Bishops how great Assertors soever of the identity of their Order with that of Presbyters ever did renounce or could renounce without making their Government unpracticable § XI Though the Bishops had received their Power from their Election by men yet that would not suffice to make valid any Acts of the same men without their consent after their Election § XII XIII This right of Presidency might hold though the whole right of their Power had been purely Humane § XIV But supposing that right Divine all that men can do can be only to determine the Person not to confine the Power The reasoning here used will proceed though Bishops had been made by Presbyters alone without the concurrence and Consecration of other Bishops § XV. The Primitive Bishops seem indeed to have been made so by Presbyters without Bishops § XVI BUT though we should suppose those Persons then to have been altogether of the same mind which they conceive those to have been of who lived in the Apostles times though we suppose not only that they thought it fit that the whole power of the Bishop should be given to Presbyters but that they had actually given it them suppose we that the Bishop had no more Authority reserved to him than only to preside in their Assemblies that is to call them and to fit in the first place of them when they were convened that is supposing that the Bishops Authority were no more than what was consistent with the Aristocratical form of Government which they conceive to have been observed in the Primitive times though this supposition be notoriously false concerning the Ages I am speaking of yet I do not see how even this way our Brethren can defend the validity of their Ordinations by single Presbyters especially as it is practised among them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government no power can be given I do not mean only that it cannot be given Canonically but that it cannot be given validly but to Persons who are at least in conjunction with those from whom they receive their power then at least when they actually receive it Which will consequently null all the Ordinations which have been made in the state of separation and will therefore make it impossible for any Schism which is made by single Presbyters in the way that has been observed by our Adversaries to maintein it self with any pretence of Authority beyond one generation And this must sure be very acceptable to those generous Spirits who are more solicitous for Catholick Vnity than for the party in which they were born § II AND that this is so I shall endeavour to prove in two regards in regard of the power that must be allowed to the Bishop even as the President of these Assemblies and in regard of that which must be allowed to other Presbyters as fellow-members of the same Assemblies 1. In regard of the power of the Bishop as President of those Assemblies For by the Fundamental Principles even of Aristocratical Government it is certain 1. That no power can be given but by the act of that Body wherein the right of Government is originally seated that is in our case of the whole Presbytery It is against the interest of all Societies and the principles of all Government that single Members even of those who have otherwise power in conjunction with others to dispose of the Government of a Society should be allowed the power of disposing of it in their single capacities But it is peculiarly against the right of a Polyarchical Government because no particular Member has the right of the whole Society and therefore cannot dispose of the Government of it which whether it be supreme or subordinate must imply either a power over the whole Society or a power necessarily derived from that which is so Even subordinate Authority must be derived from the supreme that there may be such an essential dependence upon it as is necessary for the safety of all Societies This will therefore make it a Nullity in the thing if single Members do presume to dispose of that which is not their own right alone but the right of the whole Body § III AND 2. As by the nature of this Government the right of it must be supposed to be in the whole Body so neither can any act be presumed to be the act of the whole Body but what has passed them in their publick Assemblies Though every particular Member for himself should signifie his own consent yet it is not taken for the act of the Society till it be also signified in an Assembly and it is taken for the act of the whole Society if it pass them in their Assembly though without the consent of every particular Person so it have the prevailing vote nay though that prevailing vote be not the greater part of the Society so it be only of the greater part of those which are present in such Assemblies For the reason of this I say no more at present but that it is found necessary for all Multitudes to agree on these Rules for settling Assemblies and for giving this power to what is done in such Assemblies to conclude the whole Societies and to the prevailing vote of those Assemblies to conclude the whole Assemblies before they can pass out of the state of a Multitude into that of a Society that is before they can have any Government that can solidly unite them at least before they can have any Government that can be practicable The same reasons which make this fit to be agreed on in any one Society are common to all Societies as Societies and therefore must be allowed the same force in those that are Ecclesiastical as in those that are Civil as they are capable of being administred in this Life And therefore God himself cannot be supposed to have made a Government even of his own institution practicable till he have settled these Rules of administring it And when they are once settled however they come to be so whether by Gods own appointment or by the consent of the People it will then be very just as well as fit to conclude that what is done on pretence of the right of the Society out of such an Assembly cannot validly confer any right of the Society because on the Principles of the agreement on these Assemblies they are not to be reputed as acts of the Society And certainly as nothing but the Society it self can in Justice make a valid conveyance of its own right so it is not conceivable how the Society it self can do it by any thing but its own act Besides the very reason of agreeing on these Assemblies as the most convenient means for administring the power of the Society seems to be purposely to preclude all surreptitious acts that might be pretended in the name of the Society if designing men might be allowed in their pretences concerning what might be transacted privately And therefore the main
Society can never be mainteined without a coercive power over such vested in its Governours nor without a power of deciding of such Laws Authentically in order to Practice For this power of Authentical Exposition is as necessary for preserving the Society in a Succession as the Legislative power it self was for its first establishment and therefore perfectly necessary for those Governours which are to keep up the Succession Especially considering that as I said no Authentick Interpretations are now to be expected from God himself And therefore it is as unreasonable to appeal from the Governours of the Church to the Scriptures in things concerning their Government as matters of Practice certainly must if any and to expect that either the Government or the Society could be preserved if such an Appeal were admitted as to expect that our Secular peace and Vnity could be preserved if we were allowed to appeal to the Letter of the Law against all the power of Magistrates either for their Execution or Interpretation § VII AND 4. That as it is thus inconsistent with Government or the Safety of any Society to admit of an Appeal from all its Magistracy to its Laws so it is also to admit the like Appeals from all the Visible Present Governours to one that is Invisible and from whom no present decision is to be expected For this is