THE ORIGIN OF LAY PRESBYTERS.

WHEN they who compose, execute the laws, their own practice under the rules they have indited, is the fairest criterion of interpretation. If lay presbyters had no existence in the first ages, commencing in the days of the Apostles, and extending through four centuries; there is more than violent presumption, there is the strongest negative evidence, that they rest neither on precept, nor example, in the church of Christ.

The Christian polity, from the death of the last apostle, unto that of the first Leo, after whom no change obtained, until the reformation, has been detailed; that of the Waldenses, particularly investigated; and the common mistake with respect to their government exposed. They were covertly episcopal, though after Claude, not papal; but never presbyterial, prior to the Helvetic abjuration of popery.

The Culdees, Colidei, worshippers of God, of Scotland and Ireland, the Scotia of ancient writers, have been passed in silence, because modern ideas of them rest only in vague traditions and opinions. The Celtic language had no alphabet. The Scots have no history, written within a thousand years of the Christian era; and little can be ferreted out of foreign authors, A sentence is found in Tertullian. Vot. II.-No. 2.

and another in Prosper; both uncertain. Gildas of England, A. D. 560, represents them as episcopal. The earliest period, assigned to the Gospel among them by Bede of 730 was, when it was every where episcopal. Their oldest historian was an archdeacon of St. Andrews, in the eleventh century; their second was of the thirteenth. Both are lost. Hector Boethius, quoted by Blondel end Selden, has been convicted by Lloyd of disingenuousness. The credulity of these writers, as well as of Buchanan and Knox, is on this point visible. Let their veracity remain unimpeached; belief is not knowledge, and neither can. their offer, nor could our reception of it as testimony, make it truth. The Culdees who were removed from Abernethy to St. Andrews, were monks; and such were those at Armagh in Ireland. They may have been clerical, since in each place they clected archbishops; but they were catholic, for they appealed to Rome. Columba also, the apostle of the Picts, was, according to Bede, "a monk in priest's orders," and planted monasteries in Ireland and Britain.

The Syrian Christians, the Culdees, and the Waldenses, were all of episcopal origin. Old men have lived in every age, whose prudence and experience have been brought into requisition; but of presbyters without authority to preach, neither

a word, nor an example is found, from the demise of the last apostle, unto the reformation in Switzerland; they neither existed in the original form of government; nor in the secondary, which was parochial episcopacy; nor in that, which absorbed the rest, the diocesan, which became, so far as we yet know, literally catholic.

Such was Christendom until the period of the reformation. The Eastern church speaks for itself. Rome had been sacked in 1527, and the pope captured; also Charles V. as well as Francis I. had defied the enmity of the court of Rome; nevertheless, they were both intolerant papists; and maintained, and enforced episcopal government. In England the power of the pope had been abolished by parliament in 1532, yet the doctrines and ecclesiastic government, in other respects, remained the same. James V. then reigned in Scotland, and died in 1542, a devoted catholic, leaving his kingdom under papal administration. The reformation commenced in Germany in 1517. The protestation of Saxony, Hesse, Anhalt, and fourteen cities, against the violent measures of the diet at Spice, was signed in 1529. The Augsburg confession was made and condemned in 1530. The protestant defensive league was entered into, at Smalkald, in 1531. But it was the papal, not the episcopal government, that had as yet been renoun. ced. In Switzerland in 1308 three cantons confederated: they afterwards subdued two others, and placed them on equal terms. In 1332, Lucerne acceded to the confederacy. In 1353, Berne and Zug joined them. In 1383, they sus tained themselves against the duke of Austria. In 1471, they received the Grisons. In 1481, Friburg and Soleure, in 1501, Basil and Schaffhausen, and in 1513 Appenzel were admitted. In the battle of Nancy,

they defeated, and slew Charles the bold.

From 1526, when Zuinglius, the Swiss reformer, was excommunicated by a catholic diet, unto the autumn of 1531, when his death was achieved, he offering himself a victim in defence of liberty of conscience and the cause of the reformation, the cantons of Zurich and Berne, with the towns of Basil and Schaffhausen, maintained an unremitting struggle against the intolerance of five catholic cantons, which those, who were neutral, were unable to repress. But although Zurich and Berne, and Basil and Schaffhausen, had abolished popery, and church temporalities within their territories, they had neither removed the subordination of ministers, nor created new offices in the church. At length peace was restored, because their existence as free states was at last seen to depend upon their confederacy; and each was to adopt and maintain its own form of government, both civil and ecclesiastical; and public safety to be bartered away no more for religious predilections.

