were to be brought to the door of the Tabernacle of the Congregation and there to bee washt then the Priests Garments the Coat the Ephod the Brest-plate and Mitre were to be put upon them Lastly followed the anointing oyle which was powred upon their heads And this was the Consecration of the Priests of those times The Ceremonies of Consecration in the New Testament were different I confesse from those of the Old but yet equivalent and answerable to them in their kinde These were a publike meeting of the Church together a presentation there made of the person to bee made a Priest solemne prayers and supplications put up to God to make him usefull to his Church and for a seale of all the rest the Imposition of the Bishops hands assisted by his Presbyters Now my Brethren apply this to the strange Priests of our times who with unwasht feet thrust themselves into the Tabernacle not a sacrifice not so much as a handfull of meale or grain of Incense or drop of oyl spent towards their Consecration No solemne assembly no presentation of themselves made to God no imposition of hands not so much as a short Prayer or benediction or God speed you used towards their setting forth into the Lords Vineyard and you will find that these are the theeves and robbers pardon the hardness of the language I cannot make the Scripture speake mildlier then it doth which our Saviour Christ speaks of in the 1â— Chapter of S. John at the first Verse Men who enter not in by the doore into the sheep-fold but climbe up some other way In briefe men whose Sermons and Doctrines correspond to their consecrations By stealth they enter into the Ministery and by stealth they exercise it And whereas the mark and Character of all the true Ministers of the Gospel is to stand having their feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace these men wander and goe about having their feet shod with the preparation of the Gospel of strife Men who never think themselves sufficiently Apostles till all the world doe call them the sons of thunder too Men who speake fire and throw lightning among the people and thinke they have then onely done the worke and businesse of an Apostle when they have cast the Congregation which they leave behind them into a cumbustion and flame I shall trouble your patience but with one Objection which may possibly be made against what I have hitherto said that is this Here some one of these moderne selfe-inspiring Teachers may say Sir you tell us of Ceremonies and Consecrations and I know not what Imposition of hands but either you have forgot your selfe or wisely dissembled the vocation of the Apostles Were not they without your formality of laying on of hands without all this adoe of conveying orders and the holy Ghost by fingers immediately called by Christ What imposition of hands went to change S. Peter from a Fisher-man into an Apostle or what Bishops Ceremonies past to make S. Paul in whose person you have all this while preacht against us of a persecutor of the Church to become a Doctor of the Gentiles Doth not your own Tertullian say Nonne Laici Sacerdotes sumus That any Lay-man if he please may be a Priest To this I reply first As for the Apostles 't is true indeed we doe not read that they were consecrated to their Ministerie by such Rites and Imposition of hands as were afterwards received and practised in the Church Yet something answerable to the Imposition of hands went to their Consecration before they were invested with full Authority to preach the Gospell to the world For besides their first vocation by Christ to be his Disciples from whom they learnt that Gospell which they afterwards preacht what saies the Scripture Tarry yee at Jerusalem sayes Christ to them after his Resurrection till I send the promise of my Father upon you and yee be indued with power from above And pray what was that promise and what was this power Certainly that which you read of in the second Chapter of the Acts where at the time prefixt by Christ the Holy Ghost descended on them And how did hee descend in a still soft secret invisible perswasion of the Fancy Or in the silent whisper of an unperceived Illumination No such matter Quod Episcopus aliis Spiritus sanctus Apostolis saies a learned man The holy Ghost here supplyed the Office of a Bishop descended upon them in an audible rushing wind which signified his election of them to the eare And sate upon their heads in the shape of cloven Tongues of fire which signified his election of them to the eye Hi ritus haec impositio These were his Ceremonies this his Imposition of hands sayes that Author So that all the difference betweene the Admission of the Apostles to the Ministery and others was onely this In other Consecrations the Bishop onely granted the power to preach but bestowed not the Guifts Here the Holy Ghost bestowed both He first by visible outward signes testified to the world whom hee had chosen and to whom they were to hearken And then furnisht them with Tongues and Languages and knowledge and parts fit to be the Guides and great Instructers of the world Let these men make it appeare to me that the Holy Ghost hath thus descended upon them thus furnisht them with parts and I will most willingly resign my place to them in the Pulpit Next as for S. Paul 't is cleare by the story of his Conversion that he received not his Commission to preach from that which Christ spoke to him immediately from Heaven But what saies the place After he was fallen to the Earth blinde Arise saies Christ to him and goe into the City and there it