to confess tho' De Synedr l. 1. Cap. 14.560 being an Erastian in his Judgment he was loth to allow the Word in this Text to signifie a College of Presbyters lest he should be forc'd to allow them the Power of Excommunication 4. To put this Sense upon the Word Presbyter in this Text and to make it to signify the Office is such an Inversion and Disturbance of the natural Order of the Word as is never to be allow'd but in case of plain Necessity lest we make the Sacred Scriptures a Nose of Wax of which Mr. Thorndike was too wise to be Guilty 5. And yet if you will needs take Presbytery here for the Office of a Presbyter which Calvin doth not do but rather for the Solemn Act by which the Office is conferr'd see how little it will be to your Advantage Doth it not then clearly follow that 't is by vertue of the Office it self and not by any Degree that some have obtain'd in it above others that Men are to be Ordain'd into the Ministry So that in whomsoever the Office of a Presbyter is found there is this Power of Ordaining others Have you not then ingenuously or inadvertently granted to our Ministers all that they demand in this Matter and prov'd it for 'em too from Calvin whom you pretend to alledge against ' em To what a pass now have you brought your Episcopal Ordination Are these the only Men that have Power to Ordain a Presbyter Or have they any Power or Authority at all to do it but as they are themselves Presbyters What is a Bishop but a Presbyter set in a higher Degree for Clerical Order and Government sake but as to Office the same with the Presbyter And therefore it is that the Titles are so promiscuously and indifferently us'd in the Holy Scriptures Nor did the Apostles themselves Ordain as Apostles but as Presbyters which is the Title they own in their Epistles and claim as their Honour And that it is the Presbyter not the Bishop i. e. consider'd only as such that must Ordain is put beyond Controversy by a rul'd Case that a Bishop or Prelate Ordain'd per saltum i. e. who never had the Ordination of a Presbyter himself but only of a Bishop can neither Consecrate nor administer the Sacrament of the Lord's Body nor Ordain a Presbyter Tho' for the necessary Ends of Clerical Order and Government the Bishop be set in a superiour Degree of Superintendency and consequently his Presence and authoritative Concurrence be necessary with a select Number of his best qualify'd Presbyters to confer Orders and to see the Laws of Christ duly executed in his Church yet where this Power is abus'd than which nothing in the World is apter nor hath been more abus'd where the Churches are impos'd upon and Presbyters tyrannically ravish'd of their just Rights and Priviledges and causelesly cast out of Episcopal Communion the Presbyter is nevertheless a Presbyter as to all the Parts and Purposes of his Office He may be robb'd of his Pulpit but not of his Office robb'd of his Maintenance but not of his Right to it robb'd of his Liberty but not of his Relation to Christ nor to his Church In the Holy Scriptures we find that Presbyters as such are vested with the Power of Rule and Government in the House of God 1 Tim. 5.17 Act. 20.17 28. But of the Investiture of Prelates or their Ordination by Imposition of Hands as of an Office distinct and different from that of the Presbyter we read not one Word in all the New Testament By what Law of Christ then doth he claim a despotical Power over his Presbyters any other than as the Head and Moderator of their common Council and in whose Name and with whose Concurrence for Order and Government sake all the necessary Canons and By Laws that conduce to the Peace Profit and Edification of the Churches committed to their Care ought to be issued and established Will you tell us they are the Apostle's Successors in Power and Authority So are Our Presbyters too 1 Pet. 5.1 2 3. both in Faith and Doctrin and all Things that are Common and Essential to the Office Prelacy is not of the Office per se but only per Accidens and which when duly exercis'd honourably conduces to the bene Esse of the Church but is not constitutive of its Esse We have hear'd indeed of no Bishop no King and ever thought it extravagant enough but never heard of no Bishop no Church till now Again you would have us to believe that Presbytery being a Name of Dignity is sometimes attributed to Ecclesiastical Officers of the highest Rank as St. Peter and St. John call themselves Presbyters and therefore it must needs here signify a Company of Bishops To this we Reply 1. That the Word Presbytery was never so taken for a Company of Bishops only of which there was but one in one Church which is the limited Sense either in the Times of the Apostles or of the first Centuries of the Church perhaps not till Chrysostome's Time but alway for the Collegium Presbyterorum and before we can believe that it is to be otherwise taken in this Text you must prove it 2. If the Word must be taken in your Sense for a Company of Bishops then either there is no