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

by James Frederick Ferrier

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"