Part III, Chapter XLII, 6

The same point is confirmed by the continuing practice, even today, in electing the bishops of Rome. For if the bishop of one place had the right to choose a successor to the pastoral office in any city when he left it to establish that office elsewhere, still more would he have had the right to appoint his successor in the place where he last lived and died. Yet we find no bishop of Rome who ever appointed his successor. For a long time the people chose them, as we may see from the riot over the election between Damascus and Ursinicus. Ammianus Marcellinus says it grew so fierce that Juventius the prefect, unable to keep the peace between them, had to leave the city, and more than a hundred men were found dead in the church itself. Though they were later chosen first by all the clergy of Rome and afterward by the cardinals, none was ever appointed to succeed by his predecessor. If, then, they claimed no right to appoint their successors, I think I may reasonably conclude that they had no right to establish this new power. No one could take it from the Church and bestow it on them except someone with lawful authority not only to teach but to command the Church; and no one could do that except the civil sovereign.

The original word for minister, diakonos, means someone who voluntarily attends to another person's business. A minister differs from a servant only in this: servants are bound by their condition to do what they are commanded, whereas ministers are bound only by their undertaking, and therefore to no more than they have undertaken. Thus those who teach the Word of God and those who manage the secular affairs of the Church are both ministers, but of different persons. The pastors of the Church, called (Acts 6.4.) “ministers of the Word,” are ministers of Christ, whose Word it is. But the ministry of a deacon, called (verse 2. of the same chapter) “serving tables,” is service to the Church or congregation. Therefore neither an individual nor the whole Church could ever properly call its pastor its minister. A deacon, however, the whole congregation could properly call its minister, whether his undertaking was to serve tables; to distribute support to Christians when they lived in each city on a common fund or on collections, as they did at first; to care for the house of prayer or its revenue; or to manage any other worldly business of the Church.

For as deacons their work was to serve the congregation, though when occasion arose they also preached the Gospel and upheld the doctrine of Christ, each according to his gifts, as St. Stephen did; and preached and baptized, as Philip did. For the Philip who preached the Gospel in Samaria (Acts 8. 5.) and baptized the eunuch (verse 38.) was Philip the deacon, not Philip the apostle. It is clear (verse 1.) that when Philip preached in Samaria the apostles were in Jerusalem, and that (verse 14.) “when they heard that Samaria had received the Word of God, they sent Peter and John to them.” Through the laying on of their hands, those who had been baptized (verse 15.) received the Holy Spirit, which they had not received through Philip's baptism. For the Holy Spirit could be conferred only if baptism was administered or confirmed by a minister of the Word, not by a minister of the Church. So, to confirm the baptism of those Philip the deacon had baptized, the apostles sent Peter and John from their own number in Jerusalem to Samaria. They conferred on those who had previously only been baptized the graces that were signs of the Holy Spirit, which then accompanied all true believers. What these signs were may be understood from what St. Mark says (chap. 16.17.): “These signs follow those who believe in my name: they shall cast out devils; they shall speak in new tongues; they shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover.” These gifts Philip could not confer, but the apostles could, and, as this passage shows, effectively did confer on everyone who truly believed and was baptized by a minister of Christ himself. Either Christ's ministers in this age cannot confer that power, or there are very few true believers, or Christ has very few ministers.

That the first deacons were chosen not by the apostles but by a congregation of disciples—that is, Christian people of every kind—is evident from Acts 6. We read there that the Twelve, when the number of disciples had grown, called them together and said that it was not fitting for the apostles to leave the Word of God to serve tables. They told them (verse 3.), “Brothers, select from among yourselves seven men of good reputation, full of the Holy Spirit and wisdom, whom we may appoint over this business.” Evidently, though the apostles declared them elected, the congregation chose them. This is said still more plainly (verse 5.), where we read that “the proposal pleased the multitude, and they chose seven, etc.”

