Plea for Scripture Ordination, Title page – Preface
A PLEA FOR Scripture Ordination: OR, TEN ARGUMENTS FROM Scripture and Antiquity PROVING Ordination by Presbyters without Bishops to be valid. By I. O. Minister of the Gospel.
To which is prefixt an Epistle by the Reverend Mr. Daniel Williams.
Episcopi noverint se magis consuetudine quàm dispositionis Dominicae veritate, Presbyteris esse majores. Hieron. in Ep. ad. Tit.
1 Cor. 4. 1. foreign.
London: Printed for I. Salusbury at the Rising Sun in Cornhil over-against the Royal Exchange. 1694.
THE PREFACE.
THE Cause which these Papers Vindicate is not that of a Party, as some unthinking People may imagine, but of the Reformation in General, which has been propagated and supported, in its most flourishing Branches, by the Ministry here pleaded for. The Ancient Vaudois, or Waldenses, those eminent and faithful Witnesses against Antichristian Usurpations, have had no other for near 500 years past*Perrin's Hist. p. 53, 62.. The first guides of the People from Mystical Egypt, Hist. of the Vaudois, c. 3were Presbyters Ordained by Presbyters. These are they that gathered the first Fruits unto God; under the Conduct of these the persecuted WOMAN FLED th…ough a Sea of Blood into the Wilderness: by their Ministry she hath been fed and nourished, these make the first Figure among the Witnesses that prophecy in Sackcloth; they have gone in mourning from one Generation to another. When others have assumed Beauty for Ashes, the Oyl of Ioy for mourning, the Garment of Praise for the Spirit of heaviness; these have been fed with the Bread of Tears, have been filled with bitterness, and made drunk with Wormwood. They have been Men of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief. They have been sore broken in the place of Dragons, and covered with the Shadow of Death, yet have they not forgotten the Name of their God, or stretched out their hand to a strange God.
It's by the Ministry of these that the Truth prevailed, the Eyes of Nations were opened, and vast Multitudes reduced to the Obedience of the Gospel. They seal'd their Ministry with their Blood, and Heaven sealed it with the most glorious success.
*Contra Waldens. cap. 4.Rainerius, one of their Tormentors, complains of them, that they had spread through all Countries, and crept into every Corner.
Walsingham, our Country-man, tells us how the Lolards (as they were here called) had fill'd our Land,Walsing. Hist. p. 339. and had their Ministers Ordain'd by Presbyters without Bishops: that they justified these Ordinations, and asserted an inherent Power in Presbyters to put forth all Ecclesiastical Acts without distinction.
We may rationally presume that their practice was uniform in other Countries; and had we exact Records of their Church Administrations, we should find innumerable Instances of Ordination by Presbyters among them: but the account they give of themselves is so very imperfect, that had not their Enemies transmitted to Posterity a Narrative of their Actions and Sufferings (though very partially) we should have known little of them.
We have no reason to think that those blessed Worthies did either alter their Judgments, or supersede their Practice concerning Ordination by Presbyters; and therefore I take it for granted, that the same Ministry continued among them until the begining of the Reformation.
Here in England several of the Bishops were eminently instrumental in promoting the Reformation, which gave them a deserved esteem in the thoughts of all good men, especially of the poor Lolards, to whom that great Change was a Resurrection from the dead.
By this means the Bishops continued their stations in the Church, and were entrusted with the principal management of Ordination, which their Popish Predecessors had ingrossed into their hands long before.
But though Matters were thus settled, they were far from Claiming to themselves a superiour Power over Presbyters, or stamping a Ius Divinum upon their Office. They acknowledged the identity of Bishops and Presbyters, that Ordination by Presbyters was valid, and that Episcopacy was a bare Constitution of the Civil Magistrate *Dr. Stillingfl. Iren. p. 393., for the better governing of the Church. All this will be fully proved in the following Discourse.
Thus it was in England, but in the forreign Churches it was quite otherwise; there the Bishops were implacable Enemies to the Reformation, which gave the Presbyters an Opportunity of re-assuming their inherent Power of Ordination, and of laying aside the pretended superiour Order of Bishops, as those who had appropriated to themselves the just Rights of Presbyters, and divested them of the inseparable Priviledges of their Order: and had been so far from answering the first design of their Constitution, of being a Remedy against Schism †Hier. in Ep. ad Tit., that partly by their Arbitrary Impositions, and partly by their boundless Ambition, they had miserably torn and divided the Christian Church for several Ages before, and contributed to the establishment of the usurping Bishop of Rome. For these and other Reasons, they rejected Bishops from having any part in their Church-Government. This they committed to the Presbyters, as their ancient Right*Communī Concitio Presbyterorum gubernabatur Ecclesia. Hieron. ubi supra, & ad Evagr..
If a Popish Bishop happened to be Converted to the Protestant Religion, he was not capable of Exercising his Ministry among them, no not as a Presbyter, until he submitted to a new Ordination‖See La Rocque's Conform. of D…scipline. cap. 1. art. 3..
This Establishment enraged the Roman Prelates, and drew forth their strongest Efforts to assert their tottering Hierarchy, and to overthrow the Reformed Ordinations.
Therefore the principal and leading Antagonists we have to do with, in the present Controversie, are the Papists, especially the Iesuits, who with one Mouth condemn Ordinations by Presbyters.
With us it's a very small thing that we should be judg'd of Man's day, we acquiesce in that Judgment which will dispense Rewards and Punishments, not according to the disputable Modes of Mens entrance into the Office, but as they have faithfully, or otherwise, discharged the Duties of the Sacred Ministry.
Happy they, whose Record is on high, whose Witness is in Heaven, whose Testimony is in their own Bosoms, and in the Consciences of those that hear them.
I leave the following Discourse to recommend it self unto thee; Read with observation, weigh every thing in an even Ballance, and let the Impressions of Truth form an Impartial Judgment.
I. O.