ve double
maintenance to elders that rule well, yet they count them worthy of
double maintenance, though the elders do not take it, though the
churches cannot give it.

Finally, unto these testimonies and arguments from Scripture, many
testimonies of ancient and modern writers (of no small repute in the
Church of God) may be usefully annexed, speaking for ruling elders in
the Church of Christ from time to time: some speaking of such sort of
elders, presbyters, or church-governors, as that ruling elders may very
well be implied in their expressions; some plainly declaring that the
Church of Christ _in fact_ had such officers for government thereof; and
some testifying that of right such officers ought to be in the Church of
Christ now under the New Testament for the well guiding thereof; by
which it may notably appear, that in asserting the office of the ruling
elder in the Church, we take not upon us to maintain any singular
paradox of our own devising, or to hold forth some new light in this old
opinionative age: and that the ruling elder is not a church officer
first coined at Geneva, and a stranger to the Church of Christ for the
first 1500 years, (as the adversaries of ruling elders scornfully
pretend,) but hath been owned by the Church of Christ as well in former
as in later times.[91]

_An Appendix touching the Divine Right of Deacons._

Though we cannot find in Scripture that the power of the keys is
committed by Christ unto deacons, with the other church governors, but
conceive that deacons, as other members of the church, are to be
governed, and are not to govern; yet forasmuch as deacons are ordinary
officers in the Church of God, of which she will have constant use in
all ages, and which at first were divinely appointed, and after
frequently mentioned in the New Testament; it will not be thought unfit,
before we conclude this section, touching the divine right of Christ's
church-officers, briefly to assert the divine right of deacons, as
followeth.

Deacons in the church are an ordinance of Jesus Christ. For,

1. They are found in Christ's catalogue of church officers, distinct
from all other officers, both extraordinary and ordinary. _Helps_, 1
Cor. xii. 28. The Greek word in the natural acceptation properly
signifies, to lift over against one in taking up some burden or weight;
metaphorically, it here is used for deacons, whose office it is to
_help_ and _succor the poor and sick, to lend them a han