Under the Old Testament, only the tribe of Levi was eligible for the priesthood and the other lesser offices of the Church. The land was divided among the other tribes, except Levi; with the division of the tribe of Joseph into Ephraim and Manasses, they still numbered twelve. Certain cities and their surrounding pasturelands were assigned to the tribe of Levi for their habitation and cattle; as their portion, however, they were to receive a tenth of the produce of their brothers' land. The priests, in turn, received for their support a tenth of that tenth, along with a portion of the offerings and sacrifices. For God had said to Aaron (Numb. 18. 20.), “You shall have no inheritance in their land, nor any portion among them; I am your portion and your inheritance among the children of Israel.” God was then King and had appointed the tribe of Levi his public ministers. He therefore provided for their support from the public revenue, that is, the portion God had reserved for himself: tithes and offerings. This is what God means by saying, “I am your inheritance.” Thus the Levites could appropriately be called clergy, from kleros, meaning lot or inheritance—not because they were heirs to the Kingdom of God more than others, but because God's inheritance supported them. Since God himself was then their King, and Moses, Aaron, and the succeeding high priests were his lieutenants, it is clear that the right to tithes and offerings was established by the civil power.

After they rejected God by asking for a king, the Levites still received the same revenue; but their right to it came from the fact that the kings never took it away. For public revenue was at the disposal of whoever was the public person, and until the Captivity that person was the king. Again, after the return from the Captivity, they paid their tithes as before to the priest. Up to this point, then, the civil sovereign determined the Church's means of support.

Of the support of our Savior and his apostles, we read only that they had a purse, carried by Judas Iscariot; that some apostles who were fishermen sometimes practiced their trade; and that when our Savior sent the Twelve to preach, he forbade them “to carry gold, silver, or brass in their purses, for the worker is worthy of his wages” (Mat. 10. 9,10.). From this it is probable that their usual support suited their employment: their work was (verse 8.) “to give freely, because they had freely received,” and their support was the free gift of those who believed the good news they brought of the coming of the Messiah, their Savior. We may add the gifts of gratitude from people whom our Savior had healed of disease. Among them are mentioned “certain women (Luke 8. 2,3.) who had been healed of evil spirits and infirmities: Mary Magdalene, from whom seven devils had gone out; Joanna the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward; Susanna; and many others, who supported him from their own resources.”

After our Savior's Ascension, the Christians in each city lived communally (Acts 4. 34.) on the money raised by selling their lands and possessions and laid at the apostles' feet—freely, not from duty. For “while the land remained,” St. Peter says to Ananias (Acts 5.4.), “was it not yours? And after it was sold, was it not in your power?” This shows that he need not have tried to save either his land or his money by lying, since he was under no obligation to contribute anything unless he wished. As in the time of the apostles, so throughout the period down to the time after Constantine the Great, we find that bishops and pastors of the Christian Church were supported solely by the voluntary contributions of those who had embraced their doctrine. Tithes were not yet mentioned. But in the time of Constantine and his sons Christians were so devoted to their pastors that Ammianus Marcellinus, describing the riot between Damasus and Ursinicus over the bishopric, says the office was worth fighting for: the bishops of those days, through the generosity of their flocks and especially of women of rank, lived splendidly, rode in coaches, and enjoyed luxurious food and clothing.

The Ministers of the Gospel Lived on the Generosity of Their Flocks. But someone may ask whether the pastor was then obliged to live on voluntary contributions as on alms. “For who,” says St. Paul (1 Cor. 9. 7.), “goes to war at his own expense? Or who tends a flock and does not drink the flock's milk?” Again (1 Cor. 9. 13.), “Do you not know that those who minister in holy things live from the things of the Temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is offered at the altar?” That is, they receive part of the offerings for their support. He then concludes, “So too the Lord has ordained that those who preach the Gospel should live from the Gospel.” We can indeed infer from this that the Church's pastors ought to be supported by their flocks, but not that pastors may determine the amount or kind of their own allowance and, so to speak, carve out their own portions. Their allowance must therefore be determined either by the gratitude and generosity of each member of their flock or by the whole congregation. It could not be determined by the whole congregation, because its acts were not then laws. Before emperors and civil sovereigns made laws to establish it, then, the support of pastors was nothing but voluntary generosity. Those who served at the altar lived on what was offered. In what court could they sue for it, having no tribunals? Or if they had arbitrators among themselves, who could enforce their judgments when they had no power to arm their officers? It follows that no fixed support could be assigned to any pastor of the Church except by the whole congregation, and only when its decrees had the force not merely of canons but of laws. Such laws could be made only by emperors, kings, or other civil sovereigns. The right to tithes under the law of Moses could not be applied to the ministers of the Gospel at that time, because Moses and the high priests were the people's civil sovereigns under God, whose Kingdom among the Jews was present; whereas the Kingdom of God through Christ is yet to come.

