in the pastors, the affectation of epithets, added to their names, expressive of their virtues, and of the esteem and veneration of those that approached them, such as most holy, most bles sed, most religious, most worthy of God, beloved of God, reverend, venerable, and many others, which it were tedious to enumerate, together with certain ceremonies, such as bowing the head, kissing the hands, and the like. Of these I shall only say, that though some of them became afterwards, as words of course, mere marks of civil respect for the office, they were, in their application at first, entirely personal. If we were to settle a sort of spiritual barometer for determining the precise quantity at which piety and virtue, at any given time, arrived in the church, I could not assign a better than the use of these epithets and ceremonies, holding it as an invariable canon, that in proportion as the external signs multiplied, the substance of internal religion decreased. At no time could the pharisaical scribes be accused of greater ostentation, or more desire of greetings in the markets, and to be called of men, Rabbi, Rabbi, than were, a few ages afterwards, the ministers of the humble Jesus, who had so expressly warned his followers against the imitation of their vain-glorious manners. Yet such are the manners which even, in these more. enlightened times, the priestly pride of some prelatical preachers has instigated them to write whole volumes to revive.

One of the natural consequences of all those great distinc tions of the sacred order was, that they made way for another, by which the ministers of religion, in a manner, appropriated the term church to themselves. I have had occasion, in these lectures, to lay before you the only undoubted acceptations, wherein I find the word exxncia employed in the New Testament, and have observed, that when applied to the disciples of Christ, it always denotes either the whole christian community, or all those of a particular congregation, under the guidance of their own pastors. I have also pointed out one deviation from the latter of these original meanings naturally consequent on the change that in a few centuries ensued, when the bishop, instead of the oversight of one congregation, had the superintendency of many congregations, that is, when his one congregation, on account of the increase of proselytes, was split into several, and when the habit of applying the word in the singular number to the whole of a bishop's charge prevailed over strict propriety, and the primitive use of the term. This prepared men for a still farther extension of the name to all the congregations of a province under the same metropolitan, and afterwards to all those of a civil diocess under the same patriarch or exarch.

I now intend to point out another still more remarkable deviation not from the latter, as those now mentioned were, but from the former of the two primitive senses, whereby the word is applied to the christian commonwealth. Then it means, as is pretended, either the church collective, that is, the whole community of christians, or the church representative, that is, say some, the whole clerical orders, say others, the church judicatories, especially the supreme. And this, I ac knowledge, is a distinction that is favoured not only by those of the Romish communion, but by most sects of protestants also. To many, however, and I acknowledge myself one of the num-' ber, it is manifest, that it is no less a novelty than the former,' having no foundation in the scriptural usage.

The Hebrew word np exactly corresponds to the Greek sxx, and is commonly rendered by it in the septuagint, the only Greek translation of the Old Testament in use in the days of our Saviour. Its idiom and phraseology was consequently become the standard, in all matters that concerned religion, to all the Jewish writers who used the Greek language, and were commonly distinguished by the name of Hellenists. From them the term was originally borrowed by the penmen of the New Testament. From their manner of using it, there fore, the general meanings of the word are to be sought. But though the phrases in Hebrew, and wara i exxantia lopax in Greek, the whole church of Israel, do frequently occur in the Old Testament, there is not a single passage in which they are not confessedly equivalent to the phrases 12

band way to εvos Ispaλ, all the nation of Israel. The

: * עם אלהים and להל אלהים same may be said of the phrases

nanoia, des and As the church of God and the people of God. A distinction between these would have been pro nounced by them inconceivable, as being a distinction between the church and its constituent members. In the Latin translation, called the Vulgate, the date of which, or a great part of which, if I mistake not, is about the beginning of the fifth century, the Greek word is commonly retained, having been long before naturalized among christians. Accordingly they rendered those phrases in the Old Testament omnis ecclesia Israel and ecclesia Dei.

I know not for what reason our English translators have never admitted the word church into their version of the Old Testament, notwithstanding the frequent use they have made of it in their translation of the New. They have always rendered the Hebrew word above-mentioned by the Englishwords congregation, assembly, or some synonymous term. do not mean to say,t kata so doing, they have mistranslated

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the word. Either of these English names is, perhaps, as well adapted to express the sense of the Hebrew, as the appellatives of one language commonly are to convey the ideas suggested by those of another. But these English words were altoge ther as fit for expressing the sense of the word exxλno in the New Testament as of the word in the Old, the former being the term by which the latter had been rendered almost uniformly in the septuagint, and which had been employed as equivalent by all the Hellenist Jews. What I blame, therefore, in our translators, is the want of uniformity. They ought constantly to have rendered the original expression either church in the Old Testament, or congregation in the New, Terms so perfectly coincident in signification, as those Hebrew and Greek names are, ought to have been translated by the same English word. There is one advantage at least resulting from such an attention to uniformity, which is this, that if the application of the word should, in a few passages, be dubious, a comparison with the other passages wherein it occurs, often serves entirely to remove the doubt. They are the more inexcusable, in regard to the present instance, that they do not re fuse the title of church to the Israelitish commonwealth, when an occasion of giving it occurs in the New Testament, though they would take no occasion in the Old. Thus they have rendered the words of Stephen, who says, speaking of Moses, Acts vii. 38, "This is he that was in the church in the wilder ness, Ουλα εσιν ὁ γενόμενος εν 7η εκκλησία εν τη ερήμω.

