my own perception, and clinging to the conclusion of my superstition,
just as in the mass the senses are denied, and bread and wine visibly
unaltered, are called flesh and blood. The arguments by which this
notion is supported, are too complicated, and too contemptuous of
unity or consistency, to be meddled with in our limited space. That
Christ bade men observe what the Scribes and Pharisees taught on the
authority of the law of Moses, is made a reason for reverencing what
is taught on _no_ divine authority: Scribes and Pharisees, who
pretended to no divine ordination, but rested their claims on their
knowledge, are made specimens of the respect due to ordination, in
the case of such whose ignorance and unsound teaching are allowed.
But were not the Scribes and Pharisees in many things ignorant and
unsound? Yes, truly; but were these the things of which the Lord
said expressly, these things observe and do? To tell us that we must
observe and do what is according to Scripture, however bad the men
who teach it, ordained or unordained alike; what has this to do with
ordination? True, this is no excuse for those who prostitute the form
and name of God's ordinance, and know that it is prostituted: who say,
"receive ye the Holy Ghost," and would laugh as being supposed to
confer the Holy Ghost: but there is no necessity for running from this
crime, to the error of which we have spoken. Let us acknowledge our
wretchedness, and misery, and poverty, and blindness, and nakedness.
When the laws were transgressed, and the everlasting covenant broken;
then the _ordinance_ was _changed_, as Isaiah foretold it should,[7]
among the causes why the earth is defiled under the inhabitants
thereof.

The Apostolic Epistles contain little, if any thing, to establish the
pastoral authority in a single person of each church or congregation:
and the omission of all allusion to such an office is often very
remarkable from the occasion seeming to assure us, that it would have
been mentioned had it existed. The Epistles of the Lord to the seven
churches are therefore resorted to for proof of the existence and
nature of the place of a single pastor with peculiar and exclusive
powers. But neither there nor elsewhere is the fact of ordination once
referred to, in relation to the receiving or rejection of those who
claimed to speak in the name of Christ. In these very Epistles there
is a commendation for disregarding for the truth's sake the highest