So far I have shown what the pastors of the Church are; the terms of their commission—that they were to preach, teach, baptize, and preside over their several congregations; what ecclesiastical censure is, namely excommunication: where civil laws forbade Christianity, removing themselves from the company of the excommunicated, and where civil law required Christianity, removing the excommunicated from Christian congregations; who elected the Church's pastors and ministers—the congregation; who consecrated and blessed them—the pastor; and what revenue was due to them—nothing but their own possessions, their own labor, and the voluntary contributions of devout and grateful Christians. We must now consider the office of those who, being civil sovereigns, have also embraced the Christian faith.

First we must remember that in every Commonwealth the right to judge what doctrines are conducive to peace and should be taught to subjects is inseparably attached, as already proved (chap. 18.), to the civil sovereign power, whether it belongs to one man or to an assembly. Even the simplest mind can see that people's actions spring from their opinions about the good or evil those actions will bring them. Consequently, people once convinced that obedience to the sovereign power will harm them more than disobedience will break the laws, overthrow the Commonwealth, and bring in confusion and civil war—the very things all civil government was instituted to prevent. Thus in all heathen Commonwealths sovereigns have been called pastors of the people, because no subject could lawfully teach the people without their permission and authority.

That right of heathen kings cannot be thought to have been taken from them by their conversion to faith in Christ. Christ never ordained that kings who believed in him should be deposed—that is, subjected to anyone but himself—or, what amounts to the same thing, deprived of the power necessary to preserve peace among their subjects and defend them against foreign enemies. Christian kings therefore remain the supreme pastors of their people and have the power to appoint whatever pastors they please to teach the Church, that is, the people entrusted to their care.

Again, suppose that the right to choose pastors lies with the Church, as it did before the conversion of kings, and indeed in the time of the apostles themselves, as I have already shown in this chapter. Even then the right belongs to the Christian civil sovereign. As a Christian he permits the teaching; as sovereign—which is to say, as the Church represented—his choice of teachers is the Church's choice. When an assembly of Christians chooses its pastor in a Christian Commonwealth, the sovereign chooses him, because the assembly acts by his authority, just as when a town chooses its mayor, the choice is the act of the holder of sovereign power. For every act is the act of the person without whose consent it would be invalid. Thus any historical examples of pastors elected by the people or by the clergy provide no argument against the right of a civil sovereign, since those who elected them did so by his authority.

The continuing practice of electing the bishops of Rome confirms the same point, even today. Suppose a bishop could choose the successor to a pastoral office in a city when he left to establish that office elsewhere. He would have an even stronger right to name a successor in the city where he last lived and died. Yet we find no bishop of Rome who ever named his successor. For a long time the people chose them. We can see this in the conflict over the election between Damascus and Ursinicus. Ammianus Marcellinus says it grew so violent that Juventius, the prefect, could not keep the peace and had to leave the city. More than a hundred men were found dead in the church itself. Later, the whole clergy of Rome chose the bishops, and later still the cardinals did. But no predecessor ever appointed his successor. If these bishops claimed no right to name successors, I think we can reasonably conclude that they had no right to appoint this new power either. Only someone with lawful authority not merely to teach the Church but to command it could take that power from the Church and give it to them. Only the civil sovereign could do that.

The original word for minister, diakonos, means someone who voluntarily does another person's business. A minister differs from a servant only in this: servants are bound by their position to do what they are told, while ministers are bound only by what they have agreed to do. They have no duty beyond that agreement. So those who teach God's Word and those who handle the Church's worldly affairs are both ministers, but they serve different people. The Church's pastors, called “ministers of the Word” (Acts 6.4.), are ministers of Christ, whose Word they teach. But a deacon's ministry, called “serving tables” (verse 2. of the same chapter), is service to the Church or congregation. Neither a single person nor the whole Church could properly call a pastor their minister. But the whole congregation could properly call a deacon its minister. That holds whether the deacon agreed to serve tables, distribute support to Christians when each city's Christians lived on shared funds or collections as they did at first, look after the house of prayer or its income, or handle any other worldly business of the Church.

