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The clergy became now a mediating priesthood, independent of the church, and vested with authority from God to rule the church and its members; and, by outward ordinances, to communicate the gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit.

This transition changed essentially the relations of the officers to the members of the church and the conditions of church-membership. The officers of the church, instead of receiving authority and office from that body for their service, claim authority and commission from God for the exercise of their functions. They are now the rulers, not the servants, as at the beginning they were, of the church. A union with the church by a public profession is a transaction, not so much between the church and the professing Christian as between him and the bishop. The contracting, covenanting parties are the bishop and the believer. The sovereign authority of the church is merged and lost in that of the priesthood.

Ecclesiastical discipline naturally resolves itself into a system of penance administered by the priesthood, in whom alone authority is vested for the punishment of offences. The confessional, which requires the offender to tell the tale of all his sins in the ear of a sinful creature like himself, and to bow down to degrading penance dictated by the confessor, is only a practical application of the power of a tyrannical priesthood. The deep degradation and debasement to which popery has reduced the people is its final result.

On the contrary, the total neglect of all discipline, as in the established churches in England and on the continent, is a result equally legitimate of wresting the disciplinary power from the laity, and concentrating it in the priesthood. Give the ministry the absolute and independent control of all ecclesiastical authority, and they will either abuse or neglect it. It is a recorded fact in all ecclesiastical history, that the great conservative power in the church, her ornament and her strength, the defence of her liberties, the preservation of her purity, is-the laity. The laity are at this time the only effectual safeguard against the disastrous encroachments of papacy and high-church prelacy in the Episcopal churches of England and America. This strange effort to "unprotestantize" these churches, and reinvolve them in the darkness, delusion, and degradation of papacy, is eminently a perversion of the priesthood, by which the people continue comparatively unaffected. The steadfastness of their faith is the hope, and may be the defence of the Episcopal church against that tide of error which is setting in upon

"The laity,"

her like a flood, from the abominations of papacy.
says an American bishop-"The laity must save the church."

In view of the early organization and discipline of the Christian church, we may well pause to admire the wisdom and grace that directed the Puritans to take up the work of the reformation where Luther and others left it, and restore both the government and worship of the church to their primitive simplicity and purity. Immortal honour is indeed due to Luther and his coadjutors for the great work which they so nobly began. But Luther was not a radical reformer. He sought not to emancipate the church, either from the thraldom of the state, or the more disastrous bondage of the pope. He sought not to lead out the Israel of God from their house of bondage and reinstate them in the liberty wherewith God hath made his people free. He sought not to relieve the ritual of the enormous burden of forms and ceremonies and solemn absurdities with which popery, age after age, had been overlaying the simple worship of the primitive Christians. His effort was rather to correct the wrong than to restore the right, to reform rather than to revolutionize, to rectify rather than remove the abuses, superstitions, and errors of papacy. The church was in his view an ancient and venerable structure. It had stood fast for ages in solemn, gloomy grandeur, and against it he feared to raise a sacrilegious hand. His effort was to clear away the rubbish which had gathered, in the lapse of ages, about the sacred edifice, to repair its desolations, to renew its ancient solemn services and fill its vast courts again with devout worshippers. Amazed at the decay and rottenness which he everywhere discovered, he faltered at the effects of his own great arm in demolishing what he only thought to repair and adorn. He understood not the mission on which heaven had sent him, and stayed his hand when as yet he had but begun his work. To change the figure, he held in his hand the arrow of the Lord's deliverance; but, like the timid king of Israel, he smote three times and stayed; whereas he should have smitten five or six times, then had he smitten the enemy until he had consumed it.

It remained for other men at a later age, for the noble army of the Puritan dissenters, to re-establish the church on the foundation of Christ and the apostles, to reassert the liberties of the people, to reject, not only the superstitions and empty ceremonials of the popish ritual, but the formalities also of the liturgy and prayer book, and to restore the freedom and simplicity of primitive worship.

§ 2. OF PENANCE.

THIS system of penance was manifestly of a penal character, a vindication of the laws of religion, and a warning against transgression, as well as a means of correction and reformation to the offender. Administered by the arbitrary dictation of the priesthood, it might easily be perverted for the gratification of private resentment and the accomplishment of sinister ends.

Penance, in the ecclesiastical sense of the term, is not an institution either of the Scriptures or of the apostolical and primitive church, but of the hierarchy. It is essentially an institution of prelacy or episcopacy, administered by the bishop.

Tertullian, †A. D. 220, speaks of certain acts of penance, and Cyprian also often speaks of them, but the different classes of penitents were not formed and their specific acts of humiliation prescribed until the fourth century, when prelacy had already superseded the primitive organization of the church, and changed her ordinances and her rites. "It cannot be denied that the consequence of making outward of the conception of the church, and of that Old Testament view of the priesthood had here already mixed in. Thus the judgment on an individual who had rendered himself liable to the church penance was reckoned among the acts of the priesthood; and the full power of exercising it, derived from the authority to bind and to loose, given to the apostles."1

Tertullian wrote a treatise on penitence, in which he teaches that repentance, consisting in a sorrow for sins committed, whether in act or thought, arising from a fear of God and tending to salvation, is necessary in order to baptism; and that, in case of sin after baptism, there is room once more, but only once, for repentance. This is to be accompanied with an outward act of penitence, ouo2oynois. This book manifestly departs from the simplicity of Scripture, and contains various seeds of error.

