A Christian Directory, Part 3: Christian Ecclesiastics

(7.) It is also a ministerial duty to instruct the people personally, and to watch over them at other times, Acts xx. 20, 28. And to be examples of the flock, 1 Pet. v. 1-3. To have the rule over the people, and labour among them, and admonish them, 1 Thess. v. 12; Heb. xiii. 7, 17; 1 Tim. v. 17. To exercise holy discipline among them, Titus iii. 10; Matt. xviii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. v. To visit the sick and pray over them, James v. 14. Yea, to take care of the poor. See Dr. Hammond on 1 Cor. xii. 28. And all this cannot possibly be well done by uncertain, transient ministers, but only by a resident, stated pastor, no more than transient strangers can rule all our families, or all the christian kingdoms of the world.

(8.) And as this cannot be done but by stated pastors, so neither on transient persons ordinarily; for who can teach them that are here to-day and gone to-morrow? When the pastor should proceed from day to day in adding one instruction to another, the hearers will be gone, and new ones in their place. And how can vigilancy and discipline be exercised on such transient persons, whose faults and cases will be unknown? Or how can they mutually help each other? And seeing most in the world have fixed habitations, if they have not also fixed church relations, they must leave their habitations and wander, or else have no church communion at all.

(9.) And as this necessity of fixed pastors and flocks is confessed, so that such de facto were ordinarily settled by the apostles, is before proved, if any Scriptures may pass for proof.

The institution and settlement then of particular worshipping churches is out of doubt. And so that two forms of church government are jure divino, the universal church form, and the particular.

4. Besides this, in the apostles' days there were under Christ in the church universal, many general officers that had the care of gathering and overseeing churches up and down, and were fixed by stated relation unto none. Such were the apostles, evangelists, and many of their helpers in their days. And most christian churches think that though the apostolical extraordinary gifts, privileges, and offices cease, yet government being an ordinary part of their work, the same form of government which Christ and the Holy Ghost did settle in the first age, were settled for all following ages, though not with the same extraordinary gifts and adjuncts. Because, |Reasons for a larger episcopacy.|1. We read of the settling of that form, (viz. general officers as well as particular,) but we never read of any abolition, discharge, or cessation of the institution. 2. Because if we affirm a cessation without proof, we seem to accuse God of mutability, as settling one form of government for one age only, and no longer. 3. And we leave room for audacious wits accordingly to question other gospel institutions, as pastors, sacraments, &c. and to say that they were but for one age. 4. It was general officers that Christ promised to be with to the end of the world, Matt. xxviii. 20.

Now either this will hold true or not. If not, then this general ministry is to be numbered with the human additions to be next treated of. If it do, then here is another part of the form of government proved to be of divine institution. I say not, another church, (for I find nothing called a church in the New Testament, but the universal church and the particular,) but another part of the government of both churches, universal and particular; because such general officers are so in the universal, as to have a general oversight of the particular; as an army is headed only by the general himself, and a regiment by the colonel, and a troop by the captain: but the general officers of the army (the lieutenants-general, the majors-general, &c.) are under the lord-general in and over the army, and have a general oversight of the particular bodies (regiments and troops). Now if this be the instituted form of Christ's church government, that he himself rule absolutely as general, and that he hath some general officers under him, (not any one having a charge of the whole, but in the whole unfixedly, or as they voluntarily part their provinces,) and that each particular church have its own proper pastor, (one or more,) then who can say, that no form of church government is of divine appointment or command?

Object. But the question is only whether any sole form be of God's commanding? And whether another may not have as much said for it as this?

Answ. Either you mean another instead of this, as a competitor, or, another part conjunct with these parts.

1. If the first be your sense, then you have two works to do. 1. To prove that these before mentioned were mutable institutions, or that they were settled but disjunctively with some other, and that the choice was left indifferent to men. 2. To prove the institution of your other form (which you suppose left with this to men's free choice).

But I have already proved, that both the general and particular church form are settled for continuance as unchangeable ordinances of God. I suppose you doubt not of the continuance of Christ's supremacy, and so of the universal form: and if you will prove that church assemblies with their pastors may cease, and some other way supply the room, you must be strange and singular undertakers. The other two parts of the government (by general officers, and by consociation of churches) are more disputed; but it is the circumstances of the last only that is controverted, and not the thing; and for the other I shall now add nothing to what I have said elsewhere.308

2. But if you only mean that another part of the form may be jure divino as well as this, that will but prove still that some form is jure divino.

But, 3. If you mean that God having instituted the forms now proved, hath left man at liberty to add more of his own, I shall now come to examine that case also.

Quest. LVII. Whether any forms of churches, and church government, or any new church officers, may lawfully be invented and made by man?