shall be told thee what thou must doe When hee came into the City a certaine Disciple named Ananias pre-instructed by Christ in a vision was sent to him who putting his hands on him saies the Text said to him Brother Saul the Lord even Jesus that appeared to thee in the way hath sent me that thou mightst receive thy sight and be filled with the Holy Ghost Till his Imposition of hands the holy Ghost was not bestowed upon him And when he was bestowed upon him yet he had not his full Commission he was but yet a Disciple consecrated by a Disciple To make him an out-right Apostle a higher second and more solemne consecration past upon him which you may read in the 13. Chapter of the Acts where sayes the Holy Ghost to the Prophets and Teachers of the Church of Antioch Separate me Barnabas and Saul for the worke whereunto I have called them Ver. 2. And how were they separated I pray The third Verse tells you When the Prophets and Teachers there mentioned had fasted and prayed and laid their hands on them saies the Text they sent them away till then they wanted power To which passage
you from whence have sprung our present distractions Or who are they who keep the wounds of our divided Kingdome bleeding Are they not certaine tempestuous uncharitable active men who make it their work and businesse to rob men of the greatest temporal blessing of the Scripture and to preach every man out of the shade of his owne Vine and out of the fruit of his owne Fig-tree and out of the water of his owne Cisterne Are they not men who will stone you for your Vineyard and then urge Scripture for it And will take away your field your possession your daily bread from you and then repay you with a piece of Esay or Ezekiel or one of the Prophets anc call this melting and reformation Are they not men who doe onely professe to have the art not to heale or close or reconcile but to inflame and kindle sides Men who blow a Trumpet in the Pulpit and there breath nothing but thunder and ruine and desolation and destruction Whose followers call themselves Brethren indeed and boast much of their charity But they call only such as are of their owne confederacy Brethren and make no other use of the word which was at first imposed by Christ to bee the stile and marke of agreement and peace then to bee the word and mark to know a faction by and make no other use of their charity which should extend it selfe to all men even to their very enemies but onely to keep themselves together in a separation and conspiracy Lastly these are the men who when they should strive to quench the present flame with their teares do conjure as earnestly by the name of Christ to discord and confusion as S. Paul here in this Text doth to order and agreement Men who call it prophecy and edification and building up of the people when they breake and divide them into Sects and Factions As zealously exhorting them to speake divers things as S. Paul here exhorts them to speake all the same Which is the next thing to be considered and the first step towards the reconciliation and peace here petitioned for which is unity and agreement in compellations and names in these words Now I beseech you Brethren that yee all speak the same thing Whether the dispersion of men after the building of the Tower of Babell over the face of the whole earth were a panishment or a blessing to mankinde I shall not in this Auditory examine or dispute Only thus much we learne from the History of that place that the occasion of that dispersion and separation of men from one another sprung first from the confusion which God threw among them and that confusion sprung from their diversity of speech For as speech was at first bestowed upon us by God that wee might hold league and society and friendship with one another so you may read in the 11. Chapter of Genesis that as long as all the world was of one language and of one speech they lived unanimously together like men of one family and house One heart one soule seemed to move in them all But when they once ceast to be unius labii homines men of the same lip and speech when as many languages were throwne among them as they afterwards possest Countries then society and co-habitation and brotherhood ceast among them too They were scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth saies the Scripture They who were before children of the same common Ancestours and derived themselves from the same common parentage and stock as if they had been borne in the adverse Hemispheres of the world or had taken their beginning from as many severall Parents as they afterwards found Islands of one great Family and Kindred became so many divided Nations As this diversity of Tongues at first broke the world into the severall crumbles and portions of men who from that time to this have divided it among them so there is not any one thing which hath so fatally divided Kingdomes and States and Churches against themselves somtimes to an utter extirpation many times to an eternall breach and Irreconciliation as diversity of Language I doe not meane when men speake divers tongues of severall dialects and significations as when they at the building of Babell spoke some of them Hebrew perhaps some of them Greek but my meaning is that nothing more directly tends to the division of a State or Church then for severall companies of men to distinguish and divide and separate themselves from one another by certaine words and names of marke and difference especially if they be words of disgrace and scandall and reproach mutually imposed and stuck