may not be such as to lead to investigation. Ten j ears in one period may cause more sifting of the truth than a hundred years of another period. It is the condition of the Church militant to be always under trial, some- times by persecution from the world, sometimes by blasts of contrary doctrine within itself. In different degrees these are blended, and with very diifercnt de- grees of speed will the truth emerge. The degree of holiness also, and above all, will regulate the discovery and reception of truth. For knowledge and understand- ing in spiritual things are the flower and fruit ; the plant itself is holiness springing from the root of faith. The certainty, then, of a di^ctrine enunciated by the Church is a growing certainty, var^-ing in amount with the time the doctrine has "been held, the degree of investi- gation to which it has been subjected, and the degree of holiness in the Church. Thus the decrees of a coun- cil which we may believe to be oecumenical can only be knowia to be the genuine voice of the Church by their acceptance. We may agree to the abstract proposition that a truly oecumenical council cannot err; but the proposition is of little practical value at the time of holding a council, for none can prove that the council has not in some respects failed of o-cumenicity. The authority of its decisions rests on their acceptance. For the Spirit of God is given to the whole body of the Church ; and that can only be known to be the true voice of the Church ^^•hich is expressed by sufiicient de- Uberation of generation after generation. In this sense the infallibility of the Church is a reasonable doctrine, and one, in fact, which it would be imreasouablc for any Christian to disbelieve."
Indefectible Grace is, according to the Calvin- ists, grace which cannot be lost, or fail of its intended piu-pose, the salvation of those on whom it is bestowed, i. e. the elect, and is held to be irresistible by the person so elected, thus necessarily securing his salvation. See Calvinism; Election; Grace; Will.
Indelible Character. See Character, Indel- ible.
Indemnity (Latin indemnitas, compensation) is in some chiurches a pension paid to the bishop in consider- ation of discharging or indemnifying churches, united or appropriated, from the payment of procurations, or bj' way of recompense for the profits wliich the bishop would otherwise have received during the time of the vacation of such churches. — Eadie, Eccles. Diet. p. 325.
Independence of Churches. '■ It is an admit- ted fact, as clearly settled as anything can be by human authority, that the primitive Christians, in the organ- ization of their assemblies, formed them after the model of the Jewish synagogue. . . . They disowned the he- reditary aristocracy of the Levitical priesthood, and adopted the popidar government of the synagogue. • . . Their government was voluntary, elective, free, and ad- ministered by riders or elders elected by the people. The rider of the synagogue was the moderator of the college of elders, but m\\y pirimiis inter jnires, holding no official rank above them. The people, as Vitringa {De Synagoga, lib. iii, pt. i, c. xv, p. 828-803) has shown, ap- pointed their own officers to rule over them. They ex- ercised the natural right of freemen to enact and exe- cute their own laws, to admit proselytes, and to exclude at pleasure unwortliy members from their communion. Theirs was ' a democratic form of government,' and is so described by one of the most able expounders of the constitution of the primitive churches (see Eothe, An- fanrje d. ChrL^tl. Kirche. p. 14). Like their prototype, therefore, the primitive churches also embodied the principle of a popular government and of enhghtened reUgious liberty" (Coleman, Ajwstul. and Primit. Ch. p. 43 sq.). The reason, however, why the primitive Chris- tians had this p.ecidiar organization, reintroduced in the modem Church by the Congregationalists, and in part also by the Presbyterians, is, that the members of the early "ClirLstiau Church mostly came from the Jewish
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544
INDEPENDENTS
Church, and naturally adopted methods of worship, gov- ernment, etc., to which they were accustomed. But this by no means goes to prove that it was the inten- tion of the early Cliristians to perpetuate their mode of government, but rather that, engaged as Christ and his disciples had been in foimding a Church, needing no other bond than his own person, the mode of govern- ment to which they had been accustomed was chosen for the time being, " the disciples not having yet at- tamed to a clear understanding of that call which Christ had already given them by so many intimations to form a Church entirely separated from the existing Jewish economy. . . . We are disposed to believe that the Church was at first composed entirely of members stand- uig on an equality with one another, and that the apos- tles alone held a higher rank, and exercised a directing influence over the whole, which arose from the original position in which Christ had placed them in relation to other believers; so that the whole arrangement and ad- ministration of the affairs of the Church proceeded from them, and they were first induced by particular circum- stances to appoint other church officers, as in the instance of deacons" (Neander, Apostol. Kirche, 3d edit. p. 31, 33 ; comp. p. 179, 195 ; also llothe, An/dnf/e, p. 146 sq. ; Acts vi, 1 ; xi, 30). Christ also evidently did make some pro- vision for a government of his Chiu-ch on earth indepen- dent of Jewish and pagan customs by constituting apos- tles, who should authoritatively command and teach. (See vol. ii, p. 3-28 sq.) The churches of the early Chris- tians also, unlike the Jewish, were independent one of the other. History, sacred or profane, relating to this pe- riod, records not a single instance in which one church presumed to impose laws of its own upon another. The first traces of associations between several churches, from which councils can be said to have taken their origin, we find in the 2d century (Coleman, Be Rebus Christ. saec. i, § 4S). Indications of this original independence are distinctlj^ manifested even after the rise of the epis- copacy. Every bishop had the right to form his own liturgy and creed, and to settle at pleasure his own time and mode of celebrating the religious festivals (compare Greiling, Apostolische Christenrjevieine, p. 16). Cyprian strongly asserts the right of every bishop to make laws for liis own church. Indeed, it is to this original in- dependence of the chiu-ches from each other, to the want of proper authorities to govern them, that Socra- tes (Eccles. JJist. lib. v, c. xxii) ascribes the endless con- troversies which agitated the Church in the early ages with regard to the observ^ance of certain festivals, espe- cially Easter. See, besides the authorities already cited. Sack, Comment, ad Theol. Instit. p. 141 ; Bunsen, Ilippo- lytus and hh Age, iii, 246 ; Dr. Hitchcock, in the A mer. Fresh. Rev. Jan. 1867. See also Episcopacy, vol. iii, p. 2G3, 204, 206 (iv). (J. H. W.)