How does it happen, it is perpetually asked, that while the right to temporal power is abjured in words by every Church, the State religion of every country affords an instance of its assumption? It happens, as many other strange and inconsistent things happen, through the misuse of terms. What we call temporal power, the advocates of a State religion call spiritual power; and thus have all ecclesiastical abuses been justified from the day that ecclesiastical domination was established. By spiritual authority have kings been enthroned and deposed; by spiritual authority have tributes been raised, wars been originated and conducted, properties been confiscated, and lives forfeited! By spiritual authority were the Crusades begun and carried on; by spiritual authority have popes divided and distributed kingdoms, have cardinals negotiated and priests intrigued! By spiritual authority did Wolsey amass his treasures, and rule his sovereign at home, and the agents of his sovereign abroad! By spiritual authority does the Church of England demand tithes, and under the same sanction do her bishops legislate. What then is temporal power? What are worldly pomp and wealth?
The abuses which have deformed every State religion in turn are evident to all,—even to those who still help to support them; but the origin of those abuses is not generally ascertained. We ascribe them to the error of mixing up the permanent principles of Christianity with its temporary institutions.
Spiritual principles can only be recognized by means of external manifestations; but the principles and the manifestation are not the same thing; nor can they have a lasting connexion, as every thing external is mutable, while the principles of truth are immutable. As long as mind is connected with body, as long as the intellect can only be reached through the senses, and the heart through the intellect, truth must be invested with a form, and realities be accompanied by shadows. But that form is changeable, and those shadows are fleeting: the proximate cause of which is the constitution of all material things; and the final cause, the ultimate universal recognition of the principles of truth. We have already described how these principles were communicated to the Israelites by means of ordinances which the mind of man has long since outgrown. The principles of Christianity were, in like manner, embodied in institutions, some of which are obsolete, while others remain; but, since Christianity is destined not to be superseded by any other scheme, it appears to follow necessarily from the principles on which we have been reasoning, that none of its institutions were, like the Jewish, positive, but avowedly adopted from motives of expediency. It is therefore the belief of a portion of the Unitarian body, that Christ himself appointed no ordinance for permanent adoption, and that those which were appointed by the Apostles, and sanctioned by their practice, were established on the ground of expediency alone. They were not therefore the less obligatory upon their disciples in those times, nor upon us, as far as the original ground of the ordinances remains; but as some apostolic practices have, through the revolutions of human affairs, become obsolete, it is desirable to to search into the foundation of all.
Baptism cannot be called a Christian institution, since the rite was practised long before the mission of the Baptist; but some of our body adopt it as a Christian ordinance, because it was countenanced by Jesus and administered by his followers: while other Unitarians, deeming the practice of baptism inexpedient in their circumstances of age and country, decline the rite themselves, but recommend its use in cases analogous to those in which it was first adopted, i. e. in cases of conversion from Paganism. There are others who wish to abolish it altogether, from a fear of encouraging superstition by an ungrounded attachment to external observances.
The ordinance of the Lord's Supper is considered a positive institution of Christianity by almost the whole of the Christian world, the great majority of Unitarians included. The Society of Friends, and the Free-thinking Christians, are perhaps the only sects who positively decline, from principle, the practice of the rite; while some Unitarians deem it inconsistent with their principles to believe that Christ designed the ordinance for permanent and universal adoption. It is practised by many as a means, a very important means, of increasing love and exciting to obedience, while they yet cannot plead a Divine sanction in its favor, or much less suppose that any peculiar quality resides in what is eaten and drank, or any peculiar virtue in the act of eating and drinking by which any peculiar privilege can be attained. In these last suppositions all our body are agreed, since no intimation can be found in the Scriptures that the sacramental bread and wine were at any time used otherwise than as merely emblematical of the sacrifice of Christ. It was the practice of the early Christians to assemble for the supper, each carrying his portion of the feast, which was eaten like any other feast, and frequently with excess on the part of the rich, while his poorer neighbor hungered. 'When ye come together,' says the Apostle (1 Cor. xi. 20-23,), it is not to eat the Lord's Supper; for in eating, every one taketh before another his own supper, and one is hungry and another is drunken. What? Have ye not houses to eat and drink in? Or despise ye the Church of God, and shame them that have not?' (v. 33.) 'Wherefore, my brethren, when ye come together to eat, wait one for another. And if any man hunger, let him eat at home; that ye come not together unto condemnation.'—It is not conceivable that these Christians had any notion that what they ate and drank was in itself sacred, or that the Apostle was aware of any other purpose of the rite but that of 'showing forth the Lord's death till he came.'