Calvin, passing by Geneva, in August, 1536, on his way northward, was importuned by some of the clergy, who were favorable to the reformation, to remain, and aid them in preaching, and to become a reader in divinity,

The season was favorable, the rulers and people having been exasperated by the conspiracy of their bishop with the duke of Savoy, against their liberties; who, being chargeable also with crimes of a private nature, had fled away a few months before. Although the preachers of Geneva, as well as Calvin, and all the people, were catholic, they were not, in fact, under episcopal government; and their submission to their pastors rested merely on persuasion. Of the six ministers at Geneva, two only were

favorable to the doctrines of the reformation, and confidants of Calvin; the rest being licentious, and inclined in heart to popery. But a majority of the people were, from obvious motives, haters of ecclesiastical fraud, sensuality, and oppression. In this state of vacillation, and licentiousness, Calvin adopted the expedient, of preparing an outline of doctrine and discipline, to be sworn to and subscribed, as an antidote against popery. The obligation of an oath to adhere to the rules and doctrines, advised by a minority of the ministers, was a perilous, but decisive measure. Nevertheless, it was taken by a majority in the summer of 1537.

In the next year, Farell, Calvin, and Corald, aiming at a stricter discipline, declared they could not administer the supper to people so irregular, and discordant among themselves. Advantage was immediately taken by the catholics, and, within two days, a general council having been convened, they voted, that those three ministers should leave the city.

Calvin went to Zurich, and afterwards to Strasburg, where he became the pastor of a French church. Corald died. Farell retired to Neufchatel, and never consented to be again a minister at Geneva. Notwithstanding his exile. Calvin answered the letter of the bishop of Carpentras, written against the reformation at Geneva; but would not hear the recantations of the Genevese. He refused to become a cypher among colleagues,and a people incompetent to discriminate between the discipline of Christ and papal tyranny. (a) He attended by appointment the conferences at Worms, and Ratisbon, with Me

(a)" locum sine ullâ auctoritate toneam? Quid enim faciemus? Unde sumemus exordium, si res collapsas velimus instaurare? Si verbum fecero quod displicuerit, mox silentium imperabunt." Calv. epist. 12.

lancthon and others. Interest had been made in behalf of Geneva, and he was there pressed by the heads of the reformation to return to that canton, as a thing indispensable. He yielded, upon condition he should not be interrupted in ecclesiastical discipline. (b) Accordingly in September, 1541, he resumed his labors at Geneva, still subject to the claims of Strasburg, as Viret was to Berne, but the canton soon obtained his release, His colleagues professing reconciliation, and reaching out the hand, were suffered to remain; yet were they an incumbrance, possessing neither zeal nor learning.

To secure the ascendency of himself and Viret over their copresbyters was the first necessary effort. "I detailed," he 66 says, to the senate my labor; I showed then that the church could not stand, unless a certain form of government were appointed, such as is prescribed to us in the word of God, and was observed in the ancient church. I then touched certain heads, whence they might understand what I wished. But because the whole matter could not be explained, 1 begged that there should be given us those who might confer with us. Six were appointed to us. Articles will be written concerning the whole government of a church, which we shall afterwards lay before the senate."(c)

The colleagues of Calvin and Vi, ret, "openly assented, because they were ashamed to contradict in matters so public," but they secretly persuaded the senators not to abandon their power. They sought to "escape that discipline and order which they could not bear," and to "weaken the authority of the church."(d)

(b)" suo ipsi judicio obstricti erunt, ne reclament amplius, aut quicquam ad ordinem nostrum turbandum moveant." Epist. 25.

(c) Epist. 50.

[d] Epist. 51.

Before this proposition, no canton in Switzerland had, so far as is known, even the idea of a lay officer in the church, but every presbyter and every deacon was a preacher of the Gospel. This reference was nevertheless not wholly without a precedent; for in 1532 a committee had been appointed by parliament in England, half laymen and half ecclesiastics, with Henry VIII. at its head, to decide upon certain ecclesiastical constitutions, which were alleged to involve temporal rights, and subject them to spiritual

censures.

The committee at Geneva reported; laws were prescribed; and a constitution instituted, by the General Council, on the 20th November, 1541. The consistory was to contain a double number of laymen, chosen annually; that is, at first it consisted of the six ministers, two laymen from the lesser senate, or council of twenty-five; and ten from the greater, or council of two hundred; one of the Syndics presiding.(e)

That Calvin did afterwards attempt to justify the reception of lay presbyters, from the authority of the Scriptures, his writings evince. It is perfectly clear, nevertheless, that it was adopted at first by him as an expedient for reducing the church at Geneva to a state of dis

[e]"non solos verbi ministros sedero judices in consistorio; sed numerum duplomajorem, partim ex minori senatu, ex delectis senioribus esse, ut yocant, partim ex majore diligi, ad hæc unum fere ex syndicis præsidere." Epist. 167. · Deliguntur quotannis duodecem seniores; nempe ex minori Senatu duo, reliqui

ex Ducentis, sive sint indigene sive ascriptitii cives. Qui probe et fideliter munere suo perfuncti sunt, loco non moventur; nisi, &c. Antequam ab electione suâ sedeant, eorum nomina publice edun tur, ut siquis eos indignos cognoverit mature denunceat." Epist. 302. Southey in "The Book of the Church," 2d vol. p. "Calvin himself" was 293, says, perpetual president;" an error perfectly in character for a mere compiler.

