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…

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, Joh. 4. 28, 29. Acts 18. 26. Eph. 5. 19. Col. 3. 16. Heb: 3. 13. But this the Apostle plainly distinguisheth from the special Ministerial function, 1 Thess: 5. 11, 14. with vers: 12, 13. The affirmation of this question in hand, viz. that Ordination is necessary and essential to the calling of a minister, may be confirmed by these arguments. 1. Doeth not nature it self teach you: as the Apostle sayeth in another case, Shall the visible political Church of Christ, which is the purest and most perfect Republic in the world, have less order and more confusion in it nor a civill Republic. Ambassadors, Commissioners, ⟨p. 36⟩Officers of State, Judges, Generals, Admirals, with the subordinate Commanders in Armies and Navies, do not run unsent, nor act without power authority and commission given them. How much more unbeseeming, and disorderly were it in the Church, (which Nicolaides himself, even where he disputeth against the necessity of Ordination, Refut: tract: de missione minister, cap: 10. pag: 113.) acknowledgeth to be more perfect then any politic Republic in the world) for any man to assume to himself power and authority which is not given him, or which he hath a non habente potestatem, or to intrude himself into any public administration unto which he is not appointed. It was justly complained of, as a great disorder under the Prelates, that Midwives were permitted to baptize upon pretence of a case of necessity, yea that Deacons were permitted to baptize, because the administration of baptism, doeth neither belong to Deacons, nor to private persons.