may perceive, that from what is said in relation to the church in scripture, nothing can justly be concluded in support of church-authority, or the privileges of churchmen, in the sensewhich these terms generally have at present.

The distinction just now taken notice of, in concurrence with the interferences between the civil magistrate and the minister of religion, or between the spiritual tribunals (as they were called) and the secular, gave rise to another dis tinction in the christian community between church and state. When the gospel was first published by the apostles, and the apostolick men that came after them, it was natural and necessary to distinguish believers from infidels, living in the same country, and under the same civil governours. The distinction between a christian church or society, and a Jewish or an idolatrous state, was perfectly intelligible. But to distinguish the church from its own members, those duly received into it by baptism, and continuing in the profession of the faith, we may venture to affirm, would have been considered then as a mere refinement, a sort of metaphysical abstraction. For where can the difference lie, when every member of the state is a member of the church, and conversely, every member of the church is a member of the state? Accordingly, no such distinction ever obtained among the Jews, nor was there any thing similar to it in any nation before the establishment of the christian religion under Constantine.

But what hath since given real significance to the distinction is, in the first place, the limitation of the term church to the clergy and the ecclesiastical judicatories, and, in the second place, the claims of independency advanced by these, as well as certain claims of power and jurisdiction, in some things differing, and in some things interfering with the claims of the magistrate. For however much connected the civil powers and church-governours are in christian states, still they are distinct bodies of men, and, in some respects, independent. Their very connexion will conduce to render them rival powers, and if so, confederate against each other. When this came actually to be the case, considering the cha racter and circumstances of the times, it will not be matter of great astonishment, that every thing contributed to give success to the encroachments of the latter upon the former.

Thomas Becket, archbishop of Canterbury, once wrote to the empress Matilda, mother of Henry II. king of England, in these words: “God has drawn his bow, and will speedily shoot from thence the arrows of death, if princes do not permit his spouse, the church, for the love of whom he had deigned to die,

to remain free, and to be honoured with the possession of those privileges and dignities, which he had purchased for her with his blood on the cross." "Whoever has read the gospel," says the noble historian*, "must be astonished to hear, that an ex"emption for clergymen from all civil justice was one of the "privileges purchased by the blood of Christ for his church." He might have said further, must be astonished to hear, as the words manifestly imply, that the church, the spouse of Jesus Christ, for the love of whom he died, is no other than the clergy, and that the heavenly blessings, (for that his kingdom was not of this world he himself plainly declared) which were the price of his blood, were, secular dominion, earthly treasure, and an unlimited licence in the commission of crimes with impunity. It is not easy to conceive a grosser perversion of the nature, design, and spirit of the gospel. Yet by means of the artful appropriation of some names, the word church in particular, and misapplication of others, such ab surdities were propagated by one side, and believed by the other. Nay, the frequency of the abuse is acknowledged, even by such Roman catholick authors as can make any pretension to discernment and candour. Fleury, the ecclesiastical historian, has pointed out the perversion of the term church in more places than one. "Peter de Blois," he tells us, "warmly recommended to the bishop of Orleans, to remon"strate with his cousin king Philip, and warn him against laying any subsidies whatever upon the clergy, in support of "the war, even though a holy war, for extending the domini"ons of the church; as nothing, he affirms, should be exact"ed from the clergy but prayers, of which the laity stand "greatly in need." Further, he acquaints us, that this zealous man wrote also to John of Coutances, whom he exhorted to employ his credit with the king of England, to maintain the dignity of the church. "She is free," says he, "by the "liberty which Jesus Christ has procured us, but to load her "with exactions, is to bring her into bondage like Hagar. If ་ your princes, under pretence of this new pilgrimage, will "render the church tributary, every son of the church ought "to resist, and die, rather than submit to servitude." The historian pertinently subjoinst, "We see here the equivocal use made in those days of the words church and liberty; as

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* Lord Littleton.

† On voit ici les equivoques ordinaires en ce tems là sur les mots d'Eglise et de Liberté; comme si l'Eglise delivrée par Jesus Christ n'étoit que le clergé, ou qu'il nous eut delivrez d'autre chose que du peché et des ceremonies legales. L. lxxiv, ch: zv. L. lxxxix, ch. cxliv.

