Among the number and at the head of those relics of Judaism, of which Catholicism is full, we must undoubtedly place the dogma of the real presence. God is really present in the Catholic worship as he was in the Levitical worship. I will venture to assert that, at the point of view of Christian spirituality, it is this very resemblance which condemns Catholicism. "Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no more," 2 Cor. v. 16.-This dogma also involved the restoration of caste, by the single fact that rites may be properly celebrated by any individual whatever, so that the personality is of no importance. In religious communities where the sacerdotal idea is predominant, as individuality is of small account, the corporate power must proportionally prevail.1

With us, the minister is essentially a minister of the word; and so far from the word becoming a rite, the rite becomes a word; we take, in its fullest acceptation, the idea of the apostles, who traced back the work of the gospel to the incarnation of the word, and we do not find anything too strong in the words of Erasmus: "Diabolus concionator: Satanas, per serpentem LOQUENS, seduxit humanum genus. Deus, per Filium LOQUENS, reduxit oves erraticas."2

This ministry, essentially moral, since the word forms the essence of it, does not allow the word to become materialised and transformed into rite. It aims at being the action of one soul on another soul, of liberty on liberty. Before all exercise of its powers it exists as a virtue-after all it remains such. The Roman Catholic Church, while it appears to confer greater authority and larger scope for action upon the pastor, has in reality limited the pastoral office, by stereotyping the forms under which it is to be exercised,3 and by prescribing as rites that which ought to be suggested on every separate occasion by charity and wisdom, according to the wants and circumstances

1 See LAMENNAIS, Affaires de Rome.

2 “The devil is a preacher: Satan, speaking by the serpent, has seduced the human race. God, speaking by his Son, has brought back the wandering sheep."-Ecclesiastes, lib. i.-ED.

3 It has given a fixed form to all the different impulses of pastoral love.

of its objects. [In the one case there is a real library, in the other case there is a library imitated in wood. Both communions have confession; but in the one it is a confession of the heart, in the other it is confession that has been commanded, and which, consequently, ceasing to be moral and true, loses its reality. These are the abuses of Catholicism, but we must not exaggerate them: Catholicism, as it has the cross, is also acquainted with the spirituality of the gospel.-Further, even among Catholics, strong protests have been raised against the exclusive predominance of ritualism, especially on the part of the Jansenists, who attach a very great importance to preaching, regarding it as the greatest and most awful of mysteries.1 This is a wide departure from St. Augustine, who regarded the Eucharist alone as an awful mystery. Some suppose that there is nothing mysterious in this action of soul upon soul by means of the word, because it is an ordinary thing; as if that which is ordinary were not often very mysterious and unfathomable. The same word acts upon different minds in different modes. Doubtless the character of the individual very much determines the result; but whence comes it that an animated preacher frequently produces no effect, while a feeble preacher often ploughs the deepest furrows in the souls of men? How many have been untouched by the one and been deeply affected by the other. How often does the conversion of a spirit which is listening to us depend upon the force of a single word! The dispensation by virtue of which one soul, one single soul, is touched among a crowd who remain cold and unmoved,—is it not one of the deepest mysteries? Yes, preaching is a mystery, the most profound of all, that which includes a multitude of other mysteries. In truth, it is God who preaches, and man is only his instrument.]

The form of the ministry therefore is the word. The object of the ministry is to gather into the school of Christ, "to bring into captivity to the obedience of Christ," the souls which are destined to be his; it is to perpetuate, to extend, to establish continually the kingdom of God upon the earth.

1 See the quotation from St. Cyran.-Appendix, Note II.

In order to present this idea under its manifold aspects, let us, with Burnet,1 collect the different names given to the ministers of the gospel in the New Testament. And let us first of all remark that, in the ecclesiastical, as in the political sphere, all names of functions, dignity, &c., have originally quite another significance and force than that which they possess after they have been at once consecrated and enfeebled by common usage. It has happened to them as to proper names, which have come to be nothing more than arbitrary signs after having been terms truly expressive of qualities. At the origin of a truly original institution the names of offices express the duties, affections, hopes belonging to them; the soul has invented these names; and the name which it has found does not so much express a power nicely and exactly circumscribed, a legally defined function, as a virtue to be exercised, an idea to be realised. All true names are adjectives, which become substantives by the lapse of time.

