every one of them severally bishop of Smyrna. Hence it is that we read sometimes of two bishops in one place; and had all the presbyters there been of like worth, we might perhaps have read of twenty.

Tertullian accosts us next, for Polycrates hath had his answer, whose testimony, state but the question right, is of no more force to deduce episcopacy than the two former. He says that the church of Smyrna had Polycarpus placed there by John, and the church of Rome, Clement ordained by Peter; and so the rest of the churches did show what bishops they had received by the appointment of the apostles. None of this will be contradicted; for we have it out of the scripture that bishops or presbyters, which were the same, were left by the apostles in every church, and they might perhaps give some special charge to Clement, or Polycarpus, or Linus, and put some special trust in them for the experience they had of their faith and constancy. It remains yet to be evinced out of this and the like places, which will never be, that the word bishop is otherwise taken, than in the language of St Paul and the Acts, for an order above presbyters. We grant them bishops, we grant them worthy men, we grant them placed in several churches by the apostles, we grant that Irenæus and Tertullian affirm this; but that they were placed in a superior order above the presbytery, show from all these words why we should grant. It is not enough to say the apostle left this man bishop in Rome, and that other in Ephesus, but to show when they altered their own decree set down by St Paul, and made all the presbyters underlings to one bishop.

But suppose Tertullian had made an imparity where none was originally. Should he move us, that goes about to prove an imparity between God the Father,

6

and God the Son, as these words import in his book against Praxeas? The Father is the whole substance, but the Son a derivation, and portion of the whole, as he himself professes, because the Father is greater than me.' Believe him now for a faithful relater of tradition, whom you see such an unfaithful expounder of the scripture. Besides, in his time all allowable tradition was now lost. For this same author, whom you bring to testify the ordination of Clement to the bishopric of Rome by Peter, testifies also, in the beginning of his treatise concerning Chastity, that the bishop of Rome did then use to send forth his edicts by the name of pontifex maximus, and episcopus episcoporum, chief priest, and bishop of bishops. For shame then do not urge that authority to keep up a bishop, that will necessarily engage you to set up a pope.

As little can your advantage be from Hegesippus, an historian of the same time, not extant, but cited by Eusebius. His words, are, that in every city all things so stood in his time as the law, and the prophets, and our Lord did preach.' If they stood so, then stood not bishops above presbyters; for what our Lord and his disciples taught, God be thanked, we have no need to go learn of him; and you may as well hope to persuade us out of the same author, that James, the brother of our Lord, was a Nazarite, and that to him only it was lawful to enter into the holy of holies; that his food was not upon any thing that had life, fish or flesh; that he used no woollen garments, but only linen, and so as he trifles on. If, therefore, the tradition of the church were now grown so ridiculous and disconsenting from the doctrine of the apostles, even in those points which were of least moment to men's particular ends, how well may we be assured it was much more degenerated in point of episcopacy

and precedency, things which could afford such plausi ble pretences, such commodious traverses for ambition and avarice to lurk behind.

As for those Britain bishops which you cite, take heed what you do; for our Britain bishops, less ancient than these, were remarkable for nothing more than their poverty, as Sulpitius Severus and Beda can remember you of examples good store.

Lastly, for the fabulous Metaphrastes is not worth an answer, that authority of Clemens Alexandrinus is not to be found in all his works; and wherever it be extant, it is in controversy whether it be Clement's or no; or if it were, it says only that St John in some places constituted bishops. Questionless he did; but where does Clemens say he set them above presbyters? No man will gainsay the constitution of bishops; but the raising them to a superior and distinct order above presbyters, seeing the gospel makes them one and the same thing, a thousand such allegations as these will not give prelatical episcopacy one chapel of ease above a parish church. And thus much for this cloud I cannot say rather than petty fog of witnesses, with which episcopal men would cast a mist before us, to deduce their exalted episcopacy from apostolic times.

Now, although, as all men well know, it be the wonted shift of error and fond opinion, when they find themselves outlawed by the Bible and forsaken of sound reason, to betake them with all speed to their old startinghole of tradition and that wild and overgrown covert of antiquity, thinking to farm there at large room and fine good stabling, yet thus much their own deified antiquity betrays them, to inform us that tradition hath had very seldom or never the gift of persuasion; as that which church histories report of those east and western paschalists, formerly spok

en of, will declare. Who would have thought that Polycarpus on the one side could have erred in what he saw St John do, or Anicetus, bishop of Rome, on the other side, in what he or some of his friends might pretend to have seen St Peter or St Paul do; and yet neither of these could persuade either when to keep Easter? The like frivolous contention troubled the primitive English churches, while Colmanus and Wilfride, on either side deducing their opinions, the one from the undeniable example of St John and the learned bishop Anatolius and lastly the miraculous Columba, the other from St Peter and the Nicene council, could gain no ground of each other, till king Oswy, perceiving no likelihood of ending the controversy that way, was fain to decide it himself, good king, with that small knowledge wherewith those times had furnished him. So when those pious Greek emperors began, as Cedrenus relates, to put down monks and abolish images, the old idolaters finding themselves blasted and driven back by the prevailing light of the scripture, sent out their sturdy monks called the Abramites, to allege for images the ancient fathers Dionysius and this our objected Irenæus. Nay, they were so high flown in their antiquity, that they undertook to bring the apostles and Luke the evangelist, yea, Christ himself, from certain records. that were then current, to patronize their idolatry; yet for all this the worthy emperor Theophilus, even in those dark times, chose rather to nourish himself and his people with the sincere milk of the gospel, than to drink from the mixed confluence of so many corrupt and poisonous waters, as tradition would have persuaded him to, by most ancient seeming authorities. In like manner all the reformed churches abroad, unthroning episcopacy, doubtless were not ignorant of these testimonies alledged to draw it in a

line from the apostle's days; for surely the author will not think he hath brought us now any new authorities or considerations into the world, which the reformers in other places were not advised of; and yet we see the intercession of all these apostolic fathers could not prevail with them to alter their resolved decree of reducing into order their usurping and overprovendered episcopants; and God hath blessed their work this hundred years with a prosperous and steadfast and still happy success. this may serve to prove the insufficiency of these present episcopal testimonies, not only in themselves, but in the account of those ever that have been the followers of truth.

And

It will next behove us to consider the inconvenience we fall into, by using ourselves to be guided by these kind of testimonies. He that thinks it the part of a well learned man to have read diligently the ancient stories of the church, and to be no stranger in the volumes of the fathers, shall have all judicious men consenting with him; not hereby to control, and new fangle the scripture, God forbid! but to mark how corruption and apostasy crept in by degrees, and to gather up wherever we find the remaining sparks of original truth, wherewith to stop the mouths of our adversaries, and to bridle them with their own curb, who willingly pass by that which is orthodoxal in them, and studiously cull out that which is commentitious and best for their turns, not weighing the fathers in the balance of scripture, but scripture in the balance of the fathers. If we, therefore, making first the gospel our rule and oracle, shall take the good which we light on in the fathers and set it to oppose the evil which other men seek from them, in this way of skirmish we shall easily master all superstition and false doctrine; but if we turn this our discreet and