On this page
-
Text (1)
-
Untitled Article
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
-
-
Transcript
-
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
Untitled Article
But before we admit the obligation of this conformity , is it not necessary to settle the previous question , whether the circumstances of the first discip les may not have been so widely different from any thing which exists at present , as to render any attempt to adopt their plan of church government as a model for our guidance unadvisable , oV even impracticable ? We find mention made of bishops , or presbyters , and deacons ; but we have also
deaconesses , prophets , interpreters , discerners of spirits , angels , and others , exercising various offices , probably having a certain relation to the spiritual gifts with which the primitive churches or particular members of them were endowed . But the precise nature of these offices is no where distinctlyexplained ; and , in fact , there is no point in Christian antiquity involved in greater obscurity than the internal constitution of the churches or separate societies of disciples in the apostolic age . If it be said , that these officers may now he dispensed with , inasmuch as we have no distinct account of
their functions , this is at once to take the discretionary power into our own hands , and to determine for ourselves with respect to apostolic institutions , the question , which are , and which are not , suitable to our altered circumstances . Such being the state of things , and the principle of expediency being of necessity introduced , it seems to us that we may as well be consistent at once , and fairly confess that this and this alone , ( taken of course with a reference to the spirit and general character of the Christian dispensation , ) can now be depended on as a guide in the constitution of Christian
societies . We cannot , therefore , assent to Mr . Armstrong ' s conclusion in favour of the scriptural authority of his favourite form of church government . If we must needs have such a form at all , by which is meant a regularly constituted authority exercising a control over a number of distinct Christian congregations , it appears to us that the Presbyterians and the Episcopalians are
precisely upon a level . Neither of these forms is any part of Christianity , it is only a mode of inculcating it ;* and either the one or the other may be recommended as best adapted to certain local or accidental peculiarities in the community among who m * it is introduced . But the adjustment of their comparative merits is a question with which we , as congregationalists , have nothing to do ; and we leave the parties whom it concerns to settle it as they think best .
If , however , the discussion of this question involves that of political establishments , we shall frankly say , that any thing we have observed of the proceedings either of synods or conferences , gives us no reason to think we should mend ourselves by a change . Indeed , we cannot refrain from expressing our surprise at the claim which Mr . Armstrong sets up for his church , as " the defender of the rights of conscience , the parent of civil liberty , and the nurse of religious freedom , " What the character may be of the Synod of Munster , to which our author belongs , it is not for us to say ;
but we need not look farther than to their brethren m another province for a delectable specimen of arrogant illiberality ; and surely , if ever there was an intolerant , bigoted , persecuting race of men on the face of the earth , it was the Presbyterian covenanters of Scotland and England , during the civil wars of the seventeenth century . They had , indeed , exerted themselves to overthrow the dominion of episcopacy when they felt the weight of its oppression ; but they had no sooner accomplished their object , than they set themselves to build again the things they had destroyed , and thus made
• Sec Paley ' s candid acknowledgment ; Moral Philosophy , Book vi . ch . x .
Untitled Article
Ordination Service . 4 ] f
-
-
Citation
-
Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1829, page 411, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2573/page/43/
-