SERMONS. 335 



their bishops, or, as St. Jerome * hath it more dis- 

 tinctly, Ad aliarum Urbiiim, et Proviiiciarum Epis- 

 copos, (some of them being written to inferior 

 cities and bishops, others to mother-cities, and 

 their metropolitans, and so to whole provinces,) 

 amongst the rest sent two into Crete, the one 

 of the former sort to Piniitus GnossiiE urbis Epis- 

 copus, as St. Jerome, or as Eusebius,f to the 

 Gnossians, and Pinytus, bishop of that diocese 

 only : the other, of the latter sort, and in a dif- 

 ferent style, J to the Church about (or belonging 

 to) Gortyna, together with the rest of the dioceses 

 in Crete, and in it acknowledgeth Philip their 

 bishop, that is, not only of that church of Gor- 

 tyna, but of all those dioceses, ('E-snVxouroi/ auVcov, not 

 a-jTri?,) whom therefore St. Jerome significantly 

 qualifies Episcopum Cretensem, hoc est urbis Gor- 

 tynce, Bishop of Gortyna, et eo nomine of all Crete 

 too. Enough to make evidence, that Gortyna 

 was the metropolis of Crete, even in the Christian 

 account, very early, and long before the Council 

 of Nice, (whatever hath been pretended to the 

 contrary,) and probably in the epoch of the text 

 itself; since even then it was certainly such in 

 the civil style, most confessedly the ground of 

 the Christian establishment (for sure it was not 

 chance, or lottery, that produced a perpetual 



§ In Catalogo Script. Eccles. 



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