plainly to hinder all exercise of church-Church-Authority in this Life and consequently to frustrate its whole design seeing it is here only that it can be seasonable For if the Appeal be good the exercise of Government ought to be suspended till the Cause be decided by the Power to which the Appeal is made which if it cannot be expected in this Life will consequently hinder in this Life all exercise of Government by the Persons invested with it and so leave such a Society destitute of the means necessary for its own preservation in such Cases that is indeed in all which the frowardness and mistakes of the Appellants as well as the Justice of their Cause might make such Whence it plainly follows that the supreme Visible Governours of the Church must be absolute and unappealable even in regard of Appeals to be made to God himself Nor would our dissenting Brethren think this expression arrogant if they would be pleased to consider it in a parallel Case wherein themselves as many of them at least as are sensible of the moment of the things discoursed of and no others are competent Judges of them will I believe think it Just and Reasonable that is in Secular Government For will any of them think it fit that such Appeals should be admitted I do not say in the State but even in their own Families Could they ever expect to maintein their Authority or the Peace even of these little Societies upon these Terms if their Authority must be controlled and its execution suspended as often as their too partially-concerned Subjects should make such Appeals nay where themselves the Governours could not satisfy as much as their own Consciences as to the matter wherein the Appeal were made as our Church professes her self unable to satisfy hers in the matter of our Brethrens Appeal At least can any fallible Authority subject to humane mistakes and Prejudices of the Persons vested with it ever reach the end for which it is originally designed the decision of Controversies among their Subjects on these Terms § VIII AND yet the very same reasons which they urge for such an Appeal in Ecclesiasticals will proceed as strongly in Seculars For are the Governours of the Church tyrannical I believe themselves will not deny but that many of the Seculars are so too Are they fallible Certainly the Secular Governours must be much more so whose Errors are of less importance and consequently less obliging Providence to prevent them and who cannot pretend to such assistances of the Spirit as are given to the Ecclesiasticals at their Ordination for preventing mistakes and extravagances Are they subordinate to God and Jesus Christ And are not the Secular Governours so too Have we the Scriptures given us a Rule for us to discover their failings and as a Law by which themselves must be judged at least by their Supreme Master And cannot the same Scriptures besides the Laws of Nature and Nations and the Fundamental Constitutions of their respective Societies and the Rules of Prudence serve us for the same purpose to discover the lapses of Secular Princes And are not they as obnoxious to Gods Tribunal as the Ecclesiasticks for the violation of these Laws at the day of Judgment § IX WILL they therefore say that their nearer relation to God does make them more severely accountable to him I confess it does so But must it therefore withal make them more accountable to their own Subjects Must they therefore be more subject to curbs and interruptions in the present exercise of their Government I am sure this is contrary to the course of proceedings in humane affairs We do not find there that Appeals are more easily admitted but more difficultly by how much nearer the Persons from whom the Appeal is made are related to the Supreme Prince Nor are the miscarriages of that Government which is limitted or curbed either thought so aggreable or accountable as of that which has been absolute and arbitrary And I am sure this is contrary to the sense of all those wise and Politick Nations who have therefore either united their Sacred power with that of the Secular in one Person though their Offices and Exercises were clearly distinct or used ceremonies of Consecration in their admission to the Secular power or reputed them as mixt Persons and given them the stile of Sacrosancti not only to secure their Persons from violence but to conciliate a greater veneration for their Majesty not to add any restrictions to their Authority as to Men but rather to possess them with a greater reverence of their Prudence when by this Means they should see them intitled to such Extraordinary Divine assistances and a more profound submission to their Authority when resistance to them should look so like fighting against God himself and the very honour which God was pleased to confer on them in admitting them to so near a relation to himself might justly aw Men into an opinion that God would not admit of any resistance in any Case of Appeal it self but that where Active Obedience could not be paid them yet Passive should and that even Appeals themselves would not be admitted no not even in the Court of Conscience but in matters of great importance and very evident by the same proportion of Government as we see in all other Cases that Appeals are much more difficult by how much the Judicatory from whence the Appeal is made approaches nearer to the Supreme of all And if the Secular Prince have been always thought a gainer by this accession either of the like Power or the like Ceremonies of
of men must involve their Records in a greater danger of miscarriage than others Besides that this dependence on Records must in the natural course of things make the Government weakest in the later Ages when we are warned to expect the vices of men most outragious and most needing a restraint which makes it very unlikely to have been Gods pleasure that it should depend on them Which will weaken all our Adversaries Arguments either from the less or from the obscurity of those Primitive Records § IX AND that way of tryal must needs be less popular because it resolves it into more Ancient Histories and greater variety of Learning than can reasonably be supposed in popular capacities If therefore Episcopacy alone and Episcopacy in the modern sense be the only Succession of the Apostles which has been kept uninterrupted to our present times the consequence must then be certain that there can be no Apostolical Power in our present Age which is not derived even from our modern Episcopacy § X FOR it is further observable 5. That even for this Negative consequence it is sufficient that the Argument be deduced from the only substitutes that are extant in the Age to which it is applied that whatever is not done by them cannot be supposed to be done by the Apostles themselves For what if the Presbyterian Government had lasted as long as our Adversaries pretend it did What if the Apostles had lest the form of Government different in several places in some Episcopal in some Presbyterian as a very learned Person does conjecture Dr. Stillingfleet Iren. And what if the Presbyteries of those times had indeed the power of Ordination and intended to give that Power to all the particular Presbyters that were ordeined by them then All this would only prove that the Presbyters so ordeined in those times had indeed the Power of Ordination and that all who were then ordeined by them were validly ordeined But it does not therefore follow that the present Ordinations by simple Presbyters is valid also unless it can be still proved that such a Succession of Presbyterian Government has been continued down to our present times and that the Power of Ordination is now also conferred by them on simple Presbyters as they conceive it to have been then If all the Successions of those Presbyterian Governments be long since extinct as most certainly they are now if they ever were in being then it is as vain to revive a title from them now which is impossible to be received from them as it would be to revive the title of the Julian Family