The Church and Its Polity

Charles Hodge, though he wrote the words contained in this volume, did not compile it. It was long his desire, especially following the completion of his "Systematic Theology," to write a work concerning Ecclesiology. Instead, one of his former students, the Rev. William Durant, took articles Hodge wrote for the "Princeton Review" and compiled selections of them for this work. Charles Hodge approved of the work before his death (the volume was published in 1879, a year after his death) , and his son A.A. Hodge considered it a faithful summary of his father's thought.Most of the chapters, particularly those in the second part, are excerpts from his yearly articles on the General Assembly. As a result, they appear sometimes disjointed, although the footnotes do help with context, as Hodge is writing to a particular situation, and not intending to write to the church for all time. It is a shame that he was not able to write this book himself; it would have been more general and systematic.In spite of that, this work is still quite helpful in giving the reader arguments on such topics as the validity of Roman Catholic baptism, Hodge's perspective on elders, and what the roles of the General Assembly and presbytery are. This work is overall very able to be read by an informed layman, and ought to be read by those Presbyterians with an interest in their style of government. Certain sections ought to be required reading for all church officers.. This book was created using OCR software, and was subsequently proof-read closely by a human. While we proof our texts carefully before selling them, occasionally errors do creep in. Please help us perfect our titles by submitting errors to [email protected] numerals for chapters and Bible quotations have been updated to modern numbers. Footnotes have been converted to end notes connected by hyperlinks.