Ans. 1.  According to this argument deacons are as necessary as either pastors, teachers, or elders, and without deacons there should be no church; for they are all enumerated here alike, Rom. xii. 7, 8, and in 1 Cor. xii. 28; but this would be absurd, and against experience. 2.  Though both pastors and ruling elders belong to the church by divine right, yet doth it not follow that the ruling elder is equally as necessary as the pastor.  The ruling elder only rules, the pastor both rules and preaches, therefore he is more necessary to the church.  There are degrees of necessity; some things are absolutely necessary to the being of a church, as matter and form, viz. visible saints, and a due profession of faith, and obedience to Christ, according to the gospel.  Thus it is possible a church may be, and yet want both deacons, elders, and pastors too, yea, and word and sacraments for a time:  some things are only respectively necessary to the well-being of a church; thus officers are necessary, yet some more than others, without which the church is lame, defective, and miserably imperfect.

Except. 4.  Should ruling elders here be meant, then deacons that obey, should be preferred before the elders that rule.[52]

Ans.  Priority of order is no infallible argument of priority of worth and dignity; as is evidenced in answer to the third exception against Arg.  II.—­there see; we find Priscilla a woman named before Aquila a man, and her husband, Acts xviii. 18; Rom. xvi. 3; 1 Tim. iv. 19; is therefore the woman preferred before the man? the wife before the husband?  And again, Aquila is set before Priscilla, Acts xviii. 2, 26, 1 Cor. xvi. 19, to let us see that the Holy Ghost indifferently speaks of superior and inferior before one another.

Except. 5.  But here the apostle speaketh of divers gifts and graces, for so differing gifts do import, not of divers offices:  for then they might not concur in one man, and consequently neither might the prophet teach, nor exhort, nor the deacon distribute, nor show mercy.  Many gifts may be common in one man, many offices cannot;—­which of these gifts in the apostles’ times was not common as well to the people as to the pastors; and to women as well as to men? &c.[53]

Ans.  Divers considerations may be propounded to discover the vanity of this exception:  chiefly take these three.

1.  There is no sufficient reason in this exception, proving the apostle here to speak only of divers gifts and graces, and not of divers offices also.  For, 1.  This is not proved by that expression, differing gifts, ver. 6, for these differing gifts are not here spoken of abstractly and absolutely, without reference to their subjects, but relatively with reference to their subjects wherein they are, viz. in the several officers, ver. 7, 8, and therefore, as the apostle mentions the differing gifts, so here