Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 12. And as to them that confidently teach that the Apostles suited the Ecclesiastical Government to the Politic, and that as by a Law, for the Church universally to obey: All the confutation at present that I will trouble them with, shall be to tell them, that I never saw any thing like a proof of it, to my understanding, among all the words that are brought to that purpose: and to tell them, 1. That if Paul chose Ephesus, Corinth, and other the most populous places to preach in, it was but a prudential circumstantiating of his work, according to that General Law of doing all to Edification: and not an obligation ⟨p. 10⟩on all the Pastors or Preachers of the Gospel to do the same where the case is not the same. 2. And if Paul having converted many in these Cities do there plant Churches (and no other can be proved in Scripture times) it follows not that we may plant no Churches but in Cities. 3. And if the greatest Cities had then the most numerous Churches and the most eminent Pastors fitted to them, and therefore are named with some note of excellency above the rest, it followeth not that the rest about them were under them by subjection. 4. Yea if the Bishops of the chief Cities for order sake were to call Provincial Assemblies, and the meetings to be in their Cities, and they were to be the Presidents of the rest in Synods, with such like circumstantial difference, it followeth not that they were proper Governors of the rest, and the rest to obey them in the Government of their proper charges. Nor that they had power to place and displace them. 5. Much less will it prove that these Metropolitans▪ taking the name of Diocesans, might put down all the Bishops of two hundred Churches under them, and set up none but Presbyters (in order distinct from Bishops) over the flocks, besides themselves; and so the Archbishops having extinguished all the first Order of Bishops of single Churches, to take the sole Government of so many Churches, even people as well as Presbyters into their own hands. 6. And I do not think that they can prove that the Apostles did institute as many sorts of Church-Government then, as there were of civil policy in the world. All the world had not the Roman form of Government: Nor had lesser Cities the same dependence upon greater, in all other Countries. 7.

Sect. 12. And as to them that confidently teach that the Apostles suited the Ecclesiastical Government to the Politick, and that as by a Law, for the Church universally to obey: All the confutation at present that I will trouble them with, shall be to tell them, that I never saw any thing like a proof of it, to my understanding, among all the words that are brought to that purpose: and to tell them, 1. That if Paul chose Ephesus, Corinth, and other the most populous places to preach in, it was but a prudential circumstantiating of his work, according to that General Law of doing all to Edification: and not an obligation