are signified and sealed, together with all the benefits of his crucifixion, unto all who worthily commune. 2. With respect to each individual Christian, this sacrament is the means of a most solemn, gracious, reiterated, and irrevoca ble dedication of himself to God as his God, and to the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour. In return he receives from God pardon, holiness, light, strength, comfort, peace, and joy through the divine ordinance, word, and Spirit. For the crucified Saviour in all his past work, in all his present power, and in all his future glory, is sacramentally assured herein, to the penitent and believing sinner, on whose behalf is God's eternal Covenant of Grace, and under it the New Covenant which is a testament in the blood of Christ. With respect to the whole company of believers, who are the Church of the living God, the Bride of the Lamb, and the Body of Christ, we see how this and every other gift of her husband and Lord, who gave himself for her; consecrates her to himself, and separates her from a world lying in sin and under the curse of God. She had the promise of her Saviour, the constant revelation of the will of God, and the presence of his Spirit, before she had any permanent sacrament. With the covenant of promise in Abraham, came circumcision and her own visible and separate existence; with the covenant of sacrifice in Moses, a covenant in the blood of beasts, came the passover, and the written word, and her more complete, and ordered, and separate Church state: with the New Testament in the blood of Christ, came baptism and the Lord's Supper, the complete and permanent revelation of the will of God-Christ incarnate, crucified, risen, and glorified, the Spirit poured out, and all the ordinances of God, and all the ascension gifts of Christ, peculiar to the Gospel Church. All the time it is the elect of God, the Bride of the Lamb, the Body of Christ, the Church of the first-born whose names are written in heaven: and all are proofs of eternal, unalterable, unsearchable, divine love for her. These are sublime and infinitely fruitful truths. Upon the foundation they establish, the whole doctrine of the Church must rest. What ever will not endure to be built on them, can be no portion of the house of God. Whatever they subvert, is divinely subverted. They guide us, from all that concerns the humblest believer considered as a member of Christ, onward through the whole question of the Church, to the highest generalization that concerns the kingdom delivered up to the Father on the Lamb's Book of Life illuminating the entire career of the Church, from the beginning to the end. As soon as we let them go, we are lost in darkness, amidst the innumerable revolutions of opinion, and the interminable disputes of men, concerning things with regard to which no opinion is of any value, and about which no man can know aught of any worth, except as divine light is shed upon them. Amongst all the benefits which Christ's faithful ministers could confer on his Church, none could compare with a successful effort to recall her completely to these grand and simple truths, the perversion of which has cost her so much, CHAPTER XXXI. OFFICE BEARERS IN THE GOSPEL CHURCH: AND THE GOVERNMENT IN THEIR HANDS. I. Office Bearers, and Government in their Hands.-1. Considered in their relation to all Society and to the particular society called the visible Church of Christ.-2. As appertaining to the Church, they appertain in a still higher sense to Christ3. Fundamental principle of the Divine Origin and authority of both, commeastrate with the existence of the visible Church: proved and illustrated by the example of the Apostolic synod of Jerusalem.-4. The Divine Example of that synod particularly considered; and the Fact, the Nature, and the Perpetuity of Church Government demonstrated.-5. The Office Bearers who constituted it: and firs of the Apostles considered as uniting in the Administration of the government they had formed.-6. Of the Elders-in whose Hands the Divine Government of the Christian Church is permanently and exclusively lodged-II. 1. The actual origin of the Christian Church, its Government, its Office Bearers, and its Tribonals: Its particular congregations, and the Tribunal in each.-2. Progress and development of the Government: Nature, Organization, Divine Authority of Tribunals Presbyterial, Synodical and Universal.-3. The Nature of Church Power as delegated by the Mediator: its relation to his Offices of Prophet, Priest, and King the fundamental distinction in its Nature and Use, as the Power of Pr men and the Power of Order.-4. The Perpetuation of Office Bearers and Government in their hands, by Vocation of God, immediate and mediate.—III. 1. Other Office Bearers; Prophets, inspired and temporary.-2. Deacons : Divine Authority, Nature, and permanence of their Office.-3. Evangelists: Divine Authority, and peculiar Nature of their office.-IV. 1. Summary of the Fundamental Principles of Church Government.