Presbyterians, their history and beliefs

Front matter

RIANS.

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A LE

Foreword

This little book is not intended for those who already know the history of the Presbyterian Church, but for those who do not know it. In writing it, I have had especially in mind the large number of young people who are eager to know more about the church and its work. At the same time, I have the hope in my heart that older people may not find it unprofitable.

Presbyterians have a rich heritage and a noble birthright in their history. I do not believe that they despise their birthright, but it is possible for them to be ignorant of it, and therefore indifferent to it, unless we try to present our Presbyterian history to them in some available form.

A book of this size could not possibly go into all the details of Presbyterian history. It would take many volumes to do that. Only the broadest outlines are given. A number of the smaller Presbyterian bodies have not even been mentioned. Only a bare mention has been made of the great work which the Presbyterian Church has done in many mission lands. The contents of the book have been largely determined by the fact that it was my purpose to trace especially the history of those branches of the Presbyterian Church which have contributed to what we may call the main line of Presbyterianism in the United States of America.

Iam deeply grateful to a number of people who have been of help to me in the preparation of this little book. I wish to make special mention of Miss Natalie Lancaster, Dean of Women in the Presbyterian Assembly’s Training School, who read the manuscript with painstaking care and made many valuable suggestions; and of my daughter, Miss Nan Russell Lingle, who prepared the manuscript for the printer, and who was my best critic.

I would like to dedicate this little volume to the many students who have sat in my class room during the past seventeen years, and who have been one of the great inspirational forces in my life. I could well say with an ancient Jewish rabbi: “I have learned much from my teachers, but more from my pupils.”

Richmond, Virginia. W.L. L.

Contents

FOREWORD CHAPTER I. PRESBYTERIANISM IN THE BIBLE .

II. FroM JOHN THE APOSTLE TO JOHN CALVIN (100-1509 A. D.) III. JOHN CALVIN AND PRESBYTERIANISM IV. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN FRANCE AND IN THE NETHERLANDS V. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN SCOTLAND VI. PRESBYTERIANISM IN ENGLAND .

VII. THE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN IRELAND VIII. THe PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH IN THE UNITED STATES oF AMERICA .

Chapter I Presbyterianism In The Bible

Our Name—Do you know where we get the name Presbyterian? We get it out of the Bible. That may surprise you a bit at first, for you have been reading your Bible, with more or less diligence, for a good many years, but you cannot recall having seen anything about Presbyterians in it. However, we must remember that the Bible was not originally written in English, but that the Old Testament was written in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek. The Old Testament was translated into Greek about 250 B. C.

It is in the Greek Bible that we find the word from which we get the name. Presbyterian. This word occurs about sixty times in the Greek New Testament and about a hundred times in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. There are two ways of getting this Greek word over into our English language. We may transliterate it, or we may translate it. When we transliterate a word, we simply substitute English letters for the Greek letters. When we so transliterate this Greek word, we get the English word Presbyter, and that is the word from which we get the name Presbyterian. When we translate a word we substitute its English equivalent. The English equivalent for this Greek word is our English word Elder. So a presbyter is an elder, and an elder is a presbyter. A Presbyterian church, therefore, is a church which is governed by elders. A fuller definition would be that a Presbyterian church is a church with representative selfoe I government by elders. Our church gets its name from its form of government.

The Beginning of the Presbyterian Church— When did the Presbyterian Church begin? Some people have an idea that it began with John Calvin, but they are mistaken. It would be more nearly accurate to say that he re-discovered it. The Presbyterian Church began back in Bible times. The church in the Bible was a church governed by elders. Let us see.

In Acts 14:23 we are told that Paul and Barnabas ordained elders in every church which they organized during their missionary journey. In Acts 20:17 we learn that Paul sent for the elders of the church at Ephesus to meet him at Miletus. In Titus 1:5 Paul commands Titus to ordain elders in every city. These passages are sufficient to show that the New Tea ehurch was governed by elders.

What about the Old Testament ohieeh? Was there an Old Testament church? Some people answer that question in the negative, but Stephen certainly believed that there was a church back in the Old Testament days. In Acts 7:38 he speaks of “the church in the wilderness” in the days of Moses. There was a church in those days. It had its house, its ministry, its sacraments, and its directory of worship. It was governed by elders.