to the Roman Empire And therefore they being uncapable of having Successors on this supposition it must follow that the Episcopal Successions are the only Successions now remaining of the Apostolical Power so that neither Presbyters nor Presbyteries can now have any more of the Power of the Apostles than what they can derive from the Episcopal Successions CHAP. XXII The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion THE CONTENTS 4. This Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first dividers of the several parties had never a power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their Circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first Ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were Ordeined § VIII § I 4. THIS Authority is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion This is a plain Corollary from the former Propositions For from thence it has appeared that no Authority can be expected in this present Age but in that Communion where the Succession of Apostolical Power has been continued to this present And that this Succession has been continued to our days in no other but the Episcopal Communion I conceive to be a thing so notorious as that I think our Adversaries themselves will not deny it They do not that I know of pretend the like uninterrupted Succession in any other form of Government § II HENCE it plainly follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government or in any other Communion at present must be derived from the Episcopal especially of that Age wherein the several parties began I suppose therefore that within less than two hundred years since that there was no Church in the world wherein a visible Succession was mainteined from the Apostles times to ours which was not Episcopally governed I suppose also that the first Inventers of the several Sects were at first Members of these Episcopal Churches and received both their Baptism in them and all the Orders they received I need not use that Argument here that they must therefore have received their Authority in the Episcopal Communion because there was then no other Communion that could give this Authority I think our Adversaries themselves as many of them as pretend to a regular Ordination or a valid Succession will not deny but that what Orders were received by them were actually received by their Forefathers in the Episcopal Communion and by Episcopal Authority Let us therefore see whether the Orders so received can make valid what they now do in their several Separations that is whether they can ratifie their Ordinances or their Sacraments or any thing else that concerns them as a Church that is as a Society priviledged with Spiritual Priviledges § III AND here I do not intend to take the advantage I might against the exercise of that Power by these Persons in their separate condition which they had before really and validly received from a just Authority which was able to give it them I make no exceptions as to the validity of that exercise of it much less as to the Canonicalness of it which I know our Adversaries will much less regard The uttermost that can be made of that is only this that such Persons did receive a Power for their own Lives which must expire with their Lives which this present Generation is not concerned for If therefore I can shew that they of this Generation have nothing from them by which they can justifie the validity of their
of the Bishops were so linked to him by the dependence he had brought them to as that they could not be trusted as equal Judges in matters concerning his Authority and yet the publick exigence of the Age forced them on those disputes they were then also interested to weaken their Authority when they found it so prejudicial to their great design This was plainly the case when the disputes came in between Popes and General Councils If those were to be tryed by Bishops the Popes must evidently have carried it Not only the dependence of those who were already made on him for their preferment but the multitudes more he might have made when he had seen it useful for his purpose of Titulars and Dependents as he did in Trent might have secured him of the major votes of the Bishops in any Council that would be swayed by the major votes This the Papalins very well understood in the Council of Basil when knowing how small a proportion the Bishops bore in that Council to the rest that were allowed their votes there Aen. Sylv. Comment de gest Conc. Bas. and how sure they were to be over-voted so long as those other votes were allowed they desired that the matters might be determined by the Bishops alone according to the Precedents of former Councils But this the Cardinal of Arles the great Patron of that Council would by no means endure and among other Arguments on which he insists in asserting the right of Presbyters to a vote in Councils this is the principal of the opinion of St. Hierome concerning the original equality of Bishops and Presbyters And considering how many innovations the Councils of those times and this among the rest were forced upon by the exigency of their affairs rather than by their Judgment such as the votes of the Vniversities and of the Deputies of the Nations of which I verily believe no antienter precedent can be given none can admire if in this they were also transported beyond what they would have done otherwise And he who considers the reasonings of the Council for the Superiority of Councils above the Pope as they are represented by Aeneas Sylvius who was among them and then a friend of them when he gave this account of them will find that they are the very same which have been since insisted on by all Republicans and Enemies of Monarchy in general by which it is easie to judg how far the men of that party many of whom were Subjects to Monarchs were transported with the heats of the disputes then managed I mention not the exigency of affairs which necessitated the Fathers of the Reformation to take refuge in this Opinion when they also found how the generality of the Bishops then in being were by their interest obliged to stand by the Roman Court in the Prerogatives then disputed as well as by the Oaths they had taken at their Consecration and consequently how impossible it was to expect an impartial decision of their Disputes from an Order so interessed and obliged whether in or out of Councils I have really much better thoughts of the integrity of these Persons than of the Ages now mentioned But even well meaning Persons are undiscernibly inclinable to favour Propositions which are inclinable to their Interests and to have as little kindness for such as are against their interests And how far favour may go for the deciding things which are of themselves any thing disputable to divert men from considering the uttermost that can be said for a contrary cause and to make little things seem great when they are produced for a favourable Opinion he must be a stranger to Humane Nature and Conversation who has not observed However their Authority cannot be considerable in this matter because no Ordinations depended on them § IV I DO not by this discourse in the least prejudg against the evidence producible by our Adversaries in this cause I do not therefore prejudg against the Truth of their cause because their interest obliged them to defend it I am sensible how very possible it is that truth may concur with interest All therefore that I infer from these cases is that there was in all these cases interest that might divert Persons who were not very wary as well as sincere from the quest of Truth But truly considering the light of those times by which alone they were enabled to judg without prejudice to the light of our own Age which our modern Adversaries have produced and considering the prejudices by which they were generally acted I confess I cannot see how to excuse the mainteiners of this Opinion in those times from insincerity For how was it possible for them who received Isidore Mercator's wares