SOCIETY FOR THE LIBERATION OF RELIGION FROM STATE PATRONAGE AND CONTROL. 2, SERJEANTS' INN, FLEET STREET,

AND

ARTHUR MIALL, 18, BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET.

ADVERTISEMENT.

THE present publication formed one of the original series of "TRACTS OF THE BRITISH ANTI STATE-CHURCH ASSOCIATION," published in 1848. From the value of the argument, and the eminence of the deceased writer, it is now reprinted.

2, SERJEANTS' INN, September, 1866.

LAW OF CHRIST FOR MAINTAINING AND EXTENDING HIS CHURCH.

THE controversy between Churchmen and Dissenters, although ample enough in its details, is generally admitted by both parties to resolve itself into two points, namely, the authority of civil rulers in religious matters, and a national provision for the State-Clergy. It so happens, however, that, in all practical effect, the last of these points determines the first, just as, in another aspect of the case, the first may be said to determine the last. Where the State does not fix the thing to be taught, it were absurd to expect it to support its teachers; and where it does fix the thing to be taught, without providing support for its teachers, it fails to answer the chief demand which is made upon it by State-Churchmen. If the State were to leave the Church to depend for support on her own adherents, without permitting her to share in its pay or its patronage, zeal for statute alliance with the State would soon become extinct. Few would be found insisting on a civil enactment for their creed, were there no secular advantage to be derived from such enactment. This must be obvious to every man; Churchmen themselves honestly avow it; and it invests the branch of the subject, now to be briefly considered, with great im

portance. If we can succeed in convincing those who differ from us that no Christian Church should be endowed by the State, it will not be difficult to convince them that no Christian Church should be chartered by the State. Let the hope of gain be taken away, and it will soon be confessed, that what civil rulers have to do with Christianity is, not to give law to it, but to allow it to give law to them.

?

Well, what is the law of Christ in reference to the pecuniary maintenance and extension of His Church ?-Has He given law on this subject, or has He not? The New Testament is His statute-book to us. On this vital point all Christians are as one. Well, what does the New Testament say Is it silent, or does it speak out? If it be silent there is room for expediency, although even then it must be Christian expediency-an expediency, imbued with the spirit of the Gospel, which tends to build up and not to destroy. If, again, it be not silent, we have no alternative, but must bow to its decision, however far it may run counter to our preconceptions. Now, it so happens that on this subject the New Testament is not silent; it speaks out, both incidentally, and in set purpose-both in general terms, and in terms which are clear and explicit—both in the form of exhortation, and in the form of positive institution. It speaks, I may say, with two voices; one emanating from general principles, and another modified into the precision of law. It tells us that the Christian Church is a spiritual community-a kingdom not of this world; and, if we allow our minds to settle on this single announcement till we, in some measure, apprehend its import, we shall at once perceive that the members of the Christian Church are spiritual—that her privileges are spiritual-that her fellowship is spiritual—that her aims are spiritual-that her operations are spiritualthat, in short, everything is spiritual by which she is distinguished, as a Christian Church, from the communities of this world.

But if these things are so― -if the Church in question consists of people who are separated from others by heavenly

peculiarities of the mind and of the heart-if her members be, under God, brought together and kept together by the free consent of their own wills-if spirituality be thus the very constituent of her being-it follows inevitably that the laws and the power by which she is governed must be also spiritual. I know not how this conclusion is to be resisted; but it must be resisted, and overthrown, or else that support of the Christian Church which is fixed by the will, and forced up by the sword, of the civil ruler must be for ever abandoned. The compulsory support of a voluntary society is a contradiction in terms. It is not to be expected that they who seek their own things, and not the things that are Jesus Christ's, will care for this reasoning; but let Christian men think of it-let them remember that spirituality, and, by consequence, free volition-volition under law to none but God—is uniformly spoken of in the New Testament, not as a mere accident of the Church, but as the very thing in which she has her being; and they can scarcely fail to reach the conclusion that the idea of supporting her by secular compulsion is both absurd and impious.

Again, we have facts which correspond with the above principle. The Gospel was at first committed, not to civil rulers, although they are, in their place, an ordinance of God for good, nor even to the Jewish authorities, who bore a special divine commission, but to twelve obscure men— twelve political nonentities-that, by their means, nameless and powerless as they were, it might be spread through the earth. Nor did their Master utter a word which gave them the slightest reason to expect that, in their day or in any day, the kings of the earth would be set up by Him as the presidents or patrons of His peculiar people. Nay, He forewarned them that these said kings of the earth would be their greatest enemies-that they would not only be hated of all men for His name's sake, but delivered up to councils, and beaten in synagogues, and brought before rulers and kings to answer for the crime of preaching His Gospel. These are the things for which they were taught to prepare