have seen a complete harmony prevail through the whole of these declarations, all combining to establish the truth of our Lord's having committed to his Apostles his Kingdom, to exercise in it a spiritual government over the souls of its members, binding and loosing, retaining and remitting their sins, by absolution and excommunication, by sitting at his Eucharistal Table and Baptismal Font, administering his sacraments, to which he has attached his saving graces, including complete remission of all sins. If this be Scriptural truth, there can be no doubt of the perpetual existence of the Apostolic office, and of our Lord having designed it to continue for ever in his Church; for it can never be supposed that an office thus endowed with such high privileges, so necessary to the Church, could have been of but short and temporary duration. It cannot be believed that our Lord has thus solemnly appointed the Apostolic office to be his representative form of government, exercising as transmitted by him those sacred spiritual offices first committed to himself, without having intended it to continue as long as those spiritual offices were required in the Church. It can never be supposed, that the power of binding those who refused to hear the Church was only to remain with the Church during the lives of the Apostles,that the absolution of penitents by ministers commissioned by our Lord to remit on earth their sins pardoned by him in heaven, and so give them a full assurance and lively dependence in their Saviour*, was instituted but for a few years, during which the presence of the inspired Apostles, and of the miraculous gifts of the Holy Spirit, rendered such a provision less necessary than in future ages.

46.-IMPORTANCE OF ABSOLUTION.

The commission to pronounce absolution to the confessing and penitent was esteemed a very high and sacred privilege of the Church in its primitive ages. The body of believers confided more in the judgment of the ministers of Christ respecting their spiritual condition than in their own estimation of themselves: they esteemed the ministers of Christ, who had his commission to expound the laws and teach the

* "He gave therefore these keys to the Church, that what it should loose on earth should be loosed in heaven, that whosoever should believe that his sins were remitted in the Church, and being reformed should turn from them, being re-established in the bosom of the same Church, might be healed by the same faith and correction."-Augustin. de Doct. Christ., 1. i. e. 18.

faith of the Gospel, their best guides in the Christian life; and they found in their minister's approval of their confession, and faith, and penitence, a good security for the Divine acceptance. If in their own consciences they knew that they were sincere in the confession of their faith and of their sins, and in their devout exercises of penitence, it was a strong consolation, full of spiritual joy and hope, to receive the absolution of the Lord's minister pronounced in the belief of the penitent's sincerity. It conveyed to the mind a rational confidence of the Divine pardon, founded upon a conscientious conviction of having duly received the absolution which our Lord commissioned his ministers to pronounce; and, from the spiritual satisfaction of having had their Christian condition, as members of the Church, approved by one instructed in, and devoted to, the Lord's service, whose disinterested judgment of the penitent's condition, and of his being within the terms of acceptance by the Lord, conveyed a peaceful assurance unattainable by any private judgment which individuals might form of their own state. It is also to be considered that the minister is the interpreter of the Gospel, and jealous for its honour, for that of the Church, and for those of its members, for whom he shall have to render an account,-that every sin of each individual Christian is a violation of the covenant between Christ and the congregation, and a dishonour to the Church, and that as such the sinner owed to it a debt of acknowledgment and reparation, which could only be tendered and received through the minister, since in his office of ministering for the congregation he was its organ and representative, to receive the confession of those who had dishonoured it, to accept their penitence, and pronounce their absolution or forgiveness of the offence committed against it. Thus even on human grounds of rational consideration regarding the minister, but as one from his office well instructed in the Gospel, and as being the representative of the congregation, absolution must have conveyed, especially to humble minds, to tender consciences, to the ignorant who are disposed to love and to obey, but are incapable of directing or ascertaining their own path, spiritual advantages of the highest and most necessary description. But if we add to this view of the subject the consideration which at least it possessed during the lives of the Apostles, that the ministry were empowered by Christ himself to absolve the penitent, that those whom they loosed in earth from their sins were loosed in heaven; the spiritual effect upon the minds, consciences, and lives of

Christians can scarcely be conceived. The exalted impulse and powerful inducement it must have held out to godliness, to pious exercises, and to the fulfilment of divine ordinances; the restraint upon sinfulness from the power upon the conscience of the religious ordinances, and the rule of life and of devotion prescribed by the Church, every departure from which caused an obstacle to the absolution on earth sealed in heaven; the holy confidence and devout assurance conveyed by such an absolution must have filled the devout and penitent with the highest hopes and conceptions, and with the most cheering feelings of religious comfort, and have imparted to them a foretaste of heavenly joys in the conviction of the Divine acceptance-in one word, it must have communicated to them the feelings of those to whom our Lord said, "Go in peace; thy faith hath saved thee." It cannot at least be denied that the Apostles themselves were commissioned by our Lord to remit and retain sins, or to give absolution to the penitent,-to convey directly God's pardon to the conscience of the sinner for his sins committed against him. We have seen the divine effects which must have been produced by this ministerial act, and we have considered its natural influence even without a divine commission for its exercise, in contributing the peace of assured hope to the humble and penitent, and in conveying the strongest and most necessary inducements and restraints for the godly government of the members of the Church. We have therefore the most convincing evidence from every consideration of the nature of the commission itself-of the terms in which it was conferred-of the necessity for its continuance --and of the divine character of the Giver, incapable of granting a temporary commission to convey a great and necessary blessing of a permanent nature, to lead us to the conclusion that the kingdom appointed to the Apostles, with a spiritual government of men's souls, by remitting and retaining sins, was designed to be perpetual, and so that their office must be continued in the exercise of these its highest privileges.

