58 
POLYNESIAN RESEARCHES. 
every Christian was bound, no less by duty to 
God than to man, to render obedience to their 
laws, to respect and maintain their authority, 
and to pay them every due homage. We also 
told them, that in the church of Jesus Christ, 
which was purely a religious association, so far as 
distinctions among men, from dignity of station, 
elevation of office, fame, or wealth, were con¬ 
cerned, all members were brethren; and that 
Christ himself was the only spiritual chief or King; 
that his influence or reign was not temporal, but, 
like his authority, spiritual. The only distinction 
recognized in a Christian church, we informed 
them, regarded those who acted as officers, and 
that such distinctions only prevailed in what con¬ 
cerned them as a church, or voluntarily associated 
religious society, and did not refer to their usual 
intercourse with the community of which they 
were members, and in which they were governed 
by the ordinary regulations established in civilized 
society. The exercise of any civil power in matters 
purely religious, we did not think would be advan¬ 
tageous to the latter; and even if such had been 
our opinion, we could find in the New Testament 
no example or precept to authorize such pro- 
ceedure. 
The duties which those who united in church 
fellowship were required to perform towards each 
other, towards those desirous of uniting with them, 
and to the careless or irreligious, were also fully 
and frequently brought under their notice, together 
with the paramount duty of every Christian to 
endeavour to propagate Christianity, that the 
Christian church might become a kind of nursery, 
from which other churches might be planted in the 
extensive wilderness of paganism around. 
