The Scripture, then, which is the sole and direct authority for all the truths of the Christian religion, is not in the same way, an authority for the constitution and rules of the Christian church; that is, it does not furnish direct authority, but guides us only by analogy: or it gives us merely certain main principles, which we must apply to our own various circumstances. This is shown by the remarkable fact, that neither our Lord nor his apostles have left any commands with respect to the constitution and administration of the church generally. Commands in abundance they have left us on moral matters; and one commandment of another kind has been added, the commandment, namely, to celebrate the Lord's Supper. "Do this in remembrance of me," are our Lord's words; and St. Paul tells us, if we could otherwise have doubted it, that this remembrance is to be kept up for ever. "As often as ye eat that bread or drink that cup ye do show the Lord's death _till he come_." This is the one perpetual ordinance of the Christian church, and this is commanded to be kept perpetually. But its other institutions are mentioned historically, as things done once, but not necessarily to be always repeated: nay, they are mentioned without any details, so that we do not always know what their exact form was in their original state, and cannot, therefore, if we would, adopt it as a perpetual model. Nor is it unimportant to observe that institutions are recorded as having been created on the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having formed a part of an original and universal plan. A great change in the character of the deacon, or subordinate minister's office, is introduced in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist Christians: the number of the apostles is increased by the addition of Paul and Barnabas, not appointed, as Matthias had been, by the other apostles themselves, but by the prophets and teachers of the church of Antioch. Again, the churches founded by St. Paul were each, at first, placed by him under the government of several presbyters; but after his imprisonment at Rome, finding that they were become greatly corrupted, he sends out single persons, in two instances, with full powers to remodel these churches, and with authority to correct the presbyters themselves: yet it does not appear that these especial[7] visitors were to alter permanently the earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were sent generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded. Indeed, it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time; the government was still vested not in one man, but in many[8]. Yet a few years later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to invest it with absolute power[9]. I believe that he acted quite wisely according