-2. The Phenomenon exhibited in the Origin, Develop ment and Progress of such a Government. I. IN the preceding chapters of this Fifth Book, I have endeavoured to explain the chief gifts of God to the Church of Christ, which I had attempted to demonstrate in the Fourth Book. In the first place came God's supreme gifts to the Churchnamely, his Son, his Spirit, and his Word. Then the great Ordinances which he has bestowed on her, namely, the Sabbath, the Sacraments, Instituted Worship, Discipline, and Evangelization of the world. And then, on account of their immense impor tance, the two Sacraments of the Gospel Church have been separately discussed. What remains, is to demonstrate the Office Bearers ordained by God in the Christian Church, and the Gov ernment in their hands which he has appointed therein. Partly for the sake of brevity, and partly on account of the indissoluble connection of the subjects, they will be discussed together. 1. As soon as we conceive of society as organized, no matter for what purpose, and no matter how, there arises a necessity for the designation, in some manner, of persons to perform for it those offices which, whatever, they may be, society cannot perform in mass, and without the performance of which, society cannot exist. These persons are officers. There is a multitude of ways in which they may come into office; a multitude of conditions on which they may hold office; a multitude of official duties, functions, powers-very various, and capable of being distributed in numberless ways. In all these respects the simple, limited, and powerful elemental principles of government, which I have pointed out in another place, are susceptible of endless variety in their practical exhibition; and, therefore, government itself is presented under so many diverse aspects. But in every case, under every modification, the office bearer under every form of organized society, is the office bearer of the society, and performs its offices, for its benefit, and on its behalf. Otherwise, he is a mere intruder, usurper, and tyrant, holding simply, by force; whose acts do not subvert society, but ordinarily defeat the proper ends, and always defeat the proper mode of its existence, until he is taken out of the way. The apothegm of the despot who said, I am the State, was as true as it was insolent. Nevertheless, there could be no despot, if there was no State; and the powers he usurps are not created by him, but flowing from the existence of society, are grasped and abused by him. The Church visible of Christ is subject, in these respects, to the laws and conditions belonging to the nature of all societies, organized out of human beings. Every office bearer in her bosom, is her officer; and his existence is necessary, because the continuance and perfection of her own organized existence, depends on the performance of offices, which she cannot discharge in mass. In the nature of the case, therefore, duty and power, obligation and authority, responsibility and control, go together. But, as I have before explained, the visible Church is a society of a peculiar kind, created in a peculiar manner, and for peculiar purposes. Of necessity, therefore, those great principles and truths which lie in the nature of man and of society, must incur, in this pecu liar use and direction of them, such a combination and application of them, as the nature and end of this peculiar society demand; precisely as in all other cases of their practical application. This is a society having primary reference, not to this but to a future life, not to temporal but to spiritual things: a society perfectly free, separate from the world, consecrated to Christ, and so divinely prohibited from making laws for itself, but required to obey, to expound, to proclaim, and to execute laws given to it by God. A society nevertheless; and by consequence possessed of officers and a government. Indeed it is by far the oldest society in the world; having existed through successive dispensations in a visible form, and in unbroken succession, since the covenant of circumcision was made by God with Abraham; and in its present form as the Gospel Church, since the day of Pentecost. The fact of its organized and perpetual existence, is the most palpable fact in the public history of the human race; and the divine authority for its existence, from the beginning to the end, is far more frequently and variously declared throughout the Scriptures, than the divine authority for anything else that exists. 2. This most ancient and permanent society, concerning whose officers and government we are enquiring, is not only an ordinance of God, like the family, and the State; but, as I have abundantly proved, it is an ordinance resting absolutely in divine revelation and divine acts, having relations both to God and man, the whole of which are revealed. It is a society created by the special grace of God, out of those who are united to the Lord Jesus Christ, by means of a divine regeneration of the Holy Ghost; and it is intended to be the chief witness for time and throughout eternity, to his whole intelligent Universe. It is the Kingdom of God, which his Son, Messiah the Christ, has redeemed with his most precious blood; which his divine Spirit creates and sanctifies; which the brethren of Christ, sons and heirs of God, compose and hold forth as the Church of the living God. The relation of the Son of God to this society is inexpressibly close and powerful. He is the Mediator between God and men of the Eternal Covenant under which it exists; and the Gospel form in which it now exists, as compared with its preceding forms, is in a special sense the New Testament in his blood. To be Mediator, he took their nature into eternal union with his own divine nature; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself so as |