IV. The power which this view of their office attributes to the eldership, is not only great, but controlling. In the primary Church court, or session, they are always the majority, and in all other courts they are, as a general rule, as numerous as the ministers. Nothing can be done without their concurrence. They may admit and exclude from the Church, in opposition to the ministers; they may even secure the admission or deposition of ministers, in opposition to the pastors. For if in any presbytery, the elders being more numerous than the clergy, should vote for the ordination of a man, and all the ministers against it, he must be ordained. In all Church courts, therefore, the people, by their representatives have an effective, and in many cases a controlling power.

V. The definition given in our standards of the ruling elders as representatives of the people, determines the nature and extent of their powers. These powers cannot be learnt from the title elder, because that is ambiguous, being applied to two distinct classes of officers. In some of the early Churches these officers had distinct titles, viz. either presbyters and delegates, or presbyters and seniores plebis, who are expressly distinguished from each other. It is to be observed that ruling elders are never called presbyters in our book, and the proper scriptural title for them is not presbyter, but “governments.” Calvin, in his Institutes, Lib. iv. c. 5. 8, says, “In calling those who govern in the Church, indiscriminately, bishops, presbyters, pastors, and min isters, I have followed the example of the Scriptures, which use these terms without distinction, for they give the title bishop to all who are invested with the ministry of the word.” Having proved this from Titus 1:5, Phil. 1:1, Acts 20:17, he adds, “It is to be observed that we have hitherto spoken only of those offices which are concerned in the ministry of the word; nor does Paul mention any other in the fourth chapter of Ephesians, which we have cited. But in Rom. 12:7, and 1 Cor. 12:28, he enumerates others, as powers, gift of healing, &c. &c. Two of these are permanent offices, government, and care of the poor. Governors I suppose to have been elders (seniores) chosen from among the people, who presided with the bishops over the correction of manners and the exercise of discipline.” According to this, there were two classes of officers, the one who both ruled and preached, and to whom the Scriptures give the titles, bishops, presbyters, pastors, ministers; and the other called governments, who were seniores ex plebe delecti, elders chosen from the people, to join with the former class in the government of the Church. This is precisely the system of our book, in which the title Bishop or Presbyter is never given to any but ministers of the word. Much confusion has arisen from the use of the word elder and presbyter as synonymous; and many false conclusions have been drawn from the assumption that because both words mean an old man, therefore, every elder is a presbyter, and may do whatever a presbyter may do. The same argument would prove that every alderman is a senator, and every senator an alderman.

It is not, therefore, from the ambiguous title, elder, but from the authoritative definitions of the nature and duties of the office, we are to deduce the powers of the ruling elder. Elders are declared to be the representatives of the people. That this is their distinctive character is plain, because ministers are never so called, and because elders are so designated for the very purpose of distinguishing them from another class of officers. It is also plain that their powers flow from their distinctive character as representatives of the people, and cannot extend beyond the limits fixed by that relation. A representative is one who acts for another, who does for him what he has a right to do in his own name. It is evident that the representative cannot do what his constituents are not authorized to do. Congress has the right to make laws, because the people, in this country, whom they represent, have all the attributes of sovereignty. It is equally evident that the power of the representative is not necessarily co-extensive with that of his constituents; while he cannot do what they have no authority to do, it does not follow that he can do all that they may be entitled to perform. His power depends upon the extent of his commission. His authority may be limited, as in the case of Congress and of our Generel Assembly, by a written constitution, or it may be limited by a higher authority; as in the case of the Church rulers, by the word of God. Hence, it no more follows that ruling elders, as representatives of the people, can exercise all the functions which inhere primarily in the people, than that Congress may do all that the people are assumed to have a right to do. Because as the power of Congress is limited by the constitution of the country, so the power of ruling elders is limited by the constitution of the Church, and by the word of God. According to Protestants, all Church power vests primarily in the people. But while this power vests primarily in the whole Church, it is to be exercised through certain organs, or officers, whose qualifications and powers are laid down in the word of God.

