XI. That inequality of pastors is a mere human invention, a thing not found in the word of God, they prove thus:
i. “All the places of Scripture where the word Bishop is used, or any other derived of that name, signify an oversight in respect of some particular congregation only, and never in regard of pastors committed unto his oversight. For which cause the names of bishops, and presbyters, or pastoral elders, are used indifferently, to signify one and the selfsame thing. Which so indifferent and common use of these words for one and the selfsame office, so constantly and perpetually in all places1, declareth that the word Bishop in the Apostles’ writing importeth not a pastor of higher power and authority over other pastors.”
ii. “All pastors are called to their office by the same means of proceeding; the Scripture maketh no difference in the manner of their trial, election, ordination: which proveth their office and power to be by Scripture all one.”
iii. “The Apostles were all of equal power, and all pastors do alike succeed the Apostles in their ministry and power, the commission and authority whereby they succeed being in Scripture but one and the same that was committed to the Apostles, without any difference of committing to one pastor more, or to another less2.”
iv. “The power of the censures and keys of the Church, and of ordaining and ordering ministers (in which two points especially this superiority is challenged), is not committed to any one pastor of the Church more than to another; but the same is committed as a thing to be carried equally in the guidance of the Church. Whereby it appeareth, that Scripture maketh all pastors, not only in the ministry of the word and sacraments, but also in all ecclesiastical jurisdiction and authority, equal.”
v. “The council of Nice3 doth attribute this difference, not unto any ordination of God, but to an ancient custom used in former times, which judgment is also followed afterwards by other councils: Concil. Antioch. cap. 94.”
vi. Upon these premises, their summary collection and conclusion is, “That the ministry of the Gospel, and the functions thereof, ought to be from heaven and of God (John i. 23); that if they be of God, and from heaven, then are they set down in the word of God5; that if they be not in the word of God, (as by the premises it doth appear, they say, that our kind of bishops are not,) it followeth, they are invented by the brain of men, and are of the earth, and that consequently they can do no good in the Church of Christ, but harm.”
Our answer hereunto is, first, that their proofs are unavailable to shew that Scripture affordeth no evidence for the inequality of pastors: Secondly, that albeit the Scripture did no way insinuate the same to be God’s ordinance, and the Apostles to have brought it in, albeit the Church were acknowledged by all men to have been the first beginner thereof a long time after the Apostles were gone; yet is not the authority of bishops hereby disannulled, it is not hereby proved unfit or unprofitable for the Church.
First, that the word of God doth acknowledge no inequality of power amongst pastors of the Church, neither doth it appear by the signification of this word bishop, nor by the indifferent use thereof.
For concerning signification, first it is clearly untrue, that no other thing is thereby signified, but only an oversight in respect of a particular church and congregation. For, I beseech you, of what parish or particular congregation was Matthias bishop? his office Scripture doth term episcopal6: which being no other than was common unto all the Apostles of Christ, forasmuch as in that number there is not any to whom the oversight of many pastors did not belong by force and virtue of that office; it followeth that the very word doth sometimes even in Scripture signify an oversight, such as includeth charge over pastors themselves.
And if we look to the use of the word, being applied with reference unto some one church, as Ephesus, Philippi, and such like, albeit the guides of those churches be interchangeably in Scripture termed sometime bishops, sometime presbyters, to signify men having oversight and charge, without relation at all unto other than the Christian laity alone; yet this doth not hinder, but that Scripture may in some place have other names, whereby certain of those presbyters or bishops are noted to have the oversight and charge of pastors, as out of all peradventure they had whom St. John doth entitle angels7.