Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/233

Rh ciples of, and undertaking to observe all that He has commanded. He here likewise declares the form or the roethod by which persons were to be admitted into this Church, and that was by being baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. And, lastly, He here promises the perpetual presence of His Holy Spirit, both to assist the apostles and their successors in the building and governing this Church, and to actuate and enliven all the members of it..... Thus, I am sure, I have given the true notion of the Church, which the Scripture always intends, when it speaks of the Church as the Body of Christ, when it speaks of the Church which Christ purchased with His blood, when it speaks of the Church into which we are baptized, when it speaks of the Church to which all those glorious promises are made of the forgiveness of sins, of the perpetual presence and assistance of the Holy Spirit, of the gates of hell never prevailing against it, and of everlasting salvation in the world to come; I say that Church is always meant of the whole company of Christians dispersed over all the world, that profess the common faith, (though perhaps none of them without mixture of error,) and enjoy the administration of the word and sacrament, under their lawful pastors and governors: all these people, wherever they live, or by what name soever they call themselves, make up together that one Body of Christ which we call the Catholic Church.

Another thing wherein those particular Churches, into which the Catholic Church is distributed, do communicate with each other, is, in the essentials of Christian regiment and discipline: for though the particular modes and circumstances of Christian government and discipline are not determinated by divine institution, but left for the most part free to the prudent ordering and disposal of the governors of particular churches, yet there is a standing form of government and discipline in the Church, instituted by our Saviour Himself, which, as I shall show hereafter, is this; that there should be an episcopacy, or order of men, authorized in a continual succession from the apostles, (who were au-