Series 5 > Religious Controversy in Scotland 1625-1639

BAILLIE, ‘DISCOURSE ANENT EPISCOPACY’
177
the Magnesians], ch. 9, calls presbyters ‘the assembly of the apostles’,118 and
Chrysostom, Homily 17 in Matthew, calls all presbyters‘Christ’s vicars’.119 Jerome,
Epistle 14, To Heliodoms:120 ‘Far be it from me to censure the successors of the
apostles, who with holy words consecrate the body of Christ, and who make us
Christians. Having the keys of the kingdom of heaven, they judge men to some
extent before the day of judgment.... I may not sit in the presence of a presbyter;
he, if I sin, may deliver me to Satan,“for the destruction of the flesh that the spirit
may be saved”.’
The fourt reason. In the Old Testament it was God’s ordinance that among
the officers of the church there should be one high priest to have the
preheminence and power of jurisdiction over all the inferiour priests and these
also to be over the Levites.Therefore in the New Testament it must be according
to the same wisedome of God that bishops have the preheminence over presby¬
ters and these over deacons, for bishops are now in place of the high priest,
ministers in place of priests, and deacons of Levites, according to Jerome, Epistle
146,To Emngelus:‘ln fact as if ...’.Answer. It is marvellous that our [34v] brethren
should still continue to speake the language of Ashdod121—all this, as the rest, is
word-by-word from Bellarmine.There is no force in the reason, as Bilson him¬
self confesses,122 nulla necessaria consequentia est'2i from the policie of the Jewish
church to the policie of the Christian; yea, he brings sindrie good reasons why
Aaron should have had place above other priests, and they above Levites, which
he graunts hes no ground under the New Testament. We may take no part of the
policie of the Old Testament for which we have no warrand in the New itselfe.
As for this part in hand if it wer admitted, it would overturne and destroy the
whole ministrie of the gospel, if it be pressed as our partie does. It would take the
deacons from their first institution, hinder them from serving the tables and the
poore, take them within the temple, make them wait at the altar to serve the
priest, lyke a Levite at the offering of the sacrifice. So now is the guyse at Rome
and among our bishops also—the presbyters shall be taken from his labour in
the Word and doctrine that within the vaile he may be a sacrificing priest to offer
up outward, proper, reall, unbloodie sacrifices after the order of Melchisedeck.
118 Apostolic Fathers, ed. Roberts, 177; The Apostolic Fathers, ed.J.B. Lightfoot, 3 vols. in 5 (London,
1885-90),ii/1,p. 119:‘tupon sunedriou ton apostolon’.
119 I have not located this reference.
120 Both MSS give Jerome’s Episde to Evagrius (Evangelus), but this is incorrect, and I have inserted
the proper reference in the text.Jerome, Letters and Select Works, 16. See Bilson, Perpetual Govemement,
111-12.
121 A Philistine city temporarily subjugated by Uzziah, king ofjudah.
122 Perhaps an allusion to Bilson, Perpetual Govemement, 25.
123 ‘it is no necessary consequence’, i.e. it does not follow of necessity.