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rejecting those whom they had heard year after year, and wished to dismiss; and this would open a door to young probationers.

By the course which she is pursuing, the Church is alienating the affections of the more intelligent of the people, and strengthening the cause of the Voluntaries. When the ministers and elders of chapels of ease were admitted into the Church Courts, without that measure being submitted to Presbyteries, as enjoined by the Barrier Act, he considered it glaringly unconstitutional, and dissented from the measure, producing reasons for it which were not allowed to be recorded. If these ministers were excluded, as he trusted that they would be, he believed that there would be a majority of legal ministers who did not approve of the act of 1834, or of the decision of 1839. The Assembly was only a fifth part of the Church,1 and if the real sentiments of its ministers and elders were known, harmony would be restored and peace preserved. Mr. Leslie then read the reasons of dissent which on the 5th of August, 1834, he had read against the admission of the chapel of ease ministers into the Church Courts. The manner in which that measure was passed he stated to be the most barefaced irregularity to be found in the annals of the Church, and he added, when the Sailor's Chapel should be admitted, that would be another. When the Church returned to her sound judgment, these churches would be reduced to their former status of chapels of ease. Mr. Leslie then made some reference to the previous respectability of ministers of chapels of ease, and stated that they were looked on in the Church like Daniel O'Connell and his tail in the House of Commons; and he would advise the ministers and elders of chapels of ease to retire before the Civil Courts compelled them to do so; and he would advise the legal ministers and elders, finding that in admitting them, they had acted ultra vires, to retrace their steps.

1 The constitution of the Scottish Establishment is composed of four distinct courts, rising progressively:— 1. The Kirk Session; which is the lowest court or judicatory, and is composed of the minister and the parochial lay-elders. Of this court the minister is now by custom the constant moderator or president; but according to the original constitution the moderator should be elected.

2. The Presbytery, which is styled Reverend, is the radical court, and is the most specific, essential, and indispensable part of their constitution. It is a constant current court, which meets when and where the members choose, who sit as long as they like, adjourn at any time to any place, and it possesses all the substantial power of Government and discipline. It has a legislative power and can enact laws binding on its own members, and all within its own bounds. It possesses an executive power also, and examines, ordains, inducts, suspends, and deposes ministers. It cites, absolves, condemns, and excommunicates the people; and a majority of the Presbyteries, by virtue of the Barrier Act, can prevent the passing of a law in the General Assembly, or render it nugatory. In short, as far as it can, it executes the episcopal office. Its moderator is elected twice a year, and must be a minister, but he is merely a primus inter pares. It consists of all the ministers within a certain district which is called the bounds of the Presbytery, and one lay-elder from each session. The presbyteries generally meet at the chief town of the "Bounds" once a month. There are seventy-eight presbyteries.

3. The Synod, which is styled Very Reverend, is composed of from three to eight adjacent presbyteries, and there are fifteen Synods, each of which meet twice a year at the principal town of their "Bounds." Every minister of all the presbyteries in its circuit are members, and the lay elder who last represented the Kirk Session in each presbytery, is its representative in the Synod. They choose a moderator at each half-yearly meeting, but who has no jurisdiction nor even negative. In all cases presbyteries appeal to the Synod, as the Synod does to the General Assembly. If a majority of the presbyteries which compose the Synod desire it, the moderator calls a pro re nata meeting in the intervals between the stated meetings, but the same moderator presides. The Synod is a court of Review over the presbyteries and sessions, and it is itself subject to the review of the General Assembly.

4. The General Assembly which is styled Venerable, is the court of last resort to which appeals rise progressively from the sessions to the presbyteries, from them to the synods, and from these to this court. Before the act which admitted the ministers of chapels of ease into the courts, there were 936 ministers who sat ex

BELLARMINE'S NOTES OF THE CHURCH.1

We have now arrived at the Cardinal's Seventh Note, which is, "The Union of the Members among themselves and with the Head." This note might be a good one, did he hold the Head who purchased his body the Church with his own blood; but, instead of whom, the head to which the Cardinal requires us to be united is the Pope. A Papist can never get out of the circle in which only he can reason; accordingly Bellarmine reckons that small section alone to be the Church, which makes Rome its centre, and the Pope its head. And the whole of the boasted, but fallacious note of unity consists in submitting implicitly to the usurped tyranny of the Pope, who denounces all those as heretics who refuse to be his slaves. The Anglican Church indignantly removed the intolerable pressure of his domination, and recovered her original freedom; the Greek, Russian, Armenian, and other Eastern Churches never were subject to it, and never at any time acknowledged the supremacy of the Roman patriarch.