upon each other Or words of faction and combination assumed and taken by themselves Then if hatred of person or difference of Religion doe accompany such words of distinction that for the most part befalls them which befell the men of the old world they breake society and Communion and crumble asunder and of one people become so many divided Nations and Churches to each other This is an Engine which the Devill and wicked Polititians have in all ages of the world made use of to disturb the peace and trouble the happinesse of Kingdomes and Common-wealths Making holy vertuous words and names many times the partition wall of separation And the device and incitement not onely to divide Kingdomes but Corporations and private Families against themselves As long as the Jewes called themselves by one and the same common name of their Father Jacob Israelites they made but one State one Common-wealth among them But when once ten Tribes ingrossed that name to themselves and the other two for distinction sake called themselves by the name of the Tribe of Judah the most united happiest neerliest allied people in the world a people of one blood as well as one language fell asunder and divided themselves like Jacob and Esau into two hostile irreconcileable never more to bee united Kingdomes And this was the case of these disagreeing Corinthians to whom S. Paul directed this Text As long as they called themselves by one and the same common name of Christians they made but one City one Church one place of Concord But when they once began to distinguish themselves by their severall Teachers when some said We are of Paul others we are of Cephas As third sort we are of Apollos And onely a fourth sort more Orthodox then the rest we are of Christ Then then indeed as if Christ had been devided or had beene the Author of severall Religions preacht among them by severall Apostles they became broken and rent and torne asunder into severall Churches and Congregations Where their usuall custome was not onely to oppose Sermon against Sermon and Gospell against Gospell and Teacher against Teacher but everie one in the defence of their owne Teacher and his Gospell thought it part of their Religion to extoll and quote and urge the purity and infallibility of the one to the
A SERMON CONCERNING Unity Agreement PREACHED AT CARFAX CHURCH in OXFORD August 9. 1646. By IASPER MAINE D. D. and one of the Students of Christ-Church OXON. ROM. 12. 18. Jf it be possible as much as lieth in you live peaceably with all men Printed in the Yeere MDCXLVII A SERMON CONCERNING UNITY and AGREEMENT 1 COR. 1. 10. Now I beseech you Brethren by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ that yee all speake the same thing and that there be no Divisions among you but that ye be perfectly joyned together in the same mind and in the same judgement THough Truth from what mouth soever it bee spoken or in what shape or dresse soever it appeare be but one and the same and where it is rightly understood carries this uniting peacefull quality with it that it makes all its followers of one consent and mind too yet I know not from what mist or impotence lodged in our nature with whom errors and mistakes do for the most part prevaile more then Arguments or Demonstrations and with whom our owne mis-conceipts conveyed into us from such whom we think too holy to deceive us or too learned to deceive themselves do for the most part sticke so deeply and take such root and impression in us that it is not in the power of truth it selfe to remove them This one uniting peacefull Bond of minds this Ray of our Soules according to the severall Teachers of it and according to the severall formes and shapes into which they have cast it hath alwaies been looked on as so many severall Truths And to the discredit and disadvantage of it hath in all Ages been as severally entertained and followed Thus among the Heathen Plilosophers we finde the number of Sects to be much greater then the number of Sciences Every new famous Teacher who professed severlty in his looks and austerity in his manners had the power to draw a cloud of Disciples after him and to erect a new Truth with a new School And thus in the very Church of God it selfe the Gospell no sooner began to be preached to the world but it began to have its Sects and Schismes and sidings too The Apostles taught but one Faith one Baptisme one Christ one plaine open way of salvation to men yet they were mis-understood by some as if they had preached many Or as if the numbers of their severall Doctrines had equalled the number of their severall persons and they had every one where he went scattered a severall Gospell To speake yet more plainely to you and neerer home to the History of this Text The Corinthians to whom this Epistle was written as if from every new Teacher that came thither they had learned a new Religion began at length to have as many Religions among them as they had heard Teachers You might have distinguished divers Churches in the same City and have divided their Beleefs and Creeds by their Families and streets Where by a fallacy and deceit of the eare judging of the things taught by their affection to the Teacher and not judging of the Teacher by the things which he taught every one chose to himselfe the name of his Minister to make a Side and faction by One as you read at the 12. Verse of this Chapter said I am of Paul another I am of Apollos a third I am of Cephas a fourth I am of Christ As if Christ had either been divided or else were to stand with the rest as the name