The Doctrine of the Saints' Perseverance

1 The Doctor I presume knows before this, that those with whom he hath to do, will never give him the thing in question upon his begging, or request. That which alone falls in under our consideration and enquiry is, whether the Apostles instituted any such model of Church-Order and Government, as is by the Doctor contended for; to this he tells you, that the Apostles seem to have done it, from the pattern of Mosaical institutions in the Church of the Jews; But, Doctor, the Question is not, with what respect they did it, but whether they did it at all or no; this the Doctor thought good to let alone until another time, if we would not grant him upon his petition, that so they did.

1 The Doctour I presume knowes before this, that those with whom he hath to do, will never give him the thing in question upon his begging, or request. That which alone falls in under our consideration and enquiry is, whether the Apostles instituted any such model of Church-Order and Goverment, as is by the Doctour contended for; to this he tells you, that the Apostles seem to have done it, from the patterne of Mosaical institutions in the Churche of the Jewes; But, Doctour, the Queston is not, with what respect they did it, but whether they did it at all or no; this the Doctour thought good to let alone uncil another time, if we would not grant him upon his petition, that so they did.

2 This then is the Doctors second argument for his Diocesan, and Metropolitan Prelates. His first was, from the example of the Heathens, in their civil Administration and Rule, this second from the example of the Jews. Not to divert into the handling of the Church and Political state of the Jews, as appointed of God, nor that dissonancy that is between the Institution of civil Magistrates, and Evangelical administrations; this is the sum of the Doctors reasoning in his 5, 6, 7, and 8 Sections. God in the Church and among the people of the Jews, chose out one City, to place his name there, making it the place where all the Types & ceremonies which he had appointed for the discovery, and shadowing forth of the Lord Jesus Christ, were visibly and gloriously to be managed, acted, and held forth (sundry of them being such, as whose Typicalness would have been destroyed by their multiplication) and principally on this account, making that place or City (which was first Shiloh) the seat of the kingdom, or habitation of the chief Ruler for the administration of Justice, who appointed Judges in all the land, for the good and peace of the people: therefore the Churches of Jesus Christ, dispersed over the face of the whole world, freed from Obligations to Cities, or Mountains, walking before God, in, and with a pure and spiritual worship, having no one Reason of that former institution, in common with the Church of the Jews, must be cast into the same mould and figure: I hope without offence I may take leave to deny the Consequence, and what more I have to say to this Argument I shall yet defer.