officio in the lower courts, but in the assembly they sit as representatives, in proportion to the number of parishes within each presbytery. A presbytery consisting of twelve parishes sends two ministers and one lay-elder; of eighteen and under, but above twelve, sends three ministers and one elder; of twenty-four, sends four ministers and two elders; from twenty-four to thirty, sends five ministers and two elders; and when a presbytery exceeds thirty charges, some of whom may be collegiate, sends six ministers and three elders. The five universities are represented by their own members, who may be either ministers or laymen. Each of the royal burghs send two lay-representatives; and the establishment is at present represented in the assembly as follows:

The crown, by a nobleman, who is called the Lord commissioner, and has the rank of a duke for the time being, and is styled his grace, and, for the time being, takes precedence of all other noblemen, and is received and attended with royal honours, for which he is paid £3000 per annum from the Exchequer, and

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It is impossible, however, for a court possessing both executive and legislative powers, and which meets only for ten days once a year, to exercise the executive all the year round; before its dissolution, therefore, it appoints a commission, which consists of thirty-one members, twenty-one of whom must be ministers, the remainder are lay-elders. This court chooses its own moderator, and is responsible to the next general assembly, and it therefore records its own proceedings. It has the power of an assembly in all matters which have been referred to it by the preceding assembly; though strictly speaking it can only act by recommendation of the assembly. That recommendation generally includes a clause which empowers it to act in any case for the general good of the establishment, hence the arbitrary proceedings of the commission of this year in the case of the deposition of the seven ministers in the presbytery of Strathbogie, but for which it will have to give an account to the next general assembly, which meets in May. Among other things, the annual instructions to this court contains a clause, "to advert to the interest of the church on every occasion, that the church and present establishment thereof, do not suffer or sustain any prejudice which they can prevent, as they shall be answerable."

1 Bellarmine's Notes of the Church Examined and Confuted. In Five Parts. 8vo. Holdsworth,

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Scripture nowhere informs us, neither can it be inferred from any part of it, that the bishop of Rome, or any other patriarch, was constituted head of the Church: but it does expressly inform us that GOD hath put all things under Christ's feet, "and gave HIM to be the HEAD over all things to his Church." The Church is one body, with one spirit to animate it, one in hope, in faith, and in baptism, and with one Lord as head, even Christ. "From whom the whole body, fitly framed together, and compacted by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part maketh increase of the body, unto the edifying of itself in love." The whole Church being composed of many particular churches, or "members in particular," yet makes but one body in Christ; for the apostle says, we are members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones;" ;"4" and HE is the HEAD of the body the CHURCH."5

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The silence of Scripture upon a point which involves such important consequences, and especially when so many opportunities presented themselves to our Saviour and the apostles of declaring it, is of itself sufficient to prove that no vicarious head was ever appointed. Christ's headship is repeatedly insisted on by St. Paul, in almost all his epistles, where he frequently asserts that the Church is but one body, to which he never assigns any other head than Christ, in whom we live and move, and have our being. In one of his epistles he specially asserts that Christ bestowed on his Church apostles, prophets, and evangelists, "for the edifying of the body of Christ-that we might grow up into him in all things, which is the Head, even Christ:" Here then, if any where, was a fitting opportunity of informing the Church of the vicarious head at Rome, if any such either existed or was intended to be instituted. These apostles, and others whom he names as being set or constituted, were not set as heads but as members of the Church of which he expressly specifies Christ as being the head. It is inconceivable that St. Paul would have omitted such a favourable opportunity of warning all Christians that their salvation depended on being in subjection to a visible head at Rome, when it is now made an article of faith, and of such importance as to constitute the only possible means of admission into the kingdom of heaven. And, as no mention is made either in this place, nor in any other portion of Scripture, respecting this Roman headship, it is a convincing demonstration that there was no such vicarage ever instituted, either by divine or apostolical authority. "Now," says Dr. Clagget, "when the Church is so frequently declared to be but one body, and to this one body one head is so frequently assigned, and no more; what use can any man who is not possessed with prejudice make of this, but that there is no other head of the Church but Him who is so often mentioned as such; and that, by the same reason that any man goes about to add another head to the Church, he might if he pleased find out another Church for the head: nor does it help them at all that they pretend the Pope to be but the vicarious and ministerial head of

