SERMOXS. 333 



variable are these proportions, according to the 

 fate of cities, and the daily change of the civil 

 partition ; who would look now for the throne of 

 a primate in Caer-Leon upon Uske? or rake in 

 the ruins of Carthage for St. Cyprians mitre? 

 He that should undertake a pilgrimage to Crete, 

 to visit Titus's metropolis, would in vain inquire 

 for the once famous Gortyna, and not find so 

 much of its dust together, as would suffice to 

 write its name in. That renowned Septenary of 

 Asia, of old not only episcopal, * but metropoliti- 

 cal churches, where are they? Cities may fail, 

 and bishops' sees with them : Stars have their 

 vicissitudes ; may rise, and set again : Candle- 

 sticks are moveable utensils, and may be carried 

 from room to room ; but KoctccttoXiv is the standing 

 rule, and fails not ; a city and a bishop, generally 

 adequate to one another. For as on the one side, 

 an universal bishop, with the whole world for his 

 jurisdiction, is a proud pretence, and too vast for 

 humanity to grasp ; so on the other side, rural 

 bishops too is a poor and a mean design, and not 

 only retrieves the Italian Episcopelli, so scorned 

 at Trent, but worse. As he divided the stream 

 into so many rills, that it lost its name and being; 

 so these, by a too minute division, would cantonize 

 the dignity, and degrade it into nothing at the 

 last ; as the Roitelets, and petty kings of Ivedot, 

 do but diminish majesty, and take it down into 



■* See the learned Primate's excellent Discourses of the Ori^nal 

 of Mctrop. and the Proconsular Asia. 