This rite was usually practised on the first day of the week, when the disciples met to commemorate the resurrection of their Lord, and to worship together. The custom of meeting on a stated day for worship has been continued ever since; and the day has been wisely set apart for purposes of rest and refreshment to body and mind. An institution so simple for purposes so salutary will probably, however abused, be of very long standing, even after it is more generally allowed than at present, not to be a Divine appointment. The Jewish Sabbath was a Divine ordinance for the use of the Jews; and by them alone has the last day of the week been regarded as sacred. The Lord's Day, or, as it sometimes called, the Christian Sabbath, is a totally different institution, and one which is professedly arbitrary, though subservient to very important objects. If the Jews were encouraged by their Messiah to look to the final purposes of their sabbatical institution, much more ought we, the subjects of a more enlarged dispensation, to bear in mind that all external observances are but means to ends; ordinances of which it is certain that they were made for man, and not man for them.
Whatever may be the diversity of opinion among Unitarians respecting the ground of the three ordinances just referred to, there is none with regard to those institutions whose period appears to have been determined at the moment of their origin.
The institution of Apostolic Ordination, which the Roman Catholic Church holds to be of a permanent nature, we believe not to have been designed to outlive the Apostles. We perceive no intimation in the various instructions given them which can lead us to imagine that their office was intended to be or could be bequeathed. They were chosen to be witnesses of the circumstances of the life and death of Christ, and the depositaries of miraculous powers after his ascension; but as the assistance of the Holy Spirit, that is the power conferred from on high, was only a temporary sanction, the peculiar office with which it was connected could also be only temporary. The evidence which we possess on this very important subject consists of the words of Christ himself, addressed to his Apostles respecting their mission, their own incidental observations, and the facts which ecclesiastical history presents. From all these sources of evidence we derive our belief that the office of witnessing, which is absolutely untransferrable, was the peculiar office of the twelve Apostles; that they were especially qualified by it for the task of preaching and establishing the new Gospel, and that to enable them to do so with sufficient effect, among the many and great difficulties which the state of the world then presented, the miraculous gifts of the Spirit were granted to them, with power to impart them to whomsoever they would, and that this miraculous power was coexistent with the apostolic age,—with what is variously called 'the age,' 'the kingdom of God,' 'the kingdom of Christ,' 'the kingdom of heaven;' that is, from the descent of the Holy Spirit to the abolition of Judaism on the overthrow of Jerusalem. We find no evidence of miracles after that time which is at all to be compared with that on which we rely respecting the apostolic gifts; none which allows us to hesitate in our opinion, that with the apostles expired the power of communicating miraculous privileges; and that on them alone were such privileges immediately conferred. These gifts of the Spirit served as a Divine sanction to their testimony, and were therefore coexistent with that testimony; and the same evidence which recorded their testimony after their death, recorded the Divine sanction likewise; and upon this broad and immutable foundation is built the Christian faith, against which, according to the Saviour's promise, no opposition has prevailed or can prevail. When some who could not deny the peculiarity of his mission, but would not admit his pre-eminent claims, supposed him to be John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others Jeremiah or another of the prophets, Simon Peter, who was not blinded by prejudice, and who believed for the works' sake in opposition to the opinions of men, boldly declared him to be 'the Christ, the Son of the living God.' Jesus pronounced him blessed, because he believed what the power of God made manifest, and not what men declared; and promised that on such testimony as his should the Gospel be established, so that no opposition should prevail against it; and further declared that it should be in the power of Peter to admit men into the privileges of the Gospel, and to have extensive influence over their spiritual state. 'Blessed art thou, Simon; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say unto thee that thou art Peter (a rock,) and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of death shall not prevail against it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.' This promise was fulfilled. Peter bore testimony far and wide, with all the zeal and energy by which he was characterized, to the life, teachings and death of his divine master; and from this testimony, in conjunction with that of his brethren, is derived the evidence on which Christianity is received to this day. Peter had also pre-eminent power in the infant Church, converting three thousand persons on the day of Pentecost, and afterwards preaching, baptizing, and adding multitudes to those who were pressing into the kingdom of God.
