for leaving the Established Church but that they happen to find elsewhere a ministry, if not better in itself, at least more suited to their tastes or more profitable to their hearts. But it will be seen that in none of these cases does the cause of separation affect the theoretic difference between one form of Church government and another. And we have still to find out wherein the essential difference consists.

First, as to Episcopacy, it seems to us that we are to find the essence of it in the doctrine of three ministerial orders, Deacon, Presbyter, and Bishop,-the Bishop constituting an order distinct from that of Presbyter, and superior to it. Leaving out of view the peculiar idea which Episcopalians have of the Deacon's office, their idea of the distinction between Presbyter and Bishop is their speciality, and that on which depends everything that distinguishes them from others. The idea may be embodied as in a papacy,

in which one bishop is raised to primacy over all the bishops of all lands; or in a prelacy in which the bishops are invested with the honours and privileges of peers of the realm; or in the humbler Episcopate of the Episcopalian Church in Scotland, whose bishops have no civil status other than that which the ministers

of other communions possess. The powers given to the bishop may vary in different ages and in different countries. They may be determined and regulated by civil law, as in England, or may depend entirely on the will of the Church, as in Scotland. They may be exercised by the bishop according to his own absolute discretion, as in some cases, or in concert with a council or synod of Presbyters, as in others. But with all these and other varieties, the one distinction of Episcopacy, is the superiority of the order of Bishops to that of Presbyters. And it is because of the want of bishops of this superior order, that Presbyterian and Independent Churches are regarded as essentially defective and incomplete. Learning, piety, zeal, sound doctrine, good and peaceful order, go for nothing in the absence of bishops. The Church which wants these is held to be unapostolic and uncatholic. It has separated itself from the great Church of the ages that are past, and can never be but a stunted and decrepit thing.

Now one would imagine that those who hold Bishops of an order superior to Presbyters to be so important, and even essential to a perfectly constituted Church, must feel very sure that the distinction is Scriptural, and was recognised in the Churches which were planted by apostles. But it is There are very few Episco

not so.

palian interpreters of the New Testament, who do not confess, what seems too plain to be denied, that Bishop and Presbyter, in the Acts of the Apostles, and in the Epistles, are but two names of one office, and of one class of Christian ministers. And whatever be the ground on which they justify the after development of one of the Presbyters into a Bishop par excellence, a Bishop of Presbyters, the fact that it took place after the times of Paul, should make them more modest than they are in the assertion of their claims, and may help us to feel very much at our ease in wanting a class of office-bearers, which the Church in Ephesus, and the Church in Philippi, and other Churches under the immediate guidance of the Apostle Paul, wanted likewise.

As to Presbyterianism, while with Independency it rejects the distinction which forms the essence of Episcopacy, it differs from Independency in denying to the people a direct share in the exercise of their own government and discipline, and in making the exercise of government the exclusive business of the elders or Presbyters. We may put out of view all questions respecting the distinction between a ruling elder, and an elder who shall be both a teaching and a ruling elder, because the distinction, at least as a permanency, is denied by some Presbyterians, while it is admitted by some Independents. The essence of Presbyterianism is to be found in the exclusiveness of the jurisdiction with which the elders or Presbyters of each congregation are invested, and in the united jurisdiction, which the elders or Presbyters of a district claim over all the congregations of the district. There is, first,

the exclusive jurisdiction of the elders. The people, that is the membership of each congregation, may elect their elders, and in all free Presbyterian Churches they do. But having elected them, their power ceases. The elders (including the minister who is himself an elder) exercise all government and discipline, without the voice or concurrence of the people.

