“And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions… As for Saul, he made havoc of the church… Therefore they that were scattered abroad went everywhere preaching the Word.”
Acts 8:4
“‘Master, we saw one casting out devils in thy name; and we forbad him, because he followeth not with us.’ And Jesus said unto him, ‘Forbid him not: for he that is not against us is for us.'”
Lk. 9:49-50
“The woman then left her waterpot, and went her way into the city, and saith to the men, ‘Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?’ And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman…'”
Jn. 4:39
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Subsection
Extraordinary Acts of Church Government, Superintendents, Assessor Elders, etc.
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Order of Contents
Articles 4
Latin 3
Rutherford’s Distinctions
Quotes 7+
How Universal Consent Establishes 2
Ordinary Circumstances: Gifts do Not Infer Office
Extraordinary Circumstances: Gifts may be Call from God
Laymen Preaching
Church’s Implicit Consent: Sufficient for Officers
Church-Governors’ Implicit Consent: Sufficient for Officers
Extraordinary Circumstances: God May Supply Call & Ordination
People’s Consent: Not Necessary in Extraordinary Circumstances
Extraordinarily Called Persons may be Accountable Immediately to God
Extraordinary Practices: Not Justified in Ordinary Circumstances
Church Calling one who is Not a Pastor to be their Pastor
Question of Presbyterial Succession
Extraordinary Call in Congregationalism
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Articles
Post-Reformation Anthology
Heppe, Heinrich – ch. 27, ‘The Church’, sections 29-31 in Reformed Dogmatics ed. Bizer, trans. Thomson (d. 1879; 1950; Wipf & Stock, 2007), pp. 675-76
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1500’s
Vermigli, Peter Martyr – The Common Places… (London: Henrie Denham et al., 1583), pt. 2, 9. ‘The Sixth Precept: of Friendship’ 384
‘Of the Fact of Elijah, and that a perverse imitating of him must be avoided’ 386
‘Whether Elijah did well in Killing of the Baalites’ 388
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1600’s
Bucanus, William – Institutions of Christian Religion… (London: Snowdon, 1606), 42nd Common Place, ‘Of the Ministry’
How many sorts are there of lawfull calling?
How long must we observe the visible and ordinary calling and succession of pastors?
What is extraordinary calling?
What if any do bragge that he hath an extraordinary calling by the inward inspiration of God alone, is he therfore, presently to be heard?
What, when ordinary calling ceases, ought every Christian that has skill in the Scriptures to impugne false doct∣rine and to deliver the true, for that cause goe up into the pulpit?
Which be the testimonies or notes of extraordinary calling?
May not they that are sent extraordinarily of God, err and slide in their doctrine?
Of what sort is the calling of the preachers of the Gospel in our age?
What if the Romish bishops should free themselves and their Churches from the tyranny of the Pope, and should purge them from all idolatry and would purely preach the Word of God in their churches, thus reformed, have they need of any other calling, save that which they have already?
Are there any certain testimonies in the Scriptures that after the coming of Christ there should be extraordinary callings for the restoring of the Church?
Turretin, Francis – Question 23, ‘Of how many kinds is the call to the ministry and is an ordinary call always necessary? We distinguish’ in 18th Topic, ‘The Church’ in Institutes (P&R), vol. 3, pp. 215-23
This is excellent, and is the best systematic laying out of the issues. Turretin shows the many different kinds of extraordinary aspects that are possible. Rutherford below uses many of the same distinctions made here. The Romanists denied that extraordinary calls ever occur today, whereas the reformed affirmed such.
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Latin Articles
1600’s
Maresius, Samuel – 2. ‘Whether miracles always accompany an extraordinary calling? It is denied, contra the Papists; and along the way, of mediate and immediate calling and of the first reformers is treated.’ in A New Synopsis of Elenctic Theology… (1646-1647), vol. 1, pp. 299-301
Voet, Gisbert – Ecclesiastical Politics (Amsterdam: Waesberge, 1663), vol. 3, pt. 2, bk. 3
Tract 1, 1. Of the Internal Calling & of the Extraordinary 529
Tract 2, 13. Of Extraordinary Calling by an External Apparition, as by David George 695
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Rutherford’s 11 Distinctions
The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1, Question 5, ‘From whence had Luther, Calvin & our Blessed Reformers their Calling to the Pastoral Charge?’, p. 203-8 & 29 irregular numbering
“1st Distinction. That is, 1. Properly extraordinary which is immediately from God without any other intervening cause; so Moses, his calling, when God spake to him out of the bush to go to Pharaoh and command the letting go of his people was extraordinary, for both the matter of the calling and the persons designation to the charge was immediately from God. Luther’s calling this way was not extraordinary, because he preached no new Gospel, nor [was it] by any immediate calling from God.
2. That is extraordinary which is contrary to the Law of nature. Neither the calling of Luther nor of Huss and Wycliffe was extraordinary; for that any enlightened of God and members of the Catholic Church should teach, inform, or help their fellow-members being seduced and led by blind guides, is agreeable to the Law of nature…
3. That is extraordinary which is beside a divine positive Law. So that one should be chosen a pastor in an island where there be no elders nor pastors at all, and that the people only give a calling, is extraordinary, and so it is not inconvenient that something extraordinary was in our reformers.
4. That is extraordinary which is against the ordinary corruptions, wicked and superstitious forms of an ordinary calling: so, in this sense, Luther and our reformers’ calling was extraordinary.
2nd Distinction. A calling immediately from God and a calling from God some way extraordinary are far different. An immediate calling often requires miracles to confirm it, especially the matter being new; yet not always; John Baptist’s calling was immediate, his sacrament of Baptism [was] beside the positive order of God’s worship, yet he wrought no miracles; but an extraordinary calling may be where there is an immediate and ordinary revelation of God’s Will and requires not miracles at all.
3rd Distinction. Though ordinarily in any horologe [time-keeping device] the higher wheel should move the lower, yet it is not against ordinary art that the horologe be so made as inferior wheels may move without the motion of the superior. Though by ordinary dispensation of God’s standing Law, the Church convened in a synod should have turned about Huss, Wycliffe, Luther, to regular motions in orthodox divinity, yet it was not altogether extraordinary that these men moved the higher wheels and labored to reform them. Cyprian urged Reformation, Aurelius, Bishop of Carthage, Augustin and the African bishops did the like; the bishop of Rome [?r]epining thereat; It is somewhat extraordinary that reformation should begin at scholars and not at principal masters.
4th Distinction. A calling may be expressly and formally corrupt in respect of the particular intention of the ordainers and of the particular Church, ex intentione ordinanris & operantis [out of the intention of the ordainers and of the one working]. Thus Luther’s calling to be a monk was a corrupt calling, and eatenus, and ‘in that respect’ he could not give a calling to others. But that some calling may be implicitly and virtually good and lawful in respect of the intention of the Catholic Church and ex intentione operis & ipsius ordinationis [out of the intention of the work and the ordination itself], he was called to preach the Word of God.
5th Distinction. Luther’s oath to preach the Gospel did oblige him as a pastor, this is his calling according to the substance of his office, and is valid; but his oath to preach the Roman Faith, intended by the exacters of the oath, was eatenus, ‘insofar’ unlawful, and did not oblige him. Even a wife married to a Turk, and swearing to be a helper to her husband in promoving the worship of the Mahomet, or being a papist, is engaged in an oath to promote Romish Religion; if she bee converted to the true faith of Christ, needs not to be married de novo [anew], but remains a married wife, but is not obliged by that unjust oath to promove these false religions, though the marriage oath, according to the substance of marriage duties, ties her.
6th Distinction. A pastor may, and ought, to have a pastoral care of the catholic Church, as the hand cares for the whole body, and yet neither Luther nor Zwingli are universal pastors as were the apostles. For they had usurped no power of governing and teaching all Churches: though I profess I see no inconvenience to say that Luther was extraordinarily called by God to go to many Churches, to others than to Wittenberg where he had one particular charge; yea even through Germany and the Churches of Saxony, and Zwingli through the Helvetian and Western Churches, which yet does not make them essentially apostles, because:
1. They were not witnesses of Christ’s death and resurrection, which as a new doctrine to the world, as Apostles they [were] behoved to preach, Acts 1:22. They only revealed the old truth borne down by an universal apostacy.
2. Because they were not immediately called, nor gifted with diverse tongues. And the like I may say of Athanasius, for men in an extraordinary apostasy to go somewhat farther than to that which a particular Church calls them to, is not formally apostolic, yet lawful.
7. A calling to the ministry is either such [1.] as wants the essentials, as gifts in any messenger and the Church’s consent, or these who occupy the room of the Church, the Church consenting: such a minister is to be reputed for no minister; or 2. an entry to a calling, or a calling where diverse of the apostles’ requisites are wanting, may be a valid calling, as if one enter as Caiphas, who entered by favor and money and contrary to the Law, was High-Priest but for a year: yet was a true High-Priest and prophesied as the High-priest [Jn. 11:49-51].
