A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many useful questions and cases of conscience are…A treatise of miscellany questions wherein many usefull questions and cases of conscience are…

And now I hope it may appear that the Scripture, objected by the Querist doth not hurt but help the Presbytery 4. Suppose the Presbytery, 1 Tim: 4. 14. to be an Assembly of Apostles, as the Querist would have it, what shall he gain thereby? For the name Presbytery being purposely chosen in this Text, which mentions laying on of hands in Ordination, will prove that the Apostles did these as Elders, and as an act of one Assembly of Elders, not as any thing peculiar to the Apostles. For no rational man will imagine, that the holy Ghost intending to express some extraordinary thing, which the Apostles did as Apostles, and which belongs not to ordinary Elders, would in that very thing purposely call them [Greek or Hebrew] or an Assembly of Elders. 5. That [Greek or Hebrew] here is not an Assembly of Apostles, but of ⟨p. 108⟩Elders who were not Apostles may appear plainly by comparing the Text now in controversy with 2 Tim: 1. 6. the gift of God which is in thee by the putting on of my hands. If an Assembly of Apostles had laid hands on Timothy, and so joined in that action with Paul, as the Querist supposeth, Paul had not thus distinguished his laying on of hands, from that of his fellow Apostles, as if the gifts of the holy Ghost had been given to Timothy only by the laying of his hands, and not by, but with the laying on of the hands of his fellow Apostles▪ Of this difference of the phrase in the one Text and in the other, I have spoken before, which indeed fitly expresseth the difference betwixt the laying of Pauls hands, and the laying on of the Elders hands, but there could be no such difference among the Apostles themselves, or Apostles fellows.

And now I hope it may appear that the Scripture, objected by the Querist doth not hurt but help the Presbytery 4. Suppose the Presbytery, 1 Tim: 4. 14. to be an Assembly of Apostles, as the Querist would have it, what shall he gaine thereby? For the name Presbyterie being purposely chosen in this Text, which mentions laying on of hands in Ordination, will prove that the Apostles did these as Elders, and as an act of one Assembly of Elders, not as any thing peculiar to the Apostles. For no rationall man will imagine, that the holy Ghost intending to expresse some extraordinary thing, which the Apostles did as Apostles, and which belongs not to ordinary Elders, would in that very thing purposely call them 〈non-Latin alphabet〉 or an Assembly of Elders. 5. That here is not an Assembly of Apostles, but of