particular Church tho' Diocesan that hath any Presbytery of its own or there must be more Bishops than One in every such Church or else you must say that your one Bishop is a Company of Bishops 3. What can you infer in this Case from Peter's and John's assuming the Title of Presbyter but that in all the common Acts of Ecclesiastical Government and Discipline they acted as Presbyters and not as Apostles And what then have you gotten by this Argument But you urge again That Timothy was a Bishop and had Jurisdiction over Presbyters therefore Presbyters could not Ordain him to his Office for they could not communicate a Power which they never receiv'd To this we Answer 1. That Timothy was an Evangelist 2 Tim. 4.5 which if it signify'd any more than a Preacher of the Gospel which was the Work of every Presbyter then it must signify something more than an Ordinary Bishop to which he had no particular Ordination but the Apostles Election of him as his Companion and his Mission to some particular Services in the Churches of Paul's planting So that the Presbytery Ordain'd him only as a Presbyter not as an Evangelist nor as a Bishop about which we have no Form Rule or Precedent in the Scripture 2. Whereas you say They could not communicate a Power which they never receiv'd We Answer That in this Case there was no need of it they Ordain'd him as a Presbyter and what other Titles he afterward arriv'd to were but Accidental But this Reason of yours seems to be bottom'd on a great Mistake viz. That the Ordainers communicate the ministerial Power to the Persons
Ordained whereas it is Christ that communicates the Pastoral Power and Authority by his Charter of the Gospel the Power is deriv'd from Christ not from the Ordainers As the Major of a City has his Authority from the Charter granted by the King and not from the Recorder who invests him in his Office And yet neither is this true that an inferiour Officer may not invest one of a superiour Order in his Office else what have the Bishops to do at the Coronation of Kings unless you will make the Regal to be an Inferior Office to that of the Bishop which if you do you may next pretend to an absolving and deposing Power too But you tell us again That we do not find in Scripture That to mere Presbyters any such Authority was ever committed nor are there any Footsteps of it in Antiquity And we tell you That we find not in Scripture nor in Antiquity that this Authority was ever committed to any other than Presbyters But if you insist That they must not be mere Presbyters we Reply 1. How do you prove that either Simeon that was called Niger or Lucius of Cyrene or Manaen who were commanded from Heaven Act. 13.1 2. to ordain Paul and Barnabas were any of them at that time more than mere Presbyters as to Matter of Office 2. Where do you find in all the Books of the New Testament not only that a mere Bishop but that any one single Person whether Bishop or Evangelist or Apostle or any other besides our Lord Jesus Christ himself did ever celebrate this Ordinance of Ordination without the assistance of some others more or less of the Presbytery If you instance in Paul's ordaining Timothy with his own Hands will that prove that it was with his own Hands alone especially while he tells us so expresly in words at length and not in figures That it was done by the Hands of the Presbytery 3. We will propose you a Case which is possible tho' we hope will never be real Suppose the Churches of Christ should be reduc'd to a very few and the Bishops of these few should all turn Hereticks or Persecutors of the Orthodox and cast them out of their Communion the Presbyters retaining their Integrity These Presbyters by your Doctrin cannot ordain so much as a Presbyter to continue a Succession much less can they create a Bishop to do it Must the whole Church then be extinct for lack of a Bishop to Head them Or would you expect to have one rais'd from the Dead or sent back out of Heaven to do it 4. As for Antiquity There is nothing more clear than that in the Primitive Churches the Bishops and their Presbyters alway acted in Conjunction in all Acts of Church Discipline both of Excommunication Restauration Confirmation and Ordination And in the Banishment or Absence of their Bishops the Presbyters alone without the presence of any other Bishop did by his order and allowance which he could not have done had it not been a thing in it self lawful execute all that the Bishop was to have done in Person among them Nay St. Jerom will tell you that the Presbyters have Power to Ordain a Bishop over them and invest him with his Episcopal Authority as they did at Alexandria Sir There was a Time within the Memory of Man that Our Bishops were banished from their Clergy in England and what was the Whole Church of England then extinct and cut off from the Head Christ Doth eternal Salvation go and come with Lawn-Sleeves Yet once more you tell us That the Office which Timothy had was given him by Prophecy 1 Tim. 4.14 Or