A Christian church is a society with a corporate life, organized on some definite plan, adapted to some definite purpose, which it proposes to accomplish. It has, therefore, its officers and ordinances, its laws and regulations, fitted to administer its government and carry out its purposes. The question then arises, What is the true and proper form of church organization and government? We do not care to inquire as to the various and contradictory forms, as we see them about us in the different denominations, but what was the organic form and government of the first churches, planted by and molded under the hands of Christ's inspired Apostles.
There are _three_ special and widely different forms of church government which have gained prevalence in Christian communities during past age, and which are still maintained with varied success, each of which claims to have been the original primitive form:
1. The _prelatical,_ in which the governing power resides in prelates, or diocesan bishops, and the higher clergy; as in the Roman, Greek, English, and most Oriental churches.
2. The _presbyterian,_ in which the governing power resides in assemblies, synods, presbyteries, and sessions; as in the Scottish Kirk, the Lutheran, and the various Presbyterian churches.
3. The _independent,_ in which the body is self-governing, each single and local church administering its own government by the voice of the majority of its members; as among Baptists, Congregationalists, Independents, and some other bodies.
Now which of these modes of church life and administration is taught in the New Testament, if either? or which best accords with the constitution and government of the Apostolic churches?
Baptists hold that each separate, local church is an independent body, governing itself according to the laws of Christ, as found in the New Testament; that each such church is independent of all other churches, and of all other persons, so far as administration is concerned, owing comity and fellowship to all, but allegiance and submission to none. The government is administered by the body of the members, where no one possesses a preeminence of authority, but each enjoys an equality of rights, and in which, in matters of opinion, the majority decides.