Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/21

 lowly, as the Gospel most truly is, such must the face of the ministery be. And in like manner if the forme of the Ministery be grounded in the worldly degrees of autority, honour, temporall jurisdiction, we see it with our eyes it will turne the inward power and purity of the Gospel into the outward carnality of the law; evaporating and exhaling the internall worship into empty conformities, and gay shewes. And what remains then but that wee should runne into as dangerous and deadly apostacy as our lamented neighbours the Papists, who by this very snare and pitfall of imitating the ceremonial law, fel into that irrecoverable superstition, as must needs make void the cov'nant of salvation to them that persist in this blindnesse.

 

Hat which was promis'd next, is to declare the impossibility of grounding Evangelick government in the imitation of the Jewish Priesthood: which will be done by considering both the quality of the persons, and the office it selfe. Aaron and his sonnes were the Princes of their Tribe before they were sanctified to the Priesthood: that personall eminence which they held above the other Levites, they receav'd not only from their office, but partly brought it into their office: and so from that time forward the Priests were not chosen out of the whole number of the Levites, as our Bishops, but were borne inheritors of the dignity. Therefore unlesse we shall choose our Prelats only out of the Nobility, and let them runne in a blood, there can be no possible imitation of Lording over their brethren in regard of their persons altogether unlike. As for the office wch was a representation of Christs own person more immediately in the high Priest, & of his whole priestly office in all the other; to the performanoe of wch the Levits were but as servitors & Deacons, it was necessary there should  Rh