of a distinct Religion Or at least as if the Gospell which at first sprung from him like streams broken off from their spring-head were no longer to retaine the name of the Fountain from whence it rose but were to weare the stile of the severall pipes and channells by which it was conveyed abroad into the world This diversity of names and sides grew at first from their diversity of opinions and minds When the unlearned wresting the Scripture which they had heard preached to an Apostles sense would presume to impose that sense which was indeed not an Apostles on others And those others equally as unlearned thought it as reasonable so they could entitle it to another Apostle to impose their interpretation of Scripture on the first This diversity of minds proceeded at length to diversity of language and speech Congregation spoke censoriously of Congregation as if none had been in the right but they onely who most vehemently could charge others with being in the wrong Saint Paul was urged and quoted against Saint Peter and Apollos against both and Christ against all three Whose Sermons like those changeable figures which melancholly men frame to themselves in the clouds were made to weare the shape and form which every mans zeale and fancy suggested to him Hence in time from difference and disagreement in mindes and speech they grew to difference and disagreement in society and conversation too Difference of opinion bred separation of companies and that which was at first but a neighbourly dispute by degrees tooke flame and grew to be mortall hatred division and schisme Men of the next doore were no longer neighbours to one another All the bonds of Charity became utterly broken All Christian entercourse and familiarity and commerce ceast between them He was thought to be false and to betray his side who offered to shew himselfe affable or civill to one of another party In short the breach became so wide that he was thought to be the onely religious man who could most enlarge the rent and could bring most fuell to the present combustion which was thus unhappily kindled among them To compose these differences therefore differences not unlike those of our miserable distracted times and to make the Knot and Reconciliation as fast and strong as the disagreement and rent was large and wide S. Paul here in this Text prescribes a severall Cure for every particular and severall breach First to remove the discord which rose among them by calling themselves by severall names and to banish the ill consequences of all such factious compellations which for the most part are bitter Invectives and sharp arrowes of detraction hurld at one another he perswades them to unity of language and speech and exhorts them to call themselves all by the same name in these words Now I beseech you Brethren that ye al speak the same thing Next to remove their want of meetings and Communion together in the same place of Gods Worship he perswades them to unity of Assemblies and Congregation in these words Now I beseech you Brethren that there be no divisions That is as I shall in the progress of this Sermon make it clear to you from the Original that there be no separations that is as our English word doth wel express it that there be no private sequestred meetings no such things as Conventicles among you Thirdly to remove the root and spring of all these uncharitable strifes and divisions and separations he
perswades them to unity of opinions and minds in these words Now I beseech you Brethren that you be perfectly joyned together in the same mind and in the same judgement Lastly that he might with the greater successe do this and like a skilfull reconciler might win upon all sides he for a while layes aside the Authority of his Apostleship and mingling Request and Conjuration with Exhortation and Advice he acts the part of an Apostle in the forme of a Petitioner in these words Now I beseech you Brethren by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ c. Upon these parts the Apostles mild insinuation and addresse of himselfe and the severall Degrees of unity and concord in speech in Assemblies and in Opinions to which he here exhorts the Corinthians I will build my future discourse In the ordering of which I will begin with the Apostles submissive insinuation or addresse of himselfe in these words Now I beseech you Brethren by the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ For the clearer and more usefull handling of this part of the Text First it will be necessary that I speake somthing to you of Saint Pauls person the Preacher here in the Text and of his calling to the Ministery which well considered will conduce very much to the removall of a certaine dangerous error received of late into the minds of too many unlearned vulgar men among us Which is That Universities and Bookes and Studies and Learning are so farre from being necessary preparations to make a Preacher of the Gospell that any Lay-man though perhaps brought up to a manuall Trade of a vocation of Husbandry or attendance upon Cattel if he finde by himselfe that he is called by the Spirit of God may put himselfe into Orders and take the Ministery upon him And thus enabled from above without the forme of Ordination or those other slow tedious lazy helps of sitting twenty years in a Colledge to understand the Bible may in the few minutes of a powerfull Inspiration spring up an Apostle and go forth a Preacher of the Word of God To this perswasion they have been invited by two sorts of Examples in the Scripture one in the Old