Page:The reason of church-governement urg'd against prelaty - Milton (1641).djvu/26

 and Levites in their kinde. And Bishop Andrews himselfe to end the controversie, sends us a candid exposition of this quoted verse from the 24 page of his said book, plainly deciding that God by those legall names there of Priests and Levites means our Presbyters, and Deacons, for which either ingenuous confession, or slip of his pen we give him thanks, and withall to him that brought these treatises into one volume, who setting the contradictions of two learned men so neere together, did not foresee. What other deducements or analogies are cited out of S. Paul to prove a likenesse betweene the Ministers of the Old and New Testament, having tri'd their sinewes I judge they may passe without harme doing to our cause. We may remember then that prelaty neither hath nor can have foundation in the law, nor yet in the Gospell, which assertion as being for the plainnesse thereof a matter of eye sight, rather then of disquisition I voluntarily omitt, not forgetting to specifie this note againe, that the earnest desire which the Prelates have to build their Hierarchy upon the sandy bottome of the law, gives us to see abundantly the little assurance which they finde to reare up their high roofs by the autority of the Gospell, repulst as it were from the writings of the Apostles, and driven to take sanctuary among the Jewes. Hence that open confession of the Primat before mention'd. Episcopacy is fetcht partly from the patterne of the Old Testament, & partly from the New as an imitation of the Old, though nothing can be more rotten in Divinity then such a position as this, and is all one as to say Episcopacy is partly of divine institution, and partly of mans own carving. For who gave the autority to fetch more from the patterne of the law then what the Apostles had already fetcht, if they fetcht any thing at all, as hath beene prov'd they did not. So was Jereboams Episcopacy partly from the patterne of the law, and partly from the patterne of his owne carnality; a parti-colour'd and a parti-member'd Episcopacy, and what can this be lesse then a monstrous? Others therefore among the Prelats perhaps not so well able to brook, or rather to justifie this foule relapsing to the old law, have condiscended at last to a plaine confessing that both the names and offices of Bishops and Presbyters at first were the same, and in the Scriptures no where distinguisht. This grants the remonstrant in the fift Section of his defence, and in the Preface to his last short answer. But what need respect be had whether he grant or grant it not, when as through all antiquity, and even in the loftiest times of Prelaty we find it ted