Admission to membership of a Community.

h

other limit. But in a voluntary Community, the ultimate Penalty must be expulsion; all others, short of this, being submitted to as the alternative. But in every Community, of whatever description (or in those under whose control it is placed) there must reside a power of enacting, enforcing, and remitting, the Penalties by which due submission to its laws and to its officers is to be secured.

3dly. Lastly, no less essential to a Community seems to be a power, lodged somewhere, of determining questions of Membership. Whatever may be the claims or qualifications on which that may depend,-nay, even whether the community be a voluntary Association, or (as is the case with political Communities) one claiming compulsory power,-and whatever may be its purpose in all cases, the admission to it, or exclusion from it, of each individual, must be determined by some recognised authority.

Since therefore this point, and also those others above-mentioned, seem, naturally and necessarily, to belong to every regular Community, since it must, in short, consist of regularly-constituted Members, subject to certain Rules, and having certain Officers, it follows, that whoever directs or sanctions the establishment

h See Appendix, Note (B.)

of a Community (as our Lord certainly did in respect of Christian Churches,) must be understood as thereby sanctioning those institutions which belong to the essence of a Community. To recognise a Community as actually having a legitimate existence, or as allowably to be formed, is to recognise it as having Officers,-as having Regulations enforced by certain Penalties, and as admitting or refusing to admit Members.

vinely con

Christian

§ 3. All this, I say, seems to be implied by Rights dithe very nature of the case. But, on purpose, ferred on a as it should seem, to provide against any mis- Comapprehension or uncertainty, our Lord did not munity. stop at the mere general sanction given by Him to the formation of a Christian Community, but He also particularized all the points I have been speaking of. He appointed or ordained the first Officers; He recognised the power of enacting and abrogating Rules; and He gave authority for the admitting of Members.

Such is the obvious sense of his directions to his Apostles: obvious, I mean, to them,―with such habits of thought and of expression as they had, and as He must have known them to have. He must have known well what meaning his words would convey to his own countrymen, at that time. But some things which would appear plain and obvious to a Jew,-even an

Power to bind and

of the keys,

unlearned Jew,-in those days, may be such as to require some examination and careful reflection to enable us, of a distinct Age and Country, to apprehend them in the same sense. When however we do examine and reflect, we can hardly doubt, I think-considering to whom, and at what time, He was speaking-that our Lord did sanction and enjoin the formation of a permanent religious Community or Communities, possessing all those powers which have been above alluded to. The power of "binding and loose,power loosing;"-i. e. enacting and enforcing, and of and power abrogating or suspending regulations, for a Christian Society,-was recognised by his promise' of the divine ratification of those acts,-the binding and loosing in heaven." The " of the Kingdom of Heaven," denote the power of admitting persons Members of the Church, and excluding them from it. And the expression respecting the remitting and retaining of sins,” if it is to be understood (as I think it is) as extending to anything beyond the power of admitting members into Christ's Church by Baptism for the remission of sins," must relate to the enforcement or remission of ecclesiastical censures for offences against a Christian Community.

ofremission

of sins.

66

66

66

Keys

iSee Appendix, Note (C.)

By attentive reflection on the two topics I have here suggested-namely, on the rights and powers essentially inherent in a Community, and consequently implied in the very institution of a Community, so far as they are not expressly excluded; and again, on the declarations of our Lord, as they must have been understood by his Disciples, by reflection, I say, on these two topics, we shall be enabled, I think, to simplify and clear up several questions which have been sometimes involved in much artificial obscurity and difficulty.

tion of the

Church.

§ 4. And our view of the sense in which our ConstituLord's directions are to be understood will be Jewish the more clear and decided, if we reflect that all the circumstances which have been noticed as naturally pertaining to every Community, are to be found in that religious Community in which the Disciples had been brought up ;-the Jewish Church, or (as it is called in the Old Testament) the Congregation, or Ecclesia, of which each Synagogue was a branch.1 It had regular Officers; the Elders or Presbyters, the Rulers of Synagogues, Ministers or Deacons, &c.-it had Bye-laws; being not only under the Levitical Law, but also having authority, within certain

k

* Septuagint.

k

'See Vitringa on the Synagogue.

Rights exercised by the Jewish

miliar to the

limits, of making regulations, and enforcing them by penalties (among others, that which we find alluded to in the New Testament, of excommunicating or "casting out of the Synagogue") and it had power to admit Proselytes.

With all these points then, the Disciples of Jesus had long been familiar. And He spoke Church, fa- of them in terms with which they must have Disciples. been well acquainted. For instance, the expression "binding and loosing"m was, and still is, perfectly familiar to the Jews, in the sense of enforcing and abrogating rules; or,-which amounts precisely to the same thing,-deciding as to the manner, and the extent, in which a previously existing law is to be considered as binding as is done by our Judges in their recorded Decisions.

The Jewish Church was indeed subject, by divine authority, to the Levitical Law. But minute as were the directions of that Law, there were still many points of detail, connected with the observance of it, which required to be settled by some competent authority: such as, for instance, what was, or was not, to be regarded as "work," forbidden on the Sabbath :-what was to be considered as "servile work," forbidden on certain other days; - and in what way the

m

See Lightfoot on this subject, and also Dr. Wotton's valuable work on the Mishna.