In Exodus 3:16 the Lord commands Moses to call the elders of Israel together. After that we frequently find Moses calling the elders together for distinctly religious purposes. In numbers 11:16 we have these words: “The Lord said unto Moses: Gather unto me seventy men of the elders of Israel, whom thou knowest to be elders of the people, and officers over them.” This passage indicates that these elders were not simply elderly men, but that they were elders in the official sense of the word. These and other similar passages show clearly that the Old Testament church was governed by elders. Of course we do not claim that the duties of these Old Testament elders were precisely the same as the duties of a Presbyterian elder today, but the principle of representative government by elders is there all the same.

About 400 B. C. the Old Testament church began to take the form of what came to be known as synagogues. In the New Testament we find these synagogues everywhere that we find the Jews. Jesus worshipped in the synagogues regularly. The New Testament church seems to have grown right out of these synagogues and was largely modeled after them. The synagogues were governed by elders.

As a matter of fact, the Old Testament church and the New Testament church are one and the same under different dispensations. In Galatians 3:29 Paul tells us that, if we are Christ’s, we are the true seed of Abraham. In Romans 11:17-21 he compares the church to an olive tree. Its roots and trunk reach back into the Old Testament, and the Gentile Christians are spoken of as branches which have been grafted into this ancient tree¢é In Ephesians 2:20 Paul tells us that the Christian church is built upon the foundation of the prophets and apostles, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief corner stone. Note that the prophets belong to the Old Testament dispensation.

This oneness of the Old Testament church and the New Testament church is a very important part of our Presbyterian conception of the church. You know the children of believers were included in the Old Testament covenant and were members of the Old Testament church. This being true the children of believers are still included in the covenant and are members of the New Testament church, and have a right to baptism, if the Old Testament church and the New Testament church are one and the same. We would like to go into this more fully, but it would carry us afield from the main purpose of this book.

This glance at our Bibles has shown us that the church in the Bible was governed by elders. This leading principle of Presbyterian church government, from which we get our name, can be traced back as far as the days of Moses.

Elders Were Sometimes Called Bishops.—The Presbyterian is sometimes a bit perplexed by finding the word bishop in the New Testament. It occurs in five different places and leaves the impression that perhaps after all the New Testament church was governed by bishops. A little closer study of these passages will reveal the fact that these bishops were simply elders.

In Acts 20:17 Paul sends for the elders of the church at Ephesus. In Acts 20:28 he calls them bishops, according to the accurate translation given by the American Revised Version. Again in Titus 1:5 Paul directs that elders should be ordained in every city, and in Titus 1:7 calls these same men bishops. It is perfectly clear that elders and bishops were identical in the New Testament. These are only different names for the same office.

Bishop Lightfoot, one of the greatest scholars the Anglican (Episcopal) church ever produced, not only admitted this identity, but wrote a scholarly essay to prove it. The bishop of the New Testament was not a bishop in the modern sense of that word, but an elder. In the New Testament a church was governed by several elders or bishops who were on a perfect equality. In these modern times one bishop has oversight of a large number of churches, and exercises an authority over ministers and churches that the New Testament bishop or elder never dreamed of. The fact that elders were called bishops had a very important bearing on the development of church government during the second century.

Two Kinds of Elders.—‘‘Let the elders that rule well be counted worthy of double honor, especially they who labor in the word and doctrine” (I Tim. 5:17). From this passage we conclude that all elders in the New Testament church exercised the function of ruling, and that, in addition to ruling, some elders labored in word and doctrine. On this passage we base our distinction between preaching elders, or ministers, and ruling elders in the Presbyterian Church. The Apostle Peter was a preacher, but he tells us in I Peter 1:1 that he was also an elder. He was what we would call a teaching, or preaching elder. |

In our Presbyterian system every church has a pastor, or preaching elder, and a group of ruling elders. The pastor and the ruling elders constitute the session, which is the governing body in a Presbyterian church.

The Election of Elders.—There is strong evidence that the elders in the New Testament church were elected by the people. In Acts 1:15-16 all the disciples at Jerusalem took part in the election of a man to fill the place of Judas. In Acts 6:8 all the disciples took part in the election of the seven deacons. We are told tw in Acts 14:28 that they ordained elders in every church. The Greek word used here for ordain literally means the raising of hands, and it may refer to the election of these elders by the show of hands, rather than to their ordination by the laying on of hands.

As soon as we get outside of the New Testament into early Christian literature, the election of church officers by the people is a very conspicuous part of church government. For instance, Clement of Rome, writing about 100 A. D. says that church officers received their offices “by the consent of the whole church.”

