CHURCH. 



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nnjortio assembly, the multitude whom no nun can number, who in 

 ages to come should form the great Christian community. And as, 

 when thus used by the Apostles, it comprehended all the disciples 

 of Christ, without regard to questions which divided the opinion* ol 

 Christians even in the earliest time*, no it U (till often used to denote 

 the whole body of Chrutian*, notwithstanding any peculiarities in 

 their church order and ritual, or however they may understand the 

 instructions on *ome point* of Chrict and the Apostles. 



But it soon came to be regarded a* amentia! to the idea of a church 

 that the believer* should be bound together by a species of mutual 

 pledge, and form a compact and united body. Certain outward forma 

 of profession came to be regarded a* requisite for every member, such 



and partaking in the Lord'* Supper; certain officer*, as 

 bishops, pastors, and deacons, were regarded a* essential ; as well as 

 certain uniform service*, and the acknowledgment of certain pro- 

 position* as containing a just exposition and summary of the doctrine 

 of Christ and the Apostles. A continued effort seems to have been 

 making from a very early period in the history of Christianity to 

 bring the body of professing Christians into this state of consistency 

 and uniformity. And to give the greater effect to the effort, the 

 bishop of Rome, who was represented as the direct successor of St. 

 Peter, the rock on whom the church was to be built, received by 

 almost universal consent a kind of headship, or supremacy, and about 

 him was gathered a council, consisting of other bishops, pastors, and 

 deacons, forming a supreme authority in this compact community, and 

 a court of ultimate appeal. Up to the time of Constantino, the church 

 had been independent of the State. By uniting the two, the church 

 acquired rank and wealth the state the means of influencing its 

 rulers. Nearly the whole body of professing Christians in the states 

 of western Europe were, by various means, brought to enrol them- 

 elves in this great confederacy, and they formed for many ages the 

 church, a numerous and in the main a well-ordered and well-governed 

 community. But the removal of the seat of empire led indirectly 

 to the first great separation into the eastern and western churches, 

 continuing to the present day under the forms of the Greek church 

 and the Roman Catholic church. 



At the Reformation, certain states of Europe separated themselves 

 from the Western Church. The separation was made on various 

 grounds : objections to the tyranny of the ecclesiastical authorities : 

 to their exactions ; to their assumption of powers not sanctioned by 

 reason or Scripture ; to the corrupt lives of some of the persons near 

 the head of the church ; together with an opinion that the ceremonies 

 enjoined in the ritual were superstitious, if not idolatrous ; and that 

 many things were taught to the people as Christian verities which 

 not only had no countenance from Scripture, but which were opposed 

 to the plain teachings of Christ and his Apostles. Many of the leading 

 reformers did not look to the disruption of the church, but to the 

 reformation of it in doctrine and discipline, leaving the community of 

 believers in the compact order in which they found them. But the 

 resistance which was made to the efforts of the reformers, combined 

 with other things, rendered this impracticable, and nothing remained 

 for the states in which the call for reformation was the loudest, and 

 where a strong sense of the corruption of the Roman Catholic system 

 had possessed the minds both of rulers and people, but to break off 

 from the great confederacy, and to renounce entirely all connection 

 with and all spiritual allegiance to the pope, the great head of the 

 church. Hence arose another use and application of this term church, 

 and we hear of the Lutheran church, the church of Geneva, the 

 church of Scotland, and the church of England, meaning the Christian 

 members of those political confederacies, or belonging to those nations, 

 when regarded under the aspect of being professed believers in Christ. 



The expediency and the right of particular nations thus to detach 

 themselves from the great community of Christians, and to establish 

 churches of their own, have been subject of controversy. Protestants, 

 or Reformers, however, regard the point as settled, and in all the 

 Proteittant states of Europe, there are national churcha established, 

 founded on the public law, and regulated by the same public will 

 which regulates affairs purely political and secular. Those national 

 churches of Protestantism vary among themselves on numerous 

 points of order, ritual, and doctrine, according to the peculiar opinion* 

 of the persons who happened to possess the chief influence at the 

 time when the new faith, form, and order were established, or who 

 at a somewhat later period had influence sufficient to modify the 

 church in any of these points. Hence there is no common church of 

 Protestants. Each Protestant nation has its own church, and regu- 

 lates its own spiritual affairs without communication with other 

 Protestant people. It is a system of national independency. These 

 national churches, however, are not found to comprehend all person* 

 who in their political character are members of the respective nations. 

 There are many who separate themselves from the national union be- 

 cause they object to the principle of a national church. They contend 

 that there should be no such church regulated by councils and parlia- 

 ments, but that the believers in Christ should be left at entire lilx-rty, 

 each person for himself to connect himself with others, if he sees 

 propei to do so, and thus to form Christian communities on principles 

 and for purpose* such as each individual might approve for himself. 

