uch, must not grow among the wheat in the Church, but
ought to be cast out, though they ought to live together in the world."
Here Keach reasons most naturally, and indeed irrefragably, against the
interpretation that the world is the Church, from the monstrous
consequence to which it necessarily leads. I am beyond measure amazed to
find the general stream of interpretation, as far as I have had an
opportunity of examining it, ancient and modern, German and Anglican,
flowing in this channel. When I find the great and venerated name of
Calvin contributing to swell this tide, I am compelled to pause and
examine the subject anew; but my judgment remains the same. We must call
no man master on earth; one is our master in heaven. It is not
necessarily presumption in one of us to oppose the judgment of the great
and good of a former age, especially on such a subject as this. In
regard to all the relations between the Church and the civil power, we
are in a better position for judging than either the early Reformers or
the Continental and Anglican theologians of the present day. The general
progress made since the time of Calvin in the historical development of
the Christian Church, and the particular experience through which
Christians in Scotland have in later times been led, greatly contribute
to elevate our stand-point in relation to the discipline of the Church,
and its right to freedom from civil control. As a child on the house-top
can scan a wider landscape than a man on the ground, although the child
may have been indebted to that man for his elevation; so we may own the
Reformers as in a right sense our teachers, and yet on some subjects
form a sounder judgment than they. Although no new revelation has been
made since the Lord's apostles were removed from the earth, the Church
does under the government of her Head, advance from age to age; and the
principle embodied in the declaration, "The least in the kingdom of
heaven is greater than he" (Matt. xi. 11), emerges still in manifold
subordinate fulfilments. As to the greatest modern scholars of Germany
and England, the accepted and even lauded Erastianism in which they are
steeped is a beam in their eye, which dims and distorts their sight when
they look in the direction of the Church with its constitution and
discipline. While on other subjects their insight is such that we may be
content to sit at their feet, the view on this side is from their
stand-point cut off sho