h. When the Twelve
turned to the Gentiles, their number lost its significance, and from
that date they accordingly ceased to fill up vacancies occurring in
their society; and, as the Church assumed a settled form, the apostles
were disposed to insist less and less on any special powers with which
they had been originally furnished, and rather to place themselves on a
level with the ordinary rulers of the ecclesiastical community. Hence we
find them sitting in church courts with these brethren, [47:1] and
desirous to be known not as apostles, but as elders. [47:2] We possess
little information respecting either their official or their personal
history. A very equivocal, and sometimes contradictory, tradition [47:3]
is the only guide which even professes to point out to us where the
greater number of them laboured; and the same witness is the only
voucher for the statements which describe how most of them finished
their career. It is an instructive fact that no proof can be given, from
the sacred record, of the ordination either by the Twelve or by the
Seventy, of even one presbyter or pastor. With the exception of the
laying on of hands upon the seven deacons, [47:4] no inspired writer
mentions any act of the kind in which the Twelve ever engaged. The
deacons were not _rulers_ in the Church, and therefore could not by
ordination confer ecclesiastical power on others.

There is much meaning in the silence of the sacred writers respecting
the official proceedings and the personal career of the Twelve and the
Seventy. It thus becomes impossible for any one to make out a title to
the ministry by tracing his ecclesiastical descent; for no contemporary
records enable us to prove a connexion between the inspired founders of
our religion, and those who were subsequently entrusted with the
government of the Church. At the critical point where, had it been
deemed necessary, we might have had the light of inspiration, we are
left to wander in total darkness. We are thus shut up to the conclusion
that the claims of those who profess to be heralds of the gospel are to
be tested by some other criterion than their ecclesiastical lineage. It
is written--"_By their fruits_ ye shall know them." [48:1] God alone can
make a true minister; [48:2] and he who attempts to establish his right
to feed the flock of Christ by appealing to his official genealogy
miserably mistakes the source of the pastoral commission. It would,
indeed, avail nothin