ordinance of the Christian church, and this is commanded to be kept perpetually.  But its other institutions are mentioned historically, as things done once, but not necessarily to be always repeated:  nay, they are mentioned without any details, so that we do not always know what their exact form was in their original state, and cannot, therefore, if we would, adopt it as a perpetual model.  Nor is it unimportant to observe that institutions are recorded as having been created on the spur of the occasion, if I may so speak, not as having formed a part of an original and universal plan.  A great change in the character of the deacon, or subordinate minister’s office, is introduced in consequence of the complaints of the Hellenist Christians:  the number of the apostles is increased by the addition of Paul and Barnabas, not appointed, as Matthias had been, by the other apostles themselves, but by the prophets and teachers of the church of Antioch.  Again, the churches founded by St. Paul were each, at first, placed by him under the government of several presbyters; but after his imprisonment at Rome, finding that they were become greatly corrupted, he sends out single persons, in two instances, with full powers to remodel these churches, and with authority to correct the presbyters themselves:  yet it does not appear that these especial[7] visitors were to alter permanently the earlier constitution of the churches; nor that they were sent generally to all the churches which St. Paul had founded.  Indeed, it appears evident from the epistle of Clement, that the original constitution of the church of Corinth still subsisted in his time; the government was still vested not in one man, but in many[8].  Yet a few years later the government of a single man, as we see from Ignatius, was become very general; and Ignatius, as is well known, wishes to invest it with absolute power[9].  I believe that he acted quite wisely according to the circumstances of the church at that period; and that nothing less than a vigorous unity of government could have struggled with the difficulties and dangers of that crisis.  But no man can doubt that the system which Ignatius so earnestly recommends was very different from that which St. Paul had instituted fifty or sixty years earlier.

[Footnote 7:  The command, “to appoint elders in every city,” is given to Titus, according to Paul’s practice when he first formed churches of the Gentiles (Acts xiv, 2.) Nor did Timothy, or Titus, remain permanently at Ephesus, or in Crete.  Timothy, when St. Paul’s second Epistle was written to him, was certainly not at Ephesus, but apparently in Pontus; and Titus, at the same period, was gone to Dalmatia:  nor indeed was he to remain in Crete beyond the summer of the year in which St. Paul’s Epistle was written; he was to meet Paul, in the winter, at Nicopolis.]