brethren which are in Laodicea, and Nymphas, and the external institution of certain forms of worship which is in his house,"--what awkward results we should have, here and there! Now I do not say it is possible for men to agree with each other in their religious _opinions_, but it is certainly possible for them to agree with each other upon their religious _expressions_; and when a word occurs in the Bible a hundred and fourteen times, it is surely not asking too much of contending divines to let it stand in the sense in which it there occurs; and when they want an expression of something for which it does _not_ stand in the Bible, to use some other word. There is no compromise of religious opinion in this; it is simply proper respect for the Queen's English. 184. The word occurs in the New Testament, as I said, a hundred and fourteen times.[140] In every one of those occurrences, it bears one and the same grand sense: that of a congregation or assembly of men. But it bears this sense under four different modifications, giving four separate meanings to the word. These are-- I. The entire Multitude of the Elect; otherwise called the Body of Christ; and sometimes the Bride, the Lamb's Wife; including the Faithful in all ages;--Adam, and the children of Adam yet unborn. In this sense it is used in Ephesians v. 25, 27, 32; Colossians i. 18; and several other passages. II. The entire multitude of professing believers in Christ, existing on earth at a given moment; including false brethren, wolves in sheep's clothing, goats and tares, as well as sheep and wheat, and other forms of bad fish with good in the net. In this sense it is used in 1 Cor. x. 32, xv. 9; Galatians i. 13; 1 Tim. iii. 5, etc. III. The multitude of professed believers, living in a certain city, place, or house. This is the most frequent sense in which the word occurs, as in Acts vii. 38, xiii. 1; 1 Cor. i. 2, xvi. 19, etc. IV. Any assembly of men: as in Acts xix. 32, 41. 185. That in a hundred and twelve out of the hundred and fourteen texts, the word bears some one of these four meanings, is indisputable.[141] But there are two texts in which, if the word had alone occurred, its meaning might have been doubtful. These are Matt. xvi. 18, and xviii. 17. The absurdity of founding any doctrine upon the inexpressibly minute possibility that, in these two texts, the word might have been used with a different meaning from that which it bore in all the others, coupled with the assumption that the meaning was this or that, is self-evident: it is not so much a religious error as a philological solecism; unparalleled, so far as I know, in any other science but that of divinity.