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his inspired Apostles, organized his Church. May God grant us all such measure of the grace of his Holy Spirit, that we may know what things we ought to do, and also faithfully perform the same, through Jesus Christ, our Lord.

CHAPTER V

THE CHRISTIAN MINISTRY EXISTING IN THREE ORDERS-THE HISTORICAL ARGUMENT.

HAVING finished the Scriptural argument, prov ing that Jesus Christ, through his inspired Apostles, established the Christian ministry in three orders, we come now to examine another strong and conclusive class of evidence. We mean the testimony of competent witnesses who lived in Apostolic times, or so near that period that they could not possibly have been mistaken, in respect to the organization of the Christian Church.

One or two considerations will show us the value of this class of testimony.

1st. The real amount of history of the Apostolic Church, contained in the writings of the New Testament, compared with the wide extent of the field, is extremely limited. The Holy Gospels are almost entirely occupied with the life, mirac instructions, sufferings, and death of our blessed Saviour. It was not until after he found himself victor over death and hell, that he gave full commission to his Apostles whom he had chosen. He did not go forth himself to plant Churches. "He

left this in the hands of his Apostles, clothing them with the power of the Holy Ghost. Acts i. 8. And promising them his presence, "alway, even unto the end of the world." Mat. xxviii. 20.

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"Now, the only book which professes to be at all historical in its character, is the Acts of the Apostles; and that book, not written by one of the Apostles, but by St. Luke, an Evangelist, a companion of St. Paul, and as is supposed, under his immediate inspection." Burton's Hist. Ch. Church, p. 129.

This book, however, does not profess to give an account of the labors of all the Apostles. Of at least nine of the twelve Apostles, it gives us no clue to their history, their labors, trials, sufferings and deaths. The Epistles in the Testament were not designed as historical sketches; and the book of Revelations is rather prophetic than historic in its character.

In this scantiness, in the detail of facts, in the lives of the Apostles as furnished by Holy Scripture, we should be grateful for the testimony of competent witnesses, living at that early day, whose writings Providence has handed down along with the Holy Scriptures for our use. To despise such testimony would be unwise, as it would be ungrateful to God. It is a class of evidence which appropriately belongs to the subject. Secular events depend upon the testimony of competent witnesses to hand them down the stream of time. It is one of God's ways to perpetuate the

record of his Providence. Men do not think of rejecting such testimony. We do not, as rational men, call in question the long credited statements of such writers as Xenophon and Tacitus and Gibbon. To doubt all evidence but that of our own senses would be to plunge society into universal skepticism, as it would be proof of universal folly. So also, that long chain of history, which hands down the ancient things of Christ's Church, has at least an equal claim upon our candid reception. And who will say, that the scantiness of such history in the "Sacred Writings" does not find its reason in the minuteness of detail which God has given us in his Providence? God does not interpose by miracle, when the ordinary course of his Providence sufficiently attests. Nor should we so wickedly separate his Providence and Grace. All is Grace. God, who gave the Gospel to his Son, also planted his footsteps on the sea, and writes his name in every little flower, and makes the voice of history speak of his Providence and love. We turn then to the testimony of those Apostolic men, as competent witnesses for God's truth; and so far from rejecting such testimony as unimportant, we are bound to receive it as one of God's richest gifts to the world.

2d. Another consideration will show the importance of this class of testimony, we mean its acknowledged importance on other points of the greatest moment.

Would that they who are so forward to deny the testimony of the Apostolic Fathers and speak lightly of all patristic learning, would reflect what a weapon they are placing in the hand of the infidel and blasphemer, to cast to the ground a main pillar in that solid structure, the evidences of revealed religion! At the present day, the differences of opinion concerning Christianity do not pertain to Church order and government alone. Other subjects, vital in the Christian faith, are made matters of dispute. The doctrine of the Holy Trinity; the personality and divinity of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost; the divine institution of the Lord's Day, and the holy sacrament of Infant Baptism, are subjects of earnest discussion, and both parties alike appeal to the language of the Bible in support of their views.

Now, how satisfactory it is, amid so much diversity of sentiment, to appeal at once to the practice of the Church in the very days of the Apostles, to settle the disputed point! How triumphantly the appeal is made in controversy with the Unitarian, and we drive him to the necessity of abandoning his position altogether as untenable, or else of giving up the Holy Scriptures entirely, and going over into the ranks of dark cheerless deism.

And yet, as a matter of fact, they who wield this weapon most dexterously and confidently in their controversies with the Unitarian and the Baptist, who thus appeal to the "Apostolic Fathers," as to

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