From all this you perceive, that, strictly speaking, there is, in theory, but One Order of Ministers necessary to CHRIST’S Church, and that Order, as it consisted of Apostles at first, so it does now of those whom the Apostles left as their Successors, just as CHRIST left Them. The Apostles, it seems, thought fit not to delegate their full authority to many, but only to here one and there one. They might have constituted a plenary Successor of themselves in every congregation of the Baptized, and have created no other Order of Ministers; but they did not so. In that case every ordained man must have been a Bishop, and capable of ordaining others. But the general Unity of their kingdom would have been interfered with by such a subdivision into petty provinces. Doubtless they were led by the SPIRIT of CHRIST, and His own pattern when among them, to adopt another course; and they created officers with derived and partial powers, to exercise them to a certain extent and no farther. First, they allowed certain persons to Baptize; and then, very soon, they farther permitted others to consecrate the Holy Eucharist and rule the Congregation, and use, in their absence, the powers of binding and loosing souls; of which latter we have on record one very solemn instance: (1 Cor. iv. 5.) “In the name of our LORD JESUS CHRIST, when ye are gathered together, _and my Spirit_—_with_ the Power of the LORD JESUS CHRIST, deliver such an one unto Satan.” St. Paul thus commissioning others in his absence to act in his name and CHRIST’S. But there was yet one exercise of power which the Apostles reserved to themselves and those of their Coadjutors who, by the voice of all Antiquity, became their Successors in the Church, and that was the power of “laying on of hands.” And thus was accomplished and set in order, by Divine Inspiration, that Threefold Ministry, shadowed forth in CHRIST’S own lifetime, and which has continued ever since.