up the
hands in sign of a suffrage; and so Chrysostom himself useth the word when
he speaketh properly, for he saith that the senate of Rome took upon him
_cheirosoiehin theohne_; that is (as D. Potter turneth his words(1005)),
to make gods by most voices.

Bellarmine(1006) reckoneth out three significations of the word
_cheirosoiehin_: 1. To choose by suffrages; 2. Simply to choose which way
soever it be; 3. To ordain by imposition of hands. Junius answereth
him,(1007) that the first is the proper signification; the second is
metaphorical; the third synecdochical.

Our English translators, 2 Cor. i. 19, have followed the metaphorical
signification, and in this place, Acts xiv. 23, the synecdochical. But
what had they to do either with a metaphor or a synecdoche when the text
may bear the proper sense? Now that Luke, in this place, useth the word in
the proper sense, and not in the synecdochical, Gerhard(1008) proveth from
the words which he subjoineth, to signify the ordaining of those elders by
the laying on of hands; for he saith that they prayed, and fasted, and
commended them to the Lord, in which words he implieth the laying on of
hands upon them, as may be learned from Acts vi. 6, "When they had prayed,
they laid their hands on them;" Acts xiii. 3, "When they had fasted, and
prayed, and laid their hands on them;" so Acts viii. 15, 17, prayer and
laying on of hands went together. Wherefore by _cheirotouhesagtes_ Luke
pointeth at the election of those elders by voices, being, in the
following words, to make mention of their ordination by imposition of
hands.

Cartwright(1009) hath for the same point other weighty reasons: "It is
absurd (saith he) to imagine that the Holy Ghost, by Luke, speaking with
the tongues of men, that is to say, to their understanding, should use a
word in that signification in which it was never used before his time by
any writer, holy or profane, for how could he then be understood, if using
the note and name they used, he should have fled from the signification
whereunto they used it, unless therefore his purpose was to write that
which none could read? It must needs be that as he wrote so he meant the
election by voices. And if Demosthenes, for knowledge in the tongue, would
have been ashamed to have noted the laying down of hands by a word that
signifieth the lifting of them up, they do the Holy Ghost (which taught
Demosthenes to speak) great injury in using this impropriety and
str