bates, could invalidate the legitimate ex- as against God;-that a man could b ercise of that power. Indeed, since there authorized either to absolve the impen is hardly any human government that has tent, or to shut out from divine mercy the not, at some time or other, abused, more penitent; or again, to read the heart, so or less, the power entrusted to it, to deny to distinguish between the two, witho on that ground all claims whatever to an express inspiration in each particula submission would be the very principle case. of anarchy.

PENALTIES FOR ECCLESIASTICAL OFFENCES.

condition being, the real sincerity of that penitence and faith which the converts appeared and professed to have."

§ 6. But although this is the only sense in which the Apostles, or of course any of their successors in the Christian ministry, can be empowered to "forgive sins" as against God; i. e. though they can only pronounce and proclaim his forgiveness of all those who come to Him through Christ, and assure each individual of his acceptance with God, supposing him to be one of "those who truly repent and unfeignedly believe," yet offences, as against a Community, may, it is plain, be pardoned, or pardon for them withheld, by that Community, or by those its officers who duly represent it.

27

which, in each case, God only, or those to whom He may impart the knowledge, can adequately judge.

When Paul says to the Corinthians in reference* to that member of their Church who had caused a scandal by his offence, "to whomsoever ye forgive any thing, I forgive it also," though I am far from saying that the offender's sin against God was not pardoned, it is quite plain this is not what the Apostle is here speaking of. He is speaking of a case in which they and he were not merely to announce, but to bestow forgiveness. They were to receive back the offender, who had scandalized the Society, into the bosom of that Society, on his professing with sincerity, or rather apparent sincerity (for of that Whether our Lord intended, in what alone they could be judges) his contrition. He said of "remitting and retaining sins," They would, of course-as believing to include (as seems to me a probable those his professions-cherish a confident supposition) this power of inflicting or hope that his sin against God was par removing ecclesiastical censures for trans-doned. But doubtless they did not pregressions of the regulations of a Society, tend either to an omniscient discernment we may be perhaps not authorized posi- of his sincerity, or to the power either tively to conclude; but at any rate, such of granting divine pardon to the impenia power is inherent necessarily in every tent, or of excluding from God's mercy Community, so far as not expressly re- the repentant sinner. served for some superior jurisdiction: regulations of some sort or other, and consequently enforcement of those regulations by some kind of penalties, being essential to a Community, and implied in the nature of it.

very

But what leads to confusion of thought in some minds is, that the same action may often have two distinct characters, according to the light in which it is viewed; whether as a sint against God, or as a crime in reference to the Community; and hence they are sometimes led to confound together the pardoning of the crime-the offence against the Community with the pardoning of the sin. Now the regularly-appointed Ministers-the Officers of a Community may be authorized to enforce or remit penalties against the ecclesiastical offence, the crime in reference to the Community; and may pronounce an absolute and complete pardon of a particular offender, for a particular act, on his making the requisite submission and reparation, and appearing out wardly, as far as man can judge, a proper subject for such pardon; while the pardon of sin as against God must be conditional on that hearty inward repentance, of

§ 7. Then again, with respect to the "Keys of the Kingdom of Heaven" which our Lord promised (Matt. xvi. 19.) to give to Peter, the Apostles could not, I

* 2 Cor. ii. 10.

it would be most unwarrantable to make it an There seems good reason to believe, though article of faith,-that Peter really was the chief of the Apostles; not, certainly, in the sense of exercising any supremacy and absolute control over them, as dictating to their consciences,-as finally deciding all cases of doubt-or as claiming any right to interfere in the Churches other Apostles had founded, (See Gal. ii. 7-9 and 11-14,) but as the chief in dignity; taking precedence of the rest, and acting as President, Chairman, or Speaker in the meetings. Peter, and James, and John, and sometimes Peter, and James,—always tinguished, as appears from numerous passages in with Peter placed foremost, were certainly disthe Gospels, from the rest of the Apostles. He was apparently the chief Spokesman on the day of Pentecost, when the Jewish Believers were first called on to unite themselves into a Church; and he was the chosen instrument in founding the first Church of the (" devout") Gentiles, opening

the door of the Kingom of Heaven to Cornelius

and his friends.

