The true and only way of concord of all the Christian churches the desirableness…

§. 20. VI. To the sixth, The question of the Validity of the Ordination dependeth not on it; but on the peoples acceptance and consent: If ten Bishops ordain one man Bishop of a Church, and three ordain another to the same Church, and one a third (as sometimes there have been divers ordained Popes) that only is the true Bishop whom the Church which he is to be over, consenteth to. Other decisions will not serve.

§. 21. VII. I will answer this largelier by it self in the third part: Here I only say, 1. so far as any Ordination is necessary, the Ordination of a Bishop is necessary: But the question […] what a Bishop is? If he be defined by the Power of ordaining alone, some think there is no such: because by the old Canons the Presbyters were to join in Ordination. ⟨p. 210⟩Others think that when none else are there, any one Presbyter may ordain alone. If he be defined by the Power of Ordaining simply, or of having a Negative vote in ordaining, the doubt is whether every Presbyter have not Power to ordain, as in nature the Propagation of its own species is common to all living things. Either Ordination is a Governing act of superiority, or a propagation of the species. If the later, Presbyters may do it. If the former, then Bishops cannot ordain Bishops as such, nor Arch-bishops ordain Arch-bishops, nor Patriarchs ordain Patria•rhs, nor any one ordain a Pope: And yet of old Deacons and Presbyters were made Popes, that were not before so much as Bishops, Formosus being the first Bishop of Rome that had been a Bishop before, and therefore condemned and executed dead, the Canons forbidding any to remove from one seat to another, saith Arch-bishop Usher, [Jerome ad Evagr. assureth us that at Alexandria from the days of St. Mark till Demetrius the Presbyters made their Bishop, ergo they may make Presbyters: They that can do the greater can do the less.] And Dr. Hammond concluding that there is no proof that in Scripture-times there were any subject Presbyters distinct from Bishops, maketh it hard to be proved that there should be any such at all; and whether the making of a rank of Presbyters that have no power of Ordination be not a changing of Scripture order and a sin? Yet even subject Presbyters (made since Scripture-time) concurred in ordinations, and do partly to this day.