 The CongregationalisU or Independent* of England, the most nume- 

 rous class of English dissenters, In the declaration of their faith, 



church order, and discipline, issued by authority in 1833, avow the 

 principle that each society of believers associated together for religious 

 purposes is properly a Christian church. The question a)>ut whi.-h 

 there has been so much disputation, of the union of church and state, 

 is in effect, and when stripped of its abstraction and its jiersoniticntion, 

 nothing more than the question whether there shall be a union of the 

 people of each nation in one Christian society, the aflairs of which are 

 regulated by the national will as that will is collected on other sub- 

 jects ; or, whether there shall be no expression of a common will, l.nt 

 each person be left to receive or neglect Christianity, and to make hia 

 public profession of it in whatever way seems to him to be the best. 

 Our limits do not allow us to enter into the discussion of this question, 

 but we may state the main arguments briefly thus : In behalf of a 

 national church it is contended that without some publii- provision 

 there would soon be many parts of the country without Christian 

 ministrations at all ; that by securing an order of well-instructed 

 ministers, there is the best preservative that can be devised against 

 the prevalence of injurious superstition and dangerous errors; that 

 affairs of such importance as these should be subjected to th 

 sidcration and direction of the enlightened mind of a people ; an 

 practically from the moment that property is acquired by any body of 

 professing Christians, that body must become amenable to the state, 

 must apply to the state for direction whenever questions arise respect- 

 ing it, so that it is in fact impossible entirely to disjoin affair* of 

 religion from affairs of state. On the other hand, it is contended tint 

 to set up articles of faith and forms of worship is an injurious invasion 

 of the rights of Christians ; that to connect the profession of partu-uUr 

 opinions with temporal advantages is unfavourable to the progress of 

 inquiry and of truth, and has a tendency to produce simulation in 

 Christian ministers; that the system leads to political subserviency, 

 and fosters a worldliness of spirit; and that practically the system is 

 not acceptable to the nation, as is evinced by the number of persons 

 who, notwithstanding the losses and inconveniences to which ,in c <n- 

 sequence, they subject themselves, yet do not belong to the church. 



The Methodists do not, we believe, speak of themselves as a church ; 

 but their system is in all its great features that of a Presbyterian 

 church. 



We have now gone through the principal senses in which this term 

 church is used when it is applied with any propriety. But we cannot 

 conclude without noticing one other sense in which the word is often 

 used, and we notice it to condemn it as mischievous, and in every point 

 of view incorrect and improper. We mean when church is used to 

 denote the officers of the church, the bishops, priests, and deacons ; a use 

 of it neither sanctioned by etymology nor the usage of primitive times, 

 and which is calculated greatly to mislead, as things which are predi- 

 cated, and truly predicated, of the church in its proper sense of a 

 community of believers in church order, and appointed with proper 

 church officers, may be transferred inadvertently to church when it is 

 the officers only who are meant. " The interests of the church," for 

 instance, a very common phrase, are properly the interests of the great 

 English community looked upon in the aspect of its relation to Christ- 

 ianity, not the interests of the officers or ministers only. Their proper 

 designation is not the church, but the clergy. 



CHURCH. An ecclesiastical edifice, sometimes built after the model 

 of a modern basilica, sometimes in the fonn either of a Latin or a Greek 

 cross, and sometimes, though much more rarely, circular in form. 

 The basilica form however must be considered as belonging to the 

 churches of the early Christians [BASILICA] ; cruciform churches are 

 of Romanesque date, and were almost universal during the prevalence 

 of Gothic architecture. The origin of the difference between the fonn 

 of the Latin and Greek cross belongs to the period of the <!. 

 between the Eastern and the Western churches. [BYZANTI.M: AHCMI- 

 TI :( 1 1 UK.] The Latin cross was in common use in the greater part of 

 Europe until the Reformation. Some resemblance to the basilica form 

 may be traced in modern churches erected since the Reformation to 

 the revival of Gothic architecture. 



A church or cathedral with a Greek cross has the transept as long as 

 the nave and choir : the greater part of the Greek churches are built in 

 this form. The Latin cross has the nave much longer than the tran- 

 sept and choir. The greater part of our older parish churches consist 

 of a nave with aisles, a chancel (in the larger churches, a transept), 

 and a tower sometimes at the intersection of the arms of the cross, 

 but usually at the western end. Many of our modern churches, and 

 particularly those constructed in the 18th, and early part of the 10th 

 century, consist of only one long nave, with an altar at the east end ; 

 the cross form, or transept, is in some instances scarcely perceptible, 

 and in others entirely omitted. In the nave of the church, towards 

 the east end, are placed the pulpit and reading-desk, now almost 

 invariably on one side, but during the prevalence of a semi-classic 

 style often in the centre of the nave. The altar end of the church i 

 rained by a step or steps, and is enclosed. The font is sometimes 

 placed near the entrance, at others nearer the altar. Stoups, or 

 mail stone basins, set in niches and intended for holy water, were 

 general in English churches before the Reformation, and are still often 

 seen in village churches. Near the altar in ancient churches there are 

 sometimes sedilia, or niches, with seats in them, raised each a step 

 above the other. According to some ecclesiological writers the correct 

 livision of a church in into nave, chancel, and sacrarium. 