Testament the other in the New In the Old Testament Doe you not read say they that God called Elisha from the Plough to be a Prophet And doth not Amos tell you in the 7. Chapter of his Prophesie at the 14. Verse that he was a Herdman and a gatherer of Sycamore fruit Then for examples in the New Testament pray what were the Apostles were they great Schollars or did Christ send to Athens for them were they not Fishermen men altogether unletter'd men called from mending nets to preach the Gospell If this were so That God according to his good pleasure without any consideration of study or height of parts chose simple unlearned unstudied men to be Prophets and Apostles and Teachers then why should any thinke he hath so confined or entailed his free Spirit or vocation of men upon great parts and studies that he may not if he please call the like unstudied simple men from the Plough or Fisher-boat or Stall or Shop-board to be Ministers of his Gospel and Teachers of his people now My Brethren you see I have not prevaricated or diminished ought of the strength of the Argument which is urged in favour of Lay-mens preaching In answer to which laying aside all partiality to my selfe and prejudice against them I shall with the same spirit of meekness and Candour with which Saint Paul here in this Text bespoke his Corinthians beseech you who heare me this day to observe and weigh and consider well this which I shall say for a Reply First Far far be it from me so to flatter the place of my Education or so to biass my beleef by any false ovevarluing of humane Industry or great parts that I should pinion as it were or put limits to the power of the Almighty Or should be so irreligiously bold as to gain-say that piece of his Gospell which compares his holy Spirit to the Wind which bloweth where it listeth If they who thus pretend to a private Inspiration doe meane that whatever God did in the times heretofore he is able to doe now I shall easily grant it And here in the presence of you all confesse my selfe to be of their opinion Nor shall I make any doubt or scruple at all to say that if we looke upon what God is able to doe by the fame power by which he was able to raise up Children to Abraham out of stones or to speake yet more neerly to the Argument in hand by the same power that hee was able to make a Herd-man a Prophet or a Fisher-man an Apostle he is able in our times also if he please to make the meanest Tradesman one of the greatest Luminaries of his Church Since to an Omnipotent Agent whose gifts are meerly Arbitrary and depend wholly upon the pleasure of his owne will the greatest endowments of men and the least are alike easie But though he be able to doe this and in the ancient times of the Scripture have imparted his Gifts without respect of Persons yet whether he now will or whether in our times hee doth still thus extraordinarily raise up Teachers to himselfe is extreamly to be doubted For here with all the Christian gentleness and reason which may possibly conduce to the clearing of this doubt were I to argue this Controversie with one of those men who invade our function and from gathering of Sycamore fruit step up into the Pulpit I would onely aske him this question What Commission he hath thus to usurp upon our Office Or who signed him his patent Since the Apostle tells us in the fifth Chapter of the Epistle to the Hebrewes at the fourth Verse A place well worth your marking my Brethren That no man taketh this honour of a Priest to himselfe But he who is called of God as was Aaron I know his common answer will bee that God hath called him to this Office by the secret Instinct and Motion of his Holy Spirit But then he must not take it ill if I yet farther aske him by what signes or markes or testimonies or tokens he can either maâ—e it reasonably appeare to himselfe or others that God hath dealt with him as he dealt with some of the Prophets or Apostles called him from his Trade by such a motion of his Spirit Elisha we know made Iron swim and knew mens Closet-discourses in a farre Countrey which was a sure and certaine signe that God had called him to be a Prophet The Apostles also we know wrought many of Christs miracles which was a most infallible signe that God had chosen them to be Apostles If any of these men who derive their warrant from the same sacred spring can make Iron swim or like Elisha remaining here in their owne Israel can tell us what the King of Syria saies in his
Bed-chamber Or if like Saint Peter they can cure fevers and diseases by their bare shadowes passing over them Or if like the rest of the Apostles having never before knowne Letters they can of a sudden speake all Languages the Controversie is at an end It would bee a very great sinne against the Spirit of God to deny that hee is in them of a Truth But if all the proofe and signe they can give us that they have him be onely a strong perswasion of themselves Nay if by an infallible Illumination they could assure themselves that they have him yet as many as have not the like infallible Illumination to assure them so too will not be guilty of an unpardonable offence if they suspect they have him not For here I must once more repeat my former Question and aske by what effects or signes of the Spirit men shall know them to be called By what will some man say why Doe you not heare them preach expound Scripture unfold Prophecies interpret Parables nay plucke the veile and cloud from the Booke of Mysteries it selfe the very Revelation Can any of you great Schollers with all your study of Philosophers