for genuine to doubt of the Primitive Superiority of Bishops over Presbyters when he must find all the particular subordinations of the Episcopal Hierarchy so minutely described in Epistles ascribed to Clement Cletus Linus c. And what one was there from Hincmar's time downwards to the times we speak of who ever questioned them Who could question it that believed the many Legends then extant concerning the Primitive times of Christianity And who was there then who could find in his heart to question them especially considering their incompetency to judg of the evidence produced by our modern Adversaries They knew nothing of most of those Testimonies amassed by Blondel Many of their names they had not heard of at least they had not seen their Works or if they had seen they could not understand them as many of them as were in Greek and were not then translated The Scriptures themselves as they had been quoted by St. Hierome for this purpose were the principal Arguments they were capable of knowing But it is withal notorious how much more was then ascribed to Commentators of note than any evidence of the Text it self for the sense of the Scripture § V AND therefore I am apt to think that St. Hierome's Authority in applying those Texts prevailed more with them than any Inferences they could have made from the Texts themselves For we otherwise see very many instances of this partiality not only of forced Literal senses but also of Mystical ones which passed unquestioned among them and were used upon all occasions as Arguments against Adversaries on the Authority of Commentators of far less note than he was of And the single Authority of St. Hierome against not only the concurrent Testimonies of his own Age and of Authorities then esteemed every way as considerable as his own but which past for a much more prevailing Argument in the Ages I am speaking of against the concurrent practice of the then Catholick Church could not in any probability be taken for so convincing an Argument in Conscience in times that were so manifestly swayed by Authorities I mention not the partialities that most probably got St. Hierome himself that Authority among them that the very favourable Epistle of his to
Damasus wherein he so extols the See of Rome seems to have recommended him to the counterfeiter of the Roman Council under the name of Gelasius not long before the time of Isidore Mercator as the Authority of that Council in Isidore's Collection might recommend him downwards as soon as that bundle of Forgeries had once prevailed universally All the use that I make at present of these insinuations is that if it be suspicious whether the men who then followed these Principles did embrace them out of a sincere sense of their Truth then they cannot be presumed to have been Principles of Conscience Which if they were not this is sufficient to shew that they are not fit measures of the Power that was actually given by the Bishops of that Age. § VI AND though they had been received more universally than it appears they were among the Multitude yet how is it likely that it was so received among the Bishops themselves Is it likely that they would be generally so partial to an Opinion so destructive of their common rights as Bishops Is it likely that they would be so partial when there was no evident prevailing consideration in point of Conscience that might induce them to it when it was a matter of dispute even among disinterested Persons and debated by Arguments and Authorities at least as considerable on their side as on the others If any particular Bishops had been so strangely partial against themselves and thought themselves obliged in Conscience to be so yet sure there is no reason to make use of it as a presumption to judg of the minds of them who had not otherwise declared their minds expresly and to judg of them universally And yet it has appeared that the whole use of this opinion for judging what Power was actually given is only as a presumption and even this presumption is useless concerning others than the Bishops None but they pretended to the Power of giving Orders at least not to the exercise of that Power And therefore whatever any else thought besides the Bishops is very impertinent to our present purpose because it can give us no assurance what was actually intended by the Bishops and it is only their intention by which we can in prudence judg what Power was actually given by them § VII BUT let us suppose that which in prudence can never be supposed that the Bishops of those Ages were universally of this opinion that their own Order was the same with that of Presbyters yet it does not thence follow that they must have given Presbyters the Power of Ordination It neither follows from the Notions of those times nor from the reason of the thing And sure we cannot better judg of a matter of this nature than by one of these two ways It does not follow from the Notions of those times For even they who thought them to be the same Order yet made them different degrees and that not only from the custom of the Church but by Divine Right also But it could not have appeared how they could distinguish them even in degree but by allowing something in practice to the Superior degree as a peculiar Prerogative and there was nothing thought so a So Epiphanius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Hâ—res lxxv 4 And again 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ib. And St. Chrysostome 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 init Hom. ii in 1. ad Tim. p. 289. peculiar to the Episcopal degree as this power of Ordination This was the very particular excepted by St. Hierome b Quid enim facit exceptâ Ordinatione Episcopus quod Presbyter non faciat Ep. 85. ad Euagr. himself even where he most of all pleads for parity in other things I know there are of our Brethren who understand St. Hierome's words not of the original right of appropriating ordination to them as left to them by the Apostles but of a priviledg actually allowed them by the practice of the Church in that Age wherein he wrote which I shall not now dispute It suffices that he made no mention of Ordination among the instances of their parity nay that he expresly excepts this particular among his other proofs of the identity of their Office without telling expresly on what right it was that he made the exception which were very fair occasions to induce them to believe that he did not intend to give them the power of Ordination especially when it was withal notorious and confessed by himself that he lived in the Communion of a Church wherein Presbyters were debarred from the exercise of this Power It suffices that they who in that Age followed his Authority were not obliged by any of their designs in promoting his opinion to understand him of a parity in the power of Ordination nay never seem actually to have understood him so whatever other sense has been applied to him by those who have more subtilly considered him in our present Age. It is not St. Hierome's true opinion that I am now concerned for but that of those who might then have followed him If they never understood him of a parity between Bishops and Presbyters in the power of ordination If they did not really believe them equal in this particular if they actually believed that this distinction of degree was from the Apostles and that this power of ordination was the peculiar Prerogative of the Superior degree then certainly they who then followed St. Hierome might notwithstanding if they maintained these things also together with his opinion thinks themselves obliged never to give the power of ordination to the Presbyters that were then ordeined by them So far our Brethren are from any solid ground of a presumption that such a thing was ever intended for them § VIII AND as this consequence was far from being owned in the actual sense of those times so neither will it indeed follow from the opinion of these Persons that simple Presbyters had any right to a power of Ordination Though they believed Episcopacy to be the same Order with Presbytery yet their acknowledging a difference in degree was enough to hinder them from confounding the peculiar rights of the several degrees and this we see was taken for the peculiar right of Episcopacy Though they conceived no new Character to have been imprinted in the Consecration of a Bishop yet withal they confessed that the Character of his Presbytery was extended And why may not this extension extend his Power also at least to some Acts to which he had not Power before Nay certainly this very thing was intended by them that it should actually do so And if so then certainly this extended Power must have implied an addition of Power above what was in it before it was so extended Whence it will plainly follow that this Power of Ordination to which the Episcopal Character was extended was wanting in them whilest they were simple Presbyters that is before it was so extended And therefore they who were of
