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Your whole booke is for the moste parte buylded vpon that false founded argu∣ment,* 1.1 that is called Petitio principij. For this will not be graunted vnto you, which you haue so oftentimes repeated, and wherevpon all your arguments are grounded, that to appoynt Archbyshops or Archdeacons, is to appoynt a new ministery. It is (as I tolde you before) but to kéepe an order in the ministery and in the Churche, and to execute that office of gouernment which the Apostles themselues did. When Hierome sayde, That for the auoyding of Schismes the ministers appoynted one among themselues to gouerne the rest. Did he meane that they instituted a new ministerie? A man may sée by this, how vnable you are to defend your cause, seing you are enforced to frame principles vnto your selfe, agaynst the which you may reason, that the igno∣rant reader may thinke your quarell to be iuste. But nowe to your argument. The Maior is not true, for men may adde ministeries to those that be, and breake not the will and commaundement of God, bicause they may be helpes and furtheraunces to those ministeries that God hath appoynted: But he can not take away such ministeries as God hath placed in his Churche, to be perpetuall, without breache of his will and commaun∣dement. Moreouer, besides those ministeries that God hath appoynted in his woorde as necessary at all times, there may be some added that be cōuenient for some times, and yet the Churche that hath authoritie to adde these, hath not the lyke authoritie to take awaye the other: So that your Maior lacketh proofe. Your Minor also is ambigu∣ous: for man can not take away those ministeries that God hath appoynted to be perpetuall in the Churche, but he may take away those that be but temporall, as occasion ser∣ueth.
If your foūdation be no sounder than this that you haue hitherto layde, surely your buylding cannot long stande, and M. Doctors authorities may well ynough encoun∣ter with all your reasons.