Sect. 5, " Illud ex Judccorum exemplari transeripsisse apostoli viden- tur; cum Mosaica id lege cautum esset, ut judices et ministri in qualibet civitate ordinarentur, Deut. xvi. 18. Illi vero in rebus dubiis ad judicem (Mosis successorem) synedrio Hierosolymitano cinctum recurrere teneren- tur," cap. svii. 9. And in sect. 6, he proves Jerusalem to have been the metropolis of that whole nation. Egregiam vero laudem ! But, —
1. The doctor, I presume, knows before this that those with whom he hath to do will never give him the thing in question upon his begging or request. That which alone ftills in under our consideration and inquiry is, whether the apostles instituted any such model of church order and government as is by the doctor contended for; to this he tells you that the apostles seem to have done it from the pattern of Mosaical institutions in the church of the Jews. But, doctor, the question is not with what re- spect they did it, but whether they did it at all or no. This the doctor thought good to let alone until another time, if we would not grant him upon his petition that so they did.
2. This, then, is the doctor's second argument for his diocesan and me- tropolitan prelates; his first was from the example of the heathens in their civil administration and rule, this second from the example of the Jews. Not to divert into the handling of the church and political state of the Jews as appointed of God, nor into that dissonancy that is between the insti- tution of civil magistrates and evangelical administrations, this is the sum of the doctor's reasoning in his 5th, Gth, 7th, and 8th sections: — " God, in the church and among the people of the Jews, chose out one city to place his name there, making it the place where all the types and ceremonies which he had appointed for the discovery and shadowing forth of the Lord Jesus Christ were visibly and gloriously to be managed, acted, and held forth (sundry of them being such as whose typicalness would have been destroyed by their multiplication), and principally on this account
52 A PREFACE TO THE READER.
making that place or city (which was first Shiloh) the seat of tlie kin":- doni, or habitation of the chief ruler for the administration of justice, who appointed judges in all the land, for the good and peace of the people; therefore, the churches of Jesus Christ, dispersed over the face of the whole world, freed from obligations to cities or mountains, walking before God in and with a pure and spiritual worship, having no one reason of that former institution in common with the church of the Jews, must be cast into the same mould and figure." I hope without ofi'ence I may take leave to deny the consequence, and w-hat more I have to say to this argu- ment I shall yet defer.
But the doctor proceeds to prove that indeed the apostles did dispose of the churches in this frame and order, according to the pattern of the civil government of the Roman empire and that instituted of God among the Jews. The 9th section, wherein he attempts the proof of this asser- tion, is as followeth : —
"Ad banc imaginem, apostolos ecclesias ubique disponendas curasse, et in omnibus plantationibus suis, minorum ab eminentioribus civitatibus de- pendentiam, et subordinationera constituisse exemplis quidem plurimis monstvari possit, illud in Syria et Cilicia patet. Act. xvi. 4 ; cum enim t,ri7riij.a illud, cap. xv. 2, Hierosolymas referretur ab ecclesia ihluii Antio- chife, cap. xiv. 26, xv. 3; et decretum ab apostolis denuo ad eos mittere- tur, ver. 22; in epistola, qua decretum illud continebatur simul cum Antio- chensibus Toiig -/.aTo. l-oola^ xai KiXr/Jav ahi\<pouc, comprehensos videmus, ver. 23. Dein epistola ista Antiochense ecclesia? reddita, ver. 30. Paulus tandem et Silas Syriam et Ciliciam peragrantes, ver. 41, cap. xvi. 4, hoyiMara xsK^i/j,iva V'Trh tuv anioGrokm, singulis civitatibus observanda tradiderunt, ut qute ad banc Antiochia? metropolin, ut totidem subordinates ecclesise perti- nerent; ut et ipsa Antiochia ad Hierosolymas, primariam tarn latce (ut ex Philone prrediximus) provincial metropolin pertinebat, et ad earn ad dirimendam litem istam se conferebat."
This being all that the doctor hath to produce from the Scripture to his purpose in hand, I have transcribed it at large ; for this being removed, all that follows will fall of its own accord : —
First, then, the dependence on and subordination of lesser cities to the greater is asserted as an apostolical institution. Noav, because I supjiose the doctor will not assert, nor doth intend, a civil dependence and subor- dination of cities as such among themselves; nor will a dependence as to counsel, advice, assistance, and the like suj^plies, which in their mutual communion the lesser churches might receive from the greater and more eminent, serve his turn ; but an ecclesiastical dependence and subordina- tion, such as wliercby many particular churches, with inferior officers re- siding in tlieni and with them, depended on and were hi subjection unto some one person of a sujwrior order, commonly residing in some eminent city, and many of these governois of a superior order in the greater cities were in sucli subordination unto some one of high degree, termed a metro- politan, and all this by apostolical institution, is that wliich he aimeth at: which being a most gallant adventure in a waking generation, we shall doubtless find him quitting himself like a man in his undertaking.