8. If the Church approve by silence, or countenance the ministry of a man who opened the Church door to himself, by a silver key, having given the prelate a bud. The ordinance of God is conferred upon him, and his calling ceases not to be God’s calling because of the sins of the instruments both taking and giving.
9. Though Luther was immediately called by men, anno 1508, by the Church of Wittenberg, as may be seen, tome 9, Wettenber., p. 104 in his writings as [John] Gerard shows, and the Jesuit Becanus says, he was called and ordained a presbyter, and so had power to preach and administer the sacraments, yet that hinders not that his calling was yet from the Church whereof he was a member, that is from the Roman Church, and from God, and that [1.] his calling to cast down Babylon was not from the Church of Rome: and his gifts being extraordinary; 2. his spirit heroic and supernaturally courageous, and so extraordinary; 3. his faith in his doctrine great, that he should so be blessed with success in his ministry extraordinary, his calling in these considerations may well be called extraordinary, though not immediate or apostolic.
10. Then we may well acknowledge a middle calling betwixt an ordinary and every way immediate calling, and an extraordinary and immediate calling, for the calling of Luther was neither the one, nor the other, in proper sense, but a middle betwixt two; and yet not an immediate calling.
11. The question, if such a pastor be called lawfully, is a question of fact, not a question of law; [it is] as this [case]: if such an one be baptized and there be an invincible ignorance in a question of fact which excuses. And therefore we may hear a gifted pastor taken and supposed by the Church to have the Church’s calling, though indeed he received no calling from the Church at his entry.”
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Order of Quotes
1500’s-1600’s
Chemnitz
Vermigli, Zanchi, Perkins
Forbes
Rutherford
London Presbyterians
Apollonius
Gillespie
London Presbyterians
Rijssen
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Quotes
1500’s
Martin Chemnitz (a Lutheran)
Examination of the Council of Trent (1565-73), 9th Topic, Concerning Holy Orders, from the 23rd Session, Section 4, ch. 4, in Chemnitz’s Works, vol. 2: Examination of the Council of Trent (1978; St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 2007), in ed. Littlejohn & Roberts, Reformation Theology: a Reader of Primary Sources with Introductions (Davenant Institute, 2017), p. 501
“22. But they say: ‘Those who have not been called, ordained, and sent by the usual ecclesiastical authority are thieves and robbers.’ That will make thieves and robbers of the apostles, evangelists, pastors, teachers, presbyters and deacons of the apostolic church, who were not ordained by the chief priests, who at that time had the regular ecclesiastical power.
That is the same question which the chief priests once attacked the ministry of the Baptist (John 1:19-25) and of Christ Himself, (Matt. 21:23): ‘Who gave You this authority?'”
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1500’s-1600’s
Peter Martyr Vermigli, Jerome Zanchius, William Perkins
Samuel Rutherford, The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1, p. 204
“And thus Perkins (on Gal. 1:8), if the Gospel should arise in America where there were no ministers, ordination might be wanting. And why not (say I) election also in another case, if as Petrus Martyr says well (on Judges 4:5), a woman may be a preacher of the gospel; yea, and a Turk converted by reading the New Testament (says Zanchius, Commentary on Eph. 5), and converting others, may baptize them whom he converts, and be baptized where both ordination and election should be wanting.”
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1600’s
Patrick Forbes
A Defense of the Lawful calling of the Ministers of Reformed Churches Against the Cavillations of Romanists… (Middleburg, 1614), pp. 3-4
“…for all argument they come at last to this,’By what authority doest thou these things; and who gave thee this authority?’ where the Lord answering for Himself, then, and for us now in the like case, most plainly and at length shows that, howsoever in the ordinary course of a constitute Church, a careful regard must be had to the ordinary calling, yet when (as sometime it falls) that the ordinary husband-men become murderers, and the ordinary builders become destroyers, there God extraordinarily stirs up men whose ministry proves itself to be from Heaven and not from men, even by this, that they come in the way of righteousness: and sinners are converted by them, that, so the Lord of the vineyard may report fruit thereof, even when the ordinary husbandmen rebel, and that the stone, rejected, even of the ordinary builders, may yet be made the head of the corner: which, howsoever it be marvelous in our eyes, yet it is the Lord his doing.”
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Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642)
pp. 197-8
“Answer. In an extraordinary case a private man, yea a prophet, as Samuel has performed, by the extraordinary impulsion of the spirit, that which King Saul should do, to wit, he may kill Agag;”
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The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1
p. 8
“3rd Distinction. There is a formal ordinary power, and there is a virtual or extraordinary power.
1st Conclusion. Christ Jesus has immediately Himself, without the intervening power of the Church or men, appointed offices and officers in his house, and the office of a pastor, and elder is no less immediately from Christ (for men as Christ’s vicars and instruments can appoint no new office in the Church) than the office of the apostles, Eph. 4:11; 1 Cor. 12:28; Mt. 28:19. The offices are all given to the Church immediately, and so absolutely, and so the power of the keys, is given to the Church the same way. But the officers and key-bearers now are given mediately and conditionally, by the intervening mediation of the ruling and ministerial Church, that she shall call such and such, as have the conditions required to the office by God’s Word, 1 Tim. 3:1-3…
2nd Conclusion. I deny not but there is a power virtual, not formal in the Church of believers, to supply the want of ordination of pastors or some other acts of the keys simply necessary, hic & nunc [here and now]; this power is virtual, not formal, and extraordinary not ordinary, not official, not properly authoritative, as in a Church in an island, where the pastors are dead or taken away by pest[ilence] or otherways; the people may ordain pastors or rather do that which may supply the defect of ordination, as David without immediate revelation from Heaven to direct him, by only the Law of nature, did eat showbread;
So is the case here, so answer the casuists and the schoolmen, that a positive law may yield in case of necessity to the good of the Church; so Thomas, Molina, Suarez, Vasquez, Vigverius, Sotus, Scotus, Altisiodorensis, Durand, Gabriel; and consider what the learned Voetius says in this:
What if in an extreme case of necessity, a private man, endued with gifts and zeal should teach publicly, after the example of the faithful at Samosaten. Yea and Flavianus and Diodorus preached in Antioch, as Theodoret says; yea, says Voetius, an ordinary ministry might be imposed on a laic, or private person by the Church, though the presbytery consent not, in case of necessity. God (says Gerson) may make an immediate intermission of a calling by bishops; yea (says Anton. speaking of necessity’s law) the Pope may commit power of excommunication, quia est de jure positive, pure laico & mulieri, to one mere laic, or a woman; though we justify not this, yet it is hence concluded that God has not tied Himself to one set rule of ordinary, positive laws: a captive woman (as Socrates says) preached the Gospel to the king and queen of Iberranes, and they to the people of the land.”
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p. 165
“4. Stephen [a deacon] did no more (Acts ch. 7) in his apology than any witnesses of Christ convened before rulers may doe who are obliged to be ready always to give an answer to every one who asks them of the hope that is in them, with meekness and fear, 1 Pet. 3:15, yea though it were a woman who yet may not preach, 1 Cor. 14:34.”
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p. 185
“First, a succession in the Church is necessary ordinarily; extraordinarily, and in cases of necessity it may be wanting… Occam [a Medieval Romanist] says laymen and teachers extraordinarily raised up may succeed to heretical pastors.”
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p. 186
“2nd Conclusion. Thence may well be deduced that they are lawful pastors and need not a calling revealed, who, in cases of extraordinary necessity are only chosen by the people, and not ordained by pastors; and that pastors ordained by pastors, as such, are pastors of the same nature, as Matthias called by the Church and Paul immediately called from Heaven, had one and the same office by nature.”
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p. 195
“I answer, there is, in an extraordinary necessity, where there are no presbyters at all, as little necessity of ordination if there be presbyters in other congregations to ordain. And since you never read that any in the apostolic Church ordained pastors, but pastors only; why, but we may have recourse to a presbytery of other congregations for ordination, as well as for baptizing [in such circumstances, contra congregationalists];”
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p. 199
“Answer 1. That ordination be wanting where ministers are wanting, is extraordinary and not against, 1 Tim. 4:14; no more than that one not baptized for want of a pastor should yet believe in Christ.”
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pp. 454-455
“But a woman in no case is capable of administrating baptism or the Lord’s Supper, except she were extraordinarily and immediately inspired to be a prophetess…
2. There is no such moral necessity of the sacraments as there is of the ministry of the Word, and consequently of some use of the keys where a scandalous person may infect the Lord’s flock. For where vision ceases the people perish, but it is never said, where baptism ceases the people perish; and therefore uncalled ministers in case of necessity, without ordination or calling from a presbytery, may preach and take on them the holy ministry and exercise power of jurisdiction, because the necessity of the souls of a congregation in a remote island requires so, but I hope no necessity in any [of] the most extraordinary case requires that a midwife may baptize, or that a private man remaining a private man may celebrate the Lord’s Supper to the Church without any calling from the Church.”
