The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance

Upon these and many more the like accounts do the Epistles seem to me, to be like the Children that the Jews had by their strange Wives. Neh: 13, who spake part the language of Ashdod, and part the language of the Jews. That there are in them many footsteps of a gracious Spirit, every way worthy of, and becoming the great and holy personage, whose they are esteemed, so there is evidently a mixture of the working of that worldly and carnal Spirit, which in his days, was not so let loose as in after times. For what is there in the Scripture, what is in the genuine Epistle of Clêmen's, that gives countenance to those descriptions of Episcopacy, Bishops, and the subjection to them, that are in those Epistles (as now we have them) So insisted on? What titles, are given to Bishops? What Sovereignty, Power, Rule, Dominion is ascribed to them? Is there any thing of the like Nature in the writings of the Apostles? In Clemens, the Epistle of Polycarpus &c. Or any unquestionable legitimate off-spring of any of the first Worthies of Christianity? Whence have they their three orders of Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons, upon the distinct observation of which so much weight is laid? Is there any one word, iota, title, or syllable, in the whole book of God giving countenance to any such distinctions? Eph. 4. 8. We have Pastors and Teachers. Rom: 12. 7.8. Him that teacheth, him that exhorteth, him that ruleth, and him that showeth mercy, Philip. 1. 1. We have Bishops and Deacons: and their Institutions with the order of it, we have at large expressed. 1 Tim: 3. 1. 2. Bishops and Deacons without the Interposition of any other order whatever. Deacons we have appointed Acts the 7. And Elders. Acts 14. 23. Those who are Bishops we find called Presbyters. Titus: 1. 5. 7. And those who are Presbyters, we find termed Bishops. Acts 20. 28. So that Deacons we know and Bishops who are Presbyters, or Presbyters who are Bishops we know, but Bishops, Presbyters, and Deacons, as three distinct orders in the Church, from the Scripture we know not. Neither did Clemens in his Epistle to the Corinthians, know of any more then we do, which a few instances will manifest: saith he speaking of the Apostles. [Greek or Hebrew] &c. Bishops and Deacons (as in the Church at Philippi) this man knows: but the third order he is utterly unacquainted withal.