inistration were
wholly inferred, and indirectly derived, with more or less justification,
from certain vague and fragmentary references which they found scattered
amongst His utterances as recorded in the Gospel. Not one of the
sacraments of the Church; not one of the rites and ceremonies which the
Christian Fathers have elaborately devised and ostentatiously observed;
not one of the elements of the severe discipline they rigorously imposed
upon the primitive Christians; none of these reposed on the direct
authority of Christ, or emanated from His specific utterances. Not one of
these did Christ conceive, none did He specifically invest with sufficient
authority to either interpret His Word, or to add to what He had not
specifically enjoined.

For this reason, in later generations, voices were raised in protest
against the self-appointed Authority which arrogated to itself privileges
and powers which did not emanate from the clear text of the Gospel of
Jesus Christ, and which constituted a grave departure from the spirit
which that Gospel did inculcate. They argued with force and justification
that the canons promulgated by the Councils of the Church were not
divinely-appointed laws, but were merely human devices which did not even
rest upon the actual utterances of Jesus. Their contention centered around
the fact that the vague and inconclusive words, addressed by Christ to
Peter, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church," could
never justify the extreme measures, the elaborate ceremonials, the
fettering creeds and dogmas, with which His successors have gradually
burdened and obscured His Faith. Had it been possible for the Church
Fathers, whose unwarranted authority was thus fiercely assailed from every
side, to refute the denunciations heaped upon them by quoting specific
utterances of Christ regarding the future administration of His Church, or
the nature of the authority of His Successors, they would surely have been
capable of quenching the flame of controversy, and preserving the unity of
Christendom. The Gospel, however, the only repository of the utterances of
Christ, afforded no such shelter to these harassed leaders of the Church,
who found themselves helpless in the face of the pitiless onslaught of
their enemy, and who eventually had to submit to the forces of schism
which invaded their ranks.

In the Muhammadan Revelation, however, although His Faith as compared with
that of Christ was,