Five disputations of church-government and worship

Reason 5.¹ The opposed opinion doth imply that God more regardeth Cities then Country Villages, or that Churches are to be measured according to the number and greatness of Cities rather then according to the number of souls. For they suppose that every City should have a Bishop if there be but twenty, or forty, or an hundred Christians in it: but if there be five hundred Country Parishes, that have some of them many thousand souls in them, these shall have no Bishops of their own, but be all ruled by the Bishop of the City. Now how unreasonable this is, methinks should not be hard to discern. For, 1. What is a ⟨p. 70⟩City to God any more then a Village, that for it he should make so partial an institution? Doth he regard Rome any more then Eugubium, or Alexandria more then Tanis, for their worldly splendour or privileges? No doubtless it is for the multitude of inhabitants. And if so, its manifest that an equal number of inhabitants elsewhere, should have the same kind of Government. 2. Is it probable that God would have twenty thousand or an hundred thousand people in a Diocese (and in some a Million) to have but one Church-Ruler, and yet would have every small congregation in a City to have one, though there be none else under him? What proportion is there in this way of Government, that an hundred or fifty men shall have as many Governors as a Million? as if ten thousand or an hundred thousand Scholars ou• of a City shall have no more Rulers, then an hundred in a […]; and all because one part are in a City, and the other not? Or a Physician shall have but an hundred Patients to look to in a City, and if there be a Million in that City and Country, he shall also upon pain of Gods everlasting wrath undertake the care of them all? Let them that strive for such a charge look to it; I profess I admire at them, what they think 1. Of the needs of men souls: 2. Of the terrors of Gods wrath. 3. And of their own sufficiency for such a work? Were it my case, if I know my own heart at all▪ I should fear that this were but to strive to damn thousands, and to be damned with them, by undertaking on that penalty to be their Physician (under Christ) when I am sure I cannot look to the hundred man of them, and I had rather strive to be a galley-slave to the Turks, or to be preferred to rid Cha•els, or the basest office all my days.