of a popular party § II THIS is not allowed in any Societies of the like nature Though the Aldermen of Corporations have a power together with the Mayors to dispose of the Offices belonging to their respective Corporations yet if the whole Table shall meet by themselves in separation from the Mayor and in opposition to him however they might over-vote him if he had been present and their assembly lawful yet what they should do in the Case we are now supposing would be a perfect Nullity and unobliging to the Corporation But if any single Alderman should separate from all his Brethren also and should of himself undertake to dispose of the things or Offices of the Corporation could any of our Brethren themselves approve them in it Could they think the Offices so disposed of by them validly disposed of Could they think the Corporation obliged to ratifie them And yet it is strange that they should not see how like this Case is to that of their own Predecessors The first Ministers they had ordeined in the separation were ordeined by such Presbyters as these and by such an act as this now mentioned And their whole Succession since that time has been mainteined generally on no better a Title This representation of their case may possibly affect some popular capacities better than the naked reasons But that the more judicious among them may see that my desire it to deal fairly and candidly with them and not to represent their cause more invidiously than it deserves or to take any advantage that may be taken from a false representation of it I shall endeavour to reduce the reason to a more close way of management under the following considerations which I shall intreat our Adversaries to consider impartially § III 1. THAT though a Presbyter when he is once made is a Presbyter in the Catholick Church yet the reason that makes him so is the correspondence of the whole Catholick Church with that particular one of which he was made a Member at his Ordination By his being a Presbyter in the Catholick Church when he is once made I do not mean that he may canonically exercise his Power in all particular Churches where he may have occasion to come without dependence on the respective Governours but that the exercise of his power in his own Church is to be ratified over the whole Catholick Church in general that they are to suppose the Sacraments administred by him to be validly administred and that therefore they are not to rebaptize Persons baptized by him when they come to live among them nor to refuse their Communion to such to whom he thinks fit to give it nor to receive to their Communion those who are excluded from his and that they are also so far to ratifie the Authority received in his own Church from those who had power to give it him as that if they think fit to permit him to exercise his power within their Jurisdiction they do it without pretending to give him a new Authority but only a new Licence and that where-ever he can exercise his Authority without Canonical injury as in Heathenish or Heretical Countries where no Canons do oblige ratifie all his acts of power the same way as if he had performed them within his own Canonical Jurisdiction This is more than is observed in civil Societies One Country is not bound to confirm the censures of another they are neither obliged to banish their exiles nor to receive their Countrimen to the same priviledges among themselves which they enjoyed in their own Country nor to receive their Magistrates to exercise power among themselves without a new Commission which may give them a new power which the Authority of their own Country was not able to give them § IV AND the reason why I level my discourse against the power that the Presbyters of our Adversaries may pretend to on account of their being Presbyters of the Catholick Church is because this is the only pretence that they can plausibly make for the validity of what they do Canonical Licence they cannot so much as pretend to for exercising their power within the Jurisdictions of others without their leave And it has already appeared that they can make out no Succession from the Apostles but what must originally have come from Episcopal Ordination That therefore they should expect that the exercise of a power received from the Bishops yet exercised within their Jurisdiction without the Licence of the Bishops nay contrary to their express prohibition should be counted valid how unlawful soever must be from the irrevocableness of the Authority at first received by them and the unconfinedness of the design of that power antecedently to those Canons by which it was afterwards made irregular in its practice Were it not for the nature of the unconfinedness of this power they could not pretend to any right to exercise it out of the Jurisdiction of him who gave it them nor even within that Jurisdiction without his leave And therefore if this will not do it they can have nothing that can defend their Vsurpations from being invalid as well as uncanonical § V AND that this correspondence of the Catholick Church with that particular one in which he was ordeined is the true reason why all other Churches are obliged to ratifie the acts of every particular Presbyter will appear if it be considered that by his Ordination in his own particular Church he can have no Jurisdiction given him over any other which is not under the Jurisdiction of that particular Church from which he has received his Orders And therefore the reason why they are obliged to confirm his censures cannot be any Authoritative deference they owe to him such as Subjects owe to even their fallible Superiors even in matters wherein they think them actually mistaken yet so to practise as if they thought them not mistaken but purely their own actual conviction concerning the reasonableness of the thing it self because they either know or presume it to be fit that his censure should be confirmed But this reason of the thing would not hold were it not that his Church and theirs are in those things the same and as they give the same advantages so they require the same qualifications which whoever is presumed to have in one cannot by them by whom he is presumed to have them be at the same time presumed to want them in the other In other Societies where the priviledges conferred are proper to the Society the qualifications are so too And therefore though one Society be really satisfied that a Subject has deserved well of another and that he has deservedly received his reward for his eminent deserts from that Authority which had power to give him it and therefore that he has a just title to a reward yet are they not obliged in any reason to give him the same honour in their own For the nature of these Societies are so little