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Pt. 2
p. 204
“Answer. First, we hold that by a calling or ordination he is made a pastor; by election he is restricted to be ordinarily the pastor of his flock.
Secondly, a pastor is a pastor of the catholic Church, but he is not a catholic pastor of the catholic Church, as were the apostles.
Thirdly, the Reformed Churches may send pastors to the Indians, for that which Acosta says of Jesuits, we may with better reason say it of our selves: That pastors are as soldiers, and some soldiers are to keep order and remain in a certain place; others run up and down in all places; So some are affixed to a congregation, to feed them; others may be sent to those people who have not heard of the Gospel, which sending is ordinary and lawful in respect of pastors sending and the pastors who are sent, because in pastors, even after the apostles be dead, there remains a general pastoral care for all the Churches of Christ. Thus sending is not ordinary, but extraordinary in respect of those to whom the pastors are sent; yet is it a pastoral sending [as opposed to this being absent in congregationalism in such a case].
…but a pastoral care for the Churches is not proper to apostles only, but only such a pastoral care by special direction from Christ immediately to preach to all, 2. Backed with the gift of tongues and of miracles; and this essentially differences the apostle from the ordinary pastor; but the former pastoral care to preach the Gospel to all nations, and to convert, is common both to the apostle and pastor.”
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p. 293
“‘The Samaritan woman’ (says [John] Robinson [a congregationalist]) ‘Jn. 4:28, preached, and many of the Samaritans believed because of her, v. 39, and without preaching of the Word of God, none can believe, Rom. 10:14-15. If a woman may teach without the Church, then may a man teach in the Church.’
Answer 1. A woman may teach, 2. in a non-constituted Church where there is no salvation and they worship they know not what, Jn. 4:22. 3. A woman may occasionally declare one point of the Gospel, that Mary’s Son is Christ. But hence it follows not, [that] therefore, 1. a man 2. in a constituted Church 3. may ordinarily preach the whole Gospel to the Church in public: a weak spar for so vast a roof.
2. He abuses the place, Rom. 10:14, and would hence prove that a woman or any gifted teacher is a sent preacher by whom faith ordinarily comes; for otherwise who dare deny but faith comes by reading? and just as the [Socinian] Catechism of Raccovia expones the place, Rom. 10:14, to evert the necessity of a sent ministry, so does Robinson expone the place.”
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p. 303
“But [1 Cor. 14] v. 34, he sets down a new canon about women who took on them to prophesy publicly, and he inhibits so much as ordinary prophesying, yea so much as speaking in the Church; and I deny not but Irenaeus, Eusebius, yea and Tertullian, Cyril, Chrysostom, Theophylactus, with warrant teach that always women extraordinarily inspired may prophesy, for in that God immediately exalts them above men.
But for ordinary prophesying in public, it is of moral equity, and perpetual, that the women should not teach, for Adam was first formed; this Paul brings as a moral argument against women’s preaching.”
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p. 272
“1st Distinction. There is one power of public preaching in a Church not constitute[d], and another in a Church constitute[d]; gifted persons in extraordinary cases, where a Church is not planted, may publicly preach, but the case is otherwise in a Church constituted.
…
3rd Distinction. Public preaching, as it is the ordinary mean of saving such as believe, is proper and peculiar to the Church, both subjectively, as being only in the Church, and objectively as being only exercised on the Church members per se, but upon pagans by accident.
4th Distinction. There is a call to an habitual and ordinary prophesying; here is required not only a calling by gifts, but also a collation of authority to the office, either immediately by God, or mediately by the Church, and there is a call to some particular or occasional acts of exhorting, as the martyrs and Stephen [Acts 7] are called to give confession of their faith, and a king in battle, to exhort his army, or a prince his subjects to piety, and to this latter there is no other call required but the place and profession of the exhorter, though he bee not by office a pastor.
5th Distinction. There is a formal calling of the Church, as the laying on of the hands of the elders, and a virtual and interpretative calling or tacit approbation of the Church, when learned men of eminent gifts, not in office, do write commentaries, sermons on canonic Scriptures, and tractates refuting heresies; to this the tacit approbation of the Church is required, but these have not ordinary pastoral care, nor are they the ordinary converters of souls to Christ, as the pretended prophets of [the] Separatists are.
6th Distinction. Gifted Christians may occasionally admonish, warn, rebuke and exhort one another: 1. privately; 2. without any pastoral care of souls as they are a Church, but only as they occasionally converse with them; 3. ex communi officio charitatis [out of the common office and charity], by the Law of nature, charity tying one member to help another; 4. Not authoritatively by special office; but all authority here is from the Word occasionally spoken.
The pastor is to preach, 1. publicly; 2. to the Church as the Church. 3. with a pastoral obligation to all alike, whether he converse daily with them or not. 4. not only by the tie of common charity, but by a virtue of a special office. 5. With authority both objective from the Word and official from his charge. 6. and is obliged to separate himself for this charge allanerly [singly, especially or wholly], as a watchman who must give an account in a special manner to Jesus Christ.”
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p. 411
“Hence our Fifth Conclusion: when there is an equal rupture in the body, nothing extraordinary would be attempted if ordinary ways can be had: if Saul the ordinary magistrate had at God’s commandment killed Hagag, Samuel the prophet should not have drawn his sword;
And therefore in this case [of a major and irresolvable rupture in the Church] the magistrate would first seek help from other Churches, as that learned Apollonius says. But if that cannot be conveniently had, as in a national Church it may fall out, then the magistrate, as a preserver of peace and truth, may command the sincerer part [of the ministry] to convene in a synod, and do their duty, as the good kings of the people of God did: 2 Chron. 15.
Asa gathered together a people who entered in Covenant to seek the Lord God with all their heart, and laid an obligation of punishment to death on the rest, vv. 12-13, and Jehoshaphat, 2 Chron. 23:4, he laid charge on Hilkiah the High Priest, and the priests of the second order, whom he knew to be better affected to the work, to bring out the vessels made for Baal; which proves that the king should put the sincerest to do that, which in common belongs to the whole;
In which case of the erring of the most part of the Church, the prince indirectly condemns the erring part of the synod, because it is his place to forbid and to punish with the sword, the transgressors of God’s Law. But because his power is accumulative, not privative, under that pretense he has not power to hinder the sincerer part to meet and determine according to the Word of God.”
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A Survey of the Survey of that Sum… (1658).
pp. 217-8
“Mr. Hooker [wrote]: ”An eminently gifted man in an island, where no pastors are, is no less (says Mr. Rutherford) tied in conscience in the extraordinary employment of his calling than if he were formally ordained and chosen their pastor. In some extraordinary cases a gift and Christian love ties even as much to onerousness [difficulty] in using means to save as the office itself.’ See what I add in that place,’ (Mr. Hooker says) ‘then this gifted man in an island, in using his general calling as a Christian, destroys his particular [calling] as a merchant, and turn[s] minister. 2. This is to confound the general and particular calling.’
[Rutherford’s] Answer: Not at all, for in this case, the extraordinary necessity of gaining souls, when other pastors cannot be had, and ordination and election by that means are invincibly wanting hic & nunc [hear and now], turns his Christian calling in place and room of the particular calling of a pastor; and so Mr. Rutherford said well, that in some extraordinary case like this, ‘The naked relation of jurisdiction adds nothing to [the] care and onerousness in point of labor by preaching the Gospel.'”
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p. 472
“Mr. Hooker [a congregationalist]: ‘If government by independent congregations be insufficient because it authorizes not persons to be pastors over pagans, government by synods is sick of the same disease.’
[Rutherford’s] Answer: [1.] We judge the essence of a pastor not to stand in the call and choice of those to whom they are pastors; for it makes Paul, Barnabas and the apostles to be no pastors to the gentiles and to the heathen, to whom they preach, and [it] makes the apostles as apostles to be no pastors.
[Margin Note:] Evangelists are now ceased as well as apostles.
2. Synods from Acts 15 and Acts 13 may lend men, authorized with pastoral power, to heathens to spread the Gospel; and private men as no pastors, but as private men, are intruders [though] authorized by Mr. Hooker, for they have no promise, such as pastors have by Mt. 28:19-20; Mk. 16:15-17; Jer. 1:6,17-18, to plant Churches among the heathens; nor is there a warrant to say that evangelists are ordinary officers left by Christ to plant Churches.
If Hooker have any ground from Eusebius or Scripture for evangelists now, or in Trajan’s time, he must show that they have the gift of tongues: for how could evangelists be fellow-helpers to preach the Gospel to the Churches planted by the apostles if they were not an extraordinary office only? See those divines in the margin, and my learned and dear brother, Mr. George Gillespie, Miscellaneous Questions, ch. 7. If the Church should send any to the heathen any way rip[…] for the Gospel, these could be no other than ordinary pastors to them.