No record exists of any attempt on his part to delegate any portion of his power; none of which could be transferred but such authority in the Church as he possessed under the mode of church government which then subsisted. That which constituted the chief glory of the Prince of the Apostles belonged to him as the follower of Jesus and as an eminent recipient of the gifts of the Spirit. It appears exceedingly improbable that Peter ever was Bishop of Rome, though he suffered imprisonment and perhaps martyrdom there. The authority of the Apostles was general, and seems to have been exercised generally, instead of being fixed in any one congregation. At all events it is clear that the Bishops of Rome did not lay claim to any preeminence over the patriarchs of Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, (further than as they all claimed precedence of one another on account of the dignity of their several cities, and the superior wealth of their sees,) till the Arian controversy afforded them various opportunities of extending their power. When remonstrances were offered by the sixth Council of Carthage, in A. D. 426, and by many other assemblies, against the encroachments of the Bishops of Rome, the pleas which are now brought forward in support of their claim to supremacy had never been heard of; and they were in fact never adduced till many centuries after the death of Peter. It was not till the beginning of the seventh century that the title of Pope was appropriated by the Bishops of Rome; it being applied to all bishops at first, and afterwards to those who held the larger sees, as when Cornelius, Bishop of Rome, called Cyprian the Pope of Carthage. The assumption of the title of Universal Bishop by John of Constantinople, towards the end of the sixth century, was condemned by Gregory the Great, then Bishop of Rome, as presumption and even blasphemy; and he further showed his sense of the presumption by investing himself with the humbler title of Servus Servorum Dei. Yet so soon after as A. D. 606, Boniface III. obtained of the Emperor Phocas that the Bishops of Rome alone should henceforth call themselves Universal Bishops: the claim being founded on the dignity of the city and the wealth of the see, and not on the transmission of the apostolic office from Peter, of which not the slightest hint appears to have been given till Leo complained that the Council of Chalcedon had granted his claim to preeminence on no better ground than the importance of the city where he presided. Even he, however, had no thought of advancing pretensions to infallibility, as the successor of an infallible Apostle; this additional claim being reserved for Agatho, who, in 680, brought forward the novel doctrine 'that the chair of Rome—never erred, nor can err in any point;' and that 'all the constitutions of the Roman Church are to be received as if they had been delivered by the divine voice of St Peter.' So that there is an utter absence of proof that 'the Catholic or Universal Church has been visibly continued through all ages in one uniform faith, being guided and preserved from error in matters of faith by the assistance of the Holy Spirit.' On the contrary, there is every kind of evidence to prove that the supernatural influences of the Spirit ceased with the close of the apostolic age; that divisions of various kinds and degrees existed in the Christian Church, over which the Bishops of Rome for five or six centuries exerted no pre-eminent control, and which the decrees of Councils were of no avail to soothe and unite. We therefore hold apostolic ordination to have been a temporary institution, and at the time more universally understood to be so than perhaps any other provision for the spread of the Gospel.
Of any such institution as a Church, permanent or temporary, established by Christ, and distinct from the simple exhibition of his Gospel, we find not the most remote hint in any records but those of the vain imaginations of men. A Church means literally an assemblage; and the Church of Christ signifies, everywhere in the sacred writings, those who believe in Christ. Where the term is limited, it signifies assemblages of Christians in different places, as the Church at Corinth, the Church at Ephesus, &c. By the universal Church it is impossible to understand any thing but the total number of Christian believers: nor can we conceive of any means by which it can be shown that the primitive Christians understood otherwise, or that the term can admit of any other interpretation. We hold, therefore, that the propositions we are about to quote from the document to which we have before referred ('Roman Catholic Principles,' &c.) are founded on an unauthorized and erroneous conception of the nature of the Christian Church. 'The way or means by which man may arrive at the knowledge of the mysteries of the Gospel' are declared to be 'not by the reading of Scripture, interpreted according to the private judgment of each disjunctive person or nation in particular; but by an attention and submission to the voice of the Catholic or Universal Church, established by Christ for the instruction of all; spread for that end through all nations, and visibly continued in the succession of pastors and people through all ages. From this Church, guided in truth, and secured from error in matters of faith by the promised assistance of the Holy Ghost, every one may learn the right sense of the Scriptures, and such Christian mysteries and duties as are necessary to salvation. This Church, thus established, thus spread, thus continued, thus guided, in one uniform faith and subordination of government, is that which is called the Roman Catholic Church: the qualities just mentioned, unity, indeficiency, visibility, succession, and universality, being evidently applicable to her. From the testimony and authority of this Church it is that we receive the Scriptures, and believe them to be the word of God; and as she can assuredly tell us what particular book is the word of God, so she can, with the like assurance, tell us also the true sense and meaning of it in controverted points of faith; the same Spirit that wrote the Scriptures, directing her to understand both them and all matters necessary to salvation.'