---
title: 'John Bailey Adger on the Legislative Power of the Church'
type: post
author: 'Caleb Cangelosi'
date: 2021-10-23
url: https://confessional.org/blog/2021-john-bailey-adger-on-the-legislative-power-of-the-church
---

# John Bailey Adger on the Legislative Power of the Church

“\[L\]et it be observed that of the law-making power very little indeed is possessed by the Church. Her officers are not God’s councillors, but only his servants. Not a movement can she lawfully make, not a step can she lawfully take, at her own discretion. She is permitted to act only by divine command. For everything set up by her, she must be able to produce a “ thus saith the Lord.” In religion, whatever is not commanded is forbidden; for the Word is our only and sufficient rule of faith and practice. “The whole counsel of God concerning all things necessary for his own glory, man’s salvation, faith, and life, is either expressly set down in Scripture or by good and necessary consequence may be deduced from Scripture, unto which nothing is at any time to be added, whether by new revelations of the Spirit or traditions of man.” Our doctrine, our discipline, our worship, are all divine and revealed things, to which the Church can add, from which she can take away, nothing. No more discretion has the Church in regulating those who compose her membership. She can make no new laws to bind their conscience. Neither contrary to, nor yet beside the Scripture, can she impose any new duties not imposed on men by the Word. On the other hand, she cannot make anything to be sinful which God himself has not forbidden. In fine, the Church has no lawmaking power, except as to circumstances of time and place, order and decency, which, from the nature of the case, Scripture could not regulate, and which must needs be left, and have therefore been left, to human discretion. All the power which the Church has about laws is declarative and ministerial. Her officers are servants of the Lord, and declare not their own will, but the Lord’s, and that only as he makes it known in the Word, which is open to all men, and which every man is entitled to judge of and interpret for himself.”

— [*Church Power*](/authors/john-bailey-adger) (1874)