Church of God have been developed, side by side-not indeed among all peoples-but among all where God had a people. From the call of Abraham to the establishment of the Institutions of Moses, there seems to have been little distinction between the two. From the establishment of those Institutions to the erection of the Gospel Church State, the distinction between the two was made as exact as the union was close. It is under that Gospel Church State, that the union between them has been dissevered and each assigned to its proper sphere; one as the ordinance of God for the temporal benefit of man, the other as the ordinance of God for the eternal salvation of sinners; one fitted to be universal, the other obliged by its very nature to ground itself, in some degree, on whatever is local, peculiar, distinctive, personal. Of necessity, and in every way, therefore, the law of God, and the person of Christ, have a relation to the functions of the visible Church, different from the relation of both to the civil State. It is this which remains to be explained.

5. I have proved in a previous chapter, that the word of God contained in the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, is the only infallible rule of all that God requires of man, and all that man ought to believe concerning God. I have also proved that the gathering and perfecting of the saints of God, in this life, to the end of the world, is the great immediate object of the organization and continued existence of the visible Church on earth. It follows that the word of God is not only the supreme, but the exclusive law of his Church; the whole function of determining what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad—the whole power of making law in its proper sense, and for the proper ends of her existence-much less for other ends-being swallowed up and exhausted in her joyful and complete acceptance of God as her Lawgiver, and his laws as hers. There are other lines of argument by which this same conclusion is very variously established; I content myself with remarking, that the express command of God himself crowns and settles all. The absolute sufficiency of the sacred Scriptures, is the fundamental principle of the Reformed religion—in other words of Christianity itself. Every addition to them, and every subtraction from them, which the visible Church, or any portion of it, may dare to attempt; is a usurpation of the prerogative of God, an

attack upon the Mediatorial office of Christ, and an outrage at once upon the freedom and the conscience of the saints."

6. Accepting, therefore, the law of God-the functions which remain to the organized Church, considered as a visible, but divine Institute; are the true interpretation and application, and the faithful administration and execution of all that blessed truth, of which her Lord has made her, the pillar and the ground. While her whole power is thus limited with relation to the Law of God, her judicial and executive power, like that of every society, limited to the exposition and enforcement of such law as is peculiar to them, or common to all societies, in her, is limited exclusively to the law of God. For the law of God appertains to her, to her nature, and to her ends; to expound it, and to enforce it, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints-is her business on earth. Considered simply as God's Kingdom, there is no other law which appertains to her; and, therefore, there is no other with which she may meddle, either to expound it, or to enforce it. Acting always in the name and by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ-uttering always the mind of God as made known to her through his word and Spirit-having no end but the glory of God in the salvation of fallen men; it is God's Kingdom in this ruined world, made visible as the Church of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ-and now militant in its Gospel State.

7. We may therefore define that the Church visible of Christ, is the Kingdom of God in this world, created through the communion of saints, developed externally through principles inherent in human nature and common to other societies, possessed of a peculiar and divinely appointed organization, separate from the world, and so a divine institute among men: that all the members of it, are members of Jesus Christ, its Lord and Head, whose Body it is-the infallible rule of whose faith and practice is the revealed will of God-to expound and apply, to administer and enforce which, are its sole functions as a government separate from the world-the scope of all its powers, being the scope of its own end, is exclusively spiritual, and exclusively directed to the gathering and perfecting of the saints, who are lost sinners saved by grace.

1 1 Gal., i. 8, 9; 2 Tim., iii. 14–17; Deut. iv. 1, 2; Rev., xxii. 18, 19.

CHAPTER XXII.

THE FREEDOM OF THE VISIBLE CHURCH, CONSIDERED IN ITS INDEPENDENCE OF THE STATE, AND ITS CONSECRATION TO CHRIST.

I. 1. The Family, the State, and the Church: Their Relation to Human Nature, and to God.-2. The Impossibility of either of them supplying the place of any other.-3. Relation of Christian Duty to the Commonwealth.-4. Tendency of Society to engulph the Church in the State: Certainty and Nature of the Retribution.-5. Results of the Union of the Church and the State.-6. Their distinct Nature and separate Mission: Their mutual Relation and Duty.-7. Fundamental Necessity of the Spiritual Independence of the Church.-8. Absolute Impossibility of confounding the True Church and the Civil Power: Distinction between the inward and outward Freedom of the Church.-II. 1. Relation of the Glorified Redeemer to the Visible Church, and her Relation to Him.-2. Infinite Dominion of Christ, and unspeakable Freedom and Blessedness of the Church therein:(a) The Head of the Church, head over all things :-(b) The Church the Purchase of his Blood:-(c) She Chosen in Him-chooses Him as her only Lord:—(α) His Worthiness to possess, and Competency to execute, boundless and everlasting Authority:-(e) In Him dwelleth all Fulness:-(ƒ) By Him, are all eternal Retributions.-3. The Crown of the Redeemer as exclusively his, as his Cross.4. The Root of our inward Freedom.-5. Consecration of the Church to Christ, her true Freedom.-6. Nature of this Freedom.-7. Condition of the Visible Church, when possessed of it.-8. Relation of all States to Christ's Free Church.