A deacon's job was to serve the congregation. Still, when the occasion arose, deacons preached the Gospel and defended Christ's teaching, each according to his gifts, as St. Stephen did. They also preached and baptized, as Philip did. The Philip who preached the Gospel in Samaria (Acts 8. 5.) and baptized the eunuch (verse 38.) was Philip the deacon, not Philip the apostle. When Philip preached in Samaria, the apostles were in Jerusalem (verse 1.). When they heard that Samaria had received God's Word, they “sent Peter and John to them” (verse 14.). Those whom Philip had baptized then received the Holy Ghost through Peter and John's laying on of hands (verse 15.), which they had not received through Philip's baptism. To confer the Holy Ghost, a minister of the Word, not a minister of the Church, had to administer or confirm their baptism. So the apostles sent Peter and John, members of their own group, from Jerusalem to Samaria to confirm the baptism of those Philip the deacon had baptized. Peter and John gave people who had previously only been baptized the gifts that signaled the Holy Spirit, gifts that at the time accompanied all true believers. We can learn what those gifts were from St. Mark (chapter 16.17.): “These signs will follow those who believe in my name: they will cast out devils; they will speak in new languages; they will pick up serpents, and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them; they will lay hands on the sick, and the sick will recover.” Philip could not give people the power to do these things. The apostles could, and, as this passage shows, they did give it effectively to every true believer baptized by a minister of Christ himself. Either Christ's ministers today cannot confer this power, or there are very few true believers, or Christ has very few ministers.

The first deacons were chosen not by the apostles but by a congregation of disciples, meaning Christians of all kinds. Acts 6. makes this clear. When the number of disciples had grown, the Twelve gathered them and said that it was not right for the apostles to leave God's Word in order to serve tables. They told the disciples (verse 3.), “Brothers, choose from among yourselves seven men with good reputations, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom, whom we may put in charge of this work.” The apostles declared them elected, but the congregation chose them. Verse 5. says this even more plainly: “The proposal pleased the whole group, and they chose seven,” and so on.

Under the Old Testament, only the tribe of Levi could hold the priesthood and the Church's other, lower offices. The land was divided among the other tribes, excluding Levi. There were still twelve because Joseph's tribe was divided into Ephraim and Manasses. The tribe of Levi received certain cities to live in, with surrounding land for its cattle. For its share of support, it was to receive one tenth of the produce of its brothers' land. The priests, in turn, received one tenth of that tenth, along with part of the offerings and sacrifices. God had said to Aaron (Numbers 18. 20.), “You will inherit no land among them and have no share among them. I am your share and your inheritance among the children of Israel.” God was then king and had appointed the tribe of Levi as his public ministers. For their support he allowed them public revenue, the portion God had reserved for himself: tithes and offerings. This is what God meant by “I am your inheritance.” It would therefore be fitting to call the Levites clergy, from kleros, meaning lot or inheritance. The reason was not that they inherited God's Kingdom more than other people did, but that God's inheritance supported them. Since God himself was their king at that time, while Moses, Aaron, and the high priests who followed were his deputies, the right to tithes and offerings was established by the civil power.

After the people rejected God by demanding a king, the Levites still received the same income. But their right to it came from the fact that the kings never took it away. The person who represented the public could decide how public revenue was spent, and until the Captivity that person was the king. After the return from the Captivity, the people again paid their tithes to the priest as before. Up to this point, then, the civil sovereign determined how the Church's ministers were supported.

We read only that our Savior and his apostles had a purse, carried by Judas Iscariot; that the apostles who were fishermen sometimes worked at their trade; and that, when our Savior sent the Twelve Apostles to preach, he forbade them “to carry gold, silver, or brass in their purses, for the worker deserves his pay” (Matthew 10. 9,10.). This suggests that their ordinary support suited their work. Their work was, as verse 8. says, “to give freely, because they had received freely.” Their support came from the free gifts of people who believed the good news they brought about the coming of the Messiah, their Savior. We can add gifts given in gratitude by people our Savior had healed. Among them were “certain women” (Luke 8. 2,3.) “who had been healed of evil spirits and illnesses: Mary Magdalen, out of whom seven devils had gone; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod's steward; Susanna; and many others, who supported him from their own resources.”

