Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 26. Yea the Reverend Author above mentioned shows (D•ssertat. de Episcop. 4. cap. 10. Sect. 9, 10, & alibi) that there were in those times more Bishops then one in a City, though not in una Ecclesia aut Coe•u. And the like hath Grotius oft. So that a City had oft then more Churches then one, and those Churches had their several Bishops: and neither of these Bishops was the Governor of the other, or his Congregation: much less of the remoter Churches and Bishops of other Cities. And this they think to have been the case of Peter and Paul at Rome, yea and of their immediate successors there. And so in other places (Lege Dissert. 5 c, 1.)

Sect. 26. Yea the Reverend Author above mentioned shews (D•ssertat. de Episcop. 4. cap. 10. Sect. 9, 10, & alibi) that there were in those times more Bishops then one in a City, though not in una Ecclesia aut Coe•u. And the like hath Grotius oft. So that a City had oft then more Churches then one, and those Churches had their several Bishops: and neither of these Bishops was the Governour of the other, or his Congregation: much less of the remoter Churches and Bishops of other Cities. And this they think to have been the case of Peter and Paul at Rome, yea and of their immediate successors there. And so in other places (Lege Dissert. 5 c, 1.)

Sect. 27. When the great Gregory Thaumaturgus was made Bishop of Neocaesarea, he had but seventeen Christians in his City; and when he had increased them by extraordinary successes, yet we find not that he had so much as a Presbyter under him. And if he had, its not likely that Musonius, his first and chief entertainer, would have been made but his Deacon, and be the only ⟨p. 187⟩man to accompany him and comfort him in his retirement in the persecution, and that no Presbyter should be mentioned: which shows that Bishops then were such as they were in Scripture-times (at least in most places) and had not many Churches with their Presbyters subject to them, as Diocesan Bishops have. And when Comana, a small place not far off him, received the faith, Gregory Ordained Alexander the Collier) their Bishop, over another single Congregation, and did not keep them under his own Pastoral charge and Government: Vid. Greg. Nisan in vita Thaumat.)