If the system stopped here, we might have what we should call Independent Presbyterian ChurchesChurches governed by its own Presbyters, but independent of other Churches. But Presbyterianism goes farther. It unites Church with Church, all the Churches of its order that are neighbouring to each other, not for the purposes merely of Christian communion and mutual aid, but for the purpose of a common government. While the elders of each congregation are the primary rulers of that congregation, the united elders of the congregations, within a given district, are the common rulers of the whole. The elders themselves are subject to their peers in this union of elders, usually called a Presbytery, and to this Presbytery or union of elders, appeals may be carried by individual members of congregations, who may think that their own elders have not judged rightly. If the congregations are very numerous, and the district over which they are spread is very large, this principle of subordination may be indefinitely extended. Thus in Scotland, both the Established Church and the Free Church, have first their session, then their presbytery, then their synod, and then their general assembly. But you have a complete embodiment of Presbyterian

ism wherever you have these two things; first, each Church or congregation ruled by its elders, without the voice of the people; and, secondly, the elders of the Churches or congregations of a district recognised as a court for the common government of all.

We have nothing to do at present with the supposed advantages or disadvantages of this system, nor can we now examine the grounds of Scripture on which it is ordinarily placed-only remarking that if the principles of Independency can be proved to be Scriptural, those of Presbyterianism

cannot.

The essence of Independency is to be found in each Church declining the authoritative jurisdiction of other Churches, and in its admitting the membership of each Church to a voice in the administration of its own affairs. Take the second of these principles first. Our membership has a voice in the administration of its Own affairs. The Bishop or Presbyter, or, if there be more than one, the Bishops or Presbyters, of an Independent Church, are rulers, but they exercise their rule in concurrence with the voice of the people over whom they rule. And we think the evidence is clear that in those things which constitute what we may call the staple of Church business-the admission of members, and discipline over members, even to the point of their exclusion-the private members of the Primitive Churches took part with the bishops or elders. It was the Church at Corinth, when "gathered together" (1 Cor. v. 4), not the elders of the Church, that was instructed by the apostle to put out from among them the man whose flagrancy in crime

had brought reproach on the Saviour's

name.

And it was the same body that was afterwards to restore him on proof of his repentance. Our Presbyterian brethren plead for the right of the Christian people to elect their own pastors or presbyters, and we are one with them in this. But there seems to us to be far less direct evidence for the right of the people to elect their presbyters than there is for their right to take part with their presbyters in the exercise of discipline. And it is in the claim and exercise of this right that we find one essential difference between Independency and Presbytery.

As to the other essential principle of Independency, the non-subjection of one Church to the jurisdiction of another Church, we only claim for it at present the support of this fact that we can find no trace in the Acts of the Apostles, or in the Epistles, of any interference by one Church with the discipline of another. Churches. are instructed how to act in the matter of their own discipline, but no provision is made or implied for the exercise of a common government over the Churches of a district or province.

That these principles have not always been well worked we admit. Our independence in government has

degenerated sometimes into a practical separation and isolation and indifference to each other's good opinion and each other's weal, which are very alien to the idea of one holy communion in Christ. And our Congregationalism in the administration of each Church's affairs has many times led to anarchy. But practical isolation and anarchy may be found likewise in Episcopalian and Presbyterian Churches. And if we admit that our Independency is more liable to these abuses than other forms of government, we must hold that it is less liable to another abuse, that of tyranny. And if we come to measure the evil of abuses, it would be difficult to say whether anarchy or tyranny is the greater. Tyranny is not a necessary consequence of Episcopacy or Presbytery. But neither is anarchy a necessary consequence of Independency. And, believing as we do, that our form of government is based on the practice of the Apostolic Churches, we cannot doubt that it is the best embodiment of the two great principles of freedom and law, and that, wisely administered, it will conduce better than any other to the great spiritual ends for which the Church of Christ exists in the world.

Sermons by HENRY WARD BEECHER.. Vol. I. London: Heaton and Son. THESE sermons cannot be regarded as models either in style or in thought; but there is much in their style and thought that arrests and fixes attention. It would be easy to hold up to serious reprehension crudities of opinion and defects of doctrine. But all we can do in these lines is to say that those who know and admire Mr. Beecher and his preaching will find here his usual power and freshness. And

few can study the volume, if they do it with intelligence and discrimination, without some healthy stirrings of heart and intellect.

Ministering Angels. By the Rev. ROBERT MEEK, M.A., Sutton Bonington, Notts. London: Nisbet and Co.

THE Rector of Sutton Bonington does not "intrude into things not seen." His little volume contains a sober and Scriptural statement of all that is known of minister. ing angels.