I need hardly add, that to claim on that account for Peter's supposed successors such supreme jurisdiction over the whole Church-universal, as he himself neither exercised nor clained, would be most extravagant. Moreover, since whatever pre-eminence he did possess, was confessedly not

* See Speech of Bishop Stanley in the House conferred on him as Bishop of Rome, his supposed

of Lords, May 26, 1840.

†See Warburton's Div. Leg.

successors in that See cannot, manifestly, have any claim to that pre-eminence; any more than

conceive, doubt that He was fulfilling that promise, to Peter and to the rest of them conjointly, when He "appointed unto them a Kingdom," and when, on the day of Pentecost, He began the building of His Church, and enabled them, with Peter as their leader and chief spokesman, to open a door for the entrance of about three thousand converts at once; who received daily accessions to their number. The Apostles, and those commissioned by them, had the office of granting admission into the Society from time to time, to such as they judged qualified.*

notices in the sacred writers; but all the notices we do find, go to confirm—if confirmation could be wanted-what has been just said, as to the sense in which our Lord must have been understood—and consequently, in which He must have meant to be understood-by his Disciples.

And among the important facts which we can collect and fully ascertain from the sacred historians, scanty and irregular and imperfect as are their records of particulars, one of the most important is that very scantiness and incompleteness in the detail; that absence of any full and systematic description of the formation and For we

may

And that this Society or Church-regulation of Christian Communities, that was "that Kingdom of Heaven" of which the keys were committed to them, and which they had before proclaimed as "at hand," they could not doubt. They could not have been in any danger of cherishing any such presumptuous dream, as that they or any one else, except their divine Master, could have power to give or refuse admittance to the mansions of immortal bliss.

On

has been just noticed.
plainly infer, from this very circumstance,
the design of the Holy Spirit, that those
details, concerning which no precise di-
rections, accompanied with strict injunc-
tions, are to be found in Scripture, were
meant to be left to the regulation of each
Church, in each Age and Country.
any point in which it was designed that
all Christians should be, every where, and
at all times, bound as strictly as the Jews
were to the Levitical Law, we may fairly
conclude they would have received direc-
tions no less precise, and descriptions no
less minute, than had been afforded to the
Jews.

On the whole then, one who reads the Scriptures with attention and with candour will be at no loss, I conceive, to ascertain what was the sense, generally, in which our Lord's Disciples would understand his directions and injunctions. Besides what is implied, naturally and necessarily, in It has often occurred to my mind that the very institution of a Community, we the generality of even studious readers know also, what the instructions were are apt, for want of sufficient reflection, which the Disciples had already been to fail of drawing such important inferences accustomed to receive from their Master, as they often might, from the omissions and what was the sense they had been occurring in any work they are perusing; used from childhood to attach to the ex-from its not containing such and such pressions He employed. And as we may be sure, I think, how they would understand his words, so we may be equally sure that He would not have failed to undeceive them, had they mistaken his real meaning; which therefore, we cannot doubt, must have been that which these Disciples apprehended.

§ 8. As for the mode in which the Apostles and other early Christian Ministers carried into effect the directions they had received, we have indeed but a few, and those generally scanty and incidental, the successors of King William the Third, in the office of Stadtholder, could claim the English throne. And to speak of a succession of men as being, each, a foundation on which the Church is built, is not only extravagant but unmeaning.

*

Twoμeycus, rendered in our version "such as should be saved;" by which our Translators probably meant, according to the idiom of their day, (which is the true sense of the original,) " persons entering on the road of salvation."

things relative to the subject treated of. There are many cases in which the noninsertion of some particulars which, under other circumstances, we might have calculated on meeting with, in a certam book, will be hardly less instructive than the things we do meet with.

And this is much more especially the case when we are studying works which we believe to have been composed under divine guidance. For, in the case of mere human compositions, one may conceive an author to have left out some important circumstances, either through error of judgment, or inadvertency, or from having written merely for the use of a particular class of readers in his own time and country, without any thought of what might be necessary information for persons at a distance and in after ages; but we cannot, of course, attribute to any such causes omissions in the inspired Writers.

CHRISTIAN CHURCHES DERIVED FROM SYNAGOGUES.

