§ 10. Protestantism and Denominationalism.^39
The Greek Church exists as a patriarchal hierarchy based on the first seven oecumenical Councils
with four ancient local centres: Jerusalem, Antioch, Alexandria, Constantinople; to which must be
added, since 1725, St. Petersburg where the Holy Synod of orthodox Russia resides. The patriarch
of Constantinople claims a primacy of honor, but no supremacy of jurisdiction over his
fellow-patriarchs.
The Roman Church is an absolute monarchy, headed by an infallible pope who claims to
be vicar of Christ over all Christendom and unchurches the Greek and the Protestant churches as
schismatical and heretical.
The Reformation came out of the bosom of the Latin Church and broke up the visible unity
of Western Christendom, but prepared the way for a higher spiritual unity on the basis of freedom
and the full development of every phase of truth.
Instead of one organization, we have in Protestantism a number of distinct national churches
and confessions or denominations. Rome, the local centre of unity, was replaced by Wittenberg,
Zurich, Geneva, Oxford, Cambridge, Edinburgh. The one great pope had to surrender to many little
popes of smaller pretensions, yet each claiming and exercising sovereign power in his domain. The
hierarchical rule gave way to the caesaropapal or Erastian principle, that the owner of the territory
is also the owner of its religion (cujus regio, ejus religio), a principle first maintained by the
Byzantine Emperors, and held also by the Czar of Russia, but in subjection to the supreme authority
of the oecumenical Councils. Every king, prince, and magistrate, who adopted the Reformation,
assumed the ecclesiastical supremacy or summepiscopate, and established a national church to the
exclusion of Dissenters or Nonconformists who were either expelled, or simply tolerated under
various restrictions and disabilities.
Hence there are as many national or state churches as there are independent Protestant
governments; but all acknowledge the supremacy of the Scriptures as a rule of faith and practice,
and most of them also the evangelical confessions as a correct summary of Scripture doctrines.
Every little principality in monarchical Germany and every canton in republican Switzerland has
its own church establishment, and claims sovereign power to regulate its creed worship, and
discipline. And this power culminates not in the clergy, but in the secular ruler who appoints the
ministers of religion and the professors of theology. The property of the church which had
accumulated by the pious foundations of the Middle Ages, was secularized during the Reformation
period and placed under the control of the state, which in turn assumed the temporal support of the
church.
This is the state of things in Europe to this day, except in the independent or free churches
of more recent growth, which manage their own affairs on the voluntary principle.
The transfer of the episcopal and papal power to the head of the state was not contemplated
by the Reformers, but was the inevitable consequence of the determined opposition of the whole
Roman hierarchy to the Reformation. The many and crying abuses which followed this change in
(^39) Denominationalism is, I believe, an American term of recent origin, but useful and necessary to express the fact, without praise or
blame, that Protestant Christianity exists in various ecclesiastical organizations, some of which are large, others small, some differing
in doctrine, others only in polity and worship, some liberal and catholic, others contracted and exclusive. I use it in this neutral sense,
in preference to Confessionalism which implies confessional or doctrinal difference, and Sectarianism which implies bigotry and is a
term of reproach.