Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 18. Argument 5. If the Churches and each member of them are bound to submit to the Ministry of their Pastors without knowing that they are regularly ordained, or that they have an uninterrupted succession of such Ordination, then are they quo ad Ecclesiam, true Pastors to them, and their administrations valid, though without Ordination or such a succession. But the Antecedent is true, and granted by all that now we have to deal with. Though they will not grant a known unordained man is to be taken for a Minister, or one whose succession had a known intercision; Yet they will grant that if the Nullity be unknown, it freeth not the people from the obligation to their Pastors.

Sect. 19. Bellarmine (lib 3. de Eccles. c. 10.) was so stalled with these difficulties that he leaves it as a thing that we cannot b• resolved of; that our Pastors have indeed [Potestatem Ordinis & Jurisdictionis] that is, that they are true Pastors. And he saith that [Non habemus certitudinem nisi Moralem, quod illi sint vere Episcopi.] But when he should prove it to us that there is a Moral Certainty, he leaves us to seek and gives us not so much as a ground to conjecture at any probability.

Sect. 19. Bellarmine (lib 3. de Eccles. c. 10.) was so stalled with these difficulties that he leaves it as a thing that we cannot b• resolved of; that our Pastors have indeed [Potestatem Ordinis & Iurisdictionis] that is, that they are true Pastors. And he saith that [Non habemus certitudinem nisi Moralem, quod illi sint vere Episcopi.] But when he should prove it to us that there is a Moral Certainty, he leaves us to seek and gives us not so much as a ground to conjecture at any probability.