THE NEW SCHAFF-HERZOG
hierarchy which is over the people, i.e., the "Church " in the narrow sense of the word. He is vicar of his
bishop, as the bishop is vicar of the
i. Roman pope, and the pope is vicar of Christ.
Catholic In- He has to exercise the functions of
terpretation. God, of the pope, of the bishop, with
reference to the aggregate of the Roman Catholics who constitute his parish. The parish, however, is an accidental and contingent fraction of the Church as a whole; the conception of the organized and independent single congregation is foreign to the Roman canon law. The priest is sharply distinguished from his parish and stands high above all the laity, being consecrated beyond repeal, and empowered with the keys of heaven and hell. The discharge of his spiritual cure is not dependent on his personality or on his religious and moral characteristics, but on the canonical execution of the law and institutions of the constituted Church. He rules the souls, is lord over consciences, is judge of the soul; and the cure of souls and church discipline become one and the same thing because each is exercised through the confessional. The eternal blessedness of the Roman Catholic is dependent upon the voluntary confession of known open or secret mortal sins, together wdth the confession of all other sins, if asked by the priest. After confession the priest absolves from all manner of guilt; herein he has unlimited control over souls. See Parish and Pastor.
Through the Reformation, new principles, in accordance with the Gospel, were revealed for the cure of souls. The Church is recognized as the " congregation of saints," the clerical priesthood and with it all hierarchy disappears, a twofold
morality is no longer offered. The
2. Principle condition of salvation for all alike is
and Practise faith alone, which is aroused and
of the Re- nourished by the preaching of the
formers, word; the sacraments are effective not
ex opere operato, but ethically in union with the word; Holy Scripture is accessible to all; and the moral forces of the home, of marriage, of the State, science and art, and the like, are freed from the rule of the Church and recognized as allies of the Church. But the new principle was not carried through. It is true that the Reformers individually, in their correspondence and expressed opinions, manifested a conception of the cure of souls which was exceedingly fruitful and evangelically free and profound; but in the Lutheran Church officially the field of the cure of souls remained private confession, transferred from Rome, in closer connection with the Lord's Supper. Luther himself sets forth the principle that private confession is voluntary and free; but it was introduced in 1528, and was then made a part of church discipline, and was even enforced by the secular authorities. Again, in the Reformed Church of Calvin and Johannes a Lasco, after Butzer's tract Von der waren Seelsorge unddem rechten Hirtendienst (1538), the cure of souls and ecclesiastical discipline were one. Only they were not, as in the Lutheran Church, accepted reluctantly, as evidence of the rule of the clergy over the congregation, but rather they were desired by the congregation as an indispensable and salutary
matter, and were exercised by all members of the congregation reciprocally. At Geneva in 1550, Calvin introduced the " regular and stated visitation at the home," and it is still retained in strict Reformed congregations, where the official " visitation " by the pastor and an elder is distinguished from the pastor's friendly social calls. Private confession, however, in the Reformed Church was left free to the individual, and so continues to-day.
In the Lutheran Church, it was only under the
influence of pietism that the cure of souls and church
discipline became separated. Spener called for an
increase in the number of pastors, the institution
of districts for the pastoral charge, and
3. Influence the assignment of elders to assist in the of Pietism pastoral cure (Theologische Bedenken
and Modern i. 2, 3, 10; Pia desideria, chap, ii., Thought Consilia et judicia theologica, i. 3, 4).
and Events. His worthy opponent Valentin Loscher, in Dresden, agreed with him in demanding a pastor for every thousand church members, in requesting the keeping of an exact register of all parishioners, the appointment of deacons for the care of the poor, and the institution of regular household pastoral visits {Unschuldige Nachrichten, 1703). These were recommended also by A. H. Francke (Collegium pastorale, 1713, 1714, 1743). Unfortunately pietism (even Valentin Grossgebauer, so early as 1661) associated the necessity for the special cure of souls with the deplorable condition of Christianity, and thereby aroused new distrust in the congregations; from which not even a Schleiermacher could free himself in his day. The conception of the special cure of souls in the Church was first clarified, and its exercise filled with Evangelical spirit, through the efforts of the Innere Mission (q.v.), through the religious and moral evils that were revealed during the revolutionary years of the middle of the nineteenth century, and through the industrial development, which has brought such grave social embarrassments in its train.
The reconstructive thoughts in respect to the
origin of the spiritual office and its relation to the
congregation which Luther expressed in 1520 in his
tract An den christlichen Adel have become in some
degree the common property of Evan-
4. Cure of gelical theology. The spiritual office Souls the is a logically and morally necessary
Duty of All product of the universal priesthood Christians, within the religious community, wherein the salutary fellowship of the " Church " manifests itself. The proclaiming of the divine word and administration of the sacraments necessary to the attainment, preservation, and consummation of the possession of salvation, which the spiritual office has to execute publicly in the Church and in the name of the Church by divine right, is likewise by divine right the duty and privilege of every Evangelical Christian within his proper sphere and the limits to be observed for the sake of ecclesiastical order. It is also the duty and right of all Christians, according to their station, to exercise a special cure of souls among one another. This is grounded upon the naturally necessary influence which in every community one member exerts upon the other, the individual upon the com-