Ans.  This follows not.  Priority of order is not always an argument of priority of worth, dignity, or authority.  Scripture doth not always observe exactness of order, to put that first which is of most excellency:  sometimes the pastor is put before the teacher, as Ephes. iv. 11, sometimes the teacher before the pastor, as Rom. xii. 7, 8.  Peter is first named of all the apostles, both in Matt. x. 2, and in Acts i. 13, but we shall hardly grant the Papist’s arguing thence to be solid—­Peter is first named, therefore he is the chief and head of all the apostles; no more can we account this any good consequence—­helps are set before governments, therefore governments are officers inferior to helps, consequently they cannot be ruling elders:  this were bad logic.

Except. 4.  But the word governments is general, and may signify either Christian magistrates, or ecclesiastical officers, as archbishops, bishops, or whatsoever other by lawful authority are appointed in the Church.[62] And some of the semi-Erastians of our times, by governments understand the Christian magistracy, holding the Christian magistracy to be an ecclesiastical administration.[63]

Ans. 1.  Governments, i.e. governors, (though in itself and singly mentioned, it be a general, yet) here being enumerated among so many specials, is special, and notes the special kind of ruling elders, as hath been proved. 2.  As for archbishops and diocesan bishops, they are notoriously known to be, as such, no officers set in the Church by God, but merely by the invention of man; therefore they have no part nor lot in this business, nor can here be meant.  And if by others, by lawful authority appointed in the Church, they mean those officers that God appoints well:  if those whom man sets there without God, as chancellors, commissioners, &c., such have as much power of government in the Church, as they are such, as archbishops and bishops, viz. just none at all by any divine warrant. 3.  Nor can the civil Christian magistrate here be implied. 1.  Partly, because this is quite beside the whole intent and scope of this chapter, treating merely upon spiritual church-matters, not at all of secular civil matters, viz:  of spiritual gifts for the Church’s profit, ver. 1 to 12; of the Church herself as one organical body, ver. 12 to 28; and of the officers which God hath set in this organical body, ver. 28, &c.  Now here to crowd in the Christian magistrate, which is a mere political governor, into the midst of these spiritual matters, and into the roll of these merely ecclesiastical officers, how absurd is it! 2.  Partly, because the magistrate, as such, is not set of God in the Church either as a church officer, or as a church member, (as hath been demonstrated formerly, chap.  IX.;) and though he become a Christian, that adds nothing to the authority of his magistracy, being the privilege only of his person, not of his office. 3.  Partly, because when this was written to the Corinthians, the apostle writes of such governments as had at that time their present actual being and existence in the Church:  and neither then, nor divers hundreds of years after, were there any magistrates Christian, as hath been evidenced, chap.  IX.[64]