It is admitted that ministers constitute one class of Church officers. Their qualifications are given minutely in the Scriptures. They must be blameless in faith, manners, and report; they must be apt to teach; fit to rule; and what they have received they are enjoined to commit unto faithful men who may be able to teach others also. Their powers, therefore, as specified and granted in the word of God are, teaching, (which includes the administration of the sacraments;) ruling, and commissioning faithful men. These powers God has joined together, so that he who has one of them, has all. The very fact that these duties and powers are committed to a certain class of officers, proves that they are not to be exercised by the people themselves. But while the Scriptures plainly teach that these powers are granted to a class of officers distinct from the people, they also teach that the people have a right to judge of the qualifications of their own officers, to determine who they shall be, and to take part with them in the government of the Church. And this right they exercise partly in person, as in the election of their Church rulers, and partly by their representatives, who appear in their name in all Church courts, to deliberate and vote on all questions which may come before them.

Thus while all power vests primarily in the whole Church, certain functions of that power, viz: teaching, and commissioning faithful men, are committed by Scripture and our constitution to one class of officers; while co-operation in all acts of government and discipline belongs to the people or their representatives. And as, in the ordinary state of the Church, the people have neither by the word of God, nor by the constitution of the Church, the right to preach, administer the sacraments, or ordain, so neither have their representatives.

VI. This view of the nature and duties of the office of ruling elder, is everywhere asserted or assumed in our standards. This is evident, 1.

From the names or titles given to this class of officers. They are never called ministers, bishops, stewards, or pastors. Nor are they ever called without qualification presbyters. As the Greek word for deacon is used in a general sense for all Church officers, and yet is the specific title of one particular class of officers; so the word presbyter may be taken in a wide sense, including even apostles, and yet is the definite title of ordinary ministers of the word, and is never applied in its specific sense, and without qualification to any who are not ministers. The proper title of the ruling elder, according to our book, is, “representatives of the people.” Or as it is in the Scottish standards, “public officers,” “Church governors,” seniores plebis, “elders of the people;” gubernatores ex plebe delecti as Calvin expresses it. 2. From the formal and authoritative statement of the nature of the office. Ruling elders are declared to be representatives of the people, chosen to exercise government and discipline in conjunction with pastors and ministers. 3. From the nature of the duties and powers assigned to them. Nothing is ever attributed to them which does not suppose and arise out of their representative character, and comport with the limitation of their office to participation in the government of the Church. They are members of the Church session “for the spiritual government of the congregation.” Form of Government, ch. 9, sec. 6. They are delegated to sit in presbytery, synod, and the General Assembly; they appear in these bodies as representatives of the people; for it is said, “every congregation, which has a stated pastor, has a right to be represented by one elder,” ch. 10, sec. 3. The elder, therefore, represents the congregation; he does not represent his fellow-elders in the session, but the people. Wherever he appears, he appears in that distinctive character; and as representing the people of God, he has a right to deliberate and vote on all questions which come before the body to which he is sent.

VII. The opposite theory concerning this office is inconsistent with our standards and subversive of Presbyterianism.

1. By teaching that ministers and elders are of the same order, it merges into one, offices which our constitution and the word of God declare to be distinct. The permanent officers of the Church are stated in our book to be, ministers of the word, representatives of the people, and deacons. By calling the second class “representatives of the people,” they are as much distinguished from the first class as from the third; and it is as clearly denied that ministers are representatives as that deacons are. But the new theory affirms that ministers and elders appear in presbytery on precisely the same ground; and sit and act as representatives. Now there is a sense in which ministers may be said to represent the people, inasmuch as they exercise a function included in the general commission given to the Church; but elders are representatives in a very different sense, as they are chosen to act in the name of the people, and to join with ministers in doing those things which the people themselves, as distinguished from the ministers, have a right to do. To affirm that both classes of officers are in the same sense representatives, is to destroy the peculiar, distinctive character and value of the eldership.

