But this plausible and fair-set argument of theirs, if it prove any
thing, will prove more than it is supposed they themselves will grant,
and consequently proves nothing at all. For the same gross absurdity
may, with equal reason, be inferred from a maintaining, that a due
measure and performance of scripture qualifications and duties are
essential to any other of God's ordinances, and so that these are the
ordinance itself. For instance, they might as well reason (as some have
justly observed already), that scriptural qualifications are not
essential to a lawful gospel minister, for then it would be the same
thing with the ministry, itself; nor can it be a condition, without
which one is not really a minister, unless he were so faultlessly. And
thus they have at once stripped, not only all of the race of _Adam_,
that ever exercised that office, but themselves also, of any real
mission, as ministers, unless they have assumed the Pope's
infallibility, and are advanced to the _Moravian_ perfection. So,
although the scripture declares it essential to the true church, that
she hold the head, yet by their childish reasoning, this would infer a
conclusion big with absurdities, even that this qualification of a true
church, is the church itself.
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