Cylchgronau Cymru

Tol. II.] MARCH, 1869. [No. 3. THE CARDIFF CONGREGATIONAL MAGAZINE. THE CHURCH POLITYi'OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.* BY THE REV. E. S. JOHNSTONE, OF MEBTHTE. I need not inform^you that no system of Church polity is to be found in so many set propositions in any portion of the word of God. All the information we can obtain regarding tbe constitution of the Christian Church lies scattered throughout the pages of the New Testament, and it is only by careful, methodical, unprejudiced comparison of passage with passage that we can lay hold of it. I cannot undertake to place all the facts before you on such an occasion as the present. What I say must of necessity be short and fragmentary. I. will endeavour, as briefly as possible, to state the case, more in the form of an outline of the facts than of a full elucidation and discussion of the whole question—urging you, at the same time, to make it a subject for special investigation in your own quiet and private reading of the word of God. The word Church, so frequently occurring in the books of the New Testament, is used as the equivalent of a Greek term applied to an assembly of people gathered together for some particular business. It was applied by the pagan Greeks "to an assembly of the people met toge¬ ther according to law, to consult about the good of the commonwealth." Even among them, however, it was applied not to a concourse of all and sundry, but only of freemen. It was, to some extent, a select assembly, for persons who had been punished with "infamy," slaves, foreigners, and even women and children, were shut out from it. It was not directly from pagan Greece, however, but from the Greek version of the Old Testament, that the term Ucclesia, or Church, was imported into the New Testament. It is used there as a name for the assembly of Israel, God's chosen people, and as it had been applied by the Greek translators of the Jewish/ Scriptures to,,the chosen race of the former dispensation, it * This paper was read by the Kev. V. S. Johnstone at the recognition of the Rev. W. Watkiss, at the Music Hall, on the 10th of February. The paper is printed in our Magazine at the unanimous request of the meeting. The report of the meeting is deferred for want of space.—En. C. C, M.