condition and to this extent alone, that what the church binds or looses on earth, is bound or loosed in heaven. The necessity of officers to the normal administration of church affairs, is just like the necessity of officers to the normal administration of government in the state. The state may indeed exist temporarily without any formally organized magistracy; a provisional government, or a committee of public safety, may be, for some transition period, in the place of all regularly constituted officers, but the state must have a formal and legal government, with a limited and distributed deposit of the power originally inherent in the unorganized people, or it cannot live and prosper. So the church, whatever temporary arrangements may be made, in an emergency, for the conduct of its affairs, must have its officers, " in order to itswell being," as the Cambridge Platform tells us, though "not in order to its being."

It is this part of his discourse, while dwelling on the power of the people in church government, that the author introduces all that he has to say about the lay elders of Presbyterianism. His only explanation of the Presbyterian economy in that respect, is that the lay elders represent the people, and his only argument on the subject is an argument for the power of the people in the church. He does not seem to regard these ruling elders as capable of being identified at all with any presbyters mentioned in the New Testament. The right of the Christian people, as distinguished from clergymen, to "a substantive part in the discipline and government of the church," is forcibly, and (as we judge) conclusively, vindicated as a Divine right; but the Presbyterian arrangement by which the power of the people exhausts itself in the election of lay elders to a life-tenure of office, seems to be regarded as a matter of inference and expediency. Whatever force his argument may have against those who exclude "the laity" from all participation in church government, it has no force, and probably was not intended to have any force, against those whose first objection to Presbyterianism is that under its arrangements, the Christian brotherhood in each congregation are divested of all power, save only the power of voting once in a few years to elect a minister, or to fill a vacancy in the board of ruling elders.

The second point in the discourse, announced as "the second great principle of Presbyterianism," is, "that presbyters who minister in word and doctrine, are the highest permanent officers of the church." This, as our readers are aware, is also a principle of Congregationalism. But it is well to inquire

whether the principle as belonging to the Congregational theory, is exactly the same with that propounded and defended by Professor Hodge.

We discover, then, in our author's first remark under this topic, a divergence between the two systems. That our readers may judge for themselves, we give them the whole paragraph:

1. Our first remark on this subject is that the ministry is an office, and not merely a work. An office is a station to which the incumbent must be appointed, which implies certain prerogatives, which it is the duty of those concerned to recognize and submit to. A work, on the other hand, is something which any man who has the ability, may undertake. This is an obvious distinction. It is not every man who has the qualifications for a governor of a state, who has the right to act as such. He may be regularly appointed to the post. So it is not every one who has the qualifications for the work of the ministry, who can assume the office of the ministry. He must be regularly ap. pointed. This is plain: (a) From the titles given to ministers in the Scriptures, which imply official station. (b) From their qualifications being specified in the word of God, and the mode of judging of those qualifications being prescribed. (c) From the express command to appoint to the office only such as, on due examination, are found competent. (d) From the record of such appointment in the word of God. (e) From the official authority ascribed to them in the Scriptures, and the command that such authority should be duly recognized. We need not further argue this point, as it is not denied, except by Quakers, and a few such writers as Neander, who ignore all distinction between the clergy and laity, except what arises from diversity of gifts.' pp. 36, 38.

Are there no slips in the logic of this passage? Is there no confounding of things which might be distinguished? The "great principle" to be illustrated is that "presbyters who minister in word and doctrine, are the highest permanent officers of the church." We may hold this, and do hold it, without holding or conceding that presbyter and one who ministers in word and doctrine are synonymous expressions. We do not admit that preaching, or the public ministry of the word, is the exclusive function of presbyters, in the official sense of the term-the sense which makes them rulers or bishops, and gives them jurisdiction in the church. Cannot Professor Hodge remember that he himself was a preacher, and ministered in word and doctrine, by the space of two years or more before he became a presbyter? Might he not have continued a preacher to the present time, not only ministering the word in public assemblies, but instructing and training others for the work of the ministry, without having any ordination or vocation to the presbyterial office? Indeed, is it not required by the customs of Presbyterianism, that no man shall be elevated to the office of presbyter, who is not already a preacher, ministering in word and doctrine, and making that ministry

his professional employment? In the light of this simple fact -a fact which underlies the system of the ministry in every Presbyterian denomination—what becomes of the reasoning in the paragraph now under consideration? Our author's statement, "that the ministry is an office and not merely a work," is contradicted by Presbyterian as well as Congregational common sense; for the palpable fact is, that while the work of the ministry is among the official duties of a presbyter or bishop, the ministry itself is not an office, but a work. The work of the ministry is in this respect like the practice of medicine "something which any man who has the ability may undertake." As in every well governed state there are adequate regulations to determine and declare who of the many that may be disposed to practice medicine have "the ability" to do so, and shall be introduced and commended to the public accordingly; so in every ecclesiastical connection, some method is provided by which to identify and commend to the public, for employment in the ministry of the word, those who are qualified for the work. The place of a surgeon in the navy is an office "to which the incumbent must be appointed," and the practice of medicine is one of the duties of that office; but does it follow that the practice of medicine is itself "an office and not merely a work?" If, as in the old times, no man were allowed to make shoes, without having been admitted to membership in a 66 worshipful guild of cordwainers," would the making of shoes be an office, instead of being as it now is, an employment?

