(5) None of these can be publicly done but by assembling.
(6.) No assembly can suffice for these without a minister of Christ; because it is only his office to be the ordinary teacher, and to go before the people in prayer and praise, and to administer the Lord's supper, which without a minister may not be celebrated, because Christ's part cannot be otherwise performed, than by some one in his name, and by his warrant to deliver his sealed covenant to the receivers, and to invest them visibly in the benefits of it, and receive them that offer themselves in covenant to him.
(7.) It is also a ministerial duty to instruct the people personally, and to watch over them at other times, Acts xx. 20, 28. And to be examples of the flock, 1 Pet. v. 1-3. To have the rule over the people, and labour among them, and admonish them, 1 Thess. v. 12; Heb. xiii. 7, 17; 1 Tim. v. 17. To exercise holy discipline among them, Titus iii. 10; Matt. xviii. 17, 18; 1 Cor. v. To visit the sick and pray over them, James v. 14. Yea, to take care of the poor. See Dr. Hammond on 1 Cor. xii. 28. And all this cannot possibly be well done by uncertain, transient ministers, but only by a resident, stated pastor, no more than transient strangers can rule all our families, or all the christian kingdoms of the world.
(8.) And as this cannot be done but by stated pastors, so neither on transient persons ordinarily; for who can teach them that are here to-day and gone to-morrow? When the pastor should proceed from day to day in adding one instruction to another, the hearers will be gone, and new ones in their place. And how can vigilancy and discipline be exercised on such transient persons, whose faults and cases will be unknown? Or how can they mutually help each other? And seeing most in the world have fixed habitations, if they have not also fixed church relations, they must leave their habitations and wander, or else have no church communion at all.
(9.) And as this necessity of fixed pastors and flocks is confessed, so that such de facto were ordinarily settled by the apostles, is before proved, if any Scriptures may pass for proof.
The institution and settlement then of particular worshipping churches is out of doubt. And so that two forms of church government are jure divino, the universal church form, and the particular.
4. Besides this, in the apostles' days there were under Christ in the church universal, many general officers that had the care of gathering and overseeing churches up and down, and were fixed by stated relation unto none. Such were the apostles, evangelists, and many of their helpers in their days. And most christian churches think that though the apostolical extraordinary gifts, privileges, and offices cease, yet government being an ordinary part of their work, the same form of government which Christ and the Holy Ghost did settle in the first age, were settled for all following ages, though not with the same extraordinary gifts and adjuncts. Because, |Reasons for a larger episcopacy.|1. We read of the settling of that form, (viz. general officers as well as particular,) but we never read of any abolition, discharge, or cessation of the institution. 2. Because if we affirm a cessation without proof, we seem to accuse God of mutability, as settling one form of government for one age only, and no longer. 3. And we leave room for audacious wits accordingly to question other gospel institutions, as pastors, sacraments, &c. and to say that they were but for one age. 4. It was general officers that Christ promised to be with to the end of the world, Matt. xxviii. 20.
Now either this will hold true or not. If not, then this general ministry is to be numbered with the human additions to be next treated of. If it do, then here is another part of the form of government proved to be of divine institution. I say not, another church, (for I find nothing called a church in the New Testament, but the universal church and the particular,) but another part of the government of both churches, universal and particular; because such general officers are so in the universal, as to have a general oversight of the particular; as an army is headed only by the general himself, and a regiment by the colonel, and a troop by the captain: but the general officers of the army (the lieutenants-general, the majors-general, &c.) are under the lord-general in and over the army, and have a general oversight of the particular bodies (regiments and troops). Now if this be the instituted form of Christ's church government, that he himself rule absolutely as general, and that he hath some general officers under him, (not any one having a charge of the whole, but in the whole unfixedly, or as they voluntarily part their provinces,) and that each particular church have its own proper pastor, (one or more,) then who can say, that no form of church government is of divine appointment or command?
Object. But the question is only whether any sole form be of God's commanding? And whether another may not have as much said for it as this?
Answ. Either you mean another instead of this, as a competitor, or, another part conjunct with these parts.