[Margin Note:] Tilen, Syntagma, dis. 19, th. 38, Apostolorum vice, ubi res poscebat, fungebantur. Professors of Leided, in Synopsis of Pure Theology, dis. […], thesis 17, p. 605; Bucan, in loc., Com. 42, q. 45; Calvin, Commentary on Eph. 4, Apostolis proximi erant Evangelistae, & munus affine habebant. Bullinger, ibid., In plebe potissimum e […]udienda; Zanchi, Com. ibid. Apostolorum Comites—non immediate mi […]—sed assumebantur. Dr. Robert Boyd from Trocherig, Commentary on Eph. 4, p. 493, Apostolorum Comites modo huc, modo illuc missi, modo re vocati ab Apostolis, extraordinarii.”
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London Presbyterian Ministers
The Divine Right of Church Government (1645; 1654), pt. 1
ch. 4, ‘Of a Divine Right by obligatory Scripture Examples’
“2. Some [acts of persons in the Bible] were heroical, done by singular instinct and instigation of the Spirit of God, as diverse acts may be presumed to be (though we read not the instinct clearly recorded), as, Elias’s calling for fire from heaven, 2 Kings i. 10, which the very apostles might not imitate, not having his spirit, Luke ix. 54, 55; Phinehas’s killing the adulterer and adulteress, Numb. xxv. 7, 8; Samson’s avenging himself upon his enemies by his own death, Judges xvi. 30, of which, says Bernard, if it be defended not to have been his sin, it is undoubtedly to be believed he had private counsel, viz. from God, for his fact; David’s fighting with Goliath of Gath the giant, hand to hand, 1 Sam. xvii. 32, etc., which is no warrant for private duels and quarrels. Such heroic acts are not imitable but by men furnished with like heroic spirit, and instinct divine.
3. Some were by special calling, and singular extraordinary dispensation: as Abraham’s call to leave his own country for pilgrimage in Canaan, Gen. xii. 1, 4, which is no warrant for popish pilgrimages to the holy land, etc.; Abraham’s attempts, upon God’s special trying commands, to kill and sacrifice his son, Gen. xxii. 10, no warrant for parents to kill or sacrifice their children; the Israelites borrowing of, and robbing the Egyptians, Ex. xii. 35, no warrant for cozenage, stealing, or for borrowing with intent not to pay again: compare Rom. xiii. 8; 1 Thess. iv. 6; Psal. xxxvii. 21; the Israelites taking usury of the Canaanitish strangers (who were destined to ruin both in their states and persons, Deut. xx. 15-17), Deut. xxiii. 20, which justifies neither their nor our taking usury of our brethren, Lev. xxv. 36, 37; Deut. xxiii. 19, 20; Neh. v. 7, 10; Psal. xv. 5; Prov. xxviii. 8; Ezek. xviii. 8, 13, 17, and xxii. 12; John Baptist’s living in the desert, Mt. iii., no protection for popish hermitage, or proof that it is a state of greater perfection, etc.
4. Some were only accidental or occasional, occasioned by special necessity of times and seasons, or some present appearance of scandal, or some such accidental emergency. Thus primitive Christians had all things common, Acts iv. 32, but that is no ground for anabaptistical community. Paul wrought at his trade of tent-making, made his hands minister to his necessities, Acts xx. 34; would not take wages for preaching to the church of Corinth, 2 Cor. xi. 7-9; but this lays no necessity on ministers to preach the gospel gratis, and maintain themselves by their own manual labors, except when cases and seasons are alike, Gal. vi. 6-8; 1 Cor. ix. 6-13; 1 Tim. v. 17, 18.
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But such acts as were done only upon special causes or singular reasons, are only to be imitated in like cases. Thus Christ argues from a like special cause, that He was not to do miracles at Nazareth without a call, as He did in other places where He had a call of God; from the particular example of Elijah and Elisha, who only went to them to whom God called them, Luke ix. 25-27; so He proves that in like case of necessity it was lawful for his disciples on the Sabbath-day to rub ears of corn and eat them, etc., from David’s example of eating showbread when he had need, Mt. 12:1-5.
7. Those acts that were done from extraordinary calling and gifts, are to be imitated (in regard of their special way of acting) only by those that have such extraordinary calling and gifts. Christ therefore blames his apostles for desiring to imitate Elijah’s extraordinary act in calling for fire from heaven, etc., when they had not his spirit, Luke 9:54-55. Papists are blameworthy for imitating the extraordinary forty days’ and nights’ fast of Moses, Elijah, and Christ, in their Lent fast. Prelates argue corruptly for bishops’ prelacy over their brethren the ministers, from the superiority of the apostles over presbyters.”
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“By God’s act of setting in the Church some, first apostles, etc., 1 Cor. 12:28, all those officers [even extraordinary] belong to the general visible Church by divine right. By Christ’s act of bounty upon his triumphant ascension into heaven, in giving gifts to men, Eph. 4:7, 11-12; all those church officers being Christ’s gifts, are of divine right. Finally, by the Holy Ghost’s act, in setting elders, overseers over the flock, Acts 20:28, elders are such overseers by divine right.”
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“4. Some things he commands extraordinarily in certain select and special cases: as, Israel to borrow jewels of the Egyptians to rob them, without intention ever to restore them, Ex. 11:2, etc. The disciples to go preach—yet to provide neither gold nor silver, etc. Mt. 10:7-10. The elders of the church (while miracles were of use in the church) to anoint the sick with oil in the name of the Lord, for their recovery, James 5:14. These and like extraordinary commands were only of force by divine right, in these extraordinary select cases, when they were propounded.”
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Wilhelm Apollonius
A Consideration of Certain Controversies at this Time Agitated in the Kingdom of England, Concerning the Government of the Church of God (London: G.M., 1645), ch. 5, ‘Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry, and the Exercise thereof’, p. 79, 80-83
“2. No man may take this honour to himself, unless he be called of God, and sent to preach his Word in the Name of God, Rom. 10:14-15. But all who have the gifts of preaching the Word are not called and sent of God. For those who are sent of God are sent either by an immediate and extraordinary call, or by a mediate call by the Church: but whereas now an extraordinary mission or sending is ceased in the Church, those are therefore by the ordinary ecclesiastical call separated to the office of preaching, who may lawfully undertake it. 1 Tim. 4:14 & 5:22; 2 Tim. 2:2-3.
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We reject therefore the contrary assertion of those [congregationalists] who affirm this to be an ordinance perpetual and ordinary in the Church, that a private Christian endued with gifts, either ordinarily or upon occasion, being thought fit in the judgment of those to whom it belongs, may (by the Word of God) preach publicly in the church-assembly with all authority, though he bear no Church office. But to us it’s certain that even under the Old Testament in the Jewish Church, every one was not admitted to speak publicly in the synagogues, but that it was the ordinary function of those that are called scribes and lawyers (the Levites being also for this cause distributed into many places), whereupon they are said to sit on Moses’s chair.
If any were endued with extraordinary gifts of prophecy, as the prophets in Israel, this was permitted and enjoyned him by the Word of God, publicly to preach in God’s Name. When the prophet Amos was forbidden by the Chief Priest to prophecy at Bethel, he does not challenge this liberty to the Israelites, that they might publicly preach the Word of God in God’s Name in the holy assemblies, but pleads his extraordinary mission, whereby he was sent of God to preach this word, Amos 7:14-15. And so perhaps was it permitted to the sons of the prophets, who were fitted, educated, and set apart for the ecclesiastical ministry, 1 Sam. 19:20.
In the synagogues, after the reading of Moses and the prophets was ended, there were exhortations added; which exhortations if at any time occasion required, and it so seemed good to the rulers of the synagogue, in corrupt times especially, it was indeed permitted to some, out of order, to teach and exhort; but they were always such as had testimony of their gifts, and of whom there was a general opinion of their mission extraordinary or ordinary, by reason of the doctrine they preached, and the works they did.
Thus at Nazareth Christ was permitted in the synagogue to read and explain the writings of the prophets, Lk. 4:16, as one who by reason of his majesty and miracles did everywhere obtain audience, as reverend Beza here notes; by which right he taught both in the Temple and everywhere: wherefore also the ordinary doctors demanded of him by what authority he did it, Mt. 21:23. So we find that Paul and Barnabas were allowed, Acts 13:15, publicly to speak and exhort in the synagogue at Antioch; as being such whose fame was already known to those of Antioch: for they had, before this time, for a whole year preached the Word of God to many there, and brought many to the faith of Christ; and Agabus who was joined with them, did by an extraordinary gift of prophesy foretell to those of Antioch the famine approaching; where were also many other prophets and doctors, who preached the Word of God both to Jews and Greeks: See Acts 11:19-21, 25-28, and 13:1-2, etc.
