ling this duty, they sometimes reject the truth which is proposed to them, and adopt erroneous tenets, this is only a proof, that, in the present imperfect state, uniformity of opinion is not consistent with the free exercise of the human understanding; and it is unquestionably better that men should sometimes err, than that they should be compelled to the acknowledgment of any system, by an authority which is not competent to fallible mortals, and which destroys the reasonable nature of those over whom it is exerted.

I conclude this subject with stating, that the view which I have given of the potestas doyparin is agreeable to the declared sentiments of both the churches in this island. In the twentieth article of the church of England, are these words: "The church hath authority in matters of faith. And yet it is not lawful for the church to ordain any thing that is contrary to God's word written; neither may it so expound one place of Scripture, that it be contrary to another. Wherefore, although the church be a witness and keeper of holy writ, yet besides the same, ought it not to enforce any thing to be believed for necessity of salvation." In the twenty-first article, it is said, "General councils, forasmuch as they be an assembly of men whereof all be not governed with the spirit and word of God, may err, and sometimes have erred even in things pertaining unto God. Wherefore things ordained by them as necessary to salvation have neither strength nor authority, unless it may be declared that they are taken out of the holy Scriptures." The whole first chapter of our Confession of Faith, concerning the holy Scriptures, is a testimony against the potestas doyparin claimed by the church of Rome. In the thirty-first chapter, it is said, "It belongeth to synods and councils ministerially to determine controversies of faith; and their determinations, if consonant to the word of God, are to be received with reverence and submission, not only for their agreement with the word, but also for the power whereby they are made, as being an ordinance of God, appointed thereunto in his word. All synods and councils, since the apostles, whether general or particular, may err, and many have erred; therefore they are not to be made the rule of faith or practice, but to be used as an help in both.”

CHAPTER V.

POTESTAS Διατακτική.

THE potestas daraxtixn, that which respects ecclesiastical canons or constitutions, is limited and regulated by the sovereign authority of the Lord Jesus, and the liberties of his disciples.

The church of Rome, professing to be the keepers of an unwritten word, out of which they can supply at their pleasure the deficiencies of Scripture, and claiming an authority to which Christians owe implicit subjection, conceive that they have a right to enact laws which bind the conscience, and which cannot be transgressed without incurring the same penalties, which are annexed to every breach of the divine law. They have, in virtue of this claim, made numberless additions to the essential parts of the worship of God, which, although not enjoined in Scripture, they represent as indispensably necessary, in order to the acceptance of the worshipper. They impose restraints in the enjoyment of the comforts of life, in the formation of different connexions, and in the conduct of the business of society; restraints which, although not founded upon the word of God, cannot be broken through without incurring, in the judgment of the church, the guilt of a deadly sin. They not only command, upon pain of eternal damnation, many performances, as fasts, and penances, and pilgrimages, which the Scriptures do not require; but they even enjoin by their authority, as in the case of the worship of images, and other services which appear to us idolatrous, what the Scriptures seem to have forbidden; and they abridge the liberty of Christians by a multitude of frivolous institutions, a compliance with which is not left to be regulated by the discretion and circumstances of individuals, but is bound rigorously upon all, unless the church chooses to give a dispensation from the duty, which her authority had created.

All this constitutes one branch of what Protestants account the usurpation and tyranny of the church of Rome. It appears to them to be an encroachment upon the prerogative of the "one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy," who, having delivered in his word the laws of his kingdom, has not committed to any the power of altering, repealing, or multiplying these laws, but has left his disciples to learn, from his own discourses, and the writings of his apostles, "all things whatsoever he has commanded them to observe." By this encroachment upon the prerogative of the one Lawgiver, the rights of Christians too are invaded; because, instead of having to walk by a precise rule delivered in Scripture, which all may know.

their consciences are subjected to regulations indefinite in number, which, depending upon the views and the pleasure of particular men, may not only become oppressive, but may involve them in the most distressing embarrassment, by requiring them, as a condition of salvation, to do that which to their own judgment appears sinful.

Against this usurpation and tyranny, all Protestants have revolted; and in opposition to it they hold that the church has no power to prescribe any new terms of acceptance with God, or any other conditions of salvation than those which are declared in Scripture; that every person who worships God according to the directions which he himself has given, may hope, through the merits of Jesus, to please him; that the law of God is fulfilled by abstaining from what he has forbidden, and by doing what he has commanded; and that God alone being the Lord of conscience, no ecclesiastical regulation can justify us in doing what we account sinful, or in abstaining from what we think commanded; or can so far alter the nature of things as to convert an action, concerning which the word of God has not left any direction, into a necessary indispensable duty, which we may in no situation omit without incurring the divine displeasure.

Notwithstanding these limitations, which the supreme authority of Christ and the rights of his subjects obviously require, there remains a large field for the potestas diaraztizn, and many questions have arisen amongst Christians concerning the proper and lawful exercise of it within that field.

