NO MENTION OF SUCH POWER. 47 tius thus, "Those things can have no foundation or firmness which are not sustained by any oracle of God's word.' But apparently no such commission is extant in Scripture, the allegations for it being, as we shall hereafter show, no wise clear, nor probably expressive of any such authority granted by God; but, on the contrary, divers clearer testimonies are producible derogating from it. 2. If so illustrious an office was instituted by our Saviour, it is strange that nowhere in the evangelical or apostolical history, wherein diversacts and passages of smaller moment are recorded, there should be any express mention of that institution, there being not only much reason for such a report, but many pat occasions for it. The time when St Peterwas vested with that authority, the manner and circumstances of his instalment therein, the nature, rules, and limits of such an office, had surely well deserved to have been noted, among otheroccurrences relating to our faith anddiscipline, by the holy evan- gelists. No one of them, in all probability,could have forbornepunc- tually to relate a matter of so great consequence as the settlement of a monarch in God's church, and a sovereign of the apostolical col- lege, from whom so eminent authority was to be derived to all pos- terity, for compliance wherewith the whole church for ever must be accountable; particularly, it is not credible that St Luke shouldquite slip over so notable a passage, who " had," as he tells us, chap. i. 1, "attained a perfect understanding of all things, and hadundertaken to write in order the things that were surely believed among Chris- tians" in his time; of which things this, if any, was one of the most considerable. 3. The time of his receiving institution to such authority can hardly be assigned; for was it when he was constituted by our Lord an apostle? Matt. x. 1, 2. Then, indeed, probably he began to obtain all the primacy and pre-eminencehe ever had;but no such power appears then conferred on him, or at any time in our Saviour's life; at least, if it was, it was so covertly and indiscernibly, that both he himself and all the apostles must be ignorant thereof, whoa little before our Lord's passion more than once earnestly contested about superiority. And it is observable, that whereas our Lord, before his passion, carefully taught and pressed on the apostles the chief duties which they were to observe in their behaviour toward each other, . themaintenance ofpeace, of charity, of unity, of humility toward one another, yet of paying due respect and obedience to this superior' he said nothing to them, Mark ix. 50; John xiii. 34, xv. 12, xvii. 21, xiii. 14. Nullum fundamentum aut firmitatem possunt habere, gum, nullis divinarum vo- eum fulciuntur oraculis. Laet., vii. 2.
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