1. Deacon (the word which we translate by minister) signifies servant, joining with it the idea of liberty.2 The term deacon, like all terms which are connected with an institution, instead of indicating what the thing itself ought to be, instead of expressing the ideal of the thing, has come to indicate that which the institution has become, that which it has accidentally been in a certain time and in special circumstances—a form of the thing rather than the thing itself: the ideal gives way to the historic signification, and the history becomes the law of the idea.—The word deacon has taken a special signification, but it was at first general, and designated, without distinction, every minister or servant of the gospel. "Who then is Paul, and who is Apollos, but ministers (deacons) by whom ye believed, even as the Lord gave to every man," 1 Cor. iii. 5. "Giving no offence, that the ministry (deaconship) be not blamed," 2 Cor. vi. 3. "Whereof I was made a minister (deacon), according to the gift of the grace of God given unto me by the effectual working of his power," Eph. iii. 7. "Christ Jesus our Lord hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry 1 BURNET'S Discourse of the Pastoral Care, p. 44.

The idea of Commission—committed to a certain office-Commissioner.

(deaconship)," 1 Tim. i. 12. "The gospel...whereof I, Paul, am made a minister (deacon)," Col. i. 23.-For the special and subsequent application of the word, see 1 Tim. iii. 8, "The deacons must be grave." 1 Tim. iii. 12, "Let the deacons be the husbands of one wife," and Rom. xvi. 1, “I commend unto you Phebe, our sister, which is a deaconess of the church which is at Cenchrea."

We instinctively regard this title, deacon, as a special title, because a particular institution has appropriated this name; but, in the first series of passages which we have quoted, it is no more special than the word douλos (slave, servant) in Phil. i. 1, “Paul and Timotheus, slaves or servants of Jesus Christ." And how is it that the members of the clergy do not bear the designation of douls, and the ministry that of douly, as some members of this same clergy have taken the name of deacons, and their function that of diaconate?

2. Presbyteros (elder.)

"Let the elders that rule well be

counted worthy of double honour," 1 Tim. v. 17. "They sent hands of Barnabas and Saul," Acts xi. "From Miletus he sent to Ephesus, and church," Acts xx. 17. "For this cause

it to the elders by the 30. Acts xv. passim. called the elders of the

left I thee in Crete, that thou shouldest . . . ordain elders in

every city," Titus i. 5. "Is any sick among you? let him call

for the elders of the church," James v. 14.

Our versions commonly render geßuregos by pastor, a term which we scarcely find applied to ministers, except in Eph. iv. 11, "He gave some pastors and teachers."

3. Bishop occurs as synonymous with elder in Titus i. 5–7, "That thou shouldest ordain elders. For a bishop must be blameless; and, in Acts xx. 17, 28, Paul calls together the elders of the church of Ephesus, and commends to their care the flock over which the Holy Ghost had made them bishops. See moreover Philip. i. 1, "Paul and Timotheus. . . to the bishops and deacons," and 1 Tim. iii. 2, "A bishop must be blameless."

This does not prove that some bishops might not have been 1 The New Testament of the Vaudois ministers (Lausanne, 1839), translates, les serviteurs de l'assemblée, the servants of the Assembly.

placed as superintendents of other bishops-inspectors of inspectors. "Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses," 1 Tim. v. 19, and Titus i. 5, quoted above. But this was not an institution, it was a measure. 4. Apostles or delegates. "Our brethren they are the messengers (apostles) of the churches, and the glory of Christ," 2 Cor. viii. 23.

It is, however, to be observed that this word is applied (xar' ox) (emphatically, par excellence) to those sent immediately by Jesus Christ in Acts ii. 42, "They continued steadfastly in the apostles' doctrine."

Our intention is not to determine the particular work and function which is designated by these several names.2 We believe that the words elder and bishop denote the administrators of the churches, whether they were or were not charged with the functions of teaching-a function attached to a gift or a grace, which does not appear to have determined the nomination of elders or of bishops, since neither of these terms is to be found in the well-known passages, Eph. iv. 11, and 1 Cor. xii. 28-30; and, as to the word deacon, it has a sense far more general, and, at the same time, far more special than the other two, designating, as it does, either every kind of labour for the gospel, or a very special office in the church. Our aim is merely, without stopping to distinguish these different applications of the ministry, to exhibit, by means of these terms, the characteristics common to all, the characteristics of the evangelical ministry, whatever may be the department in which it is exercised. What we have found in these three words, that is to say, what we have found without leaving the terms themselves, and before investigating their figurative import, are the ideas of voluntary service, of authority (founded, in one case, on age) and of oversight. But it is probable that the figurative

3

1 Messengers of the assemblies.

of the Vaudois ministers.)

Envoyes des assemblees. (Translation

2 On this see NEANDER, Planting, book i. ch. ii.

VULLIEMIN, Mœurs

des Chrétiens pendant les trois premiers siècles, p. 178, et seq.

3 To the first series of names M. Vinet did not add the word apostle