But in the practice of the New Testament, none but prophets by gift and office, either extraordinary or ordinary, were permitted publicly in the assembly of believers to preach the Word of God in Christ’s Name, as appears, 1 Cor. 14:29-31, etc. The apostle speaks not of any in the congregati∣on promiscuously, but of prophets lawfully called to instruct the Church of God (says Beza on this place) and therefore they are not to be hearkened to [namely the congregationalists], who from hence gather that any of the assembly may speak in the Church, and who reprehend the custom of having only a sermon preached by one.”
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George Gillespie
A Treatise of Miscellany Questions (Edinburgh, 1649), ch. 4, p. 56
“[On Acts 8:4] And suppose they preached the Word without mission or ordination, this is but like that which Chrysostom, Lib: ad eos qui scandalisati sunt, ch. 19, records as a marvelous extraordinary benefit which did accrue from the bloody persecutions of those ancient times, viz. That in such times the sheep acted the parts of shepherds, being driven away to deserts and mountains, where (by the Spirit of God speaking in them) they converted unbelievers, and gathered Churches: Which concludes nothing against the necessity of ordination in constituted and reformed Churches, for they who were scattered abroad, being driven away in the heat of persecution, might not have the opportunity of ordination, and they went forth to gather Christians to plant Churches, to lay foundations where Christ was not known. Such cases were in the beginning excepted from the state of our present question.”
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London Presbyterian Ministers
Jus divinum ministerii evangelici. Or the Divine Right of the Gospel-Ministry (London: 1654), pt. 1, ch. 7, pp. 120-24
“When Christ went up to heaven he gave two sorts of officers to his Church, some extraordinary as apostles, evangelists, prophets, and these were temporary: some ordinary, as pastors and teachers, and these are perpetual. Now as we are not to expect in our days such extraordinary officers, as apostles, evangelists, and prophets, no more are we to expect such an extraordinary way of calling, as they had; but as our officers are ordinary, so the calling we are to expect is ordinary. Add:
That God has promised to preserve an ordinary ministry in the world till the coming of Christ, 1 Cor. 11:26; Eph. 4:12-13; Mt. 28:20; Isa. 59:21. And therefore there is no need of waiting for and expecting an extraordinary and immediate call. As it is necessary (says Learned Zanchy) that there shall be always a Church upon earth, because Christ has promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it; So also it is every way as necessary that a lawful ministry be preserved: Unum enim ab altero separari non potest, nec Ecclesia a Ministerio, nec Ministerium ab Ecclesia; For the one cannot be separated from the other, neither the Church from the ministry, nor the ministry from the Church: And from hence it appears (says the same authour) That even in the Church of Rome, though the worship of God be most corrupt in it, yet God has preserved in it so much of the substance of religion as was necessary to salvation; so that as the Church is not wholly extinct therein, so neither was the ministry.
We deny not but that there are some learned divines that plead much for an immediate and extraordinary call in times of public and general defection from the truth; For our parts we will not espouse this quarrel: We cannot, we ought not to set bounds to the infinite power and free-will of God; We dispute not what God may do at such times, only we say with [John] Gerhard [a Lutheran], Destituimur promissione quod debeamus hoc tempore post confirmatum Novi Testamenti canonem immediatam vocationem expectare (Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry, p. 88). We have no promise that we ought after the confirmation of the canon of the New Testament to expect an immediate call. And afterwards he says, Nulla apparet immediatae vocationis necessitas, ‘There appears no necessity of this immediate call.’
And besides, even those that are for an immediate call do lay down diverse limitations which are very worthy to be considered by the people of our age, lest they should suck poison from such a doctrine. One that pleads much for it gives these rules (Bucanus, Common Places, Question 42, ‘Of the Ministry’):
1. That this extraordinary and immediate call then only takes place when a mediate and ordinary cannot be had and that such a call ought not to be pretended unto in contempt of the ordinary way.
2. That whosoever shall pretend to this immediate call ought first to be tried before he be admitted, that his doctrine ought to be examined by the Word, that his life and conversation ought to be diligently looked into, lest he prove one of those concerning whom the apostle speakes, ‘That serve not our Lord Jesus Christ but their own belly, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.’
After this he puts this question, An ne cessante ordinaria vocatione? etc. ‘Whether when the ordinary call ceases, it be then lawful for every private Christian versed in the Scriptures to go up into the pulpit and preach against false doctrines and assert the truth?’ and answers:
‘God forbid! for this would open a door,’ euivis ubivis, qui se sapientem existimaret, etc. ‘to every one every where who thinks himself wise, under a pretence (whether true or false) of confuting false doctrine, to have clandestine meetings, as the Anabaptists and Libertines of our days are wont to do, following the evil example of those that first at Antioch, afterwards in Galatia, and elsewhere, creeping in privately, brought great tumults and confusions into the Church; Of whom the apostle speaks: Forasmuch as we have heard that certain which went out from us have troubled you with words, subverting your souls, saying, ‘Ye must be circumcised and keep the Law,’ to whom we gave no such commandment.’
Thus far Bucanus; and much more to this purpose in the same chapter. By this it appears that even they that justify an immediate call, in some cases, do notwithstanding flatly condemn the disorderly practices of our times. So much in answer to the second question.
The third question is, Whether the call of Luther and the rest of the best reformers of religion from the errors of Popery was an immediate and extraordinary call, or no?
Answer. He that would be satisfied about the call of Luther to the ministry, let him read Gerhard, Of the Ministry, where he shall find proved (pp. 147-48), that Luther though he did always plead his doctrine to be of God, yet he did never so much as pretend to an immediate and extraordinary call, but that he was called after a mediate and ordinary way; that he was ordained presbyter in the year of our Lord 1507 at 24 years of age; That when he was ordained presbyter he did receive power to preach the Word of God; That the next Year after he was called by John Staupitius, with the consent of Elector Frederick, to be divinity professor of the Church and University of Wittenberg, by the statutes of which university he was bound to this, sc. Vestrum est legem divinam inter∣pretari & librum vitae docere; ‘It is your office to interpret the divine Law and to teach the Book of Life.’
Objection. If it be objected that Luther received his ordination from the Church of Rome, and therefore it is null and void [and thus it had to be by an extraordinary call, recognized by Luther or not].
Answer. To this Gerhard answers, that although the rite of ordination in the Church of Rome was corrupted with many superstitious and unprofitable ceremonies, yet ordination itself was not nullified; We must distinguish between the impurity of the bishop ordaining, and the ordination which is done in the name of the whole Church: And in the ordination we must distinguish that which is divine from that which is human, that which is essential from that which is accidental, that which is godly and Christian from that which was Antichristian.
As in the Israelitish Church they were to use the ministry, sacrifices, and ordination of the scribes and pharisees, who sat in Moses’s chair, yet the people were warned to take heed of the leaven of the Pharisees, Mt. 16:12. So also is the Church of Rome; We use the ministry, sacraments, and ordination of those that were in ordinary succession, but we reject the leaven of their superstition. But to this objection we shall speak more fully in our fifth Proposition.
The like to that is said of Luther, may be said of Zwinglius, Oecolampadius, Bucer, Peter Martyr, etc. Zanchy says (on the 4th Commandment, p. 774), that Luther was a lawful teacher, and a minister created in the Church of Rome with imposition of hands, and with authority to create others. The like he says of Zwinglius, Bucer, etc. and of himself, Qui in Papatu fuimus creati Doctores cum authoritate alios creandi; ‘We were made teachers under the Papacy with authority to make others.’ We confess that Zanchy, Bucanus, and diverse others speak much (if not too much) of an extraordinary call that these blessed reformers had; But yet we desire it may be considered:
That the same authours make mention also of the ordinary call which they had.
That none of our first reformers ever renounced their ordinary call, but rather asserted it and pleaded it upon all occasions, as Gerhard shows of Luther in particular. Bucan tells us, that the call of our first reformers was ordinary and extraordinary.
Ordinary, because they were doctors, pastors and presbyteri [presbyters] ex institutione Ecclesiae Romanae, sed abstersis istius sordibus a Deo; Doctors, pastors and ‘presbyters by the institution of the Church of Rome, God having washed away the defilements’ that cleaved to that ordination: It was extraordinary, because they were endued with extraordinary gifts, and (blessed be God) with incredible success, even to a miracle.
And if this be all that is meant by an immediate and extraordinary call, in this sense we willingly and freely own it; and acknowledge that our blessed Reformers were men raised up by God after a wonderful manner, to do great things for his Church; That they had [Greek], They were endued with a singular knowledge of divine mysteries, with a rare and peculiar gift of utterance, with an heroic spirit and an undaunted courage, and owned by God with miraculous success, maugre all the opposition of the enemies of Christ against them: The Papists upbraid the Protestants, and demand what miracles did your first reformers work? We answer that this was a great miracle, that so few men under such great opposition without working of miracles should be able to convert so many thousands to the Protestant Religion.”
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Leonard Rijssen
A Complete Summary of Elenctic Theology & of as Much Didactic Theology as is Necessary trans. J. Wesley White MTh thesis (Bern, 1676; GPTS, 2009), ch. 16, ‘The Church’, p. 214
“Controversy 3 – Did the first reformers, Luther, Calvin and others, have a legitimate calling? We affirm against the Papists.
