2. EXTRACTS (TRANSLATED) FROM THE INTRODUCTION TO DIE KIRCHENGEMEINDE-ORDNUNG FÜR DIE EVANGELISCHE LANDESKIRCHEN PREUSSENS.... ERLÄUTERT VON F. RICHTER,' 1882. (Berlin, Fr. Kortkampf.)

All the laws of the National Church issue from the king in virtue of his right as the person charged with the ecclesiastical government. The king calls together, closes, or adjourns the general synod; his commissioner has the right of speaking and making proposals at any time. The king nominates thirty members in the general synod, and a sixth part of the number of members in each of the provincial synods. All members of the body of church officials, that is, of the parochial councils and of the consistories, and the superintendents are nominated by the king; the complete identification of the whole body of church officials with the synod, whether as offshoots from it, or as boards selected from the synods, and consequently the attribution to them of an exclusively ecclesiastical character with regard to hierarchical position and discipline, has been decisively renounced. The difference from earlier times consists in this, that the sovereign conducts the ecclesiastical government in a constitutional, not an absolute manner.

Lastly, we must also examine the question of superintendence by the state. We can best describe the oversight which the state officials will exercise over the action of the ecclesiastical organisations when they shall have been disconnected from the control of church affairs, in the words of the state-government itself which are added to the project of law for the regulation of the general synod: The object of the state-superintendence over the management of the property of a corporation existing by public right (for it is in this character that church communities present themselves in the regulation of the law of the state) is, to prevent that anything contrary to law or anything hurtful to the public weal should be committed, and to take care that the property which belongs to the perpetual corporation, but which does not stand at the free disposal of the actual members at any given time, should be maintained from generation to generation. By this

the limit of the state-oversight is prescribed. Where nothing contrary to law or hurtful to the common weal appears, where a property is managed in such a way as not to endanger the future of the corporation, the state does not need to interfere, nor to encroach upon the Church power through pretext (socalled) of prescribing a policy, whether in the way of command or of prevention. In such a case the prescribed organs must retain freedom and independence of movement as to the power of managing their property. Starting from this principle, the system of universal oversight by the state which laid its hands on everything is abandoned in the law of June 20th, 1875, and the system is adopted of a special statement of those acts of administration which require the superintendence and the ratification of the state authorities, so that, with the exception of these special cases, the administration of property may be carried on freely and independently by the ecclesiastical organs, under the superintendence of the Church authorities. It is of course understood that henceforward the same system must be brought to bear on the Evangelical Church, and for this reason also article 23 of the project of law appears as a copy of § 50 of the law of June 20th, 1875. The project of law regulates the rights of superintendence by the state in express terms.

Thus all the rights of management hitherto exercised by the state authorities which do not remain in article 23, and those rights of superintendence which are not mentioned in article 24, are abolished. On the other hand, the state has not withdrawn from ecclesiastical legislation, though it no longer takes part in the decision of special cases, or in the application of ecclesiastical laws.

NOTE XIX.

EXTRACT FROM HOOKER'S ECCLESIASTICAL POLITY ON THE MAKING OF ECCLESIASTICAL LAWS AND THE ROYAL SUPREMACY.

Bk. VIII. c. vi. § 11. The most natural and religious course in making of laws is, that the matter of them be taken from the judgment of the wisest in those things which they are to conIn matters of God, to set down a form of public prayer,

cern.

a solemn confession of the articles of Christian faith, rites and ceremonies meet for the exercise of religion; it were unnatural not to think the pastors and bishops of our souls a great deal more fit, than men of secular trades and callings: howbeit, when all which the wisdom of all sorts can do is done for devising of laws in the Church, it is the general consent of all that giveth them the form and vigour of laws, without which they could be no more unto us than the counsels of physicians to the sick well might they seem as wholesome admonitions and instructions, but laws could they never be without consent of the whole Church, which is the only thing that bindeth each member of the Church, to be guided by them. Whereunto both nature and the practice of the Church of God set down in Scripture, is found every way so fully consonant, that God Himself would not impose, no not His own laws upon His people by the hand of Moses, without their free and open consent. Wherefore to define and determine even of the Church's affairs by way of assent and approbation, as laws are defined of in that right of power, which doth give them the force of laws; thus to define of our own Church's regiment, the parliament of England hath competent authority.

