Excerpt from The Truth With Boldness: Being Strictures on Two Lectures on Prelacy, by the Rev. Robert Burns, D.D., Minister of St. George's, Paisley

Whom they served was the King of kings, and Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes. And the office he gave them no man could lawfully take away: they might be persecuted, they might be put to death by rebels such as they who had crucified their Master, but for these things God would infallibly judge them. As their office essentially differed from and surpassed that held under earthly rulers, so the mode of their inauguration into it essentially and peculiarly varied from that of all others: so exalted, indeed, was their office, that the form employed exactly resembled the form cf consecration of our blessed Lord. When the Holy One of Israel was baptized, the Holy Spirit descended upon him ln bodily shape, like a dove, and rested upon him. So when our Lord had 1isen f1om the dead, he said to the Apostles, Peace be unto you, as (or in the same manner as) my Father hath sent me, even so send I you and when he had said this, he breathed upon them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the holyghost; whosesoeversins ye remit, they are remitted, and whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained. And again, on the' day of Pentecost, were they fully and visibly or dained to the apostolic office for there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them, and they were all filled. With the Holy Ghost. Such were the awful and extraordinary solemnities attendant upon the consecration of the ministers of Christ, and the stewards: of the mysteries of God; and glorious as were the outwa1d and visible signs of their consecration, still more glorious was that internal and spiritual shekinah which filled and illuminated the souls of the Apostles, converting those fishermen of Galilee, those vessels of earth, into holy and living temples of the Spirit of God.' In anticipation of this hallowed rite, thus on earth the Son addressed his Father in heaven -sanctify them through thy truth; thy word is truth; as thou hast sent me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world; and for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth. Neither pray I for them alone, but for them also which shall believe on me through their word, that they all may be one, as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us: that the world may believe that thou hast sent me, and the glory which thou gavest me, I have given Ikem, that they may be one even as we are one. How great, then, must be the apostleship which was clothed with the heavenly glory of the Son of God himself! Yet, with all thls, were they men of like passions with ourselves, but the Lord was with them, and his arm it sustained them. This glory here supplicated, and afterwards confer red, was not bestowed upon the Apostles as a gift not to be transferred.

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