Arguments
1. They were qualified, called by the Church, approved by the magistrate, and, originally, appointed by the Roman Church itself to teach.
Objections
1. Then the Roman Church is a true Church. Reply: Originally, it was, and later it became impure, however, it did perform this according to the Word of God, that it called ministers.
2. They were not confirmed by bishops following the ordinary rituals. Reply: It was not necessary. But their calling can be called extraordinary:
a. Insofar as God gave them extraordinary gifts.
b. From an extraordinary impulse of the Holy Spirit.
c. Insofar as God used them for an extraordinary work.”
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On How Universal Consent Establishes a Thing
Quote
Charles Hodge
Discussions in Church Polity… (NY: Scribner’s Sons, 1878), pt. 2, ch. 16, ‘Discipline’, section 3, ‘Appeals & Complaints’, b. ‘Review of a Decision that Appeals cannot lie except in Judicial Cases’, p. 486
“All courts are governed, and should, to a great extent, be governed by precedent. Long-established usage has the authority of law. People have the right to depend upon it. It works manifest injustice, when a party avails himself of a remedy, which a court for years and generations has recognized as appropriate, and he is suddenly and unexpectedly, by a new construction of the constitution, refused a hearing because he has put his case in a wrong form.”
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Excerpt
Phillimore, John George – p. 324 of Principles & Maxims of Jurisprudence (London, 1856)
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In Ordinary Circumstances Spiritual Gifts of Themselves do Not Infer an Office
Quotes
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1, p. 33
“…gifts give not the keys, nor authority to use gifts; and so that all believers, though gifted and graced also, have not power of the keys. 2. It’s certain that in a constituted Church there be no hands nor mouths to do and speak by authority, and ex officio, by virtue of an office, save only elders and pastors; and that if they do or speak, they do it extraordinarily, when Churches’ hands are lame and her eyes blind; or if they do and speak ordinarily, it is from the law of charity in a private way, not by power of the keys, and as judges and officers.”
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Wilhelm Apollonius
A Consideration of Certain Controversies at this Time Agitated in the Kingdom of England, Concerning the Government of the Church of God (London: G.M., 1645), ch. 5, ‘Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry, and the Exercise thereof’, pp. 75-77
“Our judgment is that none may publicly in the church assembly of the faithful preach the Word of God in the Name of Christ and of God, but he who is sent by a divine calling for that work; as the Protestants demonstrate against the Socinians and Anabaptists from Rom. 10:14-15; Heb. 5:4-5; Acts 13:1-2 & 14:22; Tit. 1:5; 2 Tim. 2:2, and other places and arguments; and from the examples of all those, who either in an extraordinary or ordinary manner were sent to preach the Word.
Which mission, or sending, consists not only in conferring gifts, whereby an ability, [Greek], is given by God; but in conferring a power, whereby is given an authority, [Latin], to preach the Word of God; which authority is oft-times not conferred on those, on whom yet God bestows gifts and ability. For it is by the Word of God denied to women, in whose lips is the Law of God, Prov. 31:26, and a fitness to teach the yonger women, Tit. 2:3-4.”
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In Extraordinary Circumstances, Gifts may be an Evident Extraordinary Call from God
Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642), pp. 126-7
“2. Because when the Church is overgone with heresy and apostasy, our reformers, in the exercise of their ministry, were not to keep a certain flock as in a constitute[d] Church, and suppose they had no calling but eminent gifts, they were to spread the Gospel to nations, as Luther did;
And suppose the people should resist them, as in many places they did; yet God called them, and they were not to expect election from people: So [men of] Cyprus and Cyrenus preached, Acts 11 and 18, and we read of no vocation that they had from either people or apostle. So Origen preached to a people in a certain town where there was not one Christian, and afterwards he was chosen their pastor.”
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A Survey of the Survey of that Sum… (1658), pp. 421-3
“Nor will it follow that it is intrinsically unlawful for a synod of New England [who were congregationalists] to send 24 gracious youths understanding in the language, ordain them pastors by laying on of hands of the elders, and by fasting and praying, instruct them to go and act as pastors among the savages, preaching and baptizing; and their warrant is Acts 13; and here are pastors without certain flocks [contra congregationalism].
If any (Acts 13) say [that] the Spirit gives a special command there, and names Saul and Barnabas, but its not so here: I answer, there is without question something extraordinary in Acts 13, nor are we with Seekers (too much fortified in their way by our [congregationalist] Brethren’s doctrine) to wait for the Lord’s naming from heaven John, Thomas, to be preachers in such a place. But to me:
1. The nearness to the savages,
2. The knowledge of their language (as I suppose),
3. Their weak desire, or the professed not hating of the Gospel [by the savages], were equivalent to a command from heaven, ‘Go preach to the Americans’, and that in the capacity as proper pastors.”
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The Implicit or Tacit Consent of the Church (Laypersons and/or Officers) is Sufficient for the Call Between the Church & the Officer
1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1, Question 5, ‘From whence had Luther, Calvin & our blessed Reformers their calling to the pastoral charge?’, p. 203-8 & 29 irregular numbering
“11. The question, if such a pastor be called lawfully, is a question of fact, not a question of law; [it is] as this [case]: if such an one be baptized and there be an invincible ignorance in a question of fact which excuses. And therefore we may hear a gifted pastor taken and supposed by the Church to have the Church’s calling, though indeed he received no calling from the Church at his entry.”
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1800’s
Thomas M’Crie
‘On the Right of Females to Vote in the Election of Ministers and Elders’, p. 5 from Miscellaneous Writings, Chiefly Historical (1841), pp. 669-76
“…I believe it is generally allowed that the choice and call of the people, in certain extraordinary cases, forms a valid and sufficient warrant for exercising the pastoral office.”
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Cases in which Laymen Preaching is Warranted
See also, ‘Lay-Persons may, & Ought to, Preach Privately’.
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Order of Quotes
Rutherford
Apollonius
Gillespie
London Presbyterians
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1600’s
Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642)
pp. 126-7
“2. Because when the Church is overgone with heresy and apostasy, our reformers, in the exercise of their ministry, were not to keep a certain flock as in a constitute[d] Church, and suppose they had no calling but eminent gifts, they were to spread the Gospel to nations, as Luther did;
And suppose the people should resist them, as in many places they did; yet God called them, and they were not to expect election from people: So [men of] Cyprus and Cyrenus preached, Acts 11 and 18, and we read of no vocation that they had from either people or apostle. So Origen preached to a people in a certain town where there was not one Christian, and afterwards he was chosen their pastor.”
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p. 257
“…some private Christians, Acts 8:4, preached the Gospel, but when? In time of heavy persecution when they were scattered, vv. 1,4. [According to the inference of congregationalists:] Then all gifted Christians, tradesmen or what else, not separated by Christ and his Churches’ calling may now preach the Gospel, yea be the ordinary and only converters of souls and gatherers of the saints [as regular preachers or pastors]; it follows no ways.”
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pp. 267-68
“Yea, and God at same times supplies the want of popular election while He calls one to preach to a people never consenting he shall be their pastor;”
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Due Right of Presbyteries (London, 1644)
pt. 1, pp. 454-55
“2. There is no such moral necessity of the sacraments as there is of the ministry of the Word, and consequently of some use of the keys where a scandalous person may infect the Lord’s flock. For where vision ceases the people perish, but it is never said, where baptism ceases the people perish; and therefore uncalled ministers in case of necessity, without ordination or calling from a presbytery, may preach and take on them the holy ministry and exercise power of jurisdiction, because the necessity of the souls of a congregation in a remote island requires so, but I hope no necessity in any [of] the most extraordinary case requires that a midwife may baptize, or that a private man remaining a private man may celebrate the Lord’s Supper to the Church without any calling from the Church.”
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pt. 2
p. 272
“1st Distinction. There is one power of public preaching in a Church not constitute[d], and another in a Church constitute[d]; gifted persons in extraordinary cases, where a Church is not planted, may publicly preach, but the case is otherwise in a Church constituted.
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4th Distinction. There is a call to an habitual and ordinary prophesying; here is required not only a calling by gifts, but also a collation of authority to the office, either immediately by God, or mediately by the Church, and there is a call to some particular or occasional acts of exhorting, as the martyrs and Stephen [Acts 7] are called to give confession of their faith, and a king in battle, to exhort his army, or a prince his subjects to piety, and to this latter there is no other call required but the place and profession of the exhorter, though he bee not by office a pastor.
5th Distinction. There is a formal calling of the Church, as the laying on of the hands of the elders, and a virtual and interpretative calling or tacit approbation of the Church, when learned men of eminent gifts, not in office, do write commentaries, sermons on canonic Scriptures, and tractates refuting heresies; to this the tacit approbation of the Church is required, but these have not ordinary pastoral care, nor are they the ordinary converters of souls to Christ, as the pretended prophets of [the] Separatists are.”
