The conclusion therefore which is forced upon our minds is, that the system is not only evil in the disastrous results of so many being called pastors who have no pastoral qualifications—a consequence flowing from the system of appointment; not only mischievous as restraining the exercise of liberty in the people of God (a restraint indeed which is often very right if done according to godliness), but as being destructive of all offices in the church of Christ, and subversive of the principle on which they rest; and moreover that, under the parochial or rather clerical system, the offices of the church of Christ cannot be exercised, at least in order. Nor does the system of dissenters appear in this respect at all different: they equally confound the order of the church, with the difference only of having no local limits, which so far prevents the notion of schism; a system of local limits having by the way no possible consistency or warrant from scriptural order of churches.
I am not entering now on the question of diocesan episcopacy, but it is quite clear that in its origin it went by churches, not by geographical limits; that is, a bishop governed the churches in such a limit, i.e., those who might be gathered out from heathenism—but that was all; and within such district, all the offices above mentioned might be exercised with gladness of heart and profit to those who were gathered. But parochial clericalism cannot in any way combine with this. It is absolutely without consistency with any order in the church. An individual is appointed (at three or four and twenty) to a curacy or parish, and he alone may be the elder (an office for which it is clear that he is seldom qualified), teacher, pastor, evangelist, if needed. He is the shut-door to the exercise of any office in the church, whether he himself have any gift or the contrary. If God's Spirit is to work at all, then He must be a schismatic; and this is the hateful evil and disorder of such a system—it makes a schismatic of the Spirit of God.
The office of an evangelist is not a parochial office. It may in given instances be exercised within the limits of a parish, but the office knows no such limits; nor does the exercise of such an office imply qualification for being a pastor; nay, in its ordinary exercise it necessarily disqualifies for being an elder. But the notion of a clergyman, which is wholly unsupported by scripture, summarily settles the whole question, and removes all the offices at once; for it assumes all within the limit to be Christians, and decides that the person (having the sphere of his service prescribed by men, though his ostensible commission is from the laying on of the bishop's hands) who is thus considered as being over his flock, is to have the title to exclude the exercise of office which he may not happen to possess, though it is evident that even if a good man (most frequently not the case) he may be gifted for no office at all, and clearly cannot be assumed in every instance to possess them all.
And now suppose the Spirit thus grieved and dishonored should begin to work in sovereign mercy, will it be exclusively confined to the system which has dishonored it, and haughtily domineered over all its order and grace? It cannot be so; He works where He may work, blowing where He lists. Some of those who, unconscious of the evil, are in the system, may be quickened into energy by His influence; and though in extreme irregularity and disorder (an evangelist exercising the office of a pastor here, and a pastor exercising the office of an evangelist there, and both unprofitably), yet in some measure they may work within their respective limits. The system however itself is unmended. Some of those who are without may be raised up into energy. They at once see that the system is essentially wrong; they wish not to be schismatic in any sort. Labor they must—yea, exercise pastoral care if God has committed it to them; but these individuals with the very same class of gifts are stamped at once dissenters and schismatics. And what is the meaning of this but that the system which gives the name schism is such as to preclude the exercise of God's gifts as far as it can?
Let us suppose for farther exemplification of our argument a large district without the gospel preached in it. An individual is raised up of God, a stranger to the place, who preaches there. A thousand souls are converted: what is to be done? Of the number thus awakened five are specially gifted of God for the office of pastor, or teacher, or elder. The question at once arises, Are these thousand souls to be left shepherdless, because men have chosen to appoint persons called clergymen, who turn out not to be Christians at all—nay, who, it may be, belie the gospel of Christ? I will suppose that, to prevent heresies and confusion—a point surely of material import in these days—some or all of these five practically act as pastors. Ordained for it according to the church system they cannot be, for the clergy are there already; but the love of Christ constrains them to do the best they can for the sheep. They are at once set down as censers of division: that is, the whole church of God, as far as this place is concerned, is denounced as schismatic.
In a word, the effect of the Church of England system, instead of being godly order, throws into schism in reputation nearly the whole church of God. And this is anything rather than an imaginary case. Afterward, it may be, a saint becomes a clergyman in the district; he draws some back to the church, or is the instrument of converting others; and thus two systems are formed in which saints within one and the other are thrown into opposition. And of the whole of this part of the evil the Church of England system is the original cause; however it may be perpetuated by the other system which its evil may have generated. The mischievous results are endless; but while these are abundantly sufficient to act upon, the truth is that the principle of the system is irreconcilably at variance with the order, the discipline, and the efficiency of the church of God; while it excludes the recognition of all offices in the church, and infallibly perpetuates schism. And such has been its effect.
The point to which I now specifically allude is, that it has been the author of, or has at least perpetuated, the destruction of all offices in the church of God, by which the saints are to be perfected, and the body edified; which are absolutely incompatible with the notion of that scripturally unrecognized and actually undefined office—a clergyman. By casualty it may have happened that one gifted for office may have had a limited opportunity of its exercise, but in no case can it have been exercised according to the order of the church of God. It does not appear to me that the dissenting body has at all emerged from this snare, office with them being equally confused. I will now give its effects even within the system, where there are godly ministers, under circumstances in which it is practically reduced to the limit of dissent as a system—the private choice of ministry, which is the common practice in large towns. I give it in the words of one who, being a godly high churchman, forms an unexceptionable witness to its practical effects.
“ It is one of the sad consequences of our divisions and disunions, and of the neglect of pastoral superintendence, that the oneness of interest which ought to prevail among the members of one church, and especially of one flock, is very much weakened, if not lost sight of. Each man looks to his own things, his own edification, his own comfort, his own progress, so that a kind of selfishness has sprung up in our religion itself. The injury which this has done in the church is incalculable. It leads to endless divisions. Each man is tempted to seek a ministry adapted to his own state. If he be only a little way advanced in his perception of divine truth, he will go where he can hear taught the early lessons of the school of Christ. If he be further advanced, he will go where he can hear deeper things; and the temptation arising from this to the ministry is, that it should ever be accommodated to the state of the hearers, thus checking all growth in grace, and destroying all symmetry in the body of Christ. Hence it arises that we have some congregations who are only babes in Christ, and content to remain so; and others more exclusively strong men in Christ, who, forgetting their own former weakness, are apt to be filled with self-sufficiency and pride.”
The statements I have made are neither an exposition of abuses (though abundant room might have been afforded for it) nor indefinite, though I have reasoned on the principle, because the soundness of this is alleged when abuse is admitted. I say “abundant room for exposing abuse,” for the computation of the most sanguine evangelical ministers is that two-thirds of the pastors so-called of the church are not merely without specific gifts for given office, but do not preach the gospel at all. Surely it is a strange state of things, and one which flows from the system they are anxious to vindicate; whilst the perpetual use of this criterion of preaching the gospel shows the want of any apprehension of the difference of offices in the church, which the habits of their system have generated: a system, I repeat it, subversive of all specific office in the church of God. J. N. D. (Concluded from page 52.)