29

On no supposition whatever can we less information concerning the Christian account for the omission, by all of them, Ministry and the Constitution of Church of many points which they do omit, and Governments than we otherwise might of their scanty and slight mention of have found, is that these institutions others, except by considering them as had less of novelty than some would at withheld by the express design and will first sight suppose, and that many por(whether communicated to each of them or not) of their Heavenly Master, restraining them from committing to writing many things which, naturally, some or other of them, at least, would not have failed so to record.

tions of them did not wholly originate with the Apostles. It appears highly probable—I might say morally certain*that wherever a Jewish Synagogue existed that was brought, the whole or the chief part of it, to embrace the Gospel, the Apostles did not, there, so much form a Christian Church, (or Congregation ;† Ecclesia,) as make an existing Congregation Christian; by introducing the Christian Sacraments and Worship, and establishing whatever regulations were requisite for the newly adopted faith; leaving the machinery (if I may so speak) of

I have set forth accordingly, in a distinct Treatise,* these views respecting the Omissions in the Sacred Books of the New Testament, and the important inferences thence to be deduced. We seek in vain there for many things which, humanly speaking, we should have most surely calculated on finding. "No such thing is to be found in our Scriptures as a Cate- government unchanged; the Rulers of chism, or regular Elementary Introduction to the Christian Religion; nor do they furnish us with any thing in the nature of a sytematic Creed, set of Articles, Confession of Faith, or by whatever other name one may designate a regular, complete Compendium of Christian doctrines: nor, again, do they supply us with a Liturgy for ordinary Public Worship, or with Forms for administering the Sacraments, or for conferring Holy Orders; nor do they even give any precise directions as to these and other ecclesiastical matters; any thing that at all corresponds to a Rubric, or set of Canons."

Now these omissions present, as I have, in that Treatise, endeavoured to show, a complete moral demonstration that the Apostles and their followers must have

supernaturally withheld from recording great part of the institutions, instructions, and regulations, which must, in point of fact, have proceeded from them; withheld, on purpose that other Churches, in other ages and regions, might not be led to consider themselves bound to adhere to several formularies, customs, and rules, that were of local and temporary appointment; but might be left to their own discretion in matters in which it seemed best to divine wisdom that they should be so left.† ~

$ 9. With respect to one class of those points that have been alluded to, it is probable that one cause-humanly speaking-why we find in the Sacred Books

*

(D.)

Synagogues, Elders, and other Officers (whether spiritual or ecclesiastical, or both) being already provided in the existing institutions. And it is likely, that several of the earliest Christian Churches did originate in this way; that is, that they were converted synagogues; which became Christian Churches as soon as the members, or the main part of the members, acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah.

The attempt to effect this conversion of a Jewish Synagogue into a Christian Church, seems always to have been made, in the first instance, in every place where there was any opening for it. Even after the call of the idolatrous Gentiles, it appears plainly to have been the practice of the Apostles Paul and Barnabas, when

* See Lightfoot, Appendix, Note (C.)

†The word "Congregation," as it stands in our Version of the Old Testament, (and it is one of very frequent occurrence in the Books of Moses,) is found to correspond, in the Septuagint, which was familiar to the New Testament writers, to Ecclesia; the word which, in our version of these last, is always rendered-not "Congregation," but "Church." This, or its equivalent "Kirk," is probably no other than "circle;" i. e. Assembly, Ecclesia.

These seem to be the first who were employed in converting the idolatrous Gentiles to Christianity, and their first considerable harvest among

these seems to have been at Antioch in Pisidia, as

may be seen by any one who attentively reads the

13th chapter of Acts. Peter was sent to Cornelius, a “devout" Gentile,-one of those who had renounced idolatry and frequented the Synagogues. And these seem to have been regarded by him as in an especial manner his particular charge. His Epistles appear to have been addressed to them; as Essay VI., First Series. See Appendix, Note may be seen both by the general tenor of his exSee Appendix, Note (D.)

* See Barrington's Miscellanea Sacra.

they came to any city in which there was John or Peter supply the deficiency a Synagogue, to go thither first and de- And why again did none of the numero liver their sacred message to the Jews and bishops and presbyters whom they "devout (or proselyte) Gentiles;"-ac- dained, undertake the work under the cording to their own expression, (Acts xiii. direction ?"* 16,) to the "men of Israel and those that feared God:" adding, that it was necessary that the Word of God should first be preached to them."