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p. 293
“‘The Samaritan woman’ (says [John] Robinson [a congregationalist]) ‘Jn. 4:28, preached, and many of the Samaritans believed because of her, v. 39, and without preaching of the Word of God, none can believe, Rom. 10:14-15. If a woman may teach without the Church, then may a man teach in the Church.’ Answer:
1. A woman may teach, 2. in a non-constituted Church where there is no salvation and they worship they know not what, Jn. 4:22. 3. A woman may occasionally declare one point of the Gospel, that Mary’s Son is Christ. But hence it follows not, [that] therefore, 1. a man 2. in a constituted Church 3. may ordinarily preach the whole Gospel to the Church in public: a weak spar for so vast a roof.
2. He abuses the place, Rom. 10:14, and would hence prove that a woman or any gifted teacher is a sent preacher by whom faith ordinarily comes; for otherwise who dare deny but faith comes by reading? and just as the [Socinian] Catechism of Raccovia expones the place, Rom. 10:14, to evert the necessity of a sent ministry, so does Robinson expone the place.”
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The Divine Right of Church Government... (1646), ch. 25, p. 570
“He can preach himself as a gifted believer, in an extraordinary exigence…”
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Wilhelm Apollonius
A Consideration of Certain Controversies at this Time Agitated in the Kingdom of England, Concerning the Government of the Church of God (London: G.M., 1645), ch. 5, ‘Of the Ecclesiastical Ministry, and the Exercise thereof’, pp. 77-78
“2. That private Christians in an extraordinary case, in a Church to be erected or that is decayed and ruined, may sometimes publicly preach the Word of God for the planting a Church when there are not such as by God’s ordinary call have received from God power to preach the Word. For the positive ritual law of God gives place to the moral law of God when necessity requires it.
3. We grant also that private Christians in some special cases, and upon a particular occasion, may sometimes speak the Word of God in public by a special calling from God: as martyrs are called to a public confession of the faith.
But all this does not infer that there is an exercise of prophesy constantly and ordinarily to be observed in the Church, whereby the Word should by private Christians in the Name of Christ and with all authority be publicly preached for the edification of the Church. And therefore we maintain the negative of the question proposed, and deny that there is such an exercise to be perpetually retained in the Church of Christ.”
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George Gillespie
A Treatise of Miscellany Questions (Edinburgh, 1649), ch. 4, p. 56
“[On Acts 8:4] And suppose they preached the Word without mission or ordination, this is but like that which Chrysostom, Lib: ad eos qui scandalisati sunt, ch. 19, records as a marvelous extraordinary benefit which did accrue from the bloody persecutions of those ancient times, viz. That in such times the sheep acted the parts of shepherds, being driven away to deserts and mountains, where (by the Spirit of God speaking in them) they converted unbelievers, and gathered Churches: Which concludes nothing against the necessity of ordination in constituted and reformed Churches, for they who were scattered abroad, being driven away in the heat of persecution, might not have the opportunity of ordination, and they went forth to gather Christians to plant Churches, to lay foundations where Christ was not known.”
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London Presbyterian Ministers
Jus divinum ministerii evangelici. Or the Divine Right of the Gospel-Ministry (London: 1654), pt. 1, ch. 4, p. 80
“Sixthly… we dispute not what may be done in extraordinary cases, either in regard of times or places where ordination may not possibly be had; whether in such a case private gifted men may not preach, we do not dispute: David’s necessity made it lawful for him and his men to eat the showbread, which it was not lawful for any but only the priests to eat; but our question is, What may be done in an ordinary way, in Churches where ordained ministers either are or may be had; Though we will not prescribe against necessity, yet we would not have necessity pretended where none is:
For we read that the Indians were converted to the Christian Faith by the means of Aedesius and Frumentius two private men, but we read not that either of them took upon them the office or work of the ministry; Frumentius was ordained bishop of the Indians by Athanasius. Theod. Ecclesiastical History, bk. 1, ch. 22. And it is observable how great a journey he undertook rather than to run or officiate without a call. The Iberians were converted (as the same authour relates) by the means of a captive maid, but they sent to Constantine for ordained ministers by whom they might be further instructed and guided in the ways of God, which probably our gifted men would never have done.”
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The Implicit or Tacit Consent of Church Governors is Sufficient for the Power of Being an Office-Bearer
Samuel Rutherford
The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), pt. 1, Question 5, ‘From whence had Luther, Calvin & our blessed Reformers their calling to the pastoral charge?’, p. 203-8 & 29 irregular numbering
“7. A calling to the ministry is either such [1.] as wants the essentials, as gifts in any messenger and the Church’s consent, or these who occupy the room of the Church, the Church consenting: such a minister is to be reputed for no minister; or 2. an entry to a calling, or a calling where diverse of the apostles’ requisites are wanting, may be a valid calling, as if one enter as Caiphas, who entered by favor and money and contrary to the Law, was High-Priest but for a year: yet was a true High-Priest and prophesied as the High-priest [Jn. 11:49-51].
8. If the Church approve by silence, or countenance the ministry of a man who opened the Church door to himself, by a silver key, having given the prelate a bud. The ordinance of God is conferred upon him, and his calling ceases not to be God’s calling because of the sins of the instruments both taking and giving.”
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In Extraordinary Circumstances, God May Supply the Call & Power of Ordination
Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642)
pp. 5-7
“4th Conclusion is this… Now if a church should be in a remote island, not consociate with other churches, and yet wanting guides [officers], our [congregationalist] brethren say in this case, the power of the keys should be seen to be in believers, and they might choose and ordain their own officers. I grant they have great [Romanist] schoolmen to say with them…
But I say in this case necessity is an unbooked and naughty lawyer, and God extraordinarily should supply the want of ordination, as He can do the defect of second causes: so that if God send some pastors to a congregation that were unwilling to choose their own eldership, pastors might ordain themselves pastors in that case to these people, and God should supply their want of popular election…”
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p. 48
“2. The Church of believers have no authority ecclesiastical, nor power of the keys, if all the pastors on earth were removed from the Church by death; and in that case the keys should indeed be only in Christ’s hand, and the case being extraordinary, Christ [would be] behoved extraordinarily to supply the want of ordination, which Timothy, Titus and other elders do ordinarily give, for the Church of believers could not give that which they have not…”
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pp. 266-67
“2. What is essential for making a minister who is extraordinarily called of God, is not ever more essential to the making of a minister ordinarily called of God, in an island where the Gospel is: if all the pastors should die, the people might choose pastors to themselves, but they could not then make pastors; God only, without the ministry of other pastors, in that case should make pastors; but it follows not hence that pastors ordinarily have not their calling to be pastors from the ordination of pastors.”
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pp. 267-68
“…nor do we hold a constant ordination of pastors in a continual line of succession from the apostles, made by pastors; the succession may be interrupted, but then God Himself supplies the want of ordinary ordination, appointed by Himself, 1 Tim. 4:14; Tit. 1:5; 1 Tim. 5:21-22; Acts 6:6.”
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p. 269
“Answer. Suppose in this or that Church all the ministers should die, yet it follows not that a ministry can utterly fail in the Church: It is contrary to Eph. 4:11 and to the perpetuity of Christ’s kingly government and throne, which shall endure as the days of heaven: And what if God extraordinarily supply the want of ordination in this or that particular church? A ministerial power is conferred in that case immediately upon some in a Church removed from any Church-consociation from other Churches, and so Christ’s ministerial power dies not.”
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A Survey of the Survey of that Sum… (1658), ch. 21, p. 116
“For God sends not private men, or Christian unofficed scholars (or if he do, their extraordinary sending makes them public pastors and prophets, not the people), but he sent Philip an evangelist, and after Peter and John to Samaria, Acts 8, Paul to Macedonia, Acts 16, and his own ministers, Titus 1:5; 1 Tim. 4:14 & 5:22, Paul and Barnabas, men in office, some more than zealous Christians and scholars to the Gentiles, Acts 13, Jonah to Nineveh, Ananias to baptize Paul, Jonah 3; Acts 9.”
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Consent of the People is Not Wholly Necessary in Extraordinary Circumstances, God Supplying the Call
Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642)
pp. 5-7
“4th Conclusion is this… Now if a church should be in a remote island, not consociate with other churches, and yet wanting guides [officers], our [congregationalist] brethren say in this case, the power of the keys should be seen to be in believers, and they might choose and ordain their own officers. I grant they have great [Romanist] schoolmen to say with them…
But I say in this case necessity is an unbooked and naughty lawyer, and God extraordinarily should supply the want of ordination, as He can do the defect of second causes: so that if God send some pastors to a congregation that were unwilling to choose their own eldership, pastors might ordain themselves pastors in that case to these people, and God should supply their want of popular election…”
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pp. 267-68
“Yea, and God at same times supplies the want of popular election while He calls one to preach to a people never consenting he shall be their pastor;”
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The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644)
pt. 1
p. 204
“And thus Perkins (on Gal. 1:8), if the Gospel should arise in America where there were no ministers, ordination might be wanting. And why not (say I) election also in another case, if as Petrus Martyr says well (on Judges 4:5), a woman may be a preacher of the gospel; yea, and a Turk converted by reading the New Testament (says Zanchius, Commentary on Eph. 5), and converting others, may baptize them whom he converts, and be baptized where both ordination and election should be wanting.”
