[I6] about the hundredth or ninety ninth year after` Chrifts Nativity (when St. yohn wrote the Re= velation) we muff confers that we know not how that Order or Office can be proved then to be of God's inftitution. 1. As to the Effi- cient ; whofhould do it as the certain authorized Inffruments ofGod. 2. Or how it (hall be cer- tainly proved to sa to be ofGod, when Scripture telleth it not to us ; and what Records of it are infallible; And whether fuch pretended proofs ofTradition as a fuppleenient to Scripture, be not that which the Papacy is built on, and will not ferve their turn as well as this. SeEI. V. And whereas it is laid that the Bi- íhops made in Scripture-times had authority given them to make afterward that fecond Of- fice or Order of Presbyters : i, We cannot but marvel then that in fuch great Churches,as that at yerufalem, Ephefiu, Corinth, &c. they fhouid never ufe their Power in all the Scripture- times. And when they had fo many Elders at yerufalem, fo many Prophets and Teachers at Antioch and Corinth, that Paul was fain to re- ftrain their exercifes, and bid them prophefie but One by One ; and one laid, I am of Paid, and another, I am of Apollo, &c. there fhould yet in that age be none found meet for Bifhops to ordain to thisfecondfort of Presbyters,as well asmen to make Deacons of 2. But we never yet law the proofproduced, that indeed the Bifhops had power given them to inftitute this other Species of Elders. Sure it belonged to the Founders of the Churches (Chrilt and,his Apoftles) to inftitute the Species of Ecclefiaftical Officers, though the Bifhops might
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