Cyprian of Carthage defends the same general principles against the Novatians, who denied to the fallen Christian professor the grace of God and the hope of eternal salvation, and accordingly refused him the benefit of penance and readmission to the church. The sentiments of Tertullian and of Cyprian are fully developed in the note below, and in many other parts of their writings.*

* Ne igitur ore nostro, quo pacem negamus, quo duritiam magis humanæ credulitatis, quam divinæ et paternæ pietatis opponimus, oves nobis commissæ a

§ 3. OF THE SUBJECTS OF PENANCE, OR THE OFFENCES FOR WHICH

IT WAS IMPOSED.

PENANCE related only to such as had been excluded from the communion of the church. Its immediate object was, not the forgiveness of the offender by the Lord God, but his reconciliation with the church. It could, therefore, relate only to open and scandalous offences. De occultis non judicat ecclesia-the church takes no cognizance of secret sins-was an ancient maxim of the church. The early fathers say expressly that the church offers pardon only for offences committed against her. The forgiveness of all sin she refers to God himself. Omnia autem, says Cyprian, Ep. 55, remissimus Deo omnipotenti, in cujus potestate sunt omnia reservata.* Such are the concurring sentiments of most of the early writers on this subject. It was reserved for a later age to confound these important distinctions, and to arrogate to the church the prerogative of forgiving sins.

Various synonymous expressions occur in the writings of Tertullian and Cyprian, to denote this mode of discipline, all of which are in accordance with the representations given above of penance, such as disciplina, orandi disciplina, patientiæ disciplina, deifica disciplina, satisfactio, satisfacere, etc. The last-mentioned terms imply a demand made by the church, on conditions imposed in order to a restoration to that body. Hence also the frequent ex

Domino reposcantur: placuit nobis, Sancto Spiritu suggerente, et Domino per visiones multas et manifestas admonente, quia hostis imminere prænuntiatur et ostenditur, colligere intra castra milites Christi, examinatis singulorum causis, pacem lapsis dare, imo pugnaturis arma suggerere; quod credimus vobis quoque paternæ misericordiæ contemplatione placiturum. Quod si de collegis aliquis exstiterit, qui urgente certamine pacem fratribus et sororibus non putat dandum, reddet ille rationem in die judicii Domino, vel importunæ censuræ, vel inhumanæ duritiæ suæ.-CYPRIAN, Ep. 54 ad Cornelium, de pace Lapsis danda.

* Nos, in quantum nobis et videre et judicare conceditur, faciem singulorum videmus, cor scrutari et mentem perspicere non possumus. De his judicat occultorum scrutator et cognitor cito venturus, et de arcanis cordis atque abditis judicaturus. Obesse autem mali bonis non debent, sed magis mali a bonis adjuvari. -Id. Ep. 55. Qua ex causa necessario apud nos fit, ut per singulos annos seniores et præpositi in unum conveniamus ad disponenda ea, quæ curæ nostræ commissa sunt, ut si qua graviora sunt, communi consilio dirigantur, lapsis quoque fratribus, et post lavacrum salutare a diabolo vulneratis per pœnitentiam medela quæratur: non quasi a nobis remissionem peccatorum consequantur, sed ut per nos ad intelligentiam delictorum suorum convertantur, et Domino plenius satisfacere cogantur.-FIRMILIAN, Ep. ad Cyprian, Ep. Cypr. 75.

pression, pœnitentia canonica, canones pœnitentiales-penitential exercises required by authority of councils and bishops.

1

In the ancient phraseology of the church, the lapsed, who after professing Christianity had abjured their faith, were included among the proper subjects of penance. The term was frequently applied in a wider sense, but in this restricted sense the lapsed were divided into several classes. 1. The libellatici-those who received from a Roman magistrate a warrant for their security, libellum securitatis, or pacis, certifying that they were not Christians, or that they were not required to sacrifice to the gods. 2. The sacrificati, including all those who had sacrificed to heathen gods, whether by constraint or voluntarily. 3. Taditores. This term came into use about forty years after the death of Cyprian, and was employed to denote those who had delivered up copies of the sacred Scriptures, church records, or any other property of the church. These were chargeable with different degrees of guilt, according to the nature of their offence. They who had been guilty of murder and adultery were sometimes included under this class.

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§4. OF THE DIFFERENT CLASSES OF PENITENTS.

NEITHER Tertullian nor Cyprian make any mention of different classes of penitents. It is therefore to be presumed, that this distinction into several classes was made at a later period. They are first mentioned in the equivocal epistle of Gregory Thaumaturgus, bishop of Neocæsarea, which, if genuine, falls between A. D. 244 and A. D. 270. This classification was fully known in the fourth century,' and probably was first established in the latter part of the third century, or beginning of the fourth.

The penitents were divided into four classes or degrees, as follows:

1. Пρoσx2αiovτεS, flentes, mourners or weepers. These were rather candidates for penance than actual penitents. They were wont to lie prostrate in the porch of the church. Sometimes they knelt or stood, entreating the faithful and the clergy to intercede for them for their forgiveness and reconciliation. These were probably called xequalovτes, hiemantes, because they remained in the open air, not being permitted, on any occasion, to enter within the sacred enclosure of the church. Others suppose that demoniacs were designated by this name from the convulsions to which they were subject.

2. 'Axpowμévoi, audientes, hearers. These were permitted to

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