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some of our own controversial books and pamphlets may make us aware. The clergy have always a certain tendency to grow clannish, to see things in the light of class relations, and ecclesiastical customs and formulas. They are tempted to be sticklers for minutiae of doctrine, or else rather loud-mouthed announcers of new discoveries in theological science. They are apt to run wholly imaginary lines through their own corporation, and thus crudely classify themselves as orthodox and heretical, liberal and bigoted, sound and shaky. Now, if we are to classify Congregational pastors apart from their brethren in the churches, and then call them, "the clergy," we must hold that the highest allegiance under God of this class, the clergy, is to the other class, the laity, in all Congregational churches. In 1730′ a committee of the New North Church was appointed to examine a candidate for settlement as pastor, "concerning his Christian principles, both doctrinal and disciplinary." A revival and heightening, by means of such an examination, of the sense of responsibility on the part of the pastor to the church which he teaches, would do much toward securing purity in the doctrine and life of our ministry. It is no unwarrantable assumption for any congregation to require of the candidate for its pastorate a full statement made to them of his doctrinal belief and religious experience.

Besides his primary allegiance to Christ, and his secondary responsibility to his own church, the Congregational minister has a certain tertiary allegiance and responsibility to the Church of Christ at large. This allegiance is acknowledged, and this responsibility se

1 As, e.g., a pamphlet printed in 1794, entitled Congregationalism as contained in the Scriptures, explained by the Cambridge Platform, where the removal of a Congregational pastor is likened to the deposition of a priest by a Jewish king.

cured, in the case of the pastor, by the communion of his church with sister Congregational churches. As a pastor, he has no responsibility, and owes no allegiance whatever to his fellow-ministers as such, but to them as delegated representatives of sister-churches. No Congregational minister, whatever his position or title, can assume the right to inspect the faith of any pastor; nor can any number of ministers assume any jurisdiction over any single pastor. But the ordaining and installing of pastors of Congregational churches, and, as well, the subsequent care of their purity in faith and life, is committed to the sister-churches by the first, second, third, and sixth ways of communion.1

The second and third means for conserving the purity of Congregational ministers, viz., the care of the particular visible church over its own pastor, and the care of the siste: hood of churches over their pastors, cover and shield two important epochs. The first of these is the epoch in which the minister becomes pastor of a Congregational church: the second is the sad and dangerous epoch when he becomes notably or obviously impure in morals, or unsound in faith. The local church and the communion of churches are intimately interested in both these epochs in the determining of the difficult questions which accompany both these epochs, the local church and the sister-churches should take appropriate parts. Only in this union of effort is it possible to use both these means to promote the desired end.

We consider, then, at some length, the Congregational doctrine of the ordination of the pastor.

When a Congregational church has made choice of a pastor, it is in accordance with the example of the New Testament, and with the principles and most time

1 Cambridge Platform, chap. xv. sect. 2.

honored customs of our polity, that this chosen pastor should be formally and solemnly inducted into his office. It is agreed by all that the primary and constitutive act for establishing the pastorate is that choice of the body of believers which summons the person chosen to its leadership in Christian teaching and work. To this must, of course, be added the pastor's acceptance of the choice of the church. "Mutual election," says Increase Mather, "is that which doth essentiate the relation of a pastor to this or that particular church." Ordination is, therefore, the formal act confessing and ratifying this choice. "This ordination we account," says the Cambridge Platform,2 "nothing else, but the solemn putting a man into his place and office in the church, whereunto he had right before by election; being like the installing of a magistrate in the commonwealth." The elements of this solemn act of induction were, in the New Testament, two; viz., the prayer, and the imposition of hands; the latter being, as the text shows us, an additional ceremony, and not a merely symbolical accompaniment of the prayer.3 This ceremony of the imposition of hands had served the Jews, since the time of Mosaism, as a symbol and means of the imparting of divine grace and divine power in consecration for the sacred offices of the Hebrew Church. In the Apostolic Church it was regarded as both symbol and means of special divine grace.5 The New-Testament imposition of hands is undoubtedly regarded by its

1 Sermon at the ordination of Mr. Appleton.

2 Chap. ix. sect. 2.

8 See Acts vi. 6, and Meyer's note (<aí, etc. . . . TÓTE, etc.), and compare Acts viii. 17.

4 See Num. xxvii. 18, and Ewald's Alterth., p. 47.

5 See Meyer on Acts vi. 6; Schaff, Apostolic Church, p. 502; art. Handauflegung, in Herzog and Plitt; Neander, Planting and Training, p. 154, f.; Meyer's Handbuch; 1 Tim. iv. 14.

authors as dynamic. Many of the writers of Congregationalism, in their zeal to guard against the doctrine that imposition of hands is "intended as a conveyance of office power," have been betrayed into extreme and erroneous statements. Yet the practice of the fathers was, in the respect of laying-on of hands, quite uniform. The question, whether these acts of ordination are necessary to constitute one chosen to that office the true pastor of a Congregational Church, has been often and elaborately debated. It is not now necessary to review the debate. Two points upon which conviction may be fastened are these: the choice of the local church is the primal and essential element of pastoral ordination; and this formal act of induction should occur as often as the choice to the office recurs. The choice is necessary to constitute the office of the pastorate; the ceremony of ordination, with at least its two essential elements of prayer and imposition of hands, is necessary to a decent and orderly induction into that office. In these essential regards the true church polity knows no difference between installation and ordination.

Granting, then, that this solemn act of induction is in accordance with the example of the New Testament and with the ancient and honorable customs of Congregationalism, the question arises, By whom shall the act be initiated? To this question only one answer can be given. The right and obligation both to initiate and to consummate the ordination with its appropriate service, and symbolic impartation of divine gifts, rest where the original and primal element of ordination abides: they rest, that is to say, with the local church. The

1 As, for example, that the imposition of hands had to do only with the conveying of miraculous gifts: it is, therefore, an obsolete ceremony. So Isaac Chauncey, Div. Inst. of Congregational Churches, pp. 74–83.

right and privilege and obligation to induct into office are with the people who elect to the office: the blame and shame and risk are with them in case they neglect or refuse thus to consummate their choice. Whoever, therefore, prays and lays on hands at the ordaining of a Congregational pastor, does so as invited and delegated by the ordaining church. The right of the ordaining council is always a delegated right.'

But to whom, we inquire further, does the Church most fitly delegate this right? In the practice of the New Testament they who imposed hands were the apostles or their delegates, the presbyter-bishops of the churches, and, in the case of the induction of Paul and Barnabas into their great missionary work, the Christian prophets and teachers; these all always acting in the name and behalf of the body of believers. The apostles are not with us, and their vicegerents, or successors in unbroken line, we cannot discover, even if we felt them necessary for use in valid ordination. Both the practice of the New Testament, and the ancient practice of our church order, lead us to conclude that the elders of the local church which has chosen the new officer are the persons fittest, in the name and behalf of the church, to induct him into his office. Says the chapter on discipline in the Savoy Confession,

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The way of ordaining officers is . . . with fasting and prayer, and imposition of hands of the eldership of the church." And says the Cambridge Platform,3" In such churches where there are elders, imposition of hands in ordination is to be performed by those elders."

1 See Historical Sketch of Congregational Churches in Mass., p. 23. 2 The college of elders referred to 1 Tim. iv. 14, and who imposed hands upon Timothy, were, at least for the most part, officers of the local church which ordained him. See Grimm's lexicon and Meyer's Handbuch. 3 Chap. ix. sect. 3.

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