had we been taken, as they were, in the starkness of our ignorance; that yet, after all these spiritual preparatives and purgations, have our earthly apprehensions so clammed and furred with the old leaven? O if we freeze at noon after their early thaw, let us fear lest the sun for ever hide himself, and turn his orient steps from our ingrateful horizon, justly condemned to be eternally benighted. Which dreadful judgment, O thou the ever-begotten Light and perfect Image of the Father! intercede, may never come upon us, as we trust thou hast; for thou hast opened our difficult and sad times, and given us an unexpected breathing after our long oppressions: thou hast done justice upon those that tyrannized over us, while some men wavered and admired a vain shadow of wisdom in a tongue nothing slow to utter guile, though thou hast taught us to admire only that which is good, and to count that only praiseworthy, which is grounded upon thy divine precepts. Thou hast discovered the plots, and frustrated the hopes, of all the wicked in the land, and put to shame the persecutors of thy church: thou hast made our false prophets to be found a lie in the sight of all the people, and chased them with sudden confusion and amazement before the redoubled brightness of thy descending cloud, that now covers thy tabernacle. Who is there that cannot trace thee now in thy beamy walk through the midst of thy sanctuary, amidst those golden candlesticks, which have long suffered a dimness amongst us through the violence of those that had seized them, and were more taken with the mention of their gold than of their starry light; teaching the doctrine of Balaam, to cast a stumbling-block before thy servants, commanding them to eat things sacrificed to idols, and forcing them to fornication? Come therefore, O thou that hast the seven stars in thy right hand, appoint thy chosen priests according to their orders and courses of old, to minister before thee, and duly to press and pour out the consecrated oil into thy holy and ever-burning lamps. Thou hast sent out the spirit of prayer upon thy servants over all the land to this effect, and stirred up their vows as the sound of many waters about thy throne. Every one can say, that now certainly thou hast visited this land, and hast not forgotten the utmost corners of the earth, in a time when men had thought that thou wast gone up from us to the furthest end of the hea In vens, and hadst left to do marvellously among the sons of these last ages. O perfect and accomplish thy glorious acts! for men may leave their works unfinished, but thou art a God, thy nature is perfection: shouldst thou bring us thus far onward from Egypt to destroy us in this wilderness, though we deserve, yet thy great name would suffer in the rejoicing of thine enemies, and the deluded hope of all thy servants. When thou hast settled peace in the church, and righteous judgment in the kingdom, then shall all thy saints address their voices of joy and triumph to thee, standing on the shore of that Red Sea into which our enemies had almost driven us. And he that now for haste snatches up a plain ungarnished present as a thank-offering to thee, which could not be deferred in regard of thy so many late deliverances wrought for us one upon another, may then perhaps take up a harp, and sing thee an elaborate song to generations. that day it shall no more be said as in scorn, this or that was never held so till this present age, when men have better learnt that the times and seasons pass along under thy feet to go and come at thy bidding: and as thou didst dignify our fathers' days with many revelations above all the foregoing ages, since thou tookest the flesh; so thou canst vouchsafe to us (though unworthy) as large a portion of thy Spirit as thou pleasest: for who shall prejudice thy all-governing will? seeing the power of thy grace is not passed away with the primitive times, as fond and faithless men imagine, but thy kingdom is now at hand, and thou standing at the door. Come forth out of thy royal chambers, O Prince of all the kings of the earth! put on the visible robes of thy imperial majesty, take up that unlimited sceptre which thy Almighty Father hath bequeathed thee; for now the voice of thy bride calls thee, and all creatures sigh to be renewed. SECTION V. REMONST. Neglect not the gift which was given thee by prophecy, and by laying on the hands of presbytery. Answ. The English translation expresses the article, (the,) and renders it the presbytery, which you do injury to omit. Remonst. Which I wonder ye can so press, when Calvir himself takes it of the office, and not of the men. Answ. You think then you are fairly quit of this proof, because Calvin interprets it for you, as if we could be put off with Calvin's name, unless we be convinced with Calvin's reason! The word peoẞurépiov is a collective noun, signifying a certain number of men in one order, as the word privy-council with us; and so Beza interprets, that knew Calvin's mind doubtless, with whom he lived. If any amongst us should say the privy-council ordained it, and thereby constrain us to understand one man's authority, should we not laugh at him? And therefore when you have used all your cramping-irons to the text, and done your utmost to cram a presbytery into the skin of one person, it will be but a piece of frugal nonsense. But if your meaning be with a violent hyperbaton to transpose the text, as if the words lay thus in order, "neglect not the gift of presbytery," this were a construction like a harquebuss shot over a file of words twelve deep, without authority to bid them stoop; or to make the word gift, like the river Mole in Surrey, to run under the bottom of a long line, and so start up to govern. the