Fathers Councells Schoole-men Historians Oratours Poets either hold your Congregations longer or send them away more edified And will you yet ask Questions Or doubt of the certainty of their vocation I must not dissemble with you if I could meet with an unlearned Handicraft-man who without study can doe this to the same height and measure of Truth as those unjustly-cryed downe learned and well-studied men doe I should begin to alter my opinion And should reckon him as hee deserves in the number of the inspired But alas my Brethren as I am not come hither to disparage the guifts of the Holy Ghost in what person soever I finde them or to perswade that Scripture rightly expounded is not one and the same from the mouth of a Priest or an inspired Lay-man so this I must freely say to you That as many of those strange Teachers as I have heard have expounded Scripture indeed and have ventured upon some of the hardest places of the Prophets But then if all my studies of the Bible assisted with all those holy uncorrupted learned helps which might enable mee to understand it aright have not deceived me their expositions and Sermons how passionately delivered or how long soever are evident proofes to mee that they have not the Spirit If they had they would never certainely expound Scripture so directly contrary to his meaning Or make the writings of the Prophets or Apostles weare only that present shape not which the holy Ghost hath imprinted and stampt upon them but which tends to the division of a Kingdom and the confusion of a Church Nor would they as they do what ever the Text be presse that sense from it not which is genuine and naturall but which tends most to the destruction of a party or the fomentation of a most unnaturall Civill Warre Saint Paul tells us in the fift Chapter of the Epistle to the Galatians at the 22 and 23. Verses that the fruits or effects of the Spirit are love peace long-suffering gentlenesse meeknesse temperance He useth to speake to men in the voice and figure of a Dove But to entitle him to all those forbidden workes of the flesh of variance hatred sedition heresies envyings murthers and the like there reckoned up in the precedent Verses of that Chapter is to make him speake with the voice of a Raven In short my Brethren the Holy Ghost is not the Author of such Doctrines as breake Gods Commandements in the Pulpit Nor is it a long Prayer or a zealous two-houres reviling of the foot-steps of the Lords Anointed their lawfull Soveraigne which can make their Sermons to be any other then so much Libell or holy Detractation Or which can make their Intrepretations of the Word of God how moderate soever in other cases if they be not agreeable to the scope and minde and intention of the Holy Ghost to be any more then so many zealous mistakes and so many illegitimate births and creatures of their own deluded fancies Next in pursuit of this seasonable Argument give me leave I pray with all the plainenesse I can for I well know where I am and to what Auditorie I speake to make it yet farther evident to you that if I should grant what these {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} as S. Basil calls them these Saints of a daies growth challenge to themselves who thinke that all that is required to make a Minister of the Gospell is {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} {non-Roman} onely to be willing and to start up a Preacher If I say it should be granted them that they have the inward calling of the Spirit yet God is so much the God of order that unlesse they will enter themselves into his service by undergoing those Rites of Consecration and Imposition of Hands which God hath prescribed in his Church to stand for ever as the outward formes and signes of their vocation too every act of the Ministerie which they performe is but a sacrifice like theirs who offered strange fire before the Lord and miserably perisht by their owne forbidden Censors Or if you will have me expresse the danger of it by a judgement as terrible Thus to put their hand to the Arke thus to support it if 't were ready to fall is such an unwarranted piece of officiousnesse as will certainely unrepented at some time or other draw the punishment of Vzzrah upon them provoke the abused Almighty to breake forth in a flame of fire upon them and consume them for their unnecessarie diligence For here all the Scripture examples which imbolden them to this worke do returne upon them as so many instances and proofes of their incroachment on our office For here let me once more ask them How was Elisha called to be a Prophet meerly by the secret unknown whisper and instinct of the holy Ghost Truly if he had yet this would not make much for them because God never tyed himself precisely to those outward formes in the choice of a Prophet which he then did and still doth in the choice of his Priests Yet the calling of this Prophet was not without its visible signe Goe saies God to Elias in the 19. Chap. of the first booke of Kings at the 16. Verse Anoint Elisha the Son of Shaphat to be Prophet in thy roome And whether the like Ceremony of powring oyle on his head were not also performed by some elder Prophet upon Amos as the younger as 't is not affirmed so 't is not denyed in Scripture but left probable In the Consecration of the Priests of those times the case is much more evident Read at your leisure the 29. Chapter of Exodus there you shall finde that before God would receive them into that sacred function first divers Sacrifices were to bee offered for them then they