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thus do their Successors declare it with authority, "God also bearing them witness," not indeed now, "with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles," but still according to His own most true promise with invisible "gifts of the Holy Ghost."
Let us now return to see how St. Paul exercised his Apostolical Authority. He had been consulted by the Church of Corinth upon several questions which had caused difference of opinion among them; how then does he decide these questions? In the first place, he draws a broad line of distinction between the points on which he had an express commandment of his Lord to go upon, and those on which he had to give his own judgment. In some cases he says, "I command;" in others, "not I, but the Lord." As a Minister and Steward of Christ's household, his first consideration was, whether in the course of His ministry his Master had left him any explicit commandment; if he found no such commandment, his next duty was to decide the question by the principles of Christ's Gospel. In this case, he gave his "judgment, as one that had obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful," as having been "allowed of God to be put in trust with the Gospel;" and in such decisions he felt assured that he had the Spirit of God. Accordingly he says with confidence, "If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord;" referring at the same time to his Apostolical Authority, "What? came the word of God out from you? or came it unto you only? is it nothing to you that the Apostles have so ordained, and the Catholic Church so received and practised?" And now I would ask, where is the essential difference between the Apostolic age and our own, as to the relation in which God's Ministers and His people stand to each other? I do not say that the Ministers of His word in these days can feel so sure as the Apostles could, that in the commandments which they give they have the Spirit of God; very far from it. But I do say, that neither can the people feel so sure as in those days of miraculous gifts, that they have the Spirit of God with them; and thus the relation between the two parties remains the same. Since the times of the Apostles and of miracles, the City of God is, as it were, come down from heaven to earth; the