In further illustration of what we deem our author's error on this point, we give another paragraph immediately following the one last quoted:

'2. Our second remark is, that the office is of divine appointment, not merely in the sense in which the civil powers are ordained of God, but in the sense that ministers derive their authority from Christ, and not from the people. Christ has not only ordained that there shall be such officers in his Churchhe has not only specified their duties and prerogatives-but he gives the requisite qualifications, and calls those thus qualified, and by that call gives them their official authority. The function of the Church in the premises, is not to confer the office, but to sit in judgment on the question, whether the candidate is called of God; and if satisfied on that point, to express its judg ment in the public and solemn manner prescribed in Scripture.' pp. 38, 39.

Here too, we conceive, the same distinction should have been made, as in the preceding paragraph. "Ministers," as preachers of the Gospel, as heralds of the word of God, "derive their authority from Christ" and from the vocation and unction of the Holy Spirit, and not from their hearers. Their function is analogous to the prophetic, and what the church has to do in

regard to them is only to "try the spirits" and to acknowledge those who appear to have been called to that work by "him who is Head over all things to the church." But presbyters or bishops, as rulers in the church, derive their authority not directly from Christ, but directly from the choice and consent of the Christian people, whose church-officers they are; as the Governor of New Jersey and the President of the United States, derive their authority respectively, from God, who ordains the powers that are, not directly, but indirectly, through the people by the forms and processes of the Constitution. Professor Hodge himself, however he may overlook this distinction in expounding the theory of Presbyterianism, cannot fail to recognize it in practice. As a minister of Christ, he is recognized, and reasonably expects to be recognized, far beyond the bounds of his own presbytery, or of his own ecclesiastical connection; for his calling to that work is everywhere acknowledged as evidenced in his intellectual gifts and spiritual graces. But his office as a ruler in the church belongs to him not because he is a minister of the Gospel, but because he is a member of the New Brunswick Presbytery. The congregations of that presbytery are the church over which he is one of the bishops. Those congregations, as represented in their presbyterial assembly, have placed him in that office; and they are thus "the flock over which the Holy Ghost hath made him overseer." In the Dutch Church he is as much a minister as one of their own professors; but he is not an ecclesiastical ruler over them, for they have never placed him in that office. The excellent Dr. Magie, of Elizabethtown, is as much a minister at Princeton, as his neighbor, Dr. Murray, though the latter is connected with "the Presbyterian Church," and the former is only a member of "the New School body;" for everybody in Princeton knows that Dr. Magie is a minister of Christ. But his recognized commission as a minister gives him no right to rule as a presbyter, save where by the choice and consent of the church he is invested with that office.

It is unnecessary for us to follow the author, step by step, through this part of his exposition, for it is here, more than anywhere else, that the Presbyterian system and the Congregational approximate to a complete agreement. We have sufficiently indicated the nature and extent of their divergence under this topic, by making the distinction-ignored in the exposition of Presbyterianism, but constantly and necessarily acknowledged in Presbyterian practice-between the ministry as a function, or "the work of an evangelist," and the churchoffice of a presbyter or bishop. How important the overlook

ing of this palpable distinction is to the whole argument of the discourse before us, the reader may discern by observing the form of our author's transition to his third great principle:

'III. As then presbyters are all of the same rank, and as they exercise their power in the government of the Church, in connection with the people, or their representatives, this of necessity gives rise to Sessions in our individual congregations, and to Presbyteries, Synods, and Assemblies, for the exercise of more extended jurisdiction. This brings into view the third great principle of Presbyterianism, the government of the Church by judicatories composed of presbyters and elders, &c. This takes for granted the unity of the Church in opposition to the theory of the Independents.' p. 62.

Methodists have sometimes said, if our memory does not mislead us, that their system, though in this country it is called Episcopal, is really and essentially Presbyterian, because the Conferences which rule the whole connection are made up of preaching presbyters. The first sentence of the foregoing paragraph gives an impressive suggestion as to the analogy and the difference between the Wesleyan scheme of church power and that expounded by Professor Hodge. We have here a clerical body-a body of preachers-invested with power over the church by a Divine right. Our author has taken pains to show that they have this power not from the people, nor by any choice or consent of theirs, but directly from Christ, and by virtue of a Divine commission. So far, Wesleyanism and the Presbyterian system are agreed; the hierarchical element is the same in both. The essential difference between them is that in the Presbyterian system these divinely commissioned presbyters "exercise their power in the government of the church in connection with the people, or their representatives" -if representatives they may be called, who are in no way responsible to their supposed constituents. Methodism, though agitated with the demand for a lay representation, has not yet learned how completely the people might be represented in the Conferences, and admitted to "a substantive part in the government of the church," by the expedient of lay elders with a life-tenure of office.

But the thesis to be maintained in this part of the discourse is "the unity of the church, in opposition to the theory of the Independents." It is worth the while for us and our readers to study with some care Professor Hodge's doctrine about the unity of the church.

The unity of the church, then, is something which the Independents are to be regarded as denying. The third of "the three great negations of Presbyterianism" is the "error" of believing "that each individual Christian congregation is independent." Or in the more expanded statement of the error,