So we have good grounds for believing that the elders in the New Testament church were elected by the people. That is only another way of saying that the New Testament church had a representative form of government. This has always been a fundamental feature of Presbyterianism. Presbyterians take a kind of holy pride in the fact that they have a representative form of government. They also pride themselves on the fact that wherever Presbyterianism has been strong, the civil government has become representative and has stood for civil and religious liberty.

There are only two other possible types of church government, the Episcopal and the Congregational. The word Episcopal comes from a Greek word which means bishop. The Episcopal Church is a church which is governed by bishops. The Roman Catholic, the Episcopal, and the Methodist-Episcopal churches have the Episcopal form of government. This form corresponds in general to the monarchical form in civil government, in which the monarchy may be absolute or limited. The Roman Catholic Church with the pope at its head corresponds to an absolute monarchy. In the American

. Episcopal Church the power of the bishop is limited and there is a good deal of democracy.

Congregational church government is that in which all questions are decided directly by the people. It corresponds to a pure democracy in civil government. The Congregational Church, all Baptist churches, and the Disciples of Christ have the congregational form of government.

Presbyterian government, being representative, corresponds to the republican form of government in the civil world. All Presbyterian and Reformed churches throughout the world have this type of government. _We believe that it is Biblical and that it is the best.

The Principle of the Presbytery.— We have seen that individual Presbyterian churches in the New Testament were governed by elders. Were the individual churches independent, or were they bound together into one church by some such principle as we have binding our churches together in Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assembly ?

Once upon a time when I had introduced a distinguished minister as a member of the Southern Baptist Church, he promptly replied that there is no such thing as the Southern Baptist Church, but that there are a | great many Southern Baptist churches. Do you catch his idea? Every Southern Baptist church is independent, and there is no tie that binds them all into one great church, which could be called the Southern Baptist Church. It is not so in the Presbyterian Church, and it was not so in the New Testament church. There is a presbyterial tie that binds all of our individual churches into one church. Let us see whether such a principle can be found in the New Testament.

A question of far-reaching importance arose in the church at Antioch in the days of Paul and Barnabas. Must a Gentile first become a Jew and submit to circumcision and all the Jewish ordinances before he could become a Christian? It looked as if the question would split the church from center to circumference. Even Paul and Peter had a sharp disagreement on the subject.

If the church at Antioch had been entirely independent it could have settled this question for itself, and with such men as Paul and Barnabas present it was abundantly able to do so. As a matter of fact the church at Antioch referred this question to a church council at Jerusalem. We have a full account of that council in the fifteenth chapter of Acts. Note well that it was composed of apostles and elders. It must have looked a good deal like a Presbyterian Synod or General Assembly. Note also that this council composed of apostles and elders, after full deliberations, settled the question authoritatively, and that the church at Antioch and other churches accepted its decision. There was a tie that bound these New Testament churches, together into one church. We have here the principle . that binds our Presbyterian churches into Presbyteries, Synods, and General Assemblies.

In this connection let us turn to I Timothy 4:14 where Paul exhorts Timothy not to neglect the gift which came to him “with the laying on of the hands of the presbytery.” Here we have the very word “presbytery” in the New Testament. That presbytery may not have been precisely like a modern presbytery in all details, but it had the principle. It was a council of elders, or presbyters, ordaining young Timothy to the ministry by the laying on of their hands.

The Deacons.—While the deacons have no part in the government of the Presbyterian Church, they are recognized as permanent officers in the church, and no discussion of Presbyterianism would be complete without a paragraph on the deacons.

You may be surprised to learn that deacons are mentioned in only two passages in the New Testament (Philippians 1:1, and I Timothy 3:10-13). The deacons are simply mentioned in Philippians and their qualifications are given in Timothy. Nowhere do we have their duties defined. However, we firmly believe that “the seven” who were chosen in the sixth chapter of Acts were deacons, though they are not expressly called by that name, and if this is true we have their duties very clearly defined.

The seven, in the sixth chapter of Acts, were chosen in order that they might relieve the apostles of a great burden of detailed work in connection with caring for the poor, in order that the apostles might, in turn, give themselves fully to the ministry of the word and to prayer. They were to relieve the apostles by relieving the poor. From this we conclude that the deacons should attend to all temporal and financial matters connected with the work of the church, and thus leave the pastor free to give himself wholly to the ministry of the word and prayer, and to such matters as are exclusively spiritual. The Presbyterian Church has not yet realized all the possibilities of the office of deacon.