belong to him as a Presbyter though he were not also a President of the Presbytery and therefore cannot take it for a Prerogative of his Office as President That it is therefore from some such a Presbytery as this that they must derive the validity of their Orders appears from the Principles already premised that no other Presbyteries can make out their Succession from the Apostles that particular Members of even these Presbyteries cannot do it alone in a separation from them that Multitudes of such particular Persons though meeting together cannot make up such a Church among them as were requisite to attest the Orders of Persons ordeined to the rest of the Catholick Church who maintein correspondence with them § XIII CONSIDERING therefore these Episcopal Presbyteries only as Presbyters and the Bishop himself as acting herein by no higher a power than that of an ordinary Presbyter yet even so no Orders can be valid but those which were conferred by the prevailing vote of even such a Presbytery at least those are invalid which are given by the votes of a smaller over voted part of them Even by the Principles of Aristocratical Government though it were doubtful whether the greater part might dispose a right common to them all without the consent of every particular yet it hardly can be doubtful whether a smaller part can dispose of such a common right though over-voted by a greater number of suffrages than their own Though it may be thought reasonable that some reserved cases of that nature wherein the whole Society were deeply concernâ—d should not pass without the unanimous suffrages of every individual Member yet as there is no Justice antecedently to compacts that any individuals should dispose of the rights of others though less considerable than themselves till by the general acts and compacts of all whereby Polyarchical Societies are most naturally settled such general rules are agreed on by which some particular Members may for peaces sake be allowed to dispose of the common rights of their Fellow-members without their express consent in the particular but by vertue of their general consent once given to such general rules so neither is there any reason in prudence that where unanimous consent cannot be had and it is therefore necessary that one part yield to the other the greater should be swayed by the smaller part The fundamental rule of all this publick justice is that where there is a necessity of a choice the publick be preferred before private interests that therefore it is very just to bear with injuries to private Persons when they cannot be avoided without injuries to the publick Which will in generosity oblige a smaller part to yield to a greater but can on no terms oblige the greater to yield to the smaller because indeed the interest of the greater part is more the publick interest than that of the smaller § XIV BESIDES the reason of all compacts of this kind of referring their differences to a publick decision is the presumed equality of the decision above what would be among the interessed Persons themselves and the power to execute what is resolved on beyond the resistance of those against whom the cause is decided And therefore if we should again suppose men free as they were before these compacts I am speaking of we have reason to presume that they would settle this power of deciding their differences in such hands where there might be presumed less danger of corruption and where there were the greatest power to execute their own decrees And both these reasons give the preference to these major votes above the smaller part It is to be presumed that it is not so easie to corrupt a greater as it is to corrupt a smaller part And when it is necessary that the decree be executed the power of the greater is greater than that of the smaller part where the particular Subjects of power are supposed equal as they are in our present case And though it be very possible in after cases that it may so fall out that the greatest right may sometimes belong to that side where there is the smallest power yet we have reason to believe that the only reason why it comes to be so is the unexpectedness of revolutions to which humane affairs are obnoxious which could not be so much as probably foreseen when the rules of such Societies were first agreed on Otherwise it is reasonable to presume that at the first constitution of those rules they would chuse the greatest power and interest for the fittest seat of Authority because they would by that be best secured of the execution of the Sentences given by them And therefore where we may presume the greater power lay at the passing of those compacts and where they who made those compacts had reason to see the greatest power would always be there we have also reason to presume that they would intend to place the greatest Authority § XV AND this is a reason which might in all probability induce them to resolve that the major vote should prevail through all succeeding generations because the major vote in the case I am speaking of must inseparably carry with it the greatest power And this is a reason that alike concerns all by whom the Government were at first settled whether it were by compacts of the Parties themselves who were to be governed or whether the Government were placed over them by a power who had a Jurisdiction over them antecedently to their own consent There is the same reason why such a power should decree that the smaller number of suffrages in opposition to a greater number should be null in Societies to be established by him as that the Parties themselves should at first agree that it should be so The reasons now mentioned proceed alike in both cases Which I therefore observe that our Adversaries may perceive that as to the case of which I am now speaking it will come to the same event whether the power of the Presbyteries do come from the consent of the particular Presbyters or whether it proceed immediately from the Divine institution Still it is to be presumed that things are to be decided by the vote of the greater part where nothing is otherwise expresly determined because this way of determination is so certainly for the publick interest for which we have as much reason to presume that God would be solicitous as that the Presbyters themselves would be so § XVI BY this it appears even from the Principles of Aristocratical Government how invalid as well as how irregular it must be for a smaller over-voted number of the Presbyters to undertake to dispose of the common rights of the whole Presbyteries whether as acting by themselves or as acting in Presbyteries made up of multitudes of such Presbyters as had been severally over-voted in the Presbyteries to which each of them did at first belong Now that the power given in the Ordination of a Presbyter
And it cannot be reasonable for them to judg others to be undutiful unless they suppose their reasons such as may not only perswade themselves but may also prevail on all others who use that industry and ingenuity which the moment of the thing would require from them But the evidence must be much greater which may encourage men to judg of the industry or ingenuity of those who dissent from themselves than what may suffice for their own satisfaction Probable appearances of things to themselves may be very prudent reasons to incline men rather to one side of a disputable question But that cannot make it reasonable for them to believe that others who are more judicious and sagacious than themselves are all obliged to be of their mind and must either be wanting in their industry or ingenuity if they be not so Yet some cases there are which are so very evident as that men may judg concerning them for others how judicious soever as well as for themselves But then the evidence must be so great as may exceed all that whereby we may judg concerning the industry or ingenuity of others For in this case only it is reasonable to suspect the disingenuity or negligence of others rather than their want of conviction in case they dissent from us And therefore thus great the evidence must be by which Governours must judg concerning the punishableness of Dissenters But the evidence by which they must judg of the conviction their Subjects may have of the right of such Governours to govern them