A peaceable and temperate plea for Pauls presbytery in Scotland, or, A modest and…A peaceable and temperate plea for Pauls presbyterie in Scotland, or, A modest and…

I prove the assumption, by the doctrine of independency. Pastors and Doctors may not preach the Gospel without the bounds of their own congregation, neither can they exercise any pastoral acts else where, saith the English Puritanism and M. Best, ¹and so Pastors and Doctors have now, since Apostles are out of the world,² and the Churches are planted, no authority pastoral to preach the Gospel to those who sit in the region, and shadow of death, and if they preach the Gospel to those who are not of their congregation. 1. They do it as private men, not as Pastors. 2. They have no pastoral authority or calling from Jesus Christ, and his Church so to do. But certainly Papists, as Bellarmine, ³Suarez, Becanus, Vasquez, Gregor. de Valentia seeme to say better,⁴ who will have the authoritative power of sending Pastors to Nations, who want the Gospel,⁵ to be in the Pope, whom they conceive to be an universal Pastor to care for the whole Churches, so Christ hath left no pastoral authority on Earth in Pastors and Doctors to make those the Churches of Christ, and to translate them to the kingdom of grace, who are yet carried away with dumb Idols, ⟨p. 225⟩and howbeit the Apostles and their universal commission ordinary to preach the Gospel to all, their immediate calling, their extraordinary gifts be now out of the world, yet it is unbeseeming the care of Christ, that pastoral authority should be so confined at home, and imprisoned within the lists of every particular Church, consisting possibly of six or ten believers only, that the care for many Churches, 2 Cor. 11. 28. The pastoral care to gain Jew and Gentile, those that are within and without, to be made all things to all men to save some, should be now in no pastors on earth, but dead with the Apostles, as if these places,