By REV. JOHN COLQUHOUN, Glendale.
IN the course of reading various books and pamphlets published under the auspices of the Episcopal Church, both in England and Scotland, one is brought face to face with views which would lead one to think that Episcopacy had Scripture warrant and that all other forms of Church government were but the inventions of men who showed a total disregard of Scripture authority in the matter of Church government. To those who are giving vent to such views Presbyterianism seems to be particularly obnoxious. Its worship is un-edifying, its government contrary to that of the primitive church, and the ordination of its office-bearers invalid; yea, its very existence a schism, which leaves it outside the pale of the visible Church. When the Presbyterian Church is thus characterised, one would think that all who accept its distinctive government ought to be ashamed and forsake its communion immediately for such a Scripturally constituted body as the Episcopal Church is supposed to be. Let us for a brief space examine our position in order to find out the grounds upon which these high claims are made by a Church whose servants in days past scrupled not to make use of boots, thumb-screws, dungeons and even the gallows, sparing neither age nor sex, in order to force a whole nation into compliance with what to the great majority of the people of that nation were unscriptural and unintelligible mummeries, bearing unmistakable marks of being the creatures of the carnal mind.
From the point of view of Church government, the Christian Church may be divided into three bodies, namely, Episcopalians, Independents, and Presbyterians. Each of these claim to have the authority of Scripture for their particular form of government. While no form of Church government is set down in detail in the New Testament, yet the Holy Spirit has given us the salient features of the form of government required and sanctioned in the Church, and it must be to these salient features that we must look in order to decide whether Episcopacy, Independency, or Presbyterianism is Divinely authorised.
In going to the Scriptures, the Episcopalians assert that they find three classes of office-bearers there; that is, Deacons, Priests or Presbyters, and Bishops; and it is on the distinction which they make between these classes that they rear the whole fabric of Prelacy. In their practice they allow a deacon to preach and to baptize only; a priest or presbyter is allowed to preach and administer both sacraments; while the bishop alone may govern, ordain and confirm. This does away with the parity of ministers recognised by Presbyterians as having its roots in the Church pattern set before us in the New Testament, and vests authority ultimately in one man who is set up as the head of the Church.
Independency, on the other hand, denies any relationship between various congregations, and makes the whole body of each congregation the final court of appeal, instead of representative office-bearers. In support of this view of Church government, they bring forward Matthew xviii, 15-17. “Moreover if thy brother shall trespass against thee, go and tell him his fault between thee and him alone; . . . but if he neglect to hear the church, let him be unto thee as an heathen man and a publican.” They also base their view of government on Acts xv and I Cor. v, 3-5. Without entering particularly into the bearing of these passages on the question under review, it may be remarked that the first of them is based on the assumption that the word “church” must mean a particular congregation, which Scripture language does not warrant. It also ignores the fact that Scripture very clearly teaches that office-bearers are appointed in order to rule and judge, but nowhere does it teach that members are to be partakers with them in that office and, therefore, in the exercise of Church discipline all that seems to be required of members is to acquiesce in the sentence of the office-bearers by refraining from associating in Church fellowship with an excommunicated person.
The appeals to Scripture, made both by Episcopalians and Independents, being based on wrong interpretations of certain passages of Scripture, or wrong conceptions of the various names given to office-bearers in the New Testament, we may inquire as to the bearing of these names of office-bearers on the Presbyterian form of Church government. In the Episcopal Church the lowest rank among office-bearers is the deacon who, as we have seen, is allowed to preach and baptize. When we go to the Word of God we find there no appointment of deacons to preach and baptize, but we do find the origin of the office, as far as it relates to the Christian Church, in the Book of Acts, where seven deacons were set apart to look after temporal matters in the Church, and in Paul’s first Epistle to Timothy we find the duties of the deacon set forth very clearly, but nothing is said there to indicate that he is either to preach or baptize. In this we see that Presbyterianism and not Episcopacy adheres to Scripture as regards the office of a deacon.
Again, in the Episcopal Church there are priests or presbyters and bishops, and their functions are clearly defined, but when we go to the Word of God we see no such distinctions. In Acts xx, 17, we read that the Apostle Paul sent to Ephesus and called the elders of the Church, and in his address to them he reminds them that the Holy Ghost had made them overseers, or bishops, of the flock; and in his Epistle to Titus he reminds him that one reason why he left him in Crete was to “ordain elders in every city.” In describing the character necessary to these elders, he says, “For a bishop must be blameless.” Thus we see that an elder and a bishop, to the Apostle, were synonymous terms for one and the same office, and rules out as something which has no Divine authority the distinction made between them in the Episcopal Church.
