We are persuaded, however, that this commission was not given to all Christians, though all have the Spirit. In a note in Olshausen's Commentary the matter seems to be correctly stated: "To the apostles was granted the power, absolute and unconditioned, of binding and loosing, just as to them was {166} given the power of publishing truth unmixed with error. For _both_ they possessed miraculous spiritual endowments." Only we should say "sovereign" rather than "miraculous" endowments. "_The Spirit breatheth where he wills_, and thou hearest his voice," said Jesus.[1] While miraculous gifts were not confined to the apostles, Christ may have committed to these, and to these alone, the sovereign prerogative of forgiving sins; gifts of healing, on the other hand, the working of miracles, prophecy, the discerning of spirits, and tongues, being distributed throughout the church; "but all these worketh one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally even _as he will_" (1 Cor. 12: 11, R. V.). In a word, the action of the Holy Ghost was supremely sovereign in the assignment of spiritual offices, and when Jesus breathed on his apostles the Holy Ghost, and gave them authority {167} to remit sins, he separated them unto a prerogative of which others, indwelt by the same Spirit, might have known nothing. It is very generally held that the order of apostles ceased with the death of those who had seen the Lord and companied with him until the day that he was received up. But the reason for this cessation has been too little considered. May we not believe that the apostles and their companions were commissioned to speak for the Lord until the New Testament Scriptures, his authoritative voice, should be completed? If so, in the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration; in the gospel a stereotyped inspiration; the first being endowed with authority _ad interim_ to remit sins, and the second having this authority _in perpetuam_. The New Testament, as the very mouthpiece of the Lord, pronounces forgiveness upon all in every generation who truly repent and believe on the Son of God; and preachers in every age, with the Bible in their hand, are authorized to do the same declaratively. But when it is urged, as by Catholic writers, that this infallibility for teaching and absolution, which was committed to the apostles, has descended through a succession of ministers called the clergy, the answer seems to be, that this authority has not been perpetuated in any body of men apart from the Scriptures, but was transferred to the New Testament and lodged there for all time. Historically, at least, it seems to have been {168} the fact, that as the apostles and prophets of the new dispensation disappeared, the Gospels and Epistles took their place, and that henceforth the divine authoritative voice of the Spirit could be distinctly recognized only in the written word. As coal has been called "fossil sunlight," so the New Testament may be called