that that essential part of it, the right of delegation, was withheld, when the religion was to be continued for ever? Such a power of providing ministers, they must have known, would be far more necessary when the great Shepherd was removed from the external and visible rule of his flock, when the flock was more numerous, when 'its first zeal was perhaps abated, its native simplicity perverted into arts of hypocrisy and forms of godliness, when "heresies should arise and the love of many wax cold?"" But again, when Christ gave the command that his ministers, in fulfilment of those ancient and august prophecies which had foretold the everlasting duration and universal dominion of the Gospel, should go and make disciples of all nations, could the Apostles, unless they had been mad enough to imagine that immortality on earth was a part of the gift bestowed on them, could they, I say, have believed 2

1 Jeremy Taylor's Works, Vol. vi. p. 303. Heber's edit. See also Beveridge, Vol. ii. p. 88. Horne's edit.

2 See Jeremy Taylor's Divine Institution of the Office Ministerial, § 11. The following are the words of Archbishop Sharp, Serm. XIII. Vol. v. p. 212.—' Since men to the world's end are to be saved by believing the Gospel, then there is a necessity that there should be always an order of men in the world whose business it should be to preach this Gospel: for, as St. Paul truly says, How shall men believe, &c. If Christ designed that the belief of his Gospel should be the way of salvation as long

13

that the task enjoined was to be accomplished by them alone, that task, of which, after the lapse of almost two thousand years, the greater, alas! the

as the world lasts, he must certainly have designed that there should be men set apart to preach and make known this Gospel as long as the world lasts likewise. Accordingly we find that he hath de facto done so; for the commission he gave to his Apostles he did really mean should extend to all those that should succeed them in that ministry, as appears plainly in the last clause of it, as I read it to you out of St. Matthew, Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. What is the meaning of that? Would he be with the Apostles till the end of the world? Why, that could not be, they were to go off the stage in a few years; and so they did: but the world hath continued many ages after their deaths, and is yet likely to continue. Christ's meaning then could be no other than this, that he would not only by his Spirit assist the Apostles in the preaching of the Gospel during their lives, but he would also continue that assistance to those that should succeed them in the work of the ministry, even as long as the world should endure; and accordingly we see that he hath hitherto made that promise good, having for above 1600 years all along continued a succession of Christ's ministers to give souls to Christ, and all along likewise continued a succession of Christ's people in all parts of the world, who are gained to Christ by their ministry; and as he hath hitherto made good his promise, so we doubt not but he will continue to do it to the end of the world.' The words of Theophylact on Matt. xxviii. 20. are worth quoting: Οὐ μόνως δὲ τοῦτο τοῖς ̓Αποστόλοις ὑπέσχετο, τὸ συνεῖναι αὐτοῖς, ἀλλὰ καὶ πᾶσιν αὐτοῦ ἁπλῶς τοῖς μαθηταῖς· οὐ γὰρ δήπου οἱ ̓Απόστολοι ἄχρι τῆς συντελείας ἔμελλον ζῇν· καὶ ἡμῖν οὖν καὶ τοῖς μεθ ̓ ἡμᾶς ὑπισχνεῖτο τοῦτο.

far greater part remains to be done? Strange indeed to say, it has been contended by some, in order to elude the force of this argument, that the Apostles actually accomplished their task and carried the sounds of the Gospel to the ends, not only of the old, but even the new world; and stranger still, one of the greatest divines of the Calvinists

1

1 I refer to Witsius, who has two very curious and amusing dissertations, the 13th and 14th, in the second vol. of his Miscellanea, on this subject. The notion of St. Thomas being known to the people of Brazil was started by Horne (de Orig. Gent. Amer. III. 19.) The Brazilians are by many supposed to be of Tartarian origin, and St. Thomas is said to have preached not only in Judea but in Tartary; so that if America was peopled only at a late period, the Apostle need not have travelled so far as the New World. Then others start the idea that the Atlantis of Plato refers to America, or that, at all events, America was known to the ancients. Fuller (Misc. IV. 19.) contends that the Phoenicians knew the compass; and they who are quite determined that Christ's command to preach the Gospel to all the world should be performed by the Apostles, cut the knot with great resolution. If the compass was not known, say they, people could go without it; and where others went, who shall doubt that Apostles would go? But if they did not go by a long sea voyage, there is nothing impossible in their going round by the North Pole and if we cannot find out how they went, still 'fata invenerunt aut fecerunt' a way. For if Christ performed other miracles, why should we think it strange that he sent the Apostles across the sea, and set them down in America? These resolute arguers are put down in Witsius's 14th dissertation. They indeed did not require his hand; but he has treated

has condescended, first to set this childish absurdity in the best colours his ingenuity could furnish, and then to expose it with all his vast erudition. But an objector of a different kind will complain that we rest our cause on a word; that in the passage we allege, all nations can only mean all the nations which the Apostles had the means of visiting and converting. We rest not our cause on a word, but on the promise of Jesus which explains it. 'Lo! I am with you always,' said he,' even to the end of the world.' Why a promise that his assistance should be given until time was ended, if the task enjoined could be accomplished in the brief three-score years and ten, to which man's fleeting life is bounded? But the objectors will fly to the refuge of verbal criticism, here unfounded, and always delusive when opposed to the obvious dictates of reason; and one will say that the end of the world denotes the destruction of Jerusalem another will confine the declaration to a promise of assiduous assistance during the lives of the Apostles'. Was Christianity then to last only a half

the subject with that union of learning and sense which so peculiarly belongs to him, and set the command of Christ in its true light. The reader who is curious on this subject will find full references, and perhaps ample details, in Fabricius's Lux Evangelii, p. 703 and foll.

The first of the opinions here noticed is a common one

century, to be buried in the grave of its first teachers and forgotten? Or at best to be left like seed cast on the face of the waters, to the acceptance or rejection of a world which neither understood nor cared for it? Or, on the other hand, will it be contended, that, when our Lord thought it necessary to set apart Apostles and ministers for the care of his flock, even while the daily sight of miracles showed that the faith for which they were worked came from God, he would think no ministers necessary, when all supernatural assistance was withdrawn 1?

We must pass over many casual expressions of our Lord's, as, for example, those in which he compares Christian ministers to Rulers set over the household by the Lord, and to Shepherds ap

among commentators of a certain school. See the Unitarian version of the N. T., Rosenmüller, &c. on Matt. xxviii. 20. The second opinion is quietly propounded by Schleusner, v. aiwv. The greater number of interpreters, however, have seen the good sense of the matter; and I observe, that the latest German annotator, Fritzche, both on Matt. xxviii. 20. and on xii. 39. understands σvvteλeía toũ aiñvos as designating the second advent of Messiah in glory. See Bennet on the Rights of the Clergy, ch. i., and Jus Divinum Ministerii Evangelici, p. 30.

1

Stillingfleet, Divine Right, &c. part ii. ch. xi. p. 255. (fol. ed. of his Works.) See a similar argument as to the inequality of the ministry, in Jeremy Taylor's Episcopacy asserted, § 1. 5.