Section 10

Your next Section runs yet wilder: I speak of the no-difference of our Bishops from the first, in the challenge of any spiritual power to themselves, other than delegated to Timothy and Titus; you tell me of delegating their power to others. What is this to the nature of the calling? Does any man claim this as essential to his Episcopacy? Does any man stand upon it, as a piece of his spiritual power? If this be granted to be an accidental error of some particular man, (for it cannot be fastened upon all) what difference does it make in the substance of the function? As if some monster suddenly presented itself to you, you ask, Was ever such a thing heard of in the best primitive times? that men which never received imposition of hands, should not only be received into assistance, but be wholly intrusted with the power of spiritual jurisdiction? Let me ask you again, Was ever such a thing heard of, either in the Primitive, or following times, that laymen should be so far admitted to the managing of spiritual jurisdiction, as to lay their hands upon their Ministers in their Ordination? Yet this is both done and challenged by too many of your good friends. Why do you object that to us, with which the Presbyterian part may be more justly choked? But herein, Brethren, you do foully over-reach, in that you charge our Bishops, as in a generality, with wholly intrusting the power of spiritual jurisdiction to their Chancellors, and Commissaries: the assistance of those which are learned in the Law, we gladly use, neither can well want in the necessary occasions of our judicature; but that we do either willfully or negligently divest ourselves absolutely of that power, and wholly put it into Lay hands, it is a mere slander.

For want of better proofs of the illegality of this course, you bring a negative authority from Cyprian, telling us, what that holy Martyr did not — that he did not send Complainants to his Chancellor or Commissary: it is very likely he did not, nor yet to the Bench of a Lay Presbytery. But if he did not commit the hearing of his Causes to a layman, we find that some others did: Socrates can tell you of Silvanus the good Bishop of Troas, [illegible], and so on — perceiving that some of his Clergy did corruptly make gain of Causes, would no more appoint any of his Clergy to be a Judge, but made choice of some faithful man of the Laity to whom he committed that audience, and was much honored for it.

What Bishop Downam yields concerning the Ordinaries, Vicars, and Chancellors of former times, (till Ambrose's days) that they were only clergymen, you reject with scorn, and challenge any man to produce the names of any clergyman that was Vicar to Ambrose, or Chancellor to Augustine, and so on. What a poor show of bravery is this? I challenge you to produce the name of any Secretary, or Actuary that Ambrose, or Augustine had: because you cannot, shall I conclude they had none such? That instance of Sylvanus, not long after Ambrose, is evidence enough: but the antiquity of Chancellors, which were the same with Ecclesiecdici, or Episcoporum ecdici, is provable enough, (if it were for this place) and their necessary use, beyond the power of your confutation; But I had rather refer my reader to Saint Thomas Ridley, and others that have labored in that argument; and appeal to all men's judgment how soundly you have (upon this ground) proved that our Bishops and the former were two.