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the Church; since if without union to him we are out of the Church, and have no part in Christ, it was necessary that this pretended vicarious head should have been as plainly and frequently expressed as we know the real Head to have been. Nay, it was more necessary, since a very slender intimation might have been sufficient. But that there should be another head given to the whole Church, to be united to which was no less necessary than union to Christ himself; and that this catholic head should be no other than a sinful man, and he, very often, none of the best, was so far removed from self-evidence, or even probability, that it certainly needed very express mention, if not frequent inculcation. Now that he should be frequently mentioned as Head of the Church, who, in comparison, needed not to be mentioned at all; and that no mention should be made of another head of the Church that needs very much to be so mentioned; is a point for them to give an account of who make union to this later head no less necessary to a part in the body of Christ than union to the former is.” But the Scripture opposes any such headship. Our Saviour reproved the apostles for striving about who should be greatest, and, instead of announcing that Peter should be their future head, he declared they were all equal; and whichever should attempt to be greatest among them should be considered the least, and the servant of the rest of his brethren. The same may be said of their successors. And St. Paul reproves the Corinthians for adopting heads or leaders, and utterly condemns all such distinctions, requiring them to be united in Christ. For to adopt distinct heads or leaders, or any one universal head, is, in effect, to divide the authority and headship of Christ. The unity of the Church consists in one faith, and in the mutual love and good correspondence of sister churches. Jerusalem was the mother church; then Antioch became the greatest of the Gentile churches, where men were first called Christians. Then Rome afterwards became the greatest, because it was the imperial city; but when the government removed to Constantinople, then the church there became the greatest, and first attempted to assume a supremacy, which broke the unity of the sister churches, and caused a schism, which has not been healed to this day. That striving for mastery,—that "which of us shall be greatest,"-in which Rome has ever borne such a conspicuous part, has been the chief cause of all the great schisms and heresies in the Christian Church. Bishop Hall, in his "Serious Dissuasive from Popery," has proved, from the works of Bellarmine himself, and others, that there exists upwards of three hundred controversies among the Papists, on unimportant points of faith and practice, notwithstanding their vain boast of external and internal unity.

The Christian Church is intended to embrace the whole world, and to comprehend all people and tongues, and nations and languages; consequently it is too vast for one man to govern and direct. Besides, in different nations different customs of man's adoption may and do prevail, yet without breaking unity, but which might greatly perplex a Sovereign pontiff in the adaptation of one universal rule or custom to the whole. Such a sovereignty, even although it were vested in a wise and good man, could be of little benefit to the Church diffusive; but, when this claim has been usurped by such wicked and impious men as most of the popes have been, it can only become the instrument of pride,

VOL. II.

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tyranny, and division. And that this has been the result in the Roman communion few will venture to deny. The intolerable oppression of papal tyranny preserves an outward cleanness of the cup and platter, while the body of the Roman Church is torn with intestine feuds and divisions: "the inside are full of extortion and excess,'

"-of " ravening and wickedness.' In confuting this note, Dr. Claggett has laid bare the cardinal's sophistry, and satisfactorily shown how much greater unity subsists in the Church of England, in all necessary particulars, than in the Church of Rome. In the popish communion there have been most violent and long-continued disputes between the Thomists, the Scotists, and the Occamists. The Dominicans and the Franciscans dispute most bitterly about the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin, and each party have boasted of revelations, visions, and miracles, in support of their mutual absurdities. The Jansenists and Molinists contended so long and fiercely about the "eternal decree," that the popes became alarmed lest their controversies should hasten the catastrophe which St. John says awaits popery: The popes have merely hushed up matters, but have never ventured to decide between the contending parties, notwithstanding their infallibility. And at the present moment the popish schismatics in Ireland are divided into two hostile parties on the subject of education, headed respectively by the notorious M'Hale and the mendacious Murray. Then there have been two, three, and even four popes at one time claiming the chair of St. Peter, and each pretending to be the centre of unity, cursing, excommunicating, and deposing one another; popes reversing other popes' infallible decrees; councils reversing the decrees of other councils, and deposing some popes, and setting up others. And yet these shameless schismatics point the finger of scorn at the Church of Christ, which, notwithstanding all the infirmity to which man is heir, has not such guilt and folly to answer for. Men might wonder how papists could imitate the brazen brow of the prostitute in asserting and reiterating charges of motes in their neighbour's eyes, when the beams in their own are so large and numerous; but the Holy Spirit has told us that their consciences are seared with lies and hypocrisy, and are as hard as if they had been cauterized with a hot iron. Dr. Claggett then proceeds to show

"That that unity which is indeed a note of the Church we have, and that in a much greater degree than they.

"Which point, will I hope, yield some discourse that will be more useful than barely to discover mistakes, and expose sophistry. For here I shall represent, as well as I can, the true grounds and notions of church unity, and then see who has most reason to pretend to it, they

or we.

"1. There is the unity of submitting to one head, our Lord Jesus Christ;' which is the foundation of all other Christian unity, and therefore mentioned by St. Paul amongst the principal reasons why the Church is one body," one Lord.'

2. There is the unity of professing the common faith, that was once delivered to the saints, which is grounded upon the authority of the Scriptures, and summarily expounded in the ancient creeds. And therefore to one Lord,' the apostle in the aforementioned place adds one faith.'

"3. There is an unity of sacraments in the Church,- one baptism;'

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