TELL THE CHURCH.

187

❝ between him and thee alone," you are to take one or two more; and if he is still obstinate, what are you to do? Why, to tell the church. The church! How can you tell the Universal Church? Must you call a general council to examine the case? Or must you travel to Rome, to get an audience of his holiness? What then? You will tell the Priest. And so the

Priest is the church!

"Ah!" methinks you exclaim, “you misun→ derstand the passage altogether."

"Indeed! why what does it mean?"

"It means that if we do not receive the doctrines of the church, we are heathens and publicans."

Not at all, my dear Friend; there is nothing in it about doctrines. "If thy brother offend thee." What can be plainer? If it were a

matter of doctrine, how could it be settled between him and thee alone? This would not only be vindicating for yourself the right of private judgment, but even claiming the attribute of infallibility. On your principles, all matters of faith must be referred to the authority of the church; whereas, according to the church's interpretation of this text (which stares us in almost every publication that bears her imprimatur, from the tract to the folio), articles of

belief are settled by the decisions of private individuals; and the church is appealed to only in case of disagreement. In truth, when she ventures to employ her collective wisdom on Biblical criticism, and condescends to explain a passage of Scripture, she palpably betrays her fallibility. This is the experimentum crucis, the decisive test, by which every scholar-nay, every man of sound sense-may know what manner of spirit she is of.

The church to be told in this case is the congregation (or that portion of it in full communion) with which the individual is connected, and whose character as a Christian society would be compromised by his misconduct. If he will not hear this church-that is, if he will not submit to Christian discipline-to the punishment inflicted by the many," by publicly confessing his fault, or enduring suspension from the Lord's Table-then let him be to thee as an heathen man and a publican. Let him be disannexed by the church, and no longer regarded as a brother. The wicked person must be put away.

Such is the indisputable meaning of the pas sage. No other sense can possibly be attached to it, unless you contend that the word church signifies the clergy, which it never does through-out the whole Bible; or, that doctrinal disputes

BINDING AND LOOSING.

189

can be settled by private judgment, which your Church vehemently denies. Now, mark, my dear Friend (it is worthy of your special attention); it is in connexion with this act of discipline the act of a religious assembly, meeting for worship in a particular place, and united together in church-fellowship-it is in connexion with their act, as pastor and flock, that our gracious Lord added the following words :

"Verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever ye shall loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven."

That these words were not addressed to the apostles, or to ministers, as such, is manifest from what follows: " Again, I say unto you, that if two of you shall agree on earth as touching any thing that they shall ask, it shall be done for them of my Father, who is in heaven; for where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them." Matt. xviii. 19, 20. Here is a promise plainly addressed to the laity to encourage social prayer. The statement in the eighteenth verse is as plainly addressed to the same class of persons, to

authorize their acts of church discipline.

But this view of the subject is still further confirmed, if confirmation were needed, by the

question of Peter in the next verse-a question arising immediately out of our Lord's words relative to hearing the church. "Then came Peter to him and said, Lord how oft shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?-till seven times?

"Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee until seven times; but until seventy times seven."

The appeal to the church, then, is not concerning doctrine, but personal differences between brethren; which, if not amicably settled in private, are referred to the congregation, as the ultimate tribunal; to which if the offender refuse to bow, he must be excluded from church fellowship, without appeal to any earthly authority. This is what is meant by binding. And when the church censure is "remitted," when the party is "forgiven," as in the Corinthian church, you have an illustration of loosing.

A cursory examination of the history of the primitive church, would evince, in the most satisfactory manner, the conclusiveness of this reasoning. For more than four centuries after Christ, the public confession of sin was strictly enjoined. The church member who disgraced his profession, was compelled openly to acknowledge his faults in the presence of the congregation, and to pass through a certain course of humiliation

PUBLIC CONFESSION.

191

Thus

before he was restored again to communion. But, as the process of corruption advanced, this was found to be very painful to persons of wealth and respectability, who sought to commute for their transgressions in a manner more agreeable to their feelings. To accommodate persons of this class, Leo the Great, in the fifth century, first allowed secret confession to a Priest. auricular confession was unknown to the Christian church for nearly 500 years! What say you to that? The practice, however, did not prevail for 200 years more, when Theodore, archbishop of Canterbury, published what was called a Penitential, in which he laid down particular rules for the guidance of Priests in the confessional. This was the germ of the casuistical system of the school men, a system which was matured by Thomas Aquinas and expounded by Peter Dens. The work of Theodore soon became popular among the English clergy, and was ultimately adopted, very generally, on the Continent. A practice so well calculated to confer power and wealth on the clergy, was, of course, eagerly encouraged by that body, as soon as the people had become ignorant and foolish enough to submit to it. Thus was the ancient discipline gradually superseded by an institution more eminently adapted to produce and to per