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"if the church delivered by Jesus Christ were only the clergy, or as if our deliverance were from aught but sin and the le66 gal ceremonies." Again, from the same hand, we are informed, that, in reply to a letter from pope Boniface VIII, wherein, by the same perversion of words, the pontiff had appropriated the title church to ecclesiasticks, king Philip of France, amongst other things, wrote to him, "The church, "the spouse of Jesus Christ, does not consist of clergy only, "but of laymen also. He has delivered it from the slavery "of sin, and the yoke of the old law, and has willed, that all "who compose it, both clerks and laics, enjoy this freedom. "It was not for ecclesiasticks only that he died, nor to them "alone that he promised grace in this life, and glory in the "next. It is but by an abuse of language that the clergy arrogate peculiarly to themselves the liberty, which Jesus Christ "has purchased for us." Which of the two, the king or the priest, was the greater statesman, I know not, but it does not require a moment's hesitation to pronounce, which was the better divine. The inferiority of his holiness here, even in his own profession, compared with his majesty, in a profession not his own, is both immense and manifest.

But amongst a rude and ignorant people, in ages of barbarity and superstition, it was easy to confound, in their minds, the cause of the priest with the cause of God, in every quarrel which the former happened to have with the magistrate. I shall here remark in passing, and with it conclude the present discourse, that it is doubtful whether the word exxanoia ever occurs in the New Testament in a sense, wherein the word church is very common with us, as a name for the place of worship. There are only two passages, that I remember, which seem to convey this sense. They are both in the elę. venth chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. The first is, verse 18th, When ye come together in the church, σvepxoμsvwv juar e In Exxantia. Here, however, the word is susceptible of another interpretation, as a name for the society. Thus we say, "The lords spiritual and temporal, and the commons, in "parliament assembled," where parliament does not mean the house they meet in, but the assembly properly constituted. The other is verse 22d, Have ye not houses to eat and drink in, or despise ye the church of God? The Exxanting to des nalappoveste : where, it is urged, the opposition of exxi to onia, the church to their houses, adds a probability to this interpretation. But this plea, though plausible, is not decisive. The sacred writers are not always studious of so much accuracy in their contrasts, nor is it here necessary to the sense. The apostle's argument on my hypothesis stands thus: What

Y

can be the reason of this abuse? Is it because you have not houses of your own to eat and drink in? Or is it because you despise the christian congregation to which you belong? This, though it do not convey so exact a verbal antithesis, is, in my judgment, more in the spirit and style of the New Testament, than to speak of despising stone walls. But as to this I affirm nothing. To express the place of meeting, we find the word cywyn, as observed above, used by the apostle James. In ancient authors, the words first adopted were xxλσisplov, Exxanoias oixos, and xupiaxov, whence the words kirk and church. At length the term exxano, by a common metonymy, the thing contained for the thing containing, came to be universally em ployed in this acceptation.

LECTURE XI.

THE steps I have already mentioned and explained, ad

vancing from presbytery to parochial episcopacy, thence to prelacy or diocesan episcopacy, from that to metropolitical primacy, and thence again to patriarchal superintendency, together with those methods I have pointed out to you, where by the ministers of religion distinguished themselves from their christian brethren, insensibly prepared the minds of the people for the notion, that in ordination there was something exceedingly mysterious, and even inscrutable. It came at length not to be considered as a solemn manner of appointing a fit person to discharge the duties of the pastoral office amongst a particular flock or congregation, and of committing them to his care; but to be regarded more especially as the imprinting of a certain character, or unperceivable and incom prehensible signature on a person, a character which, though in consequence of human means employed by the proper minister it was conferred, could by no power less than omnipotence be removed. And though at first hearing, one would be apt to imagine, that by this tenet they derogated as much from the ecclesiastick power on one hand, as they enhanced it on the other, since they maintained, that the persons who gave this character, could not take it away, the effect on men's concep tions was very different. If a single ceremony, or form of words, could with as much facility withdraw as confer a gift in its nature invisible, nobody would be impressed with the conception, that any thing very wonderful had been either given or taken. The words or ceremony of ordaining would be considered as nothing more than the established mode of investing a man with the right of exercising canonically the sacred function; and the words or ceremony used in the depo sition, as the mode of stripping him of that right, or privilege, so that he should no longer be entitled to exercise it. In this way he would be under the same canonical incapacity he lay under before his ordination, which answers to what was for many ages called in the church, reducing a clergyman to lay