ERASTUS AND EXCOMMUNICATION1

Not long ago I saw, in some article treating of the relations of Church and State, an allusion to certain persons who were not ashamed to be called Erastians.' Perhaps not many, either of those who accept the name or of those who brand others with it as a stigma, have any more definite notion of what Erastianism means than that it represents an aversion to ecclesiastical government and a desire that the clergy should be controlled as far as possible by the civil law. It will be found interesting, I hope, to inquire, a little more particularly, what Erastus himself taught. It may be that, as Wilkes declared he was never a Wilkite, and it has been even said that Calvin was not a Calvinist, so the opinions suggested to some minds by the name Erastianism differ considerably from anything that Erastus advocated. Certainly it is so, if Erastianism denotes a theory that a State has any natural authority to prescribe what its citizens

1 The Contemporary Review, November, 1871.

are to believe, or how they are to worship. Erastus taught nothing that struck his most religious contemporaries as extravagant, or that need seem extravagant to any sober Christian now. The only subject connected with Church government upon which Erastus wrote, was that of excommunication; and it is with express reference to this subject that he gives incidentally his opinions on the more general question of the relation of the ecclesiastical to the civil government. But the feeling he has expressed in this discussion is undoubtedly one which puts him out of harmony with those who chiefly use his name as a term of reproach. Those who desire that the Church should lord it over the State, and those who desire that the Church should consist only of voluntary associations of persons who happen to think alike on theological subjects, equally value the ordinance of excommunication. It is the Church's solemn mode of punishing the refractory, and it is the instrument for securing that the members of a voluntary Church shall continue to be men of one mind. And the Tract that made Erastus famous was an argument against excommunication.

The controversy between Erastus and Beza is referred to very briefly by Hooker in his preface;

and Hammond, in his Treatise of the Power of the Keys, answers Erastus at some length. But the only easily accessible book, I believe, from which the English reader may obtain any satisfactory knowledge of Erastus and his doctrine is a small volume published in 1844 as a controversial pamphlet by the late Dr. Robert Lee, containing a translation of the Theses on Excommunication, with a preface, in which he deals with the charge brought by the Free Church party against the Church of Scotland of being an Erastian Establishment. An English translation of his Theses had been previously published in 1659, but this I have not seen.

The reader will be glad to have a little information about Erastus himself, which may be introduced by one of Dr. Hammond's longwinded sentences, from which, however, I omit a long parenthesis :—

For the view of the person, I shall say no more than that he was a Doctor of Physick, who, having fallen on an age when novelties were in fashion ( .

..), thought it not unreasonable to step out of his profession, and offer to the world his novelty too; and having in his own profession expressed in some particulars a zeal, which others of his faculty will affirm to have been without knowledge (as when he speaks of the preparation of Stibium, or Crocus Metal

lorum, and the Antimonian receipts, he resolves that no man can salva conscientiâ, with a safe conscience, administer them, which yet every physician knows now by daily experience to be very useful), it will not be matter of wonder, if he committed the like mistake in the business of Excommunication (a medicine more out of the proper road of his studies) and conceived that a poisonous noxious recipe in the Church (judging, it seems, at a first view, that they which were most wicked needed rather to be united to the Church than driven from it), which the experience of all Christian Churches, and the advice of Christ Himself, as a Physician of Souls, have concluded to be very harmless and medicinal. I shall say no more of his person, but that he does not seem by his book to have considered much of Divinity, save only of this one head, and in order to that present controversy.1

This physician, whose name survives through a small theological work not published in his lifetime, was really distinguished in his profession. His name was originally Thomas Lieber, and was Grecized into Erastus after the pedantic fashion of his age. It was the period of the Reformation, and Lieber, born in 1524 at Baden in Switzerland, grew up in the studies and ways of thinking of the Reforming scholars of his day. He came to Basel as a youthful student some four years after Erasmus had ended his career

1 of the Power of the Keys, c. iv., sec. 30.

in that city. He was a child of seven years when Zwingli fell on the field of Cappel, and he became the friend and correspondent of Bullinger, Zwingli's successor at Zürich. He was thus the contemporary of the second generation of German and Swiss Reformers. But having chosen the practice of medicine for his profession, he devoted himself with enthusiasm to medical studies. From Basel he went to the university of Bologna, probably as having the highest reputation at that time for the scientific study of physic, and is said to have spent as much as nine years in Italy, 'in the company of the most famous and expert physicians' of that country. During the prime of his life he was at Heidelberg, professor of physic at the University, and principal physician and counsellor to Frederick the Elector, Prince Palatine. In the year 1564, when he was forty years of age, Erastus was added by his prince to a company of divines who were to carry on a controversy at Maulbronn with some Wittenberg theologians concerning Christ's Presence in the Lord's Supper. From Heidelberg he returned to Basel, and gave his labour and affection to the University of his early studies. He died on the last day of the year 1583, and was thus described