The true nature of a Gospel church and its government

ALL Churches on their first institution, quickly found themselves indigent and wanting, though not as unto their Being, Power and Order; yet as unto their well-being, with their preservation in Truth and Order, upon extraordinary Occurrences, as also with respect unto their usefulness and serviceableness, unto the general end of furthering the Edification of the Church Catholic. The care hereof, and the making provision for this defect, was committed by our Lord Jesus Christ unto the Apostles during their Lives, which Paul calls [Greek or Hebrew], 2 Cor. 11.28. The care of all the Churches. For what was only a pressing care and burden unto them, was afterward contended for by others, as a matter of Dignity and Power; the pretence of it in one especially being, turned into a cursed Domination, under the Stile and Title of Servus Servorum Dei.

ALL Churches on their first institution, quickly found themselves indigent and wanting, though not as unto their Being, Power and Order; yet as unto their well-being, with their preservation in Truth and Order, upon extraordinary Occurrences, as also with respect unto their usefulness and serviceableness, unto the general end of furthering the Edification of the Church Catholick. The care hereof, and the making provision for this defect, was committed by our Lord Jesus Christ unto the Apostles during their Lives, which Paul calls 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, 2 Cor. 11.28. The care of all the Churches. For what was only a pressing care and burden unto them, was afterward contended for by others, as a matter of Dignity and Power; the pretence of it in one especially being, turned into a cursed Domination, under the Stile and Title of Servus Servorum Dei.

BUT if a Thousand pretences should be made of supplying Churches defects after the decease of the Apostles, by any other Order, Way or Means, besides this of the equal Communion of Churches among themselves, they will be all found destitute of any Countenance from the Scripture, Primitive Antiquity, the nature, use, and end of Churches, yea, of Christian Religion it self. Yet the pretence hereof is the sole foundation of all that disposal of Churches into several stories of Subordination, with an Authority and Jurisdiction over one another, which now prevails in the World. But there is no place for such Imaginations, until it be proved, either that