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p. 493
“But you [a congregationalist] will say, in a church in an island, one may be a pastor without any ordination if the people elect him and there be no elders to ordain.
I answer: it is true: but so many pastors send a pastor to be a pastor to a congregation, though that congregation never choose him, as possibly they be for the most part Popish or unwilling; yet both cases are extraordinary and the Church [is in the case of] not [being] constituted and established.”
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pt. 2
p. 272
“4th Distinction. There is a call to an habitual and ordinary prophesying; here is required not only a calling by gifts, but also a collation of authority to the office, either immediately by God, or mediately by the Church…”
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Extraordinarily Called Persons may be Accountable Immediately to God, not Necessarily to Visible Church Government
Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642)
pp. 126-7
“2. A calling is extraordinary, either in habit or in exercise; in habit, as to be an apostle and have the gift of miracles: Thus our reformers calling was not extraordinary, they were not immediately called by God from Heaven; for they would not have concealed such a calling, if they had had any such:
Or a calling is extraordinary in the exercise, and that two ways; either in the principle moving them to teach, or, 2. in the manner of teaching and efficacy; a calling extraordinary in the principle moving is twofold: Either a mere prophetical impulsion of revelation stirring them up to such an act, as the Spirit of the Lord came upon Saul and he prophesied; this our reformers had not because we never find that they allege it. 2. A more than ordinary motion with illumination by God’s Spirit speaking in the Scriptures, in which motions they were not subordinate in the exercise of their ministry to the Church of pastors, but immediately in that subordinated to God; and in this I prove that our reformers were extraordinary doctors.
1. Because Eze. 34, in a universal apostasy of the prophets and shepherds, the Lord extraordinarily works, v. 11, ‘For thus saith the Lord God, behold I, even I will both search my sheep, and seek them out.’ Now this is by pastors, when the ordinary pastors are all failed. So Rev. 11, in that universal apostasy under Antichrist, when the gentiles tread upon the outer court of the Temple and the holy City, God stirs up two witnesses to prophesy in sackcloth; that is, some few pastors (for two is the smallest number) and they prophesy and are slain, and yet they rise again. We need not apply this to men in particular, as to John Huss and Jerome of Prague; but certainly, some few spake against Babylon and they were borne down and oppressed and killed, and men of that same spirit rose and spake that same truth as if the very two men who were slain had risen within three days again.
2. Because when the Church is overgone with heresy and Apostasy, our reformers, in the exercise of their ministry, were not to keep a certain flock as in a constitute[d] Church, and suppose they had no calling but eminent gifts, they were to spread the Gospel to nations, as Luther did; and suppose the people should resist them, as in many places they did; yet God called them, and they were not to expect election from people: So [men of] Cyprus and Cyrenus preached, Acts 11 and 18, and we read of no vocation that they had from either people or apostle. So Origen preached to a people in a certain town where there was not one Christian, and afterwards he was chosen their pastor.”
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Extraordinary Practices are Not Justified in Ordinary Circumstances
The Church Order of Dort 1618-19
“3. No one, though he be a professor, elder or deacon shall be permitted to enter the ministry of the Word and sacraments without having been lawfully called thereto; and if anyone acts contrary thereto and, having been frequently admonished, does not desist, the classis shall judge whether he is to be declared a schismatic or is to be punished in some other way.
4. The lawful calling of those who formerly have not been in office, both in the cities and in the country, consists:
first, in their election, which shall be carried out after previous fasting and prayer by the consistory and deacons…
Second, in the examination or investigation both of doctrine and life which shall be done by the classis in the presence of the deputies of the synod or some of the same.
Third, in the approbation and approval of the authorities, and thereafter of the members of the local Reformed congregation…
Finally, in the public ordination in the presence of the congregation, which shall take place with proper stipulations… with the understanding that the laying on of hands may be done in the classical meeting for the newly graduated minister who is sent to the Churches under the Cross.
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8. No schoolmasters, artisans or others who have not followed the prescribed course of study for the ministry shall be admitted to the ministry, unless there is assurance of their singular gifts, godliness, humility, modesty, common sense, and discretion, together with gifts of public speaking…”
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Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642), p. 257
“…some private Christians, Acts 8:4, preached the Gospel, but when? In time of heavy persecution when they were scattered, vv. 1,4. [According to the inference of congregationalists:] Then all gifted Christians, tradesmen or what else, not separated by Christ and his Churches’ calling may now preach the Gospel, yea be the ordinary and only converters of souls and gatherers of the saints [as regular preachers or pastors]; it follows no ways.”
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The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644), p. 272
“1st Distinction. There is one power of public preaching in a Church not constitute[d], and another in a Church constitute[d]; gifted persons in extraordinary cases, where a Church is not planted, may publicly preach, but the case is otherwise in a Church constituted.
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A Survey of the Survey of that Sum… (1658), p. 426
“4. Mr. Hooker [a congregationalist] will not say all that were scattered, Acts 8[:4] (for they were all scattered, except the apostles, verse 1) did preach the Gospel, for there were of them women, verse 3; then some of them only preached. And if Mr. Hooker say they were not officers, Mr. Rutherford says they were officers, and that the extraordinariness of their condition supplied the want of a Church-calling, and let Mr. Hooker but attempt to bring a proof for it.
5. If nothing extraordinary was here, l […]t Mr. Hooker or any for him vindicate the place, Acts 8, from Anabaptists who allege the same place, Acts 8, to destroy the standing ordinance of the ministry: and read the judicious Tractate of the Ministers of London, of Mr. Collings.”
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On a Church Calling Someone to be Their Pastor who is not yet a Pastor
Intro
This circumstance happens often in presbyterianism when someone training for the ministry is called to be a pastor of a church. It is similar (though not exactly the same) as choosing someone to marry who one is not yet married to. The choosing is a prerequisite to the marriage, and the choosing of one to be a pastor, in regular circumstances, is a prerequisite to their being given the power to be an officer through the consent of the presbytery.
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Samuel Rutherford
A Peaceable & Temperate Plea (1642), pp. 267-68
“…but a Church mystical, or a Church of believers may choose pastors before they can ordinarily be their pastors, but they cannot make pastors…”
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On the Question of Presbyterial Succession
See also, ‘On Apostolic Succession’.
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Articles
1600’s
Gillespie, George – English-Popish Ceremonies, bk. 3, ch. 8, Digression 1, p. 166, point 1 (Edinburgh, 1844)
Rutherford, Samuel – pt. 1, pp. 185-189 under ‘3rd Question. Whether or not Ordination of Elders may be by the Church of Believers Wanting all Elders or Officers’ under Ch. 8, section 8, ‘Of Election of Officers’ in The Due Right of Presbyteries (1644)
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The Extraordinary Call as Understood in Congregationalism
Articles
1600’s
Owen, John – The Duty of Pastors & People Distinguished, or a Brief Discourse Touching the Administration of Things Commanded in Religion… (London, 1644)
ch. 4, ‘Of the duty of Gods people in cases extraordinary concerning his Worship’
These chapters are not recommended. Owen publicly came out with his congregationalist principles in 1644. Congregationalists typically had a looser view of an extraordinary calling than presbyterians. Presbyterians held, apart from necessity, an extraordinary calling did not take place in ordinary, constituted Church circumstances.
Congregationalists tended to affirm that extraordinary callings occured in constituted church settings where there was no public necessity for it. That is to say, for congregationalists, lay-preachers and teachers might preach and teach publically on a regular or semi-regular basis in constituted churches, apart from public necessity, and that there was not a need for ordination (or for a formal relationship of being governed by an eldership) for this.
Owen’s blurring of (unnoticed) distinctions of things that ought to be distinguished and differentiated is evident.
ch. 5, ‘Of the Several Ways of Extraordinary Calling to the Teaching of Others; the First Way’
ch. 7, ‘The Second Way whereby a Man may be Called Extraordinarily’
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“Now they which were scattered abroad upon the persecution that arose about Stephen travelled as far as Phenice, and Cyprus, and Antioch, preaching the word… when they were come to Antioch, spake unto the Grecians, preaching the Lord Jesus. And the hand of the Lord was with them: and a great number believed, and turned unto the Lord. Then tidings of these things came unto… Barnabas… who, when he… had seen the grace of God, was glad…”
Acts 11:19-23
“God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, ‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said, ‘Here am I.'”
Ex. 3:4
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Related Pages
On the Ordinances, Order & Policy of the Church
Historic, Reformed Books of Church Order, Discipline and Minutes