The other part of Christian questions and answers which is concerning the sacraments, writ[n]…The other parte of Christian questions and answeares which is concerning the sacraments, writte[n]…

142. Question.

But are not private persons and those which are not lawfully called, to be thought in like place & degree? Which if it be true, certainly the baptism administered by popish priests must be in vain and serve to no purpose.

But are not priuate persons and those which are not lawefully called, to be thought in like place & degree? Which if it bee true, certeynly the baptisme administred by popishe priestes must be in vayne and serue to no purpose.

Answer. Here I will not stick too borrow that from the Lawyers, which maketh greatly to this purpose: the fault is either in the person, or in the thing or in both: in the person, as when the Magistrate is corruptly made, who notwithstanding (as Varro witnesseth in his fifth book of the Latin tongue) is no ⟨image 101⟩Magistrate. But the Lawyers do more subtly distinguish between him who is a Magistrate, (to wit, a lawful one) and him who is in the Magistracy: as when they dispute that it is one thing too be Proconsul, and another thing too be in the Proconsulship: another thing to be Praetor, then to exercise the Office of the Praetorship, as is said of Barbarius Philippus: another thing too be Tutor, then too exercise the office of Tutorship: in so much as that sometimes he that is a Magistrate (as for example if he be an outrageous man) may be a Magistrate indeed but yet he can not execute the Office of a Magistrate. The fault is in the act when it is not ordered rightly, that is to say, when such things are omitted which are of the nature of the act it self. Now in the Papistical Baptism, the fault is not in the act in which that same principal form is kept, which other strange and superfluous things cannot hurt, but the fault is in the person, for they are annexed to the Bishops & too the Elders,