And the ecclesiastical part of the
Commonwealth of Rome was governed by the pontifex maximus, the
rex sacrificulus, and the Flamens, all ordained or elected by the
people, the pontifex by the tribes, the King by the centuries,
and the Flamens by the parishes.
"I do not mind you of these things, as if, for the matter,
there were any parallel to be drawn out of their superstitions to
our religion, but to show that for the manner, ancient prudence
is as well a rule in divine as human things; nay, and such a one
as the apostles themselves, ordaining elders by the holding up of
hands in every congregation, have exactly followed; for some of
the congregations where they thus ordained elders were those of
Antioch, Iconium, Lystra, Derbe, the countries of Lycaona,
Pisidia, Pamphilia, Perga, with Attalia. Now that these cities
and countries, when the Romans propagated their empire into Asia,
were found most of them commonwealths, and that many of the rest
were endued with like power, so that the people living under the
protection of the Roman emperors continued to elect their own
magistrates, is so known a thing, that I wonder whence it is that
men, quite contrary to the universal proof of these examples,
will have ecclesiastical government to be necessarily distinct
from civil power, when the right of the elders ordained by the
holding up of hands in every congregation to teach the people,
was plainly derived from the same civil power by which they
ordained the rest of their magistrates.
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