47.-THE EXTERNAL GOVERNMENT OF THE CHURCH ALSO CONFERRED UPON THE APOSTLES.

In addition to the government of the Church in the office of binding and loosing, which is of a spiritual nature exercised personally upon congregations, and upon individuals, the Kingdom conferred upon the Apostles contained an authority of a more external and temporal nature as being the

supreme rulers of the Church upon earth, the highest order of ministers from whom all the orders received their ordination and authority to exercise their ministerial functions. In this sense the Apostles appropriately sit on thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel. When the twelve called the multitude of the Disciples together, directing them to choose persons from among them to be ordained Deacons to administer the funds of the Church, "to be appointed over this business by the Apostles," (Acts vi. 3), they acted the part of Judges in the Church, appointing a subordinate office for the administration of a branch of its public affairs. When they came together in council to determine whether and how far the Gentile converts should observe the ceremonies of the Jewish law, and gave sentence upon this important subject, so necessary for the peace of the Church to be decided by sufficient authority, the Apostles ruled as Judges of the Church. They admitted the Elders, the Priesthood, to participate in their Council, to add their dutiful sanction to their determinations according to the expression, "It pleased the Apostles and Elders with the whole Church." (Acts xv. 22.) It cannot be supposed that the Elders of the Church, who are mentioned as having been present at the Council, would have opposed the judgment of the Apostles in any case: they were present therefore to testify their dutiful submission and concurrence with their decision; and so to let it be conveyed to the Gentile Churches with the greater authority, as the unanimous determination of the Apostles received by the Elders and the whole Church in Judea. It was as a ruler of the Kingdom of Christ that "the care of all the Churches" was borne by St. Paul. (2 Cor. xi. 28.) It is in the exercise of the government conferred upon him by our Lord that he thus speaks, "Having in readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled." (2 Cor. x. 6.) For the weapons of his warfare were not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds; casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God; and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. The Apostle here speaks of the power of excommunication, or the censures of the Church which he had exercised against one member of the Church of Corinth, cutting him off by his sentence delivered solemnly in his former Epistle (ch. v., ver. 4); to which letter those who were disobedient to him referred, "for his letters say they are weighty and powerful, but his bodily presence is weak." (2 Cor. x. 10.) It is plain from

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the whole context, that the Apostle is speaking of his own power to punish such members of the Church of Corinth as disputed his authority, for which purpose he lays claim to the full power of an Apostle, "not being a whit behind the very chiefest Apostles" (2 Cor. xi. 5); and recounts the labours and sufferings he endured in his Apostolic office, "writing these things being absent, lest, being present, he should use sharpness according to the power which the Lord had given him." (2 Cor. xiii. 10.) He alludes also to his power as governing the Church, when he says, "Though I should boast somewhat more of our authority which the Lord hath given us for edification, not for your destruction, I should not be ashamed."* The Apostle describes his authority as that conferred upon the Prophet Jeremiah (1 Jerem. i. 10): See, I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to destroy, and to throw down, to build, and to plant.' Placed by our Lord upon a throne in his Kingdom to judge his spiritual Israel, with a Divine declaration that whosoever despised him despised the Lord whose authority he administered, the language of the Apostles similar to that of the Prophet, however exalted, is not beyond the power it describes the power of the Lord to bring into captivity every thought to His obedience. Hence, then, we learn that the Apostles were the supreme rulers of the Church of Christ,-that they framed regulations for its direction,-determined the ordinances it was to receive, set in order all things pertaining to Divine faith or worship, and so established the sacred institutions of the Lord's Kingdom. We learn also that each Apostle exercised a supreme government over the Churches founded by himself, exacting obedience, on the ground of possessing the power of the Lord committed to him for the government of the Church ;-that they pronounced sentence of excommunication in the name of the Lord upon the disobedient, cutting them off from the Redeemer, and delivering them to Satan; that they communicated the power to execute ministrations in the Church as they saw fit," ordaining Elders in every city," and "appointing Deacons over their own peculiar office." In every thing then which pertained to the relation between man and the Lord, which belonged to the ministration of the Christian religion, the Apostles exercised a supreme authority; and so, in the fullest meaning of the words, sat on thrones judging the Israel of God in the name

* See also 2 Pet. iii. 2.