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But in the use neither of the Greek word in the New Testament, nor of the correspondent Hebrew word in the old, do we find a vestige of an application of the term to a smaller part of the community, their governours, pastors, or priests, for instance, as representing the whole. The only passage, as far as I can learn, that has been, with any appearance of plausibility, alleged for this purpose, is Matt. xviii. 17, where our Lord, in the directions he gives for removing offences between brethren, enjoins the party offended, after repeated admonitions in a more private manner have proved ineffectual, to relate the whole to the church, eixe ky sundeσia; and it is added, "If he neglect to hear the church, let him be to thee as a hea "then and a publican." Now I ask by what rule of sound criticism can we arbitrarily impose here on the word church, the signification of church representative, a signification which we do not find it bears in one other passage of scripture? To affirm, without proof, that this is the sense of it here, is taking for granted the very point in question.

But we have more than merely negative evidence that the meaning of the word is here, as in other places, no more than

congregation, and that the term ought to have been rendered Let it be observed, that our Lord gave these directions during the subsistence of the Mosaick establishment; and if we believe that he spoke intelligibly, or with a view to be understood, we must believe also, that he used the word in an acceptation with which the hearers were acquainted. Dodwell himself saw the propriety of this rule of interpreting, when he said, "It very much confirms me in my reasonings, when I "find an interpretation of the scriptures not only agreeable to "the words of the scriptures, but agreeable also to the notions "and significations of words then received. For that sense "which was most likely to be then understood was, in all like"lihood, the true sense intended by the Holy Ghost himself. "Otherwise there could be no security that his true sense "could be conveyed to future ages, if they had been them"selves mistaken in it, to whose understanding the Holy "Ghost was then particularly concerned to accommodate him "self." Now all the then known acceptations, as I showed before, of the name xxàŋo, were these two, the whole Jewish people, and a particular congregation. The scope of the place sufficiently shows it could not be the former of these senses, it must therefore be the latter. What further confirms this interpretation is, that the Jews were accustomed to call those assemblies, which met together for worship in the same synagogue, by this appellation; and had, if we may believe some learned men conversant in Jewish antiquities, a rule of procedure similar to that here recommended, which our Lord adopted from the synagogue, and transplanted into his church.

Another collateral and corroborative evidence, that by xxq= o is here meant not a representative body, but the whole of a particular congregation, is the actual usage of the church for the first three hundred years. I had occasion formerly to remark, that as far down as Cyprian's time, which was the middle of the third century, when the power of the people was in the decline, it continued to be the practice, that nothing in matters of scandal and censure could be concluded without the consent and approval of the congregation. And this, as it appears to have been pretty uniform, and to have subsisted from the beginning, is, in my opinion, the best commentary which we, at this distance, can obtain on the passage.

If any impartial hearer is not satisfied on this point, I would recommend it to him, without the aid of any commentator on either side of the question, but with the help of proper concordances, attentively to search the scriptures. Let him exa

* Distinction between soul and spirit, &c., § 7.

mine every passage in the New Testament wherein the word we render church is to be found, let him canvass in the writings of the Old Testament every sentence wherein the correspondent word occurs, let him add to these the apocryphal books received by the romanists, which, as they were either originally written, or translated by Hellenists, amongst whom the term Exxλ was in frequent use, must be of some authority in ascertaining the Jewish acceptation of the word; and if he find a single passage, wherein it clearly means either the priesthood, or the rulers of the nation, or any thing that can be called a church representative, let him fairly admit the distinction as scriptural and proper. Otherwise he cannot admit it, in a consistency with any just rule of interpretation.

I observed, in a preceding lecture, that the term λ is,' in some passages, applied to the people, exclusively of the' pastors. The same was remarked of the word xλnpos, (not as though these terms did not properly comprehend both, but because, in collectives, the name of a whole is often given to a great majority) but I have not discovered one passage wherein either exxancia, or xmpos, is applied to the pastors, exclusively of the people. The notion, therefore, of a church representative, how commonly soever it has been received, is a mere usurper of later date. And it has fared here as it sometimes does in cases of usurpation, the original proprietor comes, though gradually, to be at length totally dispossessed. Should any man now talk of the powers of the church, and of the rights of churchmen, would the hearers apprehend, that he meant the powers of a christian congregation, or the rights of all who are members of the christian community? And it they should come to learn that this is his meaning, would they not be apt to say, "It is pity that this man, before he attempt to speak on these subjects, does not learn to speak intelligibly, by conforming to the current use of the language?' It is therefore not without reason that I affirm, that the more modern acceptation, though an entruder, has jostled out the rightful and primitive one almost intirely. But as every man, who would be understood, is under a necessity of employing words according to the general use of the time present,

Quem penes arbitrium est, et jus, et norma loquendi ;

when I employ, for the future, any of the words affected by this remark, I am always, unless where the connexion indicates the contrary, to be understood as using them in the sense in which they are now commonly received. Only by the deduction that has been given of the origin of this change, we