Five disputations of church-government and worship

Sect. 17. 11. Yea more, after all the warnings you have had, in the ways and ends of your predecessors, it seems that you would yet incomparably outstrip the most of them in persecution, if you had your way. For few of them did attempt, or make any motion, for degrading or denying most of the Protestant Ministers in Europe, or such a number as in England and Scotland are not Ordained by Prelates, and to unchurch all their Churches. This is far higher then these before you.

Sect. 17. 11. Yea more, after all the warnings you have had, in the waies and ends of your predecessors, it seems that you would yet incomparably outstrip the most of them in persecution, if you had your way. For few of them did attempt, or make any motion, for degrading or denying most of the Protestant Ministers in Europe, or such a number as in England and Scotland are not Ordained by Prelates, and to unchurch all their Churches. This is far higher then these before you.

Sect. 18. 12. And take heed lest continuing in such a sin, after both prohibitions and judgements, you should be found fighters against God. If those that despise the Ministers of Christ, despise Christ himself, what shall we think of them that do it themselves, and teach men so to do, and have pleasure in them that do it? Its fearful to draw near that forlorn Condition of the Jews, 1 Thes. 2.15, 16. [— and have persecuted us: and they please not God, and are contrary to all men; forbidding us to speak to the Gentiles that they might be saved, to fill up their sins alway: for the wrath is come upon them to the uttermost.]

Sect. 19. 13. It is apparent that your doctrine and practice tendeth to let in the old ejected rabble of drunken, ignorant, ungodly persons into the Ministry. (And what can be more odious to the most Holy God!) For if once you cast out all those that have not Prelatical Ordination, or all that are against it, (especially after a former Ordination,) you must take in such as these, and with Jeroboam, make Priests of the vilest of the people, or else the places must be vacant: for we know that there are not able godly men to be had of your mind to supply the vacant places.