Presbyterianism thus adheres to the order of Scripture as to the office-bearers of the Church of God, that is, one class of office-bearers to attend to temporal matters, called in Scripture “deacons,” and another attending to spiritual matters, known as “elders,” or presbyters, or bishops. Of these elders there are teaching elders, who also rule, and ruling elders, whose main function is to rule. For this there is Scripture authority, for we find the Apostle Paul writing to Timothy and saying, “Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honour, especially they who labour in the word and doctrine,” (I Timothy v, 17). By this we see that there are ruling elders who teach as well as rule, while there are others who, though they rule, do not teach. In all Presbyterian congregations there is a teaching elder, or in the case of a vacancy, one such from another congregation who acts as interim Moderator, and a number of ruling elders who assist him in the government of the congregation.
As Presbyterianism is, of all other systems of Church government, the only one that has its origin in the Word of God as to its office-bearers, so it can claim to be in accordance with that same rule as to its various Church courts. Episcopacy makes a diocesan bishop the ruler in the Church; Independency makes the members of each congregation the final court of appeal; while Presbyterianism vests the ordering of the government, discipline and worship of the Church in the Kirk-sessions of each congregation. These Kirk-sessions are composed of a teaching elder and a competent number of ruling elders, and they are made answerable to higher courts, composed also of teaching and ruling elders, which are, properly speaking, courts of review. These courts of review, in their turn, have the sanction of Holy Writ, as we see from the case of the Churches to whom Paul and Barnabas had been preaching, for when “certain men which came down from Judæa taught the brethren” that they would require to be circumcised, these Churches sent “Paul and Barnabas and certain other of them” to Jerusalem to “the apostles and elders about this question.” The elders whom Paul and Barnabas ordained in these Churches evidently did not feel themselves equal to giving a decision on this important matter and so they remitted it to an assembly composed of apostles and elders who appear to have been representing various churches or congregations, and who had gathered to Jerusalem either, expressly, in connection with this matter or to settle various other matters. Thus we have a court of review brought before us in the Scriptures, giving an ample foundation for the gradation of Church courts found in the Presbyterian Church.
That the early Christian Church should be governed by elders or presbyters need not occasion surprise, for the Apostles had the pattern of this in the Jewish Church. In all their synagogues were to be found elders or presbyters, chosen by the congregation, who were to judge along with the priests and Levites, and, therefore, when the Christians either withdrew from the Jewish synagogues or were expelled from them, it almost amounts to a certainty that the system of Church government which they would adopt would be the one with which they had been familiar from their childhood, and which was the one most suitable to their circumstances. In this they manifested a wisdom which clearly shows that they had Divine guidance. This form of Church government, when set up, as it naturally would be, in all the congregations formed as the number of Christians increased, would at once show the necessity of having a common Church court to which these subordinate courts would submit their difficulties, and where they would seek advice. This is the very essence of Presbyterianism, as that form of Church government is described by Dr. E. F. Hatfield in the Schaff-Herzog Encyclopædia, 3rd edition: “It recognises the Church as a great commonwealth, and by means of well-digested formulas of faith and order, it aims to bring its detached parts into an organic union, the more effectually to give expression to Church fellowship, and to secure to the particular Church its rights and privileges; to provide for them a learned and godly ministry, and to preserve them from the inroads of ignorance, immorality, superstition, and intolerance in the pulpit, and conserve the purity of doctrine; to secure a ready and appropriate redress for injuries; to maintain a uniform standard of godliness; and to combine the resources of the whole for the general good. These salutary ends it seeks to accomplish by a regular series of Church judicatories, the session or consistory of a particular Church, the presbytery or classis, the synod, and the general synod or assembly. The principle of constitutional representation is maintained throughout; and opportunity is given, by a system of review, complaint, and appeal, for the righting of wrongs and the correction of errors; while, in a well-organised and carefully compacted body, provision is made for the most effective aggressive movement against the combined powers of evil. It is a great Church with numberless compacted parts, a great Christian republic, of which the Lord Jesus Christ alone is the sovereign.”
(To be continued.)