SERMONS. 337 



pronounce him an extraordinary officer ; who, for 

 aught appears, is impowered to none, but acts of 

 ordinary, and continual importance to the church : 

 and more reverence for the blessed Apostle, than 

 to think he would issue a commission, full fraught 

 with rules of perpetual use, to a temporary dele- 

 gate, who was perhaps next day to be exauc- 

 torated, and never to have any exercise of them. 

 Consider him yet further invested with a pleni- 

 tude and sufficiency of power (not only to preach, 

 and baptise, and so to beget sons to God and the 

 church, which is the Presbyter's, and, for aught 

 I know, the whole of the Evangelist's office ; but 

 also) both to ordain Elders in all the cities under 

 him, and so to beget spiritual fathers too, as Epi- 

 phanius * distinguisheth ; and then, (as in the old 

 paternal dominion, they ruled whom they had 

 begotten,) to govern and regulate whom he had 

 thus ordained, even all the bishops of those nu- 

 merous cities. Whence the question of our reve- 

 rend and learned f Jewel most naturally pro- 

 ceedeth, ' Having the government of so many 

 Bishops, what may we call him but an Arch- 

 bishop V (And I add) of so many cities, what but 

 a Metropolitan ? I say, consider all this soberly 

 and maturely, and you will not disavow me if I 

 say, that whosoever shall drive us out of this 

 Crete, thus strongly garrisoned by St. Paul and 

 his Disciples, and slight and dismantle so many 



* Contra Haeres. lib. 3. contr. Aerium. 

 t Apud Rev. Usserium. 

 VOL. II. Z 



