In the New Testament it occurs once, viz. in the enumeration of the several orders or classes of persons possessing miraculous gifts among the primitive Christians (), where it seems to be used by metonymy, the abstract for the concrete, and to mean helpers; like the words 'miracles,' i.e. workers of miracles; 'governments,' that is, governors, etc., in the same enumeration. The Americans, it is well known, by a similar idiom, call their servants 'helps.' Great difficulty attends the attempt to ascertain the nature of the office so designated among the first Christians. Many conjectures have been hazarded regarding it; but after all it must be confessed, with Doddridge, that 'we can only guess at the meaning of the words in question, having no principles on which to proceed in fixing it absolutely.'