2. This theory subverts our system also by teaching that the minister obtains his right to rule and to sit in presbytery, by his election to the eldership by a particular congregation, and in virtue of his representative character; whereas the word of God and our Book teach that the right to rule, to preach, to administer the sacraments, and to ordain, belongs to every minister in virtue of his office. If a man is ordained a presbyter, he has, by authority of Scripture, all these rights; and he cannot be deprived of the one any more than of the others. He has indeed no right to exercise his authority either to preach or to rule in a particular congregation without their consent; but their election no more makes him a ruler than it makes him a preacher. Though he may not be a pastor of a particular congregation, and consequently have no right to act as such, yet as a member of presbytery he has the right to rule, because such right belongs to his office, and because all the churches under the supervision of that presbytery consented to his exercising his functions as a member of presbytery, when, by their representatives, they consented to his ordination. The opposite doctrine on this particular point, viz., that no man should be ordained sine titulo, or can be a presbyter except in virtue of his election by a particular Church, arose partly out of the jealousy of the clergy, who feared intrusion on their own bounds, and partly out of the obvious impropriety of such ordinations in countries where the whole ground is occupied by settled ministers. But to convert this rule of expediency into a principle; to say that because a man should not be made a presbyter when he has no sphere for the exercise of the functions of his office, he therefore owes that office to his having a particular sphere for its exercise; and that he cannot be a presbyter except in virtue of his connection with a particular church, is as much as to say a man cannot be a physician without a prescribed number of patients, or a captain if not in actual command of a ship, or a general unless when at the head of a brigade. Owen consistently carries out this doctrine, and maintains that as no man can be a bishop or presbyter but in relation to a particular congregation, no Church has a right to ordain a man to preach to the heathen (Works, vol. xx. p. 457). When a theory comes to such an issue, it may fairly be assumed to have broken its neck. In the Apostolic Church all ministers ruled. They met together with the apostles and brethren to decide important questions; they formed churches, they ordained elders, and yet not one in ten of those ministers was a pastor, or sustained any special or permanent relation to any particular church.

Presbyterians do not believe that Timothy was the pastor of Ephesus, or Titus the bishop of Crete.

3. Again this theory subverts our system by making all elders ministers. By common consent bishop and presbyter are convertible terms. If a man is a presbyter, he is a bishop, and if he is a bishop, he is a presbyter. Even prelatists admit this to be true as far as the language of the Bible is concerned. But according to the Scriptures, a bishop is and must be a teacher; he must be “apt to teach.” Titus was commanded to ordain presbyters if any be blameless; “for a bishop must be blameless as a steward of God,… holding fast the faithful word as he hath been taught, that he may be able by sound doctrine both to exhort and to convince the gainsayers.” Titus 1:5–9. Nothing is plainer from Scripture and antiquity than that presbyters were bishops, and that bishops were rulers, teachers and ordainer. This is our constant argument against Episcopalians, and it is so decisive that the most learned and candid of that class admit its conclusive character. That is, they admit that if a man is a presbyter, he is, as far as Scripture and the early Church are concerned, a teacher, ruler and ordainer. After having proved this, and rested our cause upon it, as against prelatists, we cannot turn round and say that a man’s being a presbyter is no proof that he is a teacher and ordainer. If a presbyter, he is by our own showing a bishop, and if a bishop, then both a preacher and an ordainer. To maintain therefore that ruling elders and ministers are of the same order, that they have the same presbyterate, is to maintain that elders are ministers of the word and sacraments. We are commanded not to make a man a presbyter unless he is “apt to teach;” we are therefore shut up by this new doctrine to abolish the office of ruling elder; we are required to make them all preachers.

