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| | The Ruling Elder, Chapter 9 |
 | | The truth is, the practice of connecting the functions of preaching and baptizing with the Deacon's office, is one of the various human inventions which early began to spring up in the Church, and which turned almost every ecclesiastical office which had been divinely instituted more or less from its primitive character. |
 | | But when the purity of the Church, both in doctrine and practice, declined, and especially, when the ardor of her charity to the poor had greatly slackened, that officer, having little to do in his appropriate department, sunk, for a time, into a kind of ecclesiastical menial. |
 | | Or, ought all ecclesiastical authority and discipline to be exercised by the Pastor alone? |
| www.bpc.org /resources/books/miller/elder10.html (5439 words) |
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