word presbytery, as in immediate syntaxis: a device ridiculous enough to make good that old wife's tale of a certain queen of England that sunk at Charing-cross, and rose up at Queenhithe. No marvel though the prelates be a troublesome generation, and, which way soever they turn them, put all things into a foul discomposure, when, to maintain their domineering, they seek thus to rout and dis1 array the wise and well-couched order of St. Paul's own words, using either a certain textual riot to chop off the hands of the word presbytery, or else a like kind of simony to clap the word gift between them. Besides, if the verse must be read according to this transposition, μὴ ἀμέλει τῶ ἐν σοὶ χαρίσματος το πρεσβυτερία, it would be improper to call ordination χάρισμα, whenas it is rather only χείριασμα, an outward testimony of approbation; unless they will make it a sacrament, as the papists do: but surely the prelates would have St. Paul's words ramp one over another, as they use to climb into their livings and bishoprics. > > Remonst. Neither need we give any other satisfaction to the point than from St. Paul himself, 2 Timothy i. 6: "Stir up the gift of God which is in thee by the imposition of my hands;" mine, and not others. : Answ. Ye are too quick this last place is to be understood by the former; as the law of method, which bears chief sway in the art of teaching, requires that clearest and plainest expressions be set foremost, to the end they may enlighten any following obscurity; and wherefore we should not attribute a right method to the teachableness of scripture, there can be no reason given to which method, if we shall now go contrary, besides the breaking of a logical rule, which the Remonstrant hitherto we see hath made little account of, we shall also put a manifest violence and impropriety upon a known word against his common signification, in binding a collective to a singular person. But if we shall, as logic (or indeed reason) instructs us, expound the latter place by the former cited, and understand "by the imposition of my hands," that is, of mine chiefly as an apostle, with the joint authority and assistance of the presbytery, there is nothing more ordinary or kindly in speech than such a phrase as expresses only the chief in any action, and understands the rest. So that the imposition of St. Paul's hands, without more expression in this place, cannot exclude the joint act of the presbytery affirmed by the former text. Remonst. In the mean while see, brethren, how you have with Simon fished all night, and caught nothing. Answ. If we fishing with Simon the apostle can catch nothing, see what you can catch with Simon Magus; for all his hooks and fishing implements he bequeathed among you. SECTION XIII. REMONST. We do again profess, that if our bishops challenge any other power than was delegated to and required of Timothy and Titus, we shall yield them usurpers. Answ. Ye cannot compare an ordinary bishop with Timothy, who was an extraordinary man, foretold and promised to the church by many prophecies, and his name joined as collateral with St. Paul, in most of his apostolic epistles, even where he writes to the bishops of other churches, as those in Philippi. Nor can you prove out of the scripture that Timothy was bishop of any particular place; for that wherein it is said in the third verse of the first epistle, "As I be sought thee to abide still at Ephesus," will be such a gloss to prove the constitution of a bishop by, as would not only be not so good as a Bourdeaux gloss, but scarce be received to varnish a vizard of Modona. All that can be gathered out of holy writ concerning Timothy is, that he was either ar apostle, or an apostle's extraordinary vicegerent, not confined to the charge of any place. The like may be said of Titus, (as those words import in the 5th verse,) that he was for that cause left in Crete, that he might supply or proceed to set in order that which St. Paul in apostolic manner had begun, for which he had his particular commission, as those words sound," As I had appointed thee." So that what he did in Crete, cannot so much be thought the exercise of an ordinary function, as the direction of an inspired mouth. No less may be gathered from 2 Cor. viii. 23. Remonst. You descend to the angels of the seven Asian churches; your shift is, that the word angel is here taken collectively, not individually. Answ. That the word is collective, appears plainly, Rev. ii. First, Because the text itself expounds it so; for having spoken all the while as to the angel, the seventh verse concludes, that this was spoken to the churches. Now if the spirit conclude collectively, and kept the same tenor all the way, for we see not where he particularizes, then, certainly, he must begin collectively, else the construction can be neither grammatical nor logical. Secondly, If the word angel be individual, then are the faults attributed to him individual: but they are such as for which God threatens to remove the candlestick out of its pace, which is as much as to take away from that church the light of his truth; and we cannot think he will do so for one bishop's fault. Therefore, those faults must be understood collective, and by consequence the subject of them collective. Thirdly, An individual cannot branch itself into subindividuals; but this word angel doth in the tenth verse. "Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer; behold the devil shall cast some of you into prison.' And the like from other places of this and the following chapter may be ob served. Therefore it is no individual word, but a collective. Fourthly, In the 24th verse this word Angel is made capable of a pronoun plural, which could not be, unless it were 4 |