The Book of Directions

The Book of the Directions of the Children of the Church

First Teaching

Concerning the Church and Its Distinctions

And in it are seven sections:

First Section

Concerning that the life of the Church exists only from Christ.

Christ said: "If you, son of man, have not made a bishop, and you are not a king, and how have you been given [authority] to be a judge and a divider over us, the children and the youth?" and distinctions If it is not possible that the Church should proceed for the sake of the non-believers, [by] the work of the children of the bishop, then the Church of the Romans shall not be completed. How is it not a work? Also, how is it possible that the Church should be built, by the nature of our kind, or how [do] two or three [gather] in his name? It does not complete them, nor the non-believers; also, how should the Church receive them, and how should it be received from them? Church If you make [this] from the Church, just as the Church wishes to testify, it is not possible for the bishop to be alive.

So also [are] those who perform the services of the believers; and the students of the physicians all hear.

Second Section

Concerning the affairs of the Church, and the number of Christ that exists. If a human being is a righteous soul, Christ is the bishop; he commands, "Go, that you may receive every affair of the Church, and for its distinction, perform its divisions, and let it be given to the treasury, and to the poor, and to the orphans." And let everything be his business, and just as the Church has performed [it], and let no one lack anything. And thus, let it testify that God commanded, and those who do evil say, "From the altar they shall be fed." Because also, for the youth, from the bishop is the hand established. and to whom. If the prophet desires an ecclesiastical affair, the bishop shall be ruler, and he shall take [it] for his joy. However, he shall not be a ruler to plunder something of his own from them, or for the children of his house. Like the poor, he shall feed them. But he shall not take from them; he shall take what the Church desires. and to whom. Let it testify [to] the thing of the affair of the bishop, and the Church, just as a human being, [who] completes that which comes out from him.

(1) They are poor