Answ. To remove ambiguities, 1. By the word forms may be meant either that relative form of such aggregate bodies which is their essence, and denominateth them essentially; or only some accidental mode which denominateth them but accidentally.

2. By churches is meant either holy societies related by the foundation of a divine institution; or else societies related by accident, or by human contract only.

3. By church government is meant, either that government formally ecclesiastical, which constituteth a church, of Christ's making; or else some government about the matters of the church, which is formally either magistratical or human, (by contract,) &c.

4. So by church officers are meant, either such as are accounted essential to a church in the pure christian sense; or integral at least (as deacons); or else such as are accounted but accidental to it, and essential only to the human form. And so I answer,

1. As there are some things circa sacra, or accidents of God's special church worship, which are left to human prudence to determine of, so the same human prudence may determine who shall do them. As, e. g. Who shall repair the buildings of the church; the windows, the bells, the pulpits, the tables, &c.; who shall keep the clock; who shall keep the cups, cloths, and other utensils; who shall be the porter, the keeper of the books, &c.; who shall call the people to church, or ring the bells, or give them notice of church assemblies; who shall make the bread for the sacrament, or provide wine, or bring water for baptism; who shall make the graves, and bury the dead, or attend marriages, or baptizings, &c.; who shall set the tune of the psalm, or use the church music (if there be any); who shall summon any of the people on any just occasion to come to their pastors; or who shall summon the pastors to any synod, or lawful assembly, and give them notice of the time and place; when they are to meet, who shall be called first, and who second; who shall sit highest, and who lowest; who shall take the votes, or moderate or guide the disputations of the assembly; who shall be the scribe, and record what is done; who shall send abroad their agreements, and who shall be the church messenger to carry them. The agents of such circumstantials maybe chosen by the magistrate, or by the churches, or pastors, as is most convenient. Though I doubt not but in the beginning the deacons were mere servants to the pastors, to do as much of such circumstantial work as they were able; of which serving at tables, and looking to the poor, and carrying bread and wine to the absent, &c. were but parts; and all went under the name of ministering to the pastors or churches. And therefore they seem to be such an accidental office, appointed by the apostles, on such common reasons, as magistrates or churches might have appointed them, if they had not.

2. If one will call all or many of these, church officers, and another will not, it is but a strife about names, which one will use more largely and the other more narrowly or strictly.

3. If magistrates by authority, or the churches by agreement, shall distribute the country for conveniency into parishes, (not making all to be church members that dwell in those precincts, but determining that all persons that are fit in those proximities, and they only, shall be members of that particular church,) and then shall denominate the church from this accident of place, it is but what is left to their discretion.

4. And if the said magistrates or churches shall divide a kingdom into provinces, and say, that whereas God commandeth us the use of correspondencies, mutual advice, and synods, for the due help, concord, and communion of churches, and all things must be done in order and to edification; therefore we determine that so many churches shall make up such a synod, and the churches of such a district shall make up another synod, and so shall be specially related to each other for concord as advisers, all this is but the prudent determining of church circumstances or accidents left to man.

5. And if they shall appoint that either a magistrate or one pastor shall be for order's sake the appointer of the times and places of meeting, or the president of the synod, to regulate and order proceedings, and keep peace, as is aforesaid, it is but an accident of the sacred work which man may determine of. Therefore a layman may be such a president or regulator.

6. And if they will call this man by the name of a church governor, who doth but a common part therein, and from thence will call this association or province by the name of a church, which is but a company of churches associated for concord and counsel, the name maketh it not another thing than it is without that name; and the name may be lawful or unlawful as times and probable consequents make it fit or unfit as to use.

7. So much of church matters as is left to the magistrate's government, may be under monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy, and under such subordinate officers as the supreme ruler shall appoint.

8. And if the magistrate will make assemblies or councils of pastors, to be his councils, and require them frequently to meet to advise him in the performance of his own trust and work about religion and the church, he may accordingly distribute them into provinces for that use, or order such circumstances as he please.

9. And if a province of churches be called one church, because it is under one magistrate, or a nation of churches called a national church, because it is under one king, or many kingdoms or an empire called one catholic church, because they are all under one emperor; it must be confessed that this question is but de nomine, and not de re.

And further, 1. That in sacred things that which is of divine and primary institution is the famosius analogatum, and not that which is but formed by man. 2. That when such an ambiguous word is used without explication or explicating circumstances, it is to be taken for the famosius analogatum. 3. That in this case the word church or church form is certainly ambiguous and not univocal. 4. That a national, imperial, or provincial church as headed by a king, emperor, magistrate, or any head of man's appointment, is another thing from a church of Christ's institution; and is but an accident or adjunct of it: and the head of the human form, if called the head of the church of Christ, is but an accidental head, and not constitutive. And if Christ's churches be denominated from such a head, they are denominated but from an accident, as a man may be denominated clothed or unclothed, clothed gorgeously or sordidly, a neighbour to this man or that, &c. It is no formal denomination of a church in the first acception, as it signifieth the famosius analogatum; though otherwise many kind of societies may be called ecclesiæ or cœtus: but divines should not love confusion.

