Except. 5.  Teachers are here expressed, but pastors omitted; and therefore well might governors be mentioned instead of pastors.[65]

Answ. 1.  Then, according to his judgment, pastors were a distinct kind of officers from teachers; otherwise the naming of teachers would have sufficiently implied pastors, without the addition of the word governors, one act or function of the office being put for the whole office.  But prelates did not love to hear of such a distinction.  However, it is the judgment of many others no less learned or pious than they, that in the same congregation where there are several ministers, he that excels in exposition of scriptures, teaching sound doctrine, and convincing gainsayers, may be designed hereunto, and called a teacher or doctor:  he that excels in application, and designed thereunto, may be called a pastor; but where there is only one minister in one particular congregation, he is to perform, as far as he is able, the whole work of the ministry. 2.  If pastors are to be understood by this term governors, as contradistinct from teachers, formerly enumerated in the text; doth not this seem to devolve the matter of government so wholly upon the pastor, as that the teacher hath nothing to do with it? and hereby both pastor and teacher are wronged at once:  the teacher, while power of governing is denied him, which belongs to him as well as to the pastor; the teacher being a minister of the word, hath power of administration of the sacraments and discipline, as well as the pastor:  the pastor, while he consequently is deprived of the necessary and comfortable assistance of the teacher in point of government.  Therefore the pastor cannot here be intended by governors. 3.  Bilson himself was not very confident of this gloss, and therefore he immediately adds, “If this content you not, I then deny they are all ecclesiastical functions that are there specified,” &c.  What then doth he make them? viz. he makes divers of them, and governments among the rest, to be but several gifts, whereof one and the same officer might be capable.  And a little after he ingenuously confesses he cannot tell what these governors were, saying, “I could easily presume, I cannot easily prove what they were.  The manner and order of those wonderful gifts of’ God’s Spirit, after so many hundreds may be conjectured, cannot be demonstrated—­governors they were, or rather governments, (for so the apostle speaketh,) i.e. gifts of wisdom, discretion, and judgment, to direct and govern the whole church, and every particular member thereof, in the manifold dangers and distresses which those days did not want.  Governors also they might be called, that were appointed in every congregation to hear and appease the private strifes and quarrels that grew betwixt man and man, lest the Christians, to the shame of themselves, and slander of the gospel, should pursue each other for things of this life before the magistrates, who then