Touching the supremacy of power which our kings have in this case of making laws, it resteth principally in the strength of a negative voice; which not to give them, were to deny them that without which they were but kings by mere title and not in exercise of dominion. Be it in states of regiment popular, aristocratical, or regal, principality resteth in that person, or those persons unto whom is given the right of excluding any kind of law whatsoever it be before establishment. This doth belong unto kings, as kings; pagan emperors, even Nero himself had not less but much more than this in the laws of his own empire. That he challenged not any interest in giving voice in the laws of the Church, I hope no man will so construe, as if the cause were conscience, and fear to encroach upon the Apostles' right.

If then it be demanded by what right from Constantine downward, the Christian emperors did so far intermeddle with

the Church's affairs, either one must herein condemn them utterly, as being over presumptuously bold, or else judge that by a law which is termed Regia, that is to say royal, the people having derived into the emperor their whole power for making of laws, and by that means his edicts being made laws, what matter soever they did concern, as imperial dignity endowed them with competent authority and power to make laws for religion, so they were taught by Christianity to use their power, being Christians, unto the benefit of the Church of Christ. Was there any Christian bishop in the world which did then judge this repugnant unto the dutiful subjection which Christians do owe to the pastors of their souls? To whom in respect of their sacred order, it is not by us, neither may be denied, that kings and princes are, as much as the very meanest that liveth under them, bound in conscience to show themselves gladly and willingly obedient, receiving the seals of salvation, the blessed sacraments, at their hands, as at the hands of our Lord Jesus Christ, with all reverence, not disdaining to be taught and admonished by them, not withholding from them as much as the least part of their due and decent honour. All which for any thing that hath been alleged, may stand very well without resignation of supremacy of power in making laws, even laws concerning the most spiritual affairs of the Church.

Which laws being made amongst us, are not by any of us so taken or interpreted, as if they did receive the force from power which the prince doth communicate unto the parliament, or to any other court under him, but from power which the whole body of this realm being naturally possessed with hath by free and deliberate assent derived unto him that ruleth over them, so far forth as hath been declared. So that our laws made concerning religion do take originally their essence from the power of the whole realm and Church of England, than which nothing can be more consonant unto the law of nature and the will of our Lord Jesus Christ.

NOTE XX.

RICHARD ROTHE ON THE CHURCH.

In his great work on Theological Ethics, which, written in 1826, still continues to be reprinted in Germany, and has never been surpassed, Rothe takes the Church as meaning the Society which is concerned with spiritual relations pure and simple, as contrasted with Societies which exist for the general moral purposes of human life. He appropriates the word Church to that which I have in these Lectures called the Association for worship. He points out that religion must work itself out to moral and political results; that, as a corporate brotherhood, the Church necessarily gives birth to political life, and similarly that it is the parent of all the great forms of moral association. But he contends (1) that the Church only uses these Associations for its own purely spiritual purposes, and (2) that when these Associations have been fully inspired with the moral and religious spirit, the Society occupied with purely spiritual objects will have no further ratio essendi, and, according to his use of the term, the Church will vanish away. I subjoin a translation of the passage in which he expresses this remarkable opinion. I have given my reasons in the Lecture for not agreeing with it; but it is important as the judgment of a deeply thoughtful and far-seeing Christian teacher. The passage is from the Theologische Ethik, vol. ii. pp. 247-9:—

:

The community which exists for the purposes of piety purely and exclusively as such is the Church. The Church is accordingly, until the full termination of the moral development of humanity, the highest unity in it the multiplicity of special circles of fellowship, into which the community of moral relations unfolds itself, passes again into absolute unity; and in it by this very fact the Society which exists for the religious-moral purposes of the individual, and which is confined in itself and limited, widens out into an universalism which has no limits and advances to the measure which our moral being demands, and thereby also gains true purity and enlightenment. It is, therefore, an unconditional