10. It seemeth to me that the first distribution of churches in the Roman empire, into patriarchal, primates, metropolitical, provincial, diocesan, were only the determination of such adjuncts or extrinsic things, partly by the emperors, and partly by the church's consent upon the emperor's permission; and so that these new church governments were partly magistratical, or by power derived from the emperors, and partly mere agreements or contracts by degrees degenerating into governments; and so the new forms and names are all but accidental, of adjuncts of the true christian churches. And though I cannot prove it unlawful to make such adjunctive or extrinsic constitutions, forms, and names, considering the matter simply itself, yet by accident these accidents have proved such to the true churches, as the accident of sickness is to the body, and have been the causes of the divisions, wars, rebellions, ruins, and confusions of the christian world. 1. As they have served the covetousness and ambition of carnal men. 2. And have enabled them to oppress simplicity and sincerity. 3. And because princes have not exercised their own power themselves, nor committed it to lay officers, but to churchmen. 4. Whereby the extrinsic government hath so degenerated, and obscured the intrinsic, and been confounded with it, that both going under the equivocal name of ecclesiastical government, few churches have had the happiness to see them practically distinct.309 Nay, few divines do clearly in their controversy distinguish them. (Though Marsilius Patavinus and some few more have formerly given them very fair light, yet hath it been but slenderly improved.)

11. There seemeth to me no readier and directer way, to reduce the churches to holy concord, and true reformation, than for the princes and magistrates who are the extrinsic rulers, to re-assume their own, and to distinguish openly and practically between the properly priestly or pastoral intrinsic office, and their extrinsic part, and to strip the pastors of all that is not intrinsically their own (it being enough for them, and things so heterogeneous not well consisting in one person): and then when the people know what is claimed as from the magistrate only, it will take off most of their scruples as to subjection and consent.

12. No mortal man may abrogate or take down the pastoral office, and the intrinsic, real power thereof, and the church form which is constituted thereby; seeing God hath instituted them for perpetuity on earth.

13. But whether one church shall have one pastor or many is not at all of the form of a particular church; but it is of the integrity or gradual perfection of such churches as need many, to have many, and to others not so: not that it is left merely to the will of man, but it is to be varied as natural necessity and cause requireth.

14. The nature of the intrinsic office or power (anon to be described) is most necessary to be understood as distinct from the power of magistrates, by them that would truly understand this. The number of governors in a civil state make that which is called a variety of forms of commonwealths, monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy: because commanding power is the thing which is there most notably exercised, and primarily magnified. And a wiser and better man, yea, a thousand, must stand by as subjects, for want of authority or true power; which can be but in one supreme, either natural or political person; because it cannot consist in the exercise with self-contradiction. If one be for war, and another for peace, &c. there is no rule. Therefore the many must be one collective or political person, and must consent or go by the major vote, or they cannot govern. But that which is called government in priests or ministers, is of another nature; it is but a secondary subservient branch of their office: the first parts are teaching and guiding the people, as their priests, to God in public worship: and they govern them by teaching, and in order to further teaching and worshipping God; and that not by might, but by reason and love. Of which more anon. Therefore if a sacred congregation be taught and conducted in public worship, and so governed as conduceth hereunto, whether by one, two, or many, it no more altereth the form of the church, than it doth the form of a school, when a small one hath one schoolmaster, and a great one four: or of an hospital, when a small one hath one physician, and a great one many; seeing that teaching in the one, and healing in the other, is the main denominating work, to which government is but subservient in the most notable acts of it.

15. No mortal man may take on him to make another church, or another office for the church, as a divine thing, on the same grounds, and of the same nature pretendedly as Christ hath made those already made. The case of adding new church officers or forms of churches, is the same with that of making new worship ordinances for God, and accordingly to be determined (which I have largely opened in its place). Accidents may be added. Substantials of like pretended nature may not be added; because it is a usurping of Christ's power, without derivation by any proved commission; and an accusing of him, as having done his own work imperfectly.

16. Indeed no man can here make a new church officer of this intrinsic sort, without making him new work, which is to make new doctrine, or new worship (which are forbidden): for to do God's work already made belongs to the office already instituted. If every king will make his own officers, or authorize the greater to make the less, none must presume to make Christ officers and churches without his commission.

