Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

THE SECOND AGE OF THE MARTYR CHURCH.275the promise*, Himself declared so long as Hon earth, whether to the people openly, or to thlisciples apart, what He was, what He had bwhat will of the Father He administered, whduty of man He laid down. Of whom He hadattached to his own side twelve in chief, the destinedteachers of the nations. One of these havingfallen off from Him, He bade the other eleven, onhis departure to the Father after the resurrection,go and teach the nations, who were to be baptisedinto the Father, into the Son, and into the HolyGhost. The Apostles then forthwith, the meaningof their title being the Sent, assuming by lot Matthiasas a twelfth into the place of Judas, by theauthority of the prophecy in the psalm of David,when they had obtained the promised power ofthe Holy Ghost for miracles and utterance, firstthrough Judea bore witness to the Faith in ChristJesus, and established churches, thence proceedinginto the world promulgated the same doctrine of thesame Faith to the nations, and thereupon foundedchurches in every city, from which the other churchesthenceforth borrowed the vine-layer of the Faithand the seeds of the doctrine, and are daily borrowingthem that they may become churches. AndLs cause they are themselves apostolical, as being the offspringThe whole kind must be classed underits original. And thus these churches so manyand so great are that one first from the Apostles,