Welsh Journals

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THE WELSH CALVffiSTIC METHODIST RECORD. MARCH, 1852. THE DUTIES OF THE CHURCH TO HER MINISTERS. (Continued from page 30.J 2. Another duty winch the church has to fulfil to her ministers for Jesus Christ, is to place them solemnly in the ministry. No man has a right to serve in those duties which belong specially to the ministry, however competent he may be, unless he is first called, and placed in the office, by the church of God. Not that the church, nor any of its officers, has any supreme or absolute authority to make any man a minister of the gospel. We know that such a notion does exist. It is thought that the Apostles, who possessed in themselves a treasure of ecclesiastical power, have transferred that power to their successors; and that on whomsoever, therefore, those successors lay their hands, they at once receive the privilege of being ministers of the word, and that altogether independent of their personal character and qualifications. Christ never gave such power to men. No! it is the Great Head, in whom rests all the government of the church, and He alone, who has the power to make whom he will a minister of the gospel; and the. church, when ordaining such, only performs a duty laid upon her by Him. In Acts xiii, 2, we read thus:—"As they (the parties mentioned in the previous verse) ministered to the Lord, and fasted, the Holy Ghost said, Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the work whereunto I have called them." It was He, we perceive, who called them, and he had done so before the brethren separated them; yea, the very reason given for the command to separate them, was their having been called to the Avork by the Holy Ghost. So also iioav, the evidences of the call of the Spirit are the grounds upon which the church is to act. But suffer us to ask, in passing, if it be thus here to-day? Was it because there have been found in these our brethren, in some measure at least, those ministerial qualifications which the Holy Ghost bestows upon the ministers of the word—was this the reason, the only reason, for bringing them forward to be ordained? If so, avc may hope that they have had a