Warrantableness of the Preaching of Unordained Persons, Religious tract · Response to chapter 1
CHAP. I.
1. THey Question, What is meant by the Ministry? And here (to passe by impertinencies) because a Minister is called so from ministration, they infer, That gifted men, whose ordinary work or calling is to Preach, may properly be called Ministers of the Gospel; pag. 3. For my part I shall never blot paper with contending about words: Our Question is not about Names, but Things; And if the word Minister may be applied to twenty persons, we are not concerned in it; for the Question is not, Whether a Gifted brother, whose work or calling is to preach, may be called a Minister? (for even he who never preaches, if he any other way minister to the Gospel, may be called a Minister of the Gospel, according to their own arguments) but Whether such a Gifted brother may preach? and Whether the title Minister, in its special and distinct acception may be applied to him? And in both these we hold the Negative.
2. Their second Question is not much more important, viz. Whether the Office of the Ministry be a relation to the Work of the Ministry, or to the Church? And here they tax the Assembly, for saying that the Office of the Ministry is better defined by relation to the Work, than to a particular people. Where I desire it may be observed, that the Assembly did not say, The Office of the Ministry is better defined by relation to the Work, than to the Church in generall, but than to a particular Church: It was not the design of the Assembly to deny the Ministry to be a relation to the Church, nor yet was it their businesse accurately to insist upon the notions of relate and correlate; they never called the Work of the Ministry, the correlate, but only obiter and foreign, they asserted the Office of the Ministry to be better defined by relation to the Work, than to a particular Church, which our Brethren have not here disproved; but only endeavoured to prove that the Office of the Ministry rather consisteth in relation to the Church in general, than to the Work; so that all their labour, as to that particular, might have been spared. To which may be added, that we must distinguish between the abstract Ministry, and the concrete a Minister.
And although the Minister in the concrete have the Church for his Correlatum, yet that the Ministry in the abstract should have relation to the Work, is no more absurd, then that the Office of a King should have relation to ruling, which, I think, no sober man will deny; and especially when such a thing is brought in occasionally by a person not minding, nor obliged to minde the foreign of words; it were a vanity in any man to batter down such an expression by a quaternion of Arguments, which our Brethren have attempted to do.
To which may be added, that that rule upon which their first Argument hangs, viz. Relata sunt simul, & do mutuo se ponere & tollere, is true only of Predicamentall, but not of Transcendentall relations, such as this is; whose being is not wholly respective,Suarez Metap. as the Masters of the Metaphysicks inform us.
And the same answer also may serve for the second Argument (which indeed is but the same) viz. That relations must be together, but the Office is a means to the Work as an end, and so the Office must needs be first, and therefore they are not relatives. To which I answer, 1. As before, The rule holds not of Transcendentall relations. 2. A potentiall being is sufficient in relations: My knowledge of a Rose to be in the spring is related to that Rose even in winter; and yet the Rose doth not actually, but only potentially exist in winter.
The other two Arguments are trivial, and therefore I shall dilate no further about them, because this is a Logical and no Theological Controversie.