After our Savior's Ascension, the Christians in each city lived on shared funds (Acts 4. 34.). They raised this money by selling their lands and possessions and willingly laying the proceeds at the apostles' feet. It was voluntary, not a duty. As St. Peter said to Ananias (Acts 5.4.), “While the land was yours, was it not your own? And after it was sold, was not the money under your control?” Ananias did not have to lie to keep either his land or his money. He did not have to contribute anything unless he wanted to. From the apostles' time until after Constantine the Great, bishops and pastors of the Christian Church were likewise supported only by voluntary gifts from people who had accepted their teaching. Tithes were not yet mentioned. But in the days of Constantine and his sons, Christians felt such affection for their pastors that, according to Ammianus Marcellinus's account of the conflict between Damasus and Ursinicus over the bishopric, the post was worth fighting for. The generosity of their congregations, especially of women of standing, let bishops live splendidly, ride in coaches, and enjoy expensive food and clothing.

The ministers of the Gospel lived on the goodwill of their congregations. But someone might ask whether pastors were then required to live on voluntary contributions, like charity. St. Paul asks (1 Corinthians 9. 7.), “Who goes to war at his own expense? Or who tends a flock without drinking its milk?” And again (1 Corinthians 9. 13.), “Do you not know that those who serve at holy ceremonies live on what is given to the temple, and those who serve at the altar share in what is given at the altar?” That is, they receive for their support part of what people offer there. He concludes, “In the same way the Lord has directed that those who preach the Gospel should live by the Gospel.” We can indeed infer from this that congregations ought to support their pastors. We cannot infer that pastors could set the amount or kind of their own support and serve themselves whatever they wanted. Their support had to be decided either by the gratitude and generosity of each member or by the whole congregation. The whole congregation could not decide it as a binding obligation, because its decisions were not yet laws. Before emperors and civil sovereigns made laws establishing pastoral support, it was therefore nothing but voluntary generosity. Those serving at the altar lived on what was offered there. With no courts, where could they sue for payment? Even if they had arbitrators among themselves, who could enforce their decisions when they had no power to arm their officers? So no fixed support could be assigned to the Church's pastors except by the whole congregation, and only when its decrees had the force not just of church rules but of laws. Such laws could be made only by emperors, kings, or other civil sovereigns. The right to tithes under the Law of Moses could not be applied to the Gospel's ministers of that time. Moses and the high priests were civil sovereigns of the people under God, whose Kingdom was then present among the Jews. God's Kingdom through Christ, by contrast, is still to come.

So far I have shown who the Church's pastors are and what their commission covers: preaching, teaching, baptizing, and presiding over their individual congregations. I have explained church discipline, namely excommunication. Where civil laws forbade Christianity, this meant Christians withdrawing from the company of an excommunicated person. Where civil law required Christianity, it meant removing that person from Christian congregations. I have shown who chose the Church's pastors and ministers—the congregation—and who consecrated and blessed them—the pastor. I have also shown what support was due to them: only their own possessions, their own labor, and the voluntary gifts of devout and grateful Christians. We must now consider the office of people who are civil sovereigns and have also embraced the Christian faith.

First, we must remember that the right to judge which teachings serve peace and should be taught to subjects belongs inseparably to the civil sovereign power in every Common-wealth, whether one person or an assembly holds it. I proved this earlier in chapter 18. Even someone with little understanding can see that people act according to what they think will benefit or harm them. So if they come to believe obeying the sovereign power will hurt them more than disobeying, they will break the laws. They will thereby destroy the Common-wealth and bring confusion and civil war, the very things all civil government was established to prevent. Thus, in every non-Christian Common-wealth, sovereigns have been called pastors of the people. No subject could lawfully teach the people without their permission and authority.

Conversion to faith in Christ cannot be thought to take this right away from non-Christian kings. Christ never decreed that kings who believed in him should be deposed, made subject to anyone but himself, or—which comes to the same thing—stripped of the power needed to preserve peace among their subjects and defend them against foreign enemies. Christian kings therefore remain the supreme pastors of their people. They can appoint whichever pastors they choose to teach the Church, meaning the people in their care.

Even if we say that the right to choose pastors belongs to the Church, as it did before kings converted and in the apostles' own time, as I have shown in this chapter, the Christian civil sovereign still has that right. As a Christian he approves the teaching. As sovereign, he represents the Church, so the teachers he elects are elected by the Church. When an assembly of Christians chooses its pastor in a Christian Common-wealth, the sovereign elects him because the assembly acts by his authority. In the same way, when a town chooses its mayor, the choice is the act of whoever has sovereign power. Every act is the act of the person whose consent is necessary for it to be valid. Historical examples of pastors chosen by the people or the clergy therefore do not count against a civil sovereign's right: the electors acted by his authority.