An expository comment, doctrinal, controversial, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…An expository comment, doctrinal, controversal, and practical upon the whole first chapter to the…

In the next place, Let us consider how comprehensive this is, when Paul saith, An Apostle by the will of God, and it is not useless: for every Minister ought to say so, I am a Minister of the Gospel by the will of God; and the people ought to say, Such an one is our Pastor by the will of God. It is God that had a special hand that he should be our Pastor, and we his flock. And

In the next place, Let us consider how comprehensive this is, when Paul saith, An Apostle by the will of God, and it is not useless: for every Minister ought to say so, I am a Minister of the Gospel by the will of God; and the people ought to say, Such an one is our Pastour by the will of God. It is God that had a special hand that he should be our Pastor, and we his flock. And

1. It is more than a mere bare will of permission. Paul did not mean Gods mere permitting and suffering of him to be so, for thus all the false Apostles, all ¹the false and corrupt Teachers that are, they are by the will of God. It was by Gods will that any unworthy and corrupt Teachers have ever crept into the Church of God, 1 Cor. 11. There must be heresies, God will have it so; but how? It is only his permissive will, whereby he suffers sin to be. It was a custom that some Church-officers had to say, They were so permission divinâ, by divine permission, as thinking themselves unworthy, only God suffered it to be so. Even as Bernard styled himself vocat us Abbas, as if he had only the name, not the reality: but it is well, if this was not proud humility. To be sure as God sometimes suffers evil Governors in Civil Affairs, so he doth also in Church-administrations.

1. It is more than a meer bare will of permission. Paul did not mean Gods meer permitting and suffering of him to be so, for thus all the false Apostles, all ¹