1.-1. WHEN We have considered man as an individual being, and then considered him under the various social aspects in which he is united with his fellow-creatures; there remains nothing which concerns his nature, his development, or his duty, which may not have been subjected to our scrutiny. For there is no position in which man can be contemplated, which does not become distinct under one or other of these points of view. I have attempted in the early part of the previous Treatise to analyze what may be called the social possibilities of human nature, as a necessary part of the demonstration of the total and universal depravity of the race. The result reached was, that all the social relations which have been ordained and regulated by God, and of which human nature appears to be capable, are embraced

under the institutions of the family, the State, and the Church; these three institutions, and none besides, appearing to be unavoidable under the scheme of creation, providence, and grace, known to us; and, at the same time, to exhaust the social capabilities and satisfy the social necessities of human nature, in its present condition. In order to the analysis and demonstration which it was necessary to attempt, neither of these social institutions was required to assume any particular form, out of the innumerable forms in which all of them have existed, or might be supposed to exist. What was to be shown was, the social capabilities and wants of human nature, concurring with the ordination of God, and uniformly producing the organization of families, of civil communities, and of religions-however perfect or imperfect they might be supposed to be; by means of the whole of which, and by no other means, those social capabilities and wants are completely exhausted and satisfied. This is the result on the side of Philosophy-illustrating the course of divine Providence towards man, and confirming the perpetual teaching of God's word, that these, and only these, are the social institutions which belong to human nature in its present condition, and which have been ordained by the Creator and Ruler of the uni

verse.

2. It follows, that neither of these institutions can discharge the functions which are peculiar to either of the others; and that neither of them can encroach upon the proper domain of any other, without jeoparding the highest interests of man, and at the same time attempting to disorder the course of divine Providence, and to set at naught the revealed ordinations of God. If it were possible to obliterate the sense of religion in the human soul, we should become a race of fiends. If it were possible to annihilate the irresistible tendency in man to a state of society, mankind would be exterminated by mutual violence, unless want, and pestilence, and beasts of prey, anticipated the savage work. If it were possible to extinguish the parental, the filial, the fraternal, the marital affections and instincts of our racc-its continued existence would be impossible. It is by means of these profound and enduring elements of our nature, that our race has been found capable not only of existing, but of making progress, under conditions which would seem capable of overwhelming it with ruin and despair.

3. Civil society, then, is by divine appointment-and the commonwealth is an ordinance of God. The magistrate is, in his place, the servant of God.' Obedience to the laws of the land in which we dwell, loyalty to the community of which we are members, zeal for the advancement of the commonwealth to which we belong, are not only obligations of natural religion, and high impulses of nature herself; they are explicit duties of revealed religion, enjoined by God. But, like all other relative duties, they are neither exclusive nor absolute; but are bounded and regulated by other duties of equal dignity; and are liable, on one hand to be greatly strengthened, and on the other to be even effaced, by coincidence or by conflict with duties more exalted than themselves.

4. Nothing in the history of society, is more remarkable than the strength of that tendency to confound and identify its civil and religious institutions, which has manifested itself in all ages. And yet from the moment that the tribal form of society was superseded, by what may be properly called the State, and the Church became visible and separate; nothing would be more illogical, and nothing has been more disastrous. When God organized his ancient people under a form of administration immediately theocratical, not only did he keep the functions of the Church and those of the commonwealth distinct; but he rendered their union impossible-and secured the freedom of both -by making one tribe royal, and another priestly. Yet mankind, imbued with a deep instinct of the divine origin of society, while they apprehended vaguely its true principles; overlooked the divine ordination of its separate organization for its special and limited ends, and engulphed under the one ruling idea of the State, every interest of man, personal and public, temporal and eternal. However great may be the error of denying the divine authority of civil society; the error is equally great that swallows up the individual-the household-and the Church-and leaves to man nothing positive but the State-and no distinct relation but that of citizen, or subject, or slave, as the case may be. The social instincts of man, not less powerful in their religious than in their civil tendencies, might be expected to seek a terrible retribution; and they were taught the way, both by the spirit and the method to which governments were prone. The

Matt., xxii. 15-22; Rom., xiii. 1–7.