Order of the Discourse.

TO manage the present controversy with the more clearness, I have divided my discourse into five parts or chapters.

THE first, explaining the words chirotonia and chirothesia, paraphrastically relates the story of the perambulation made by the apostles Paul and Barnabas thro the citys of Lycaonia, Pisidia, &c. by way of introduction.

THE second shews those citys, or most of them, at the time of this perambulation, to have bin under popular government. In which is contain’d the whole administration of a Roman province.

THE third shews the deduction of the chirotonia from popular government, and of the original right of ordination from the chirotonia. In which is contain’d the institution of the sanhedrim or senat of Israel by Moses, and of that at Rome by Romulus.

THE fourth shews the deduction of the chirothesia from monarchical or aristocratical government, and the second way of ordination from the chirothesia. In which is contain’d the commonwealth of the Jews as it stood after the captivity.

THE fifth debates whether the chirotonia, us’d in the citys mention’d, was (as is pretended by Dr. Hammond, Dr. Seaman, and the authors they follow) the same with the chirothesia, or a far different thing. In which are contain’d the divers kinds of church-government introduc’d and exercis’d in the age of the apostles.

I am entring into a discourse to run much, for the words, upon a language not vulgar, which therfore I shall use no otherwise than by way of parenthesis, not obstructing the sense; and for the things, upon customs that are foren, which therfore I shall interpret as well as I can. Now so to make my way into the parts of this discourse, that (wheras they who have hitherto manag’d it in English, might in regard of their readers have near as well written it in Greec) I may not be above the vulgar capacity, I shall open both the names wherof, and the things wherupon we are about to dispute, by way of introduction.