according to the Prophesies which went before of him 1 Tim. 1.18 His Ordination therefore must have been an extraordinary Thing and not to be drawn into Precedent except in parallel Cases But our Pastors you suppose do not pretend that they are mark'd out by Prophecy 1. We answer These Prophesies whatever they were concerning Timothy respected his Person and not the manner of his Ordination 2. It is very probable that the Apostles had a more than ordinary Direction relating to the choice of Ministers or Church-Officers many times in their Days Acts 20.28 It is there said That the Elders of the Church of Ephesus were made Overseers of their Flocks by the Holy Ghost i. e. as some think their Choice and Nomination was by Direction of the Holy Spirit of God And Clemens Romanus says That the Apostles in those Days ordained Bishops or Presbyters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. Discerning by the Spirit and having a perfect Knowledge whom they should Ordain But what is all this to the way of Ordaining by Presbyters is an extraordinary Thing and not to be drawn into Precedent It 's probable that it had been foretold by some one or other that Timothy would be a faithful and eminent Minister of Christ who but you would have concluded from thence That his Ordination by Presbyters was an extraordinary Case 3. May you not as pertinently argue That none of the Ordinations done by the Imposition of the Hands of the Apostles are to be drawn into Precedent because these were extraordinary Cases the Apostles being extraordinary Persons who had an extraordinary and immediate Mission from Christ himself nor do we know of any Bishops that now pretend to be marked out by an immediate Call from Christ or any Prophecy of their extraordinary Vsefulness that have gone before of ' em But Sir Before you had given your self and us all this Trouble to so little purpose you had done much better to have sate down and considered how you could have answered Mr. John Owen's ten Arguments from Scripture and Antiquity Owen's Plea for Scripture Ordination proving Ordination by Presbyters without Bishops to be valid to which to save Labour of Transcribing we refer those that are willing to see much more on this Subject III. The Declamation which you make against popular Ordination we are not at all concern'd in but join with you in our hearty Wishes that they that are would deeply consider it Now to conclude this your third Section Having read out our Indictment in all the Articles of it and examin'd it after your manner you come to sum up the Evidence or what you call Evident and bring in the Bill against us that we have in all these Respects exceeded the Novatians Donatists and Meletians But before you proceed to your Damnatory Sentence we hope your Charity will take into Consideration what we have already so briefly offer'd in our own Defence and what we have yet further to plead for our selves as your following Discourse shall give us Occasion Your fourth Section in which you pretend to blow us wholly up Sect. 4. and to beat us out of all our Fasinesses and not to leave us a Rag to cover our Nakedness with is a Collection of just half a dozen of some little Things which you have pickt up some-where behind
second sort of Teachers who claim a Title to the Ministry as being Ordain'd by Presbyters And indeed when you shall have prov'd this way of Ordination to be Schismatical you will have done something in the Service of your Cause wherein if Saying were Proving and Confidence were good Evidence doubtless you would not fail But this being the main Hinge on which the whole Controversy turns it will be necessary to spend a little more Time with you here And first you make your Trip at our Ministers Heels by striking at the Stone on which they stand but you will find it is a Rock against which you may dash your own Feet but which will not move for all the Kicks you can make at it The main Scripture which with all your might you heave at is that of 1 Tim. 4.14 Neglect not the Gift that is in thee which is given unto thee by Prophecy with the laying on of the Hands of the Presbytery Against the generally approved Sense of this Scripture you are pleas'd to Quote us Calvin himself whom you mistakingly call the Father of our Discipline and would have us to believe that he could find no such Matter in this Text and that he thought Presbytery here signifies but the Office of a Presbyter and so read to us the Sense of the Text thus That Timothy should not neglect but be careful to exercise that Presbyterial Office or Power which was committed to him by laying on of Hands Now by the way lest you should hereafter forget pray take notice that you have now granted that it was to the Office of a Presbyter that Timothy was now ordain'd not to that of a Bishop or an Evangelist But as for what you refer us to out of Calvin's Institutions We find that he was there offering some Observations which he had gather'd out of the Scriptures of the New Testament