Five disputations of church-government and worship

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.

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 Ministrie. (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 Ieroboam, 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.

Sect. 20. 14. Your doctrine doth tend to harden malignant wicked men in their enmity against a faithful Ministry: and we see this unhappy success of it by experience. Our doctrine is so much against the inclination and interest of the flesh, and men are by corrupted nature at such an enmity to God, and all that is truly Spiritual and Holy, that we have as many enemies as hearers, till Grace do either restrain or change them. But when they have such an irritation and encouragement as this, and that from men that would be reputed as Godly as the best; then no wonder if they are hardened in their malignity. When we would instruct them and mind them of their everlasting state, and help to prepare them for their latter end; they are told by Learned men, that we are no Ministers but Lay-men and Schismatics, and that it is their sin to own us, or receive the Ordinances of Christ from us as Ministers: and so the poor people turn their backs on us, and on the Assemblies and Ordinances of God; and being taught by wise and learned men to disown us and despise us, they follow their drunkenness, and worldliness, and ungodliness with greater security, and with less remorse: for