Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Qualifications for Ministerial Power: The Carew Lectures for 1895, Hartford Theological Seminary
Upon the strength of Apostolic testimony we are justified in describing the Christian ministry as the gift of Christ, one Of His mighty bequests to His Church when He went away and we are further justified in connecting with our conception of the Christian minis try the idea Of succession or continuity, whereby amidst the passage from earth of individual lives, the institution of the ministry remains, uttering a sustained witness, and addressing a continuous appeal to the generations of humanity.
It is possible to hold this belief in the Divine origin and the historic continuity of the Christian ministry without entering into the discussion of those correlated and subordinate questions touching the modus of the historic succession, the nature of ordination, the parity or disparity of ministerial orders, the specific limits of ministerial functions, about which has gathered an im mense controversial literature. We do not desire to minimize or to magnify the importance of those ques tions; we do but claim that it is no part of our under taking to enter that region of controversy. The basis of our present inquiry is not controversial but catholic.
We are not attempting to classify or to compare the points of view from which Christ's servants have debated the orders, functions, and succession of the Christian ministry. The entire structure of our argument rests on foundations broad enough for all who acknowledge the veracity of the New Testament, namely, that the Chris tian ministry is the gift of Christ, designed and author ized by Himself to continue throughout the present Dispensation as a permanent institution Of His Church.
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