to ecclesiastics, king Philip of France, amongst other things, wrote to him," The church, the spouse of Jesus Christ, does "not consist of clergy only, but of laymen also. He has de"livered it from the slavery of sin, and the yoke of the old law, "and has willed, that all who compose it, both clerks and laics, "enjoy this freedom. It was not for ecclesiastics only that he "died, nor to them alone that he promised grace in this life, "and glory in the next. It is but by an abuse of language, "that the clergy arrogate peculiarly to themselves the liberty "which Jesus Christ has purchased for us." Which of the

two, the king or the priest, was the greater statesman, I know not; but it does not require a moment's Kesitation to pronounce which was the better divine. The inferiority of his Holiness here, even in his own profession, compared with his majesty, in a profession not his own, is both immense and manifest.

But amongst a rude and ignorant people, in ages of barbarity and superstition, it was easy to confound, in their minds, the cause of the priest with the cause of God, in every quarrel which the former happened to have with the magistrate.—I shall here remark in passing, and with it conclude the present discourse, that it is doubtful whether the word ɛnnλnoia ever occurs in the New Testament in a sense wherein the word church is very common with us, as a name for the place of worship. There are only two passages that I remember, which seem to convey this sense. They are both in the eleventh chapter of the first epistle to the Corinthians. The first is, verse 18th, When ye come together in the church, συνερχομένων υμων εν τη εκκλησία. Here, however, the word is susceptible of another interpretation, as a name for the society. Thus we say, "The lords, spiri"tual and temporal, and the commons, in parliament assem"bled," here parliament does not mean the house they meet in, but the assembly properly constituted. The other is verse 22d, Have ye not houses to eat and drink in, or despise ye the church of God? ̧ ons exxλnoias tu dev nalaqgovsik: where it is urged, the opposition of exxanoia to oixia, the church to their houses, adds a probability to this interpretation. But this plea, though plausible, is not decisive. The sacred writers are not always studious of so much accuracy in their contrasts, nor is it here necessary to the sense. The apostle's argument, on my hypo

thesis, stands thus: What can be the reason of this abuse? Is it because ye have not houses of your own to eat and drink in? Or is it because ye despise the Christian congregation to which ye belong? This, though it do not convey so exact a verbal antithesis, is, in my judgment, more in the spirit and style of the New Testament, than to speak of despising stone walls. But as to this I affirm nothing. To express the place of meeting, we find the word ywyn, as observed above, used by the apostle James. In ancient authors, the words first adopted, were εκκλησίας κριον, εκκλησίας οικος, and κυριακον, whence the words kirk and church. At length the term sxxλna, by a common metonymy, the thing contained for the thing containing, came to be universally employed in this acceptation.

LECTURE XI.

THE HE steps I have already mentioned and explained, advancing from presbytery to parochial episcopacy; thence to prelacy or diocesan episcopacy; from that to metropolitical primacy; and thence again to patriarchal superintendency; together with those methods I have pointed out to you, whereby the ministers of religion distinguished themselves from their Christian brethren ;-insensibly prepared the minds of the people for the notion, that in ordination there was something exceedingly mysterious, and even inscrutable. It came at length not to be considered as a solemn manner of appointing a fit person to discharge the duties of the pastoral office amongst a particular flock or congregation, and of committing them to his care; but to be regarded more especially as the imprinting of a certain character, or unperceivable and incomprehensible signature on a person; a character which, though in consequence of human means employed by the proper minister, it was conferred, could by no power less than omnipotence be removed. And though at first hearing, one would be apt to imagine, that by this tenet they derogated as much from the ecclesiastic power on one hand, as they enhanced it on the other, since they maintained, that the persons who gave this character, could not take it away, the effect on men's conceptions was very different. If a single ceremony, or form of words, could with as much facility withdraw as confer a gift in its nature invisible, nobody would be impressed with the conception, that any thing very wonderful had been either given or taken. The words or ceremony of ordaining would be considered as nothing more than the established mode of investing a man with the right of exercising canonically the sacred function; and the words or ceremony used in the deposition, as the mode of stripping him of that right, or privilege, so that he should no longer be entitled to exercise it. In this way he would be under the same canonical

