III. Therefore I have already remarked, that God has frequently commended its dignity to us by every possible encomium, in order that we might hold it in the highest estimation and value, as more excellent than every thing else. That he confers a peculiar favour upon men by raising up teachers for them, he fully signifies, when he commands the prophet to exclaim, “How beautiful are the feet of him that publisheth peace;”[801] and when he calls the apostles “the light of the world,” and “the salt of the earth.”[802] Nor could that office be more splendidly distinguished than when he said to them, “He that heareth you, heareth me.”[803] But there is no passage more remarkable than that in Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians, where he professedly discusses this question. He contends, that there is nothing more excellent or glorious than the ministry of the gospel in the Church, inasmuch as it is the ministration of the Spirit, and of righteousness, and of eternal life.[804] The tendency of these and similar passages, is to preserve that mode of governing the Church by its ministers, which the Lord appointed to be of perpetual continuance, from sinking into disesteem, and, at length, falling into disuse through mere contempt. And how exceedingly necessary it is, he has not only declared in words, but shown by examples. When he was pleased to illuminate Cornelius more fully with the light of his truth, he despatched an angel from heaven to send Peter to him. When he designs to call Paul to the knowledge of himself, and to introduce him into the Church, he does not address him with his own voice, but sends him to a man to receive the doctrine of salvation, and the sanctification of baptism. If it was not without sufficient reason, that an angel, who is the messenger of God, refrains from announcing the Divine will himself, and directs a man to be sent for in order to declare it,—and that Christ, the sole Teacher of believers, committed Paul to the instruction of a man, the same Paul whom he had determined to elevate into the third heaven, and to favour with a miraculous revelation of things unspeakable,—who can now dare to despise that ministry, or to neglect it as unnecessary, the utility and necessity of which God has been pleased to evince by such examples?