Observations on Church and State: Suggested by the Duke of Argyll's essay on the ecclesiastical history of Scotland

by James Frederick Ferrier

Wherever the Reformation was radical and complete, it did more than correct the abuses of the church of Rome—more than establish a purer mode of worship. It abolished for ever the sacerdotium as the badge of a peculiar order. It extinguished the distinction between clergyman and layman; and thus gave, as we shall see, a totally new aspect to the constitutional policy of all the nations which embraced it. This was more particularly the case in Scotland. Here there can be no mistake as to what the Reformation effected. Here we can exhibit demonstrably the steps by which the distinction between the clerical and the lay part of the population was brought to an end.

We may gather this: that the whole believing community is “the church”—a congregation of priests; that the whole Christian nation is a spiritual or ecclesiastical commonwealth. This it is by divine right—by the charter of the Bible. It is, moreover, the theory of the Reformation that this divine right must be controlled for the sake of good order—controlled by a jus humanum. Hence the origin of the ministry. They preach by human authority—that is, in virtue of election and admission—an authority which, not being extended to the rest of the community, checks the exercise of its spiritual privilege. Hence we perceive that the church, considered in its proper and more extended sense, as containing the whole body of Christian believers, is founded on a jus divinum; but that, considered in its more restricted sense, as confined to the ministers of religion, it rests, in so far as this limitation is concerned, purely on a jus humanum.

"by the charter of the Bible"

We now proceed to speak of ecclesiastical affairs as viewed by the same theory. Here it is that both people and their ministers become bewildered. Spiritual interests, the concerns of eternity as compared with those of time, are so momentous, that people naturally transfer the awe which is due to the things to the person of the man who administers them: and the man who administers them is naturally disposed (indeed he cannot help himself) to welcome the veneration which is forced upon his acceptance. Do we object to this? Far from it. We would have the ministers of the gospel loved and revered, and the ties between them and their people drawn as close as possible, over the whole length and breadth of the land. But there is one thing which we do most strenuously object to—and it is this; that any amount of reverence and esteem should be allowed to obliterate a sound constitutional truth—should overbear the profoundest maxim, the most vital principle of the Reformation. And this, we much fear, is what the veneration we are speaking of has done. Giving to persons a valuation which belongs to things, many professing Protestants have actually transposed the two titles of our ministry back into their old Popish order— ​holding that the minister's original title to officiate, which he and all Christians possess in their character of believers, is simply human; and that the other part of his commission, that which accrues to him through election and admission to office, that this ...

the most vital principle of the reformation… giving to persons an evaluation which belongs to things