incapacity he lay under before his ordination, which answers to what was, for many ages, called in the church, reducing a clergyman to lay communion. There would be nothing more extraordinary here, than the creating of a lord high steward, for instance, by certain solemnities accompanying the delivery of a white baton into his hands, and placing him on an eminent seat, and his putting an end to his office, by publicly breaking the baton, and coming down from his seat. Whereas for a man to do a thing, which nothing less than omnipotence can undo, and which even that, in fact, will never be employed in undoing; to imprint a character-a something which, in spite of angels, men, and devils, shall, to eternity, remain indelible, appears the result of a power, inconceivable indeed, and little less than divine.

Whence ideas of this kind originated,-ideas that do not seem to quadrate with the so much boasted power of the keys, which implies, alike, that of opening, and that of shutting, admitting and excluding, binding and loosing; ideas, of which the apostles and evangelists have no where given us the slightest hint, and of which it is plain they had not themselves the smallest apprehension; is a matter of curious inquiry, and closely connected with the subject of the hierarchy. I shall therefore endeavour briefly, in this lecture, to trace the rise and progress of so strange a doctrine.

Ecclesiastical degrees were not instituted originally under the notion of dignities, pre-eminencies, or honours, as they became afterwards, but as ministries, charges, and what the apostle Paul called pya, works, 1 Tim. iii. 1. "If a man desire the office of

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a bishop," says he, "he desireth a good work." Consequently if, in any thing denominated the office of a bishop, there be no work to do, it cannot be the office whereof the apostle speaks; for the misapplication of the name can never alter the nature of the thing. The persons accordingly possessed of such offices were styled, both by our Lord and by Paul his apostle, pyaas, labourers, workmen. "The labourers "are few," says the former, and, "the workman is worthy of "his meat." The latter recommends it to Timothy to acquit himself 66 as a workman that needeth not be ashamed.". For some time, indeed it could hardly enter into the mind of any man, to think himself entitled to decline executing person

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ally, whilst able to execute, a trust solemnly committed to him, and which he had himself undertaken. For the terms ordination, and appointment to a particular personal charge, were perfectly synonymous. If one, however, in those truly primitive times (which but rarely happened) found it necessary to retire from the work, he never thought of retaining either the title, or the emoluments. And though the ministers were of two kinds, the one called anciently the ministry of the word, and, in later times, the cure of souls, and the other a ministry in things temporal, for the support and relief of the poor and infirm, as was the deaconship, those in both offices were equally held bound to personal service. Nor would any one have thought, in the earliest ages, of serving by a deputy, unless for a short time, and on account of some remarkable and unavoidable impediment; much less would he have accepted another charge that was incompatible with his former one. But to be made a bishop, and in being so to receive no charge whatever, to have no work to execute, could have been regarded no otherwise than as a contradiction in terms.

Indeed, the name of the office implied the service, without which it could not subsist, that is, without which there was no office. The name bishop, as I have observed, means overseer, and this is a term manifestly correlative to that which expresses the thing to be overseen. The connection is equally necessary and essential as between father and child, sovereign and subject, husband and wife. The one is inconceivable without the other. Ye cannot make a man an overseer to whom ye give no oversight, no more than ye can make a man a shepherd, to whom ye give the charge of no sheep, or a husband to whom ye give no wife. Nay, in fact, as a man ceases to be a husband, the moment that he ceases to have a wife, and is no longer a shepherd than he has the care of sheep, so in the only proper and original import of the words, a bishop continues a bishop only whilst he continues to have people under his spiritual care. These things, indeed, are so plain, that one is almost ashamed to attempt to illustrate them. Yet the changes that too soon ensued, have turned matters so entirely off their original bottom, that propositions which, in the age of the apostles, must have appeared self-evident, require a careful developement to