17. No man must make any office, church, or ordinance, which is corruptive or destructive, or contrary or injurious to the offices, churches, and ordinances which Christ himself hath made. This Bellarmin confesseth, and therefore I suppose protestants will not deny it. Those human officers which usurp the work of Christ's own officers, and take it out of their hands, do malignantly fight against Christ's institutions: and while they pretend that it is but preserving and not corrupting or opposing additions which they make, and yet with these words in their mouths, do either give Christ's officers' work to others, or hinder and oppress his officers themselves, and by their new church forms undermine or openly destroy the old, by this expression of their enmity they confute themselves.

18. This hath been the unhappy case of the Roman frame of church innovations, as you may observe in the particulars of its degeneracy.

(1.) Councils were called general or œcumenical in respect to one empire only; and they thence grew to extend the name to the whole world; when they may as well say, that Constantine, Martian, &c. were emperors of the whole world, seeing by their authority they were called.

(2.) These councils at first were the emperor's councils called to direct him what to settle in church orders by his own power; but they were turned to claim an imposing authority of their own to command the churches as by commission from God.

(3.) These councils at first were only for counsel, or for agreement by way of contract or mutual consent to the particular bishops; but they degenerated into a form of government, and claimed a ruling and commanding power.

(4.) The patriarchs, primates and metropolitans, at first claimed but a power about circumstantials extrinsical to the pastoral office, such as is the timing and placing of councils, the sitting above others, &c. And the exercise of some part of the magistrate's power committed to them, that is, the deposing of other bishops or pastors from their station of such liberty and countenance as the magistrate may grant or deny as there is cause. But in time they degenerated to claim the spiritual power of the keys, over the other bishops, in point of ordination, excommunication, absolution.

(5.) These patriarchs, primates, and metropolitans, at first claimed their extrinsic power but from man, that is, either the consent and agreement of the churches, or the grant of the emperors: but in time they grew to claim it as of divine or apostolical appointment, and as unalterable.

(6.) At first they were taken only for adjuncts, ornaments, supports, or conveniences to the churches: but afterwards they pretended to be integral parts of the church universal, and at last the pope would needs be an essential part; and his cardinals must claim the power of the church universal in being the choosers of a universal head, or a king priest and teacher for all the christians of the world.

(7.) At first laymen (now called chancellors, &c.) were only the bishops' counsellors, or officers to the magistrate or them, in performing the extrinsical work about church adjuncts, which a layman might do: but at last they came to exercise the intrinsic power of the keys in excommunications and absolutions, &c.

(8.) At first a number of particular churches consociated with their several bishops, were taken to be a community or company of true churches prudentially cantonized or distributed and consociated for concord; but after they grew to be esteemed proper political societies, or churches of divine appointment, if not the ecclesia minimæ, having turned the particular churches into oratories or chapels, destroying Ignatius's character of one church, To every church there is one altar, and one bishop with his presbyters and deacons. Abundance more such instances may be given.

Object. Wherever we find the notion of a church particular, there must be government in that church; and why a national society incorporated into one civil government, joining into the profession of christianity, and having a right thereby to participate of gospel ordinances, in the convenient distributions of them in the particular congregations, should not be called a church, I confess I can see no reason.

Answ. 1. Here observe, that the question is only of the name, (whether it may be called a church,) and not of the thing (whether all the churches in a kingdom may be under one king, which no sober man denieth).

2. Names are at men's disposal much; but I confess I had rather the name had been used no otherwise, or for no other societies, than Scripture useth it. My reasons are, (1.) Because when Christ hath appropriated or specially applied one name to the sacred societies of his institution, it seemeth somewhat bold to make that name common to other societies. (2.) Because it tendeth to confusion, misunderstanding, and to cherish errors and controversies in the churches, when all names shall be made common or ambiguous, and holy things shall not be allowed any name proper to themselves, nor any thing can be known by a bare name without a description. If the name of Christ himself should be used of every anointed king, it would seem not a little thus injurious to him. If the name, Bible, Scripture, preachers, &c. be made common to all that the notation of the names may extend to, it will introduce the aforesaid inconveniences; so how shall we in common talk distinguish between sacred societies of divine institution and of human if you will allow us no peculiar name, but make that common which Christ hath chosen?

3. And that the name is here used equivocally is manifest. For the body political is informed and denominated from the pars imperans, the governing part or head: therefore as a head of divine institution, authorized for the spiritual or pastoral work, denominateth the society accordingly; so a civil head can make but a civil society, and a head of man's making, but a human society. It is certain that Christ hath appointed the episcopal or pastoral office, and their work, and consequently episcopal or pastoral churches; and it is certain that a king is no constitutive part of one of these churches, but accidental; and therefore that he is an accidental head to a pastoral church as such, to which the pastor is essential.