Church-history of the government of bishops and their councils abbreviated including the chief part…

§. 2. By these principal Ministers the first Church was planted at Jerusalem, (fitliest called the Mother-Church) and after by those that were sent thence many Churches were gathered in many Kingdoms of the world, darkness being not able to resist the light. The Apostles and Evangelists and Prophets delivered to them the Oracles of God, teaching them to observe all things that Christ had commanded them, and practically teaching them the true Worship of God, ordering their Assemblies, and ordaining them such Officers for sacred Ministration as Christ would have continued to the end of the world, and showing the Churches the way by which they must be continued, and describing all the work of the Office appointed them by Christ.

§. 2. By these principal Ministers the first Church was planted at Ierusalem, (fitliest called the Mother-Church) and after by those that were sent thence many Churches were gathered in many Kingdoms of the world, darkness being not able to resist the light. The Apostles and Evangelists and Prophets delivered to them the Oracles of God, teaching them to observe all things that Christ had commanded them, and practically teaching them the true Worship of God, ordering their Assemblies, and ordaining them such Officers for sacred Ministration as Christ would have continued to the end of the world, and shewing the Churches the way by which they must be continued, and describing all the work of the Office appointed them by Christ.

§. 3. The Apostles were not the Authors of the Gospel, or of any essential part of the Christian Religion, but the Receivers of it from Christ, and Preachers of it to the world: Christ is the Author and finisher, or perfecter of our faith. But they had besides the power of infallible remembering, knowing and delivering it, a double power about matters of Order in the Church: 1. By the special gift of the Spirit's inspiration, to found and stablish such Orders as were to continue to the end, and none that came after them might change, they being the Ordinances of the Holy Ghost in them. 2. Temporarily, pro re natâ, to make convenient mutable Constitutions, in matters left by the great Legislator to humane prudence, to be determined according to his general regulating Laws. In this last the Apostles have Successors; but not in the former: No other have their Gift, and therefore not their Authority: No men can be said to have an Office that giveth them Right to exercise abilities which they never had nor shall have.