THE world is governed by ideas. The triteness of this remark is only a proof of its importance. It is wonderful also how ideas percolate: how they silently diffuse themselves, as heat, or electricity, until they animate the mass of society, and manifest themselves in the most unexpected quarters. They often lie dormant, as it were, in the public mind, until some practical measure, some foregone conclusion or purpose as to a definite mode of action, calls them into notice. If they suit the occasion, if they answer a cherished purpose, and give to the intellect a satisfactory reason for what the will has determined upon, they are adopted with avidity. The history of every community will suggest abundant illustrations to every reader of the truth of this remark.
Great evils were long experienced in England from Erastianism. The intimate union of the Church and state, and the consequent subjection of the former to the latter, led to all manner of corruptions and oppressions. To escape these evils, one class of the Puritans went to the opposite extreme. They represented the visible Church as a purely spiritual body, consisting of the regenerated, united by special covenant for the worship of God, and mutual watch and care. This is Owen’s idea. He says, believers are the matter of the Church, and the covenant is the form. No one, therefore, is a member of the Church but one, who giving satisfactory evidence of regeneration, voluntarily and personally professes his faith, and enters into a Church covenant with a number of fellow-believers. All else are of the world, in no way amenable to the Church or subject to its control. The sole object of Church organization is the worship of God and the exercise of discipline; and consequently its sole prerogative is to provide for divine worship and to receive and exclude members. This leads to the distinction between the Church and the parish. The former is the covenanted body of believers; the latter, the whole body of the community united in the maintenance of the ordinances of religion. There are two principles involved in this theory, the one, that each body of believers united by covenant for worship and discipline is a complete Church, and independent of all others; and the other, that the Church is a purely spiritual body having for its sole object the worship of God and the fellowship and purity of believers. The effects of this theory we see in the progress of development in New England. The Church, there, is what Napoleon’s army would be were it disbanded into independent companies, each acting by, and for itself; this is the effect of Independency; or what these countries would be, if every village were a separate sovereignty. The effect of the other principle, relating to the nature and design of the Church, is utter inefficiency. Who ever heard of the Church saying or doing anything in New England? It is muzzled, manacled and fettered. It exists there in spite of the theory, in the spiritual union and fellowship of the people of God, but they have no means of organic action, and according to the prevalent notion, no right to act as an organic whole, nor to act even in its disjointed members, except for the purposes indicated above. If they have even to ordain a man to the ministry, found a seminary, send out missionaries, or do anything however intimately connected with Christ’s kingdom, they must go out of the Church organization to do it. The most desperate evils may prevail in the form of heresies or immoralities, the Church as such can do nothing, and does nothing. We give full credit to the devotion of individual Christians in New England, and to the energy of their combined action in their voluntary associations of different kinds. But these are very poor substitutes for the natural and divinely appointed organs of Church action. Experience is teaching a sad lesson on this subject.
Of the two principles involved in this form of Puritanism, the Independent element has had no access to our Church. There is no susceptibility in our system of impression from that source. The two systems are antagonistic and repellent. They are incapable of combination. With regard to the other element, however, relating to the nature and prerogatives of the Church, the case is far different. That element has long been silently diffusing itself through our whole body. It affects our modes of thought, our expressions, and our ecclesiastical action. With us, in common parlance, the Church is the body of those who profess to be regenerated; to join the Church is to come to the Lord’s table. Our Book declares that all baptized persons are members of the Church, and yet we constantly talk of such persons joining the Church when they come to the Lord’s Supper. Personal and voluntary profession of saving faith is regarded as the condition of Church membership. The Church has no right of discipline except over such professors. And now the doctrine is advanced by one of the very foremost men of our whole communion, that the Church is in such sense a spiritual body, that she has no right even to recommend a benevolent society. She must confine herself to a purely spiritual vocation. She cannot denounce evil or patronize good out of her pale. It is not her business to attend “to the colonization of races, or to the arrest of the slave trade,” or to anything else but the immediate spiritual affairs of men.