Sessions have a necessary use, because the pastors and those
elders who assist them in the governing of their flocks must, as well
conjunctly as severally, as well publicly as privately, govern, admonish,
rebuke, censure, &c. As for presbyteries, because the parishes being
divided in most places, there is but one pastor in a parish, except there
should be a meeting of a number of pastors out of divers parishes, neither
could trial be well had of the growth or decay of the gifts, graces, and
utterance of every pastor, for which purpose the ninth head of the First
book of Discipline appointed the ministers of adjacent churches to meet
together at convenient times, in towns and public places, for the exercise
of prophecying and interpreting of Scripture, according to that form
commended to the church at Corinth, 1 Cor. xiv. 29-32. For yet could the
churches be governed by the common council and advice of presbyteries,
which being necessary by apostolic institution, and being the foundation
and ground of our presbyteries, it maketh them necessary too.

3. After the golden age of the apostles was spent and away, presbyteries,
finding themselves disturbed with emulations, contentions, and factions,
for unity's sake, chose one of their number to preside among them, and to
confer, in name of the rest, the rite and sign of initiation (which was
imposition of hands) on them whom they ordained ministers. This honour did
the presbyters yield to him who was specially and peculiarly called
bishop, _jure humano_; yet the act of ordination they still reserved in
their own power. And wheresoever the act doth thus remain in the power of
the whole presbytery, the conferring of the outward sign or rite by one in
the name of the rest, none of us condemneth, as may be seen in Beza,
Didoclavius, and Gersom Bucer. Neither is there any more meant by
Jerome(1038) when he saith, "What doth a bishop (ordination being
excepted) which a presbyter may not do?" For, 1. He speaketh not of the
act of ordination, which remained in the power of the presbytery, but of
the outward sign or rite, which synedochically he calls ordination.(1039)
2. He speaketh only of the custom of that time, and not of any divine
institution; for that the imposition of hands pertained to the bishop
alone, not by divine institution, but only by ecclesiastical custom,
Junius proveth(1040) out of Tertullian, Jerome and Ambrose.

4. Afterward bishops began to appropriate to themse