In the Epistle to the Ephesians, in which alone among his epistles St. Paul is writing not about the difficulties or needs of a particular congregation, but about the church in its general conception, this larger use of the term becomes dominant. And the point to be noticed is that the church in general, or catholic church, is conceived of, not as made up of local churches, but as made up of individual members. The local church would be regarded by St. Paul not as one element of a catholic confederacy[3], but as the local representative of the one divine and catholic society[4]. But the local church is not, according to St. Paul, a completely independent representative of the church as a whole. The apostles, as commissioned witnesses and representatives of Christ, are over all the churches. They, or their recognized associates and delegates, like Barnabas, Timothy and Titus, represent the general church which every local church must, so to speak, reproduce. The apostles therefore, or their representatives, give to each church when it is first founded 'the tradition' of truth and morals which is permanently to mould it; and they maintain the tradition by a more or less constant supervision. Thus they are {269} the force which holds all 'the churches' together on a common basis. 'So ordain I,' says St. Paul, 'in all the churches[5].' 'Hold fast the traditions even as I delivered them to you[6].' The apostle has, he teaches, an 'authority' commensurate with his 'stewardship[7],' an authority 'which the Lord gave for the edification and not the destruction[8]' of the Christians, but which at times must take the form of a 'rod' of chastisement[9]. The complete doctrinal and moral independence of particular Churches is strongly denied by St. Paul in such phrases as 'Came the word of God unto you alone?' or, 'If any man preacheth unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema[10].'