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

by James Frederick Ferrier

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