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…

3. Neither is the question, what may be done in extraordinary cases when Ordination cannot be had, or where there are none who have power to ordain. We read that Aedesius and Frumentius being but private men, became Preachers of the ⟨p. 35⟩Gospel, and converted a great nation of the Indians: Likewise that when the Iberians were converted by a captive woman, their King and Queen became Teachers of the Gospel to the people. There may be an extraordinary calling from God where Religion is not yet planted, nor Churches yet constituted. It is altogether another case in a constituted reformed or reforming Church: I add with Peter Martyr, that even those persons who set about the work of the Ministry extraordinarily or among Infidels, if they can come at any who may ordain them in the usual and right way, they ought not to neglect the seeking of Ordination.

3. Neither is the question, what may be done in extraordinary cases when Ordination cannot be had, or where there are none who have power to ordaine. VVee read that Aedesius and Frumentius being but privat men, became Preachers of the ⟨p. 35⟩Gospell, and converted a great nation of the Indians: Likewise that when the Iberians were converted by a captive woman, their King and Queen became Teachers of the Gospell to the people. There may be an extraordinary calling from God where Religion is not yet planted, nor Churches yet constituted. It is altogether another case in a constituted reformed or reforming Church: I adde with Peter Martyr, that even those persons who set about the work of the Ministery extraordinarly or among Infidels, if they can come at any who may ordain them in the usuall and right way, they ought not to neglect the seeking of Ordination.

4. Nor is the question of teaching, exhorting, admonishing, reproving, comforting one another, or praying for, or with one another, in the way of a private Christian fellowship, and and brotherly love. For this belongs to the general calling of Christians as they are Christians, observing therein the rules of the word, and there is no need nor use of Ordination in all this. But the question is of the particular, special, sacred calling of the Ministers of the Gospel to preach and administer the Sacraments, whether Ordination be not essential and necessary to this calling. The private Christian duties of teaching one another, reproving, exhorting, &c. Are to be conscionably and carefully performed by private Christians,