Ecclesiastical Chronicle for Scotland (Volume 2)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1875. Excerpt: ... MINISTERS AND THEIR POWERS. 179 Ministry, therfor this Ministry must be religiously observed. It's plain our Lord did commissionate His Apostles, and promised to be with them to the end of the world; therfor never to expire, but be perpetual. It's plain that our Lord was sent or commissionated by His Father, and the like authority He derived on His Apostles: As my Father sent me, even so send I you, &c. (S. Jo. xx. 21, &c.) This commission the Apostles exerted by ordaining, authorizing, or sending others; and so on still to this present time, and henceforth to the end of the world, even as light kindleth fresh successive lights. This could not be otherwise, considering that according to the Prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messias, and the many and luculent Revelations of the New Testament, Christ was to be a King, Who should found a Society and State, Himself being King and Governor of it; consequently He behoved to have Officers to act in His name, whose sentences, agreeably to His Law, He would ratine in Heaven, and without whose interposition no legal deeds could be of any validity. This should be diligently considered; for all those who go on the latitudinarian novel ground consider our Holy Religion, not as it is indeed a Society, and that infinitely transcending in real excellency all the Kingdoms and Commonwealths in the world, both on the account of its glorious Sovereign, and of its object, which is the rectitude of our minds and our peace with God in this life, and our everlasting felicity in the other; whereas our civil societies have at best but weak, corrupt men for their supreme governours, and a sorry fugitive temporal happiness for their object. Not only hath God revealed and instituted our Holy Religion; not only is Jesus...