concerning the Ordination of such as are to serve in the Office of the Ministry and tells us that it is certain the whole Multitude of the People were not to impose Hands on their Ministers in their Ordination but only such as were themselves Pastors in Office to whom alone the ordaining Power belongs tho' he leaves it uncertain whether the Hands of many were always laid on in every solemn Act of Ordination but produces Scripture Instances that it was so done in the Ordination of Deacons Act. 6.6 and in the Ordination of Paul and Barnabas Act. 13.3 But that Paul here minds Timothy that he had ordain'd him with his own Hands tho' not exclusively of all others or with his own Hand only but rather that he was the principal Person and the only Apostle concerned in that Ordination and therefore Admonishes him to stir up the Gift that was in him by the Imposition of his Hands And afterward gives us his private Opinion that when the Apostle mentions to Timothy in his other Epistle the Hands of the Presbytery that he is not there minding him so much of the manner of his Ordination by the College of Presbyters of whom Paul was one and the chief in that Action but rather that he should mind lpsam Ordinationem his Ordination it self and the great and glorious Ends of it q. d. Fac ut Gratia quam per manuum impositionem recepisti quum te Presbyterum Crearem non sit irrita That so the Grace which he had receiv'd when he ordain'd him a Minister of the Gospel or a Presbyter might not prove in vain And now how far Calvin is like to serve your Purpose or to disserve ours we leave to any competent impartial Judge And yet if you think your Notion of Calvin's Sense be the right we must tell you you are a Dissenter from the generality of the most Learned of your own Church Mr. Herbert Thorndike will tell you If we take not our Marks amiss we shall sind Argument enough at least at the beginning for the concurrence of Presbyters with the Bishop in making of Presbyters and other inferior Orders In the first Place those general Passages of the Fathers Wherein is witnessed that the Presbytery was a Bench assistent to the Bishop without Advice whereof nothing of Moment was done must needs be drawn into Consequence to argue that it had effect in a particular of this weight Then the Ordination of Timothy by Imposition of Hands of the Presbytery will prove no less Indeed says he 't is well known that the Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Ecclesiastical Writers signifies divers times the Office and Rank of Presbyters which Signification divers here embrace expounding Imposition of Hands of the Presbytery to mean that by which the Rank of Presbyter was conferr'd But the Apostles Words running as they do 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 oblige a Man to ask when he is come as far as the Imposition of Hands of whom or whose Hands they were he speaketh of which the next Words satisfy Had it been 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Sense might better have been diverted but running as it doth with the Article 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 with Imposition of the Hands it remaineth that it be specified in the next Words whose Hands were imposed Thus this Word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Gospel Luk. 22.66 and in Ignatius's Epistles signifieth the College of Presbyters which hath the Nature and Respect of a Person in Law and therefore is read in the singular for the whole Bench which being assembled and set is call'd 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in both Places and in Cornelius of Rome his Epistle to St. Cyprian where he saith Placuit contrahere Presbyterium Now Sir here 's your Mr. Thorndike against what you would impose on our Calvins But besides this we Answer 1. If the Word Presbytery is here to be understood of the Office then will it follow as we have before noted that Timothy's Office was the Office of a Presbyter What then is become of Timothy's Episcopacy which you so learnedly plead for in your Discourse of Church-Government Or When and by Whom was it that he was created Bishop 2. Camerarius tells us that it is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which imports the Office of a Presbyter So that here 's a foul mistake of the Presbytery for the Presbyterate the Persons for the Office 3. Ignatius who liv'd very near the Times of the Apostles and therefore may well be presum'd to have understood the Meaning and Use of this Word tells us 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ignat. Epist ad Trall What is the Presbytery other than the Sacred Company who are the Bishops Counsellors and Assessours This Sense Clemens Alexandrinus and some others of the Primitive Fathers give of it nor was it ever taken in any other Sense by the Fathers till Origen nor in any Place of the New Testament doth it signify any other than the Company of Presbyters as Luk. 22.66 Act. 22.5 And this Mr. Selden himself is fore'd