The apostasy of the church, as one writer has expressed it, came
by "ecclesiastical ambition and degeneracy." The human element got
in the way where there should have been only the divine. There is
necessarily the human element in the work of God, for Christian
work is God and man working together; but in the true relation man
is God's instrumentality and is altogether in subjection to the
divine Head, who rules over all. When the human element supplants,
gets in the way of, or acts in the place of, the divine, we have
a fundamental error that always results in apostasy. This human
ecclesiasticism, always more or less intolerant, reached its
autocratic perfection in the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church
and constituted the "man of sin" who opposeth and exalteth himself
above all that is called God, or that is worshiped; so that he as God
"sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God" (2
Thess. 2:3,4).
The spirit of human government in church affairs has shown itself
in, or has followed in the wake of, every reform movement of the
past. The Spirit of God worked in the movement to accomplish good,
but was always checked by this baleful element. Luther meant well
but was himself dogmatic and intolerant. He held to many doctrines
of Catholicism whose wrongs he could not see. He did not make proper
allowance that others besides himself might be right, or at least
have some truth. Neither did he or his associates or followers leave
the way open for God to lead into more truth, much less the whole
truth. Thus the reformation of the sixteenth century, while it
recovered from the debris of apostasy the doctrine of justification
by faith, became the occasion for Protestant sects, human-ruled
institutions, and these were succeeded by other sects. Some of
these have been as intolerant, inflexible, and as unlike primitive
Christianity as the Roman Catholic Church itself.
Church government, as humanized in the sects, has taken forms other
than the hierarchic. We have the episcopal, or rule by bishops; the
presbyterian, or rule by presbyters; the congregational, or rule
by the local brotherhood. Our object here is, not to discuss which
of these forms most nearly resembles or is most different from the
Scriptural, but merely to show that man rule has manifested itself in
various ways.