4. Again, the inconsistency of the new theory with our standards, becomes perfectly glaring when compared with the chapter of the Form of Government which treats of the ordination of ruling elders. The theory assumes that elders are as much presbyters as ministers are; that ordination to the presbyterate is the act of the presbytery; that if a man is ordained a ruling elder he needs no further ordination when he becomes a minister. Compare all this with Ch. xiii., of the Form of Government. It is there said: 1. That the congregation shall elect ruling elders. 2. That the minister, after sermon, shall state the warrant and nature of the office. 3. He shall propose certain questions, first to the candidate, and then to the people. 4. When these questions are satisfactorily answered: “The minister shall proceed to set apart the candidate, by prayer, to the office of ruling elder (or deacon, as the case may be,) and shall give to him and the congregation an exhortation suited to the occasion.” Here it is to be remarked, first, that the whole chapter relates to deacons as much as to elders. It prescribes the form in which “elders and deacons” are to be ordained. And, secondly, the ordination is not the act of a presbytery, but of one individual minister. This cannot be evaded by saying that the minister acts in the name of the session, or parochial presbytery, because the book contemplates the case of the ordination of elders when no session exists. Nor will it avail to say that the minister acts in the name of the presbytery; for this is not only gratuitous and without evidence, but is in contradiction with the fact. Not one word is said of the presbytery in the whole context. The presbytery is not at all brought into view in the whole service; it is as purely a ministerial act as the administration of baptism or of the Lord’s supper. The theory therefore breaks down entirely. It cannot by possibility be reconciled with this chapter. Nothing is said of the imposition of hands, nor of the co-operation either of the session or presbytery in the act of ordination. Yet this is part of our system to which we are as much bound to adhere as to the method prescribed for ordaining ministers. The error lies not in saying that, according to our system, the ordination of a presbyter must be by a presbytery; but in saying that elders are presbyters in the same sense with ministers. If they are, they must be ordained in the same way; but in point of fact, the book prescribes a different way; and therefore the two classes of officers are not of the same order. A man who is ordained a ruling elder does not become a presbyter, so as not to need ordination by a presbytery, when he becomes a minister. We get rid of all these contradictions by adhering to our book. Ministers are stewards, bishops, presbyters; elders are the representatives of the people. The former must be ordained by the presbytery; the latter must be ordained by the minister in the presence of the people.

5. The new theory is only a modified system of prelacy. It asserts that elders are bishops, presbyters, ministers. Yet the pastoral office is declared to be “the first in dignity and usefulness.” The pastor is the standing moderator of the session composed of bishops or presbyters; he is not amenable to them; cannot be tried by them; he ordains them. What becomes then of our ministerial parity? What is prelacy, if this superiority of one minister to others is not one of its essential elements? This doctrine, if introduced into our system, therefore vitiates its whole nature.

6. There is, however, a different element in this theory which legitimately leads to congregationalism. It makes ministers and elders sit in Church courts as representatives of the people, and being of the same order the Church session is a competent ordaining body, capable of perpetuating itself. This is very much the plan on which the New England churches were originally organized. In the chapter on Congregationalism, in Baird’s recent work on “Religion in America,” the writer of the chapter, who is said to be a distinguished Congregational minister, says: “The officers are of two sorts, elders and deacons. When the Congregational churches of New England were first organized, two centuries ago, the plan was that each church should have two or more elders; one a pastor, another charged with similar duties, under the title of teacher, the third ordained to his office like the other two, a ruling elder, who with his colleagues, presided over the discipline and order of the church, but took no part in the official and authoritative preaching of the word, or in the administration of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper. Thus it was intended that each Church should have within itself a presbytery, or clerical body, perpetuating itself by the ordination of those who should be elected to fill successive vacancies.” As far as it goes, we have here the essential features of the new theory. Each congregation chooses a body of men, who are all equally presbyters, having the same ordination and vested with the power to ordain. This system rapidly subsided into the form in which congregationalism now exists in Massachusetts. This new doctrine, therefore, if we may learn anything from history, must either, in virtue of its making elders, bishops and ministers, and yet setting the pastor up as their official superior, issue in prelacy; or in virtue of making both ministers and elders, in the same sense presbyters and representatives of the people, issue in congregational independency.

The doctrine of our standards is simple and consistent. Ruling elders are not bishops, or ministers; they are not presbyters in the same sense as preachers are, but governors, “representatives of the people,” appointed to take part with ministers in the government of the Church. They are entitled to be present in every Church court, with full authority to deliberate and vote. This view puts great honour upon the office; it establishes its divine right; it invests it with great authority; it defines its duties; it harmonizes with our whole system, and is every where asserted or assumed in our standards. Whereas the opposite doctrine, by making elders bishops, makes them of divine right ministers of the word and sacraments, as well as ordainers, and thus subverts our whole system of government, and tends, by a logical necessity, either to prelacy or congregationalism.

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