Conclusion.—In the New Testament a church was governed by a group of elders who were elected by the people. Individual churches were bound together by a principle that made them one. Questions that affected the whole church were referred to a central council, or synod, composed of the apostles and elders. Besides elders each church had a group of officers known as deacons.

The Presbyterian Church has tried to model its government after the pattern given in the New Testament, and we feel that it is not too much to say that in the matter of government Presbyterians come nearer the apostolic model than any other denomination in the world. While we say this, we do well to remember that the greatest church is not necessarily the one that has the most scriptural form of government, but the one that holds in purest form the Gospel of Christ, the one that has most of His spirit, and the one that is doing most to advance His Kingdom in the earth.

Where does the Presbyterian Church get its name?

When did the Presbyterian Church begin?

Prove that there was a church in the Old Testament times.

How was the Old Testament church governed?

Prove that elders and bishops in the New Testament were identical.

What authority is there for having two kinds of elders?

Were the New Testament elders appointed or elected?

Is there any principle in the New Testament to justify having individual churches united into Presbyteries and Synods?

9. What are the duties of deacons as set forth in the sixth chapter of Acts?

10. Name the ways in which our Presbyterian Church govern-

ment resembles the New Testament church.

0 eS

Chapter II

FROM JOHN THE APOSTLE TO JOHN CALVIN (100 A. D.-1509 A. D.)

The End of the Apostolic Age.—In this chapter we want to see what happened to the New Testament principles of church government after all the apostles were dead. The Apostle John probably outlived all the other apostles. He died about 100 A. D. With his death the Apostolic Age was closed, and a new era was ushered in. While the apostles lived they took general oversight of the church. You will recall that Paul visited the churches of Asia Minor, Macedon, and Greece again and again, and that he wrote them in his absence. After the death of the apostles, there were left no great, outstanding men to guide the destinies of the church, and each church seems to have been left very much to its own resources.

At the end of the Apostolic Age there was probably not a Christian in the whole worid who had ever seen a complete Bible as we have it today. All the books of the Old Testament had been brought together under one cover, but there were comparatively few copies of it in existence, as printing had not been invented and every copy had to be written out by hand. All the books of the New Testament had been written, but they had not been brought together under one cover. In fact, the New Testament books were at first right widely scattered. One book was sent to the church at Rome, another to the church at Ephesus, two others to the church at Corinth, and so on for all the twenty-seven. It took a long time to bring all these books together into the one book which we call the New Testament. Irenaeus, who suffered martyrdom about 200 A. D., is the first one of the early church writers to make full use of the New Testament in his writings.

If all the Christians at the close of the Apostolic Age had owned complete Bibles, comparatively few would have been able to read them, as the great majority of these early Christians came from the uneducated classes. The Apostle Paul tells us that not many of the mighty were called. What they knew of the gaspel story they had learned orally from preachers, and not from the written page. We enjoy the benefit of all that Christian scholars for eighteen hundred years have accomplished in the way of studying, interpreting, and systematizing the teachings of the Bible. The early Christians did not have the benefit of all this.

Is it any wonder under these circumstances if the church, after the death of the apostles, missed the way, and developed along lines that were not entirely in accord with the New Testament pattern? As an actual fact it began very soon to depart from New Testament standards in doctrine, in government, and in worship. Inasmuch as we are tracing the story of the Presbyterian principles of government set forth in the New Testament, we are especially concerned with developments in church government after the Apostolic Age.

Evolution of the Bishop.—We saw in the preceding chapter that in New Testament times each church was governed by a group of elders who were sometimes called bishops. All of these elders, or bishops, were on a perfect equality. But soon after the death of all the apostles we see one elder, or bishop, rising above the others in some churcitcs, and this one was called “‘the bishop.”

This was a perfectly natural development. It is difficult to keep any group of men on a perfect equality. Some men have more ability and more leadership than others. These naturally rise to places of leadership. Besides, it was necessary for a group of elders, or bishops, to have a presiding officer at their meetings. They would naturally select a man with leadership. Such a temporary office very easily becomes permanent. In some such way “the bishop” of a church came into being and became a permanent officer of the church. At first he was the bishop of only one congregation and not of a diocese, but his influence was greater than that of any other elder, or bishop, in that congregation.

