Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/255

Rh above, that the Church is a spiritual community, comprehending the dead as well as the living......

But it is now to be shown, secondly, that as the Church of hath always been the same in its nature, it hath likewise preserved the same form in its external economy; the wisdom of  having so ordained, that the Christian Church under the Gospel should not depart from the model of the Church under the Law. For as the congregation of Israel was divided into twelve tribes, under the twelve Patriarchs, so is the Church of founded on the twelve Apostles, who raised to themselves a spiritual seed amongst all the nations of the world..... There were then three orders of priests in the Jewish Church; there was the high priest, and the sons of Aaron and the Levites. In the Church of, there was the order of the Apostles, besides whom there were the seventy Disciples sent out after them; and, last of all, the Deacons were ordained to serve under both in the lower offices of the Church. The same form is still preserved in every regular Church of the world, which derives its succession and authority from the Church of the Apostles: after whom the Bishops succeeded by their appointment, such as Timothy and Titus, in their respective churches. This authority has been opposed in the Christian as it was in the Jewish Church; Corah and his company rose up against Moses and Aaron for usurping a lordly authority over the people; so, in the later ages of the Christian Church, a levelling principle hath prevailed, which has appeared in many different shapes.....

The Church has also been remarkably conformable to itself in its sufferings. There never was a time, so far as we can learn, when the true Church of, with its doctrines and institutions, was not hated and opposed by the world; either persecuted and oppressed by powerful tyrants, or traduced and insulted by lying historians.

The keys of the kingdom of Heaven here promised to St. Peter .... must be something quite distinct from that with which it hath generally been confounded, the power of remission and retention of sins, conferred by our, after His resur-