Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Discourse volume 1.djvu/323

276 word, changed bread and wine into the flesh and blood of Almighty God. It styles itself God's vice reg ent on earth, and as Jesus was a temporary and partial incarnation of the deity, so itself is a perfect and eternal incarnation thereof. Thus the Christian Church became a Theocracy. It was far more consistent than the Jewish Theocracy, for that allowed private inspiration, and therefore was perpetually troubled by the race of prophets, who never allowed the priests their own way, but cried out with most rousing indignation against the Levites and their followers, and refused to be put down. Besides, the Jewish Theocracy limited infallibility to God and the Law, which was to be made known to all, and though inspired could be easily understood by the simple son of Israel: it never claimed that for the Priesthood.

Now there are but two scales in the balance of power: the Individual who is ruled, and the Institution that governs, here represented by the Church. Just as the one scale rises, the other falls. The spiritual freedom of the individual in the Church is contained in an angle too small to be measurable. Did men revolt from this iron rule? There was the alternative of eternal damnation, for all men were born depraved, exposed to the wrath of God; their only chance of avoiding hell was to escape through the doors of the Church. Thus men were morally compelled to submit for the sake of its “redemption.” Did they throw themselves on the mercy of the Holy Ghost, penitent for their disobedience of the Church? They were told that mercy was at the Church's disposal. Did they make the appeal to Scripture, and say, as in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive; that he had expiated all their sins? The Church told them their exegesis of the passage was wrong, for Christ only expiated their inherited sin, not the actual sins they had committed, and for which they must smart in hell, atone for in purgatory, or get pardoned by submitting to the vicar of God, and going through the rites, forms, fasts, and penances he should prescribe, and thus purchase a share of the redemption which Christ and the saints by their works of supererogation had provided to meet the case. This doctrine was taught in good faith, and in good faith received.