Ratio disciplinae fratrum Nov-Anglorum. A faithful account of the discipline professed and practised; in…

There are those to be found, even among the Prelates themselves, who have told but a sad Story, and yet given a just & fair Account, How and Why the Jus Divinum of Prelacy came to be first asserted; which is almost unaccountably become the Topping Doctrine of our Days. Be it how it will, certainly Men that are not far gone with the Spirit of a Party, will not go beyond the Temper of Dr. Ward, who in his Determinations, when he speaks of the Difference between the Few Churches that have Prelates, and the many more Churches that have None, says, It ought to be tolerated, Absque Fraternae Unitatis Laesione. Most certainly they who consider, that even in ⟨p. 204⟩the Popish Times, the English Parliaments took upon them to create new Bishoprics; and that Giraldus Cambrensis assures us, there were no less than Threescore Bishoprics in England, when the Island was not yet wholly Christianized; would not think that an Act of Parliament would Unchristianize the Island by making above Nine Thousand Bishoprics, where there are now no more than Six & Twenty. — All the World knows that all the Churches of the Reformation, on the Continent of Europe, subsist upon a Presbyterian Ordination. And the Superintendents in the Lutheran Churches, make not the Pretensions of our Prelates. But when the Papists of late Years as well as formerly, have been trying to make Disturbances among them, with Clamours like what have been made elsewhere, That they have no True Ministers, & so not Sacraments, because they want Episcopal Ordination, [As Osiander the Chancellor of the University of Tubingen, particularly complains, in his Treatises of Casuistical Divinity published A. C. 1680. The Popish Doctors suppose that Presbyters cannot be Ordained but by a Bishop, & for this very Reason, they deny the Truth of the Lutheran Ministry:] their most Learned Historians & Advocates, in their Answers, confess that their Lutheran Ministers have none but a Presbyterian Ordination: But then prove the Cavils of the Papists on that Score to be Unreasonable. No longer ago than the beginning of the present Century, Joachim Hildebrand, in his Treatise, concerning the Hierarchy of the Church, has this Passage; The Great Question between us & the Papists is, Whether in the ⟨p. 205⟩Days of the Apostles, there was one Order of Bishops & another of Presbyters?

There are those to be found, even among the Prelates themselves, who have told but a sad Story, and yet given a just & fair Account, How and Why the Jus Divinum of Prelacy came to be first asserted; which is almost unaccountably become the Topping Doctrine of our Days. Be it how it will, certainly Men that are not far gone with the Spirit of a Party, will not go beyond the Temper of Dr. Ward, who in his Determinations, when he speaks of the Difference between the Few Churches that have Prelates, and the many more Churches that have None, says, It ought to be tolerated, Absque Fraternae Unitatis Laesione. Most certainly they who consider, that even in