must yet be presumed by so much greater than the evidence of their particular Decrees by how much the evidence of Principles ought to be greater than that of the inferences deduced from those Principles For the knowledg of the Persons who are to govern us is indeed the first Principle of the practicableness of any visible Government § VII HENCE it follows 5. That those notorious and agreed means by which Subjects may be enabled to judg to whose Government they do particularly belong must be from God And if it be from him it is no matter whether it be from him immediately or whether it be derived from him by the Ministry of men empowered by him and who are empowered by virtue of their general Authority received from him to make provision even for this particular case It suffices that God will account resistance to Superiors whose right is discoverable by such notorious Rules as a resistance to Governours established by himself and I believe this is all of which our dissenting Brethren themselves will desire to be satisfied And that this is so will easily appear from the Principles already premised For if all must be presumed to come from God which is necessary for the practicableness of the Government established by him and the knowledg of their particular Governours be necessary for the practice of the duty of particular Subjects and no other means be proper for this knowledg of their Governours but such as are agreed and notorious it must then follow that God must have provided some such means And then considering that this distinction of Jurisdictions is such a means for Subjects to distinguish to whose Government they belong seeing that this was a means agreed on by all and notoriously in use long before the rise of them who first began to question Jurisdictions it cannot be denied to be very becoming the care of God that this should be settled by him But on the other side considering also that the means assigned by our Adversaries different from this of Jurisdiction are neither notorious nor agreed on by any but themselves or those who have innovated with them who cannot in any equity be allowed to be competent Judges in a matter of this nature wherein the whole Community is concerned even those also who dissent from them who have the advantage of Number as well as of Prescription against them I say these things being considered these cannot be taken for means of Gods appointment And therefore the settlement of Jurisdictions is not only a proper means but the only means by which all must be concluded in this matter And therefore they must either be acknowledged obligatory by divine right or God cannot be supposed to have made those provisions which are absolutely necessary for making the Government established by him practicable This must follow from their finding it already settâ—ed to their hands when they first began their Innovations that by whomsoever these Jurisdictions were first introduced yet they were not introduced without the Divine approbation Which is enough to oblige all them who find it grounded on such a right to submit to it But according to the Principles of those of our Adversaries who allow the Church a power to determine particular circumstances not expresly determined in the Scriptures but yet necessary for the practice of those general rules which are already prescribed there the institution it self must be acknowledged Divine not only providentially but also in regard of the Authority by which it was introduced not only because the Church's Authority in general proceeds from God but also because she is by these Principles authorized to exercise her power in this very matter which I am now discoursing of seeing this determination of Jurisdictions has appeared to be no other but a determination of particular circumstances requisite for the practicableness of Government in general § VIII NOR can they think it strange in reason that the right of these Jurisdictions should be Divine notwithstanding that the limitation of them depends on men especially when by these Principles those men must be supposed to be seconded by a Divine Authority There is hardly any instance of a Divine Authority which does not as to some particular requisite for practice need the accession of a Humane Authority Yet none thinks the obligation resulting from the complex of both to be therefore any thing the less Divine Who doubts but that the Authority even of these particular Books of Scripture which we now receive for Scripture is Divine Yet it is impossible to prove that these particular Books were written by those particular Authors whose names they bear on which notwithstanding the credit of their being Divinely inspired does necessarily depend but by the same way as we prove other matters of Fact that is by Humane Historical Testimony Many believe that the right of Secular Government is Divine and that the punishment of Rebellious Persons is accordingly such as those deserve who resist the Ordinance of God himself Nay this plainly seems to be the design of the Apostles reasoning Rom. xiii 2 Yet there is no present Government in our parts where the determination of the particular Persons who are to govern is not wholly performed by men by men not pretending to inspiration nor yet on that account expecting any extraordinary Revelation The use of Lots and Anguries which might look like consulting the Gods in the matter
of the reasons that required them § XVIII XIX XX XXI XXII XXIII XXIV XXV The unreasonableness of this way of arguing § XXVI There were then circumstances proper to that Age which required particular condescension § XXVII Though the Negative Argument be not good yet the Positive is that the actual claim of Governours then is a good Presumption that they had a right to the Power so claimed by them § XXVIII Persons extraordinarily gifted at length made subject to the ordinary Governours of the Church § XXIX XXX XXXI This derivation of Power rather from Governours than from the People agreeable to those Precedents whom the Primitive Christians were mâ—st likely to imitate § XXXII XXXIII XXXIV XXXV A way proposed for accommodating the several interests concerned in Ordinations according to the practice of those times § XXXVI XXXVII The Apostles unlikely to confer this right of Government on the People if left by God to their own Liberty according to the Notions which then prevailed among the Christians § XXXVIII Remarks tending to the satisfaction of the lovers of Truth and Peace 1. This way of arguing from the actual establishments of God as it is much more modest so it is also more secure for finding out the right of Government than any conjectures we can make from the reason of the thing § XXXIX XL. 2. Though the People had this inherent right of Government originally yet it cannot exclude a right of God who may when be pleases resume this right into his own hands § XLI 3. If the people ever had such a right originally yet all that has been done since for alienating that right which could be done § XLII p. 423. CHAP. XX. 2. This Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God by the Mediation of those men to whom it was at first committed by him The Negative to be proved That none can be presumed to have a call from God without at least an approbation from the Supreme visible Governours § I. 1. It is in reason and by the Principles of visible Government requisite that this Negative be granted for the Conviction of false Pretenders to a Power received from God 1. It is necessary that Pretenders should be discovered § II III IV. 2. It is also requisite that the means of discovering Pretenders be notorious to all even to ordinary capacities § V VI. 3. These notorious means for discovering Pretenders must be common to all Ages of the Church not proper only to that of the Apostles § VII 4. Hence it follows that God left them to the same ordinary means of judging concerning the right of Spiritual Governours as had been used in judging concerning the right of their temporal Superiors § VIII IX 5. By this Rule of judging concerning Spiritual right the same way as we judg concerning temporal none can be presumed to have this Power but they who have received it from them to whom it was at first committed § X XI 6. This Inference will especially hold when access to the Supreme is most difficult § XII XIII This is the case of Ecclesiastical Government § XIV Application to the Principles of a Modern Writer § XV XVI 2. Our Brethren must be obliged in equity to grant this way because they cannot pitch on a more certain way for the tryal of Pretenders § XVII 1. They cannot do it by deriving their Authority from God immediately § XVIII XIX XX. 2. They cannot do it by pretending to receive their Authority immediately from the Scriptures independently on the Act of their ordinary Superiors § XXI An Objection answered § XXII p. 438. CHAP. XXI 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the Age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from thâ—se who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own times Neither by their own Persons nor by their deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient Substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their power to others cannot at all receive any power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their Innovations § X. p. 476. CHAP. XXII 4. The Authority of administring the Sacraments is not now to be expected any where but in the Episcopal Communion § I. Hence it follows that all the Authority which can be pretended in any other form of Government now must be derived from the Episcopal Government of that Age wherein that form first began § II. The first Dividers of the several parties had never a Power given them of ordeining others by them who made them Presbyters § III IV. 1. They have actually received no more Power from God than they have received from their Ordeiners § V. 2. They have actually received no more from their Ordeiners than what their Ordeiners did actually intend to give them according to their presumable intention § VI. 3. That is to be presumed likely to be the intention of their Ordeiners which may be presumed likely to be thought becoming by Persons in their circumstances § VII 4. The securest way of judging what the Bishops who first ordeined these Dividers thought becoming must be by the Notions then prevailing when these first Dividers were ordeined § VIII p. 483. CHAP. XXIII The Objection concerning the Opinion prevailing in the modern Schools that Bishops and Presbyters differed not in Order but Degree Answ. 1. It seems rather to have been Interest than Conscience that inclined men to the belief of this Opinion This cleared from a short History of this Opinion § I II III IV V. Answ. 2. Though this Opinion had been received more universally than it appears it was by the Multitude yet it is not likely that it would be so received by the Bishops upon whose intention the validity of the Orders conferred by them must depend § VI. Answ. 3. Though the Bishops of those Ages had been universally of this Opinion yet it does not thence follow that they must have given the Presbyters ordeined by them the Power of
Investiture into his own Power with those whereby the Ecclesiasticks are ordinarily settled in theirs then certainly the Original Ecclesiastical Power must be conceived more obligatory and less obnoxious to Appeal than the Secular which has been thus fortified by it § X AND 5. By the general Principles of Government it is not only true that Officers of higher Dignity are to be obeyed as Representatives of the Prince such as are Viceroys and Deputies but it is also true of the meanest Officers that are such as Constables c. That resistance of them in any Case is counted a resistance of the Prince and even where they transgress the Laws yet they are not to be opposed But according to the method of Regular Appeals not by an immediate recourse to the Prince himself but their more immediate Superiors And what is decreed in such Cases by those inferior Subordinate Officers to whom the Appeal is made is the same way to be obeyed as if it had been decreed by the Prince himself and under the same hazard of incurring the guilt of Rebellion against him especially where there can be no access to the Person of the Prince himself as there is none in our present Case So that by this method there can be no lawful remedy against the Exorbitances even of inferior Governours but by recourse to their Superiors and the Sentence given by Superiors upon such Appeal cannot be resisted without resisting Christ himself Thus Christ as a Governour is concerned to take care for the erection of a Body Politick consisting of Visible Governours as well as governed and Subordinate as well as Supreme Governours and to provide means of obliging all to obey them all respectively under pain of being accounted refractory against himself as a means of securing the performance of his own will by us which must be performed by us if we be real Subjects § XI BUT 2. He is also further concerned to see not only that his Will be performed by us but also that it be performed by us because it is his Will and not because it is our own humour and that it may appear to be so performed by us the erection of a Body Politick is also necessary He is concerned as a Governour to take care that it may appear even to Men that his Will is performed by us because it is his Will and not only because it is our humour to do the things willed by him For it is absolutely necessary for Government that it may attain the ends of Government to keep up its own reputation in the minds of Subjects For a despised Government can neither awe by its threats nor allure by its rewards nor consequently have any hold on the minds of Subjects to oblige them to perform their Duties or to preserve the publick Peace which are the most essential ends of Government Of this all wise Men have been so very sensible as that it has always been thought fit to punish the least affronts against Majesty how inconsiderable soever otherwise in themselves with the severest Penalties Though all civilized Nations and Places would afford innumerable instances hereof yet at present I name only one because I believe it will be of most Authority with our dissenting Brethren 2 Sam. x. 4.5 1 Chron. xix 4.5 and that is of David The affront of Hanun the Ammonite was not that of a Subject but of a neighbouring absolute Prince not against his Person but only his Ambassadors nor even against them was it such as might do them any permanent inconvenience It was only a matter of present shame the shaving of one half of their beards and cutting off their garments to the middle Yet we see this occasioned a very severely managed War wherein besides the mischief done in hot blood the whole People that were taken as Prisoners of War were treated with excessive rigour They were put under sawes and harrows of Iron 2 Sam. xii 31 1 Chron. xx 3 and axes of Iron and made to pass under the brick Kilne And to treat a Prince thus to whose Father David himself had confessed himself so much obliged I suppose in his exile under Saul for Nahash the Father of Hanun seems to have been the same who was vanquished by Saul 1 Sam. XI Ant. l. vi c. 5. Whereas yet Josephus without any ground from the Sacred Text will have him killed in the fight though afterwards in the Story it self he makes him newly deceased when this Embassy was sent Id. Ant. l. vii c. 5. unless possibly the distance between these two actions may incline us to suspect that there were two different Kings of the Ammonites of the same name To do thus with the Ammonites to whom the Nation of the Jews was so nearly related to the generality of those who had yielded to his mercy and in all their Cities may to Persons not considering how fatal in their consequences things may be which are inconsiderable in themselves and how necessary it is for Government that such consequences be in time prevented seem an excessively harsh expiation of so small a guilