THE CONSTRUCTION OF SHEEPFOLDS 551

dependent on their recommending themselves to every man’s conscience, both as messengers of God, and as themselves men of God, perfect, and instructed to good works.*

31. (6) The last subject which we had to investigate was, it will be remembered, what is usually called the connection of “Church and State.” But, by our definition of the term Church, throughout the whole of Christendom, the Church (or society of professing Christians) is the State, and our subject is therefore, properly speaking, the connection of lay and clerical officers of the Church; that is to say, the degrees in which the civil and ecclesiastical governments ought to interfere with or influence each other.

It would of course be vain to attempt a formal inquiry into this intricate subject;-I have only a few detached points to notice respecting it.

32. There are three degrees or kinds of civil government. The first and lowest, executive merely; the government in this sense being simply the National Hand, and composed of individuals who administer the laws of the nation, and execute its established purposes.

The second kind of government is deliberative; but in its deliberation, representative only of the thoughts and will of the people or nation, and liable to be deposed the instant it ceases to express those thoughts and that will. This, whatever its form, whether centred in a king or in any number of men, is properly to be called Democratic. The third and highest kind of government is deliberative, not as representative of the people, but as chosen to take separate counsel for them, and having power committed to it, to enforce upon them whatever resolution it may adopt,

* The difference between the authority of doctrine and discipline is beautifully marked in 2 Timothy ii. 25, and Titus ii. 12-15. In the first passage, the servant of God, teaching divine doctrine, must not strive, but must “in meekness instruct those that oppose themselves;” in the second passage, teaching us “that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts he is to live soberly, righteously, and godly in this present world,” the minister is to speak, exhort, and rebuke with ALL AUTHORITY-both functions being expressed as united in 2 Timothy iv. 3.

[Version 0.04: March 2008]