cipline, which should secure the reformation at that place. He probably preferred the name consistory, because the judicatory was composed of presbyters and laymen; for since ordination is by the laying on of the hands of the presbytery, if those laymen were members of a presbytery, then they must impose hands, and give an authority which they possessed not. As if apprehensive, also, of the impropriety of denominating men presbyters, who had received no ordination, he called them Inspectors; and such they really were, not as sometimes it is explained, of the morals of the people, but evidently of the designs of the clergy, whose bishop had within one year before the arrival of Calvin committed treason against the canton, from a desire to bring them back to the chains of popery.

Soon after he had gained a consistory, Calvin writes, "Now we have a judgment of presbyters, such as it is, and a form of discipline, such as the infirmity of the times could bear." (f)

The presbyters here intended were the preachers, for he then thought of no others, and represents that he had succeeded in obtaining a tribunal in which the sentence of a presbytery might be judicially given, according to the original mode of ecclesiastical trials among the early Christians; nevertheless, he qualifies his representation by the word "such as it is," not "such as they are," for the judgment to be rendered by the presbyters would be under the control of the duplicate rates of lay members in the consistory. Of this Calvin had nevertheless no reason to complain; for what could he have effected without laymen, when the major number of the clergy were really

[f] "Nunc habemus qualecunque presbyterorum judicium,et formam disciplina qualem ferebat temperum infirmitas." Epist. 54.

catholic, and hostile to a reforma tion, in doctrines, discipline, and manners? They had caused his banishment, when his clerical minority was greater. They were secretly opposed to his return; and even at the time of their public gratulations, resisted clandestinely the new government, "as rigid, tyrannical, and contrary to the practice of the other churches, which governed without such articles."

The people were suspicious, for they bad learned by experience to be jealous of clerical power, and were disposed to weaken it, (g) alleging that "Moses, a secular prince, had prescribed to Aaron, and David to the priests." So ar duous was the work of reformation at Geneva, that Calvin declared that without Viret he could not preserve that church.(h)

In 1553, a question arose upon their articles of agreement; the senate claiming an appellative juris diction in all causes decided by the consistory; but the original intention was merely to secure in certain cases the intervention of civil authority. One Bertelier had been suspended from the communion by the consistory. He complained to the senate, who heard the reasons of the sentence, and confirmed it. Within half a year, he applied to them again, for restoration. Calvin was again heard. But the senate restored the offender. Calvin declared that he preferred resignation to compliance.

The senate of Geneva, in compromise, asked the advice of the senate of Zurich, on three questions; the first was concerning excommunication; the second, whether it could not be exercised in some

[g]"laici-in potestate positi, si quando possint, nos, qui verbo prosumus, auctoritatemque nostram labefactare." Epist. 47.

[b]"Si me Viretus auferatur prorsus perii, nee hanc, ecclesiam salvam retinere potero." Ep. 39.

other manner than by a consistory? and the third was for advice how to act. To these it was answered by the other senate-" that they had heard of the consistorial rules of the church at Geneva, acknowledged them to be pious and near to the prescript of the word of God; and therefore could not advise a change, especially at that period."(i) That the pastors of the protestant churches at Zurich, Berne, Schaffhausen, and Basil, considered themselves to be deeply interested, at that time, in supporting Calvin, and obtaining the approbation of their senates, appears by their letters.

In 1554, he observed--" that the conflict was over, and peace restored; after the church at Geneva had fluctuated like Noah's ark upon the waters," yet that he was still apprehensive. That when invited into the public assembly, he had freely forgiven every one, who had repented; but that he, being but one of the consistory, did not arrogate the right of representing the church. (k.)

Calvin prevailed to establish an order of Government, as nearly approximating the original form, as the dissolute morals, and fixed prejudices of the Genevese against ecclesiastical tyranny, would allow.

Of the original parity of presbyters, Calvin could not have been ignorant; into that state the church of Geneva had providentially fallen by their abandonment of papal authority, and by the flight of their bishop. Of a re-establishment of episcopacy no one appears to have thought; nor did there occur a syllable about an inferior order of pres

[i]"audivisse nos de legibus ecclesiæ consistorialibus, et agnoscere illas pias esse, et accedere ad verbi Dei præscriptum: ideoque non videri admittendum, ut per innovationem mutentur, hoc præsertim seculo," &c. Epist. 166.

(k.) "Tandem huc ventum est, ut inter se omnes reconciliarentur,"" Acris erat dimicatio,"-brevi tamen rursus certandum exit." Epist. 171.