The first intimation that we have of the change in church government by which “the bishop” came into being is in some old letters written by a noted Christian called Ignatius about the year 117 A. D. At that time Christians were being terribly persecuted by the * Roman government. Ignatius was arrested in Antioch and carried to Rome to suffer martyrdom because he was a Christian. On the long journey from Antioch to Rome he wrote a number of letters to churches and individuals exhorting them to stand fast in the days of fiery persecutions. The genuineness of all these letters has been disputed by some very able scholars, but the majority of scholars believe that seven of these letters are genuine, and were written by Ignatius about 117 A. D.

In his letters to several of the churches Ignatius refers to “the bishop” of the church and urges the members to be obedient to him and to follow his leadership and advice. This is the earliest reference that we have to “the bishop” of a church. In the New Testament a church had a group of bishops, or elders, to govern it, but nowhere in the New Testament do we find a reference to “‘the bishop” of a church.

It is rather significant that in his letter to the church at Rome Ignatius does not refer to “the bishop.” The best explanation of this silence is that the church at Rome had not yet reached the stage in its development where it had “a bishop.”” This development took place in the church in the East first, and afterwards in the West. It is probable that by 150 A. D. the whole church, East and West, had developed this type of government, and that each church had a bishop who had greater authority than any other elder, and even greater authority than all the other elders combined. But note that he was still a congregational bishop, and not a diocesan bishop. His authority was confined to a single church. This was the first step away from the New Testament, representative form of government by elders, who were sometimes called bishops.

Evolution of the Pope.—After the first step had been taken it was easy enough to take the second. It was just as natural as the first. The bishop of a church in an important center became more prominent and influential than the bishop in a more obscure church. As a result the bishop in the large and important place began to exercise influence and authority over some of the smaller churches. Thus the diocesan bishop, with a large group of churches under his oversight, came into being. In due time the whole church had its diocesan bishops who exercised authority over groups of churches. This was accomplished by 250 A. D.

Cyprian, the bishop of Carthage, who suffered martyrdom in 258 A. D., did a great deal to increase the influence and authority of bishops. He did this by his own example as a bishop and by his writings. He went so far as to say: “The bishop is in the church, and the church in the bishop, and if any one is not with the bishop he is not in the church.”’ That does not sound like anything that we find in the New Testament.

Cyprian also expounded the doctrine of apostolic succession. He believed that the apostles were bishops, that they appointed and ordained other bishops as their successors, and that these in turn appointed and ordained other bishops, and so on in unbroken succession down through the centuries. But there is not one scintilla of evidence in the New Testament for this doctrine. The early Christian writers make no reference to it. In fact, it seems to have been an afterthought. The ablest historians, even those who belong to the Anglican Church, reject the theory of the apostolic succession, and trace the development of the bishop from the elders, or presbyters, of the New Testament church, who were sometimes called bishops.

Even diocesan bishops could not stay on an equality. Those in the larger metropolitan centers began to have more authority than those in less important places, and they were called ‘Metropolitans,”’ or metropolitan bishops.

After awhile some metropolitan bishops began to have more power than others, and these were called “Patriarchs,” or fathers. There were five of these patriarchs. They were the bishops of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch, and Jerusalem.

But even the patriarchs could not stay on an equality, and there began a rivalry as to which should be the greatest. As the years went by the contest narrowed down, and the final race was between the patriarch of Rome and the patriarch of Constantinople. The patriarch of Rome won, and came to be known as the pope of Rome.

By this time a great many legends and traditions had grown up around the church at Rome and the bishop, or pope, of Rome. Among these was the tradition that Christ had appointed Peter the head of His church on earth, and that Peter was the bishop, or pope, of Rome from 42 A. D. to 67 A. D. There is no evidence in the New Testament that Christ appointed Peter head of His church on earth, and there is no evidence that Peter was the bishop of Rome or that he was ever in Rome.

The council in Jerusalem, of which we are told in the fifteenth of Acts, was held while Peter was supposed to be the pope of Rome. Peter was at that council, but no one would judge from the narrative in the fifteenth chapter of Acts that he was the infallible pope of Rome. Paul wrote his epistle to the Romans while Peter was supposed to be the pope of Rome and in the last chapter of that epistle Paul sends his greetings to twentyeight Christians in Rome, but never says a word about Peter. That is passing strange if Peter was at that moment pope of Rome.

Thus we have traced the gradual development of the New Testament church, with its representative form of government by elders, into the Roman Catholic

Church, with its priests, bishops, metropolitans, patriarchs, and popes. This process of evolution extended over a period of about five hundred years. By 590 A. D. there was a full-fledged pope of Rome, standing at the head of the whole western church.