There is one branch indeed of the exercise of the polestas daraxtixn, which admits of no dispute. It may be employed in enforcing the laws of Christ; not that the authority of these laws derives any accession from that of the church. But as the church is the publisher and defender of the rule of faith contained in the Scriptures, so she is also the publisher and defender of the rule of practice there delivered. The ministers of religion, in their individual capacity, exhort and persuade Christians to observe this rule. When the rule is generally violated, or when it is perverted by gross misinterpretations which are likely to spread, the teachers of any district united in a society, forming what we call the church of that district, may address an admonition or explanation to all who are of their communion. The interposition of this visible authority may awaken the minds of the people to a recollection of that superior authority which is not an object of sense; and the infliction of those censures, which are within the power of the church, may serve as a warning to those judgments which the Almighty has reserved in his own power. In all churches there are standing laws of the church enjoining the great branches of morality. There are also occasional injunctions and ordinances prohibiting those transgressions which are most flagrant; reproofs and warnings against sins, which at any time particularly abound in a district. As no person who attends to the manners of the world will say that such laws, and injunctions, and reproofs, are unnecessary, so experience does not justify any person in saying that they are wholly ineffectual. While civil government prohibits many immoralities under this view, that they are hurtful to the peace of society, church government extends its prohibitions to other immoralities also, which do not fall under this description; and when the two conspire, as, if

both are legitimately exercised, will never fail to be the case, they are of considerable use in restraining enormity of transgression, and in preserving that decency of outward conduct, which is a great public benefit, and which, with many, might not proceed from the unassisted influence of religion.

It is unnecessary to dwell longer upon this undisputed exercise of the authority of the church in commanding what Christ has commanded, and forbidding what he has forbidden. The discussions, which the potestas daraxtin requires, respect those numberless occasions upon which the church is called to make enactments by her own authority. To these enactments there was applied, in early times, the name canons, which is derived from the Greek word xar, regula, and which means to convey that these enactments are not put upon a footing with the laws of Christ; but, being subordinate to them, are merely regulations applying general laws to particular cases. The first object of these regulations is what we may call matters of order. The church being a society, in which a number of persons are united, and are supposed frequently to assemble, there must be regulations enacted to give the outward polity of the society its form, to ascertain the terms upon which persons are admitted to bear office in the society, and to direct the time and place of assembling for all the members. It is manifest that such matters of order cannot be left to the discretion of individuals, because the variety of their determinations would produce confusion. It may be supposed that with regard to all such matters, individuals are ready to follow that authority which they unite in recognising; and if the Christian society is not necessarily dependent upon any human society, but may exist by itself, and has within itself the powers necessary for its own preservation, this authority of order must be lodged in the officebearers of the society.

One of the most important circumstances of order in the Christian society is the time of holding the assemblies. I do not mean the hours, but the days, of meeting; a circumstance with regard to which an uniformity may naturally be expected in a society united by the same faith. It has been common for men in all ages to connect the remembrance of interesting events with the solemnization of the days, upon which such events originally happened: and the first teachers of the Gospel appear to have given their sanction to this natural propensity, by changing the weekly rest, from the seventh day to the day upon which Christ rose from the dead. From emotions of respect and gratitude, and from the authority of this example, there was early introduced in the Christian church the annual solemnization of Christmas as the day upon which Christ was born; of Easter, as the day upon which he rose; and of Whitsunday as the day upon which the Holy Ghost was poured forth. Although these anniversary solemnities were very early observed, there was not an uniform tradition in the church with regard to the precise day of the year, upon which each of the three events had happened. Even in the second century, there were violent disputes between the Asiatic and the western Christians, whether Easter should be kept always upon a Sunday, or whether, without regard to the day of the week, it should be kept on the third day after the day of the Jewish passover,

which was considered as a type of the death of Christ, and which happened invariably upon the fourteenth day of the first Jewish month. This controversy, insignificant as it appears in our times, agitated the whole Christian world for many years, and was not decided till the council of Nice, giving their sanction to the practice of the western Christians, established throughout Christendom the observance of the day called Good Friday, in remembrance of Christ's death, and of the succeeding Sunday, in remembrance of his resurrection.

In the progress of the superstitions of the church of Rome, a multitude of days were consecrated to the memory of saints; and it was impressed upon the minds of the people, that the scrupulous observance of all the fasts and feasts, which the church chose to ordain, was an essential part of religion. The spirit of the Reformation led men to throw off a bondage, most hurtful to the interests of society, and most inconsistent with the whole character of the Christian religion, which ranks the distinction of days amongst the rudiments of the law, and declares by the mouth of Paul, that " he that regardeth the day, regardeth it unto the Lord, and he that regardeth not the day, to the Lord he doth not regard it."* Upon the principle implied in this declaration, such of the reformers, as wished to depart very far from the corruptions of the church of Rome, abolished those days which from early times had been kept sacred in honour of Christ, as well as those which had been dedicated to the saints; and, as is the case in Scotland, where no day in the year, except the Lord's day, is statedly appropriated to religious service, they retained only the Sabbath, which they considered as of divine institution. It was understood, however, that the church has a power of appointing days occasionally, according to circumstances, for the solemn services of religion, although the annual return of festivals appeared to them to lead to abuse. Such of the reformers, again, as judged it expedient to conform, as far as could be done with safety, to the ancient practice of the church, retained the names of the days sacred to the memory of the apostles, and distinguished with peculiar honour the three great festivals in which the Christian world had long agreed, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsunday. In the church of England, these days are statedly and solemnly observed. Some of the more zealous assertors of the authority which appointed those days attempted, in the seventeenth century, to conciliate greater reverence for the appointment, by placing them upon a level with the Lord's day. They maintained that the change from the seventh to the first day of the week was made, not by divine, but by ecclesiastical authority; they denied the morality of the Sabbath; and they gave the countenance of law to those sports and recreations, after the time of divine service upon that day, which had been usual upon the multiplicity of festivals in the times of Popery.

The controversy concerning the morality of the Sabbath, in which the Puritans and the violent Episcopalians of the seventeenth century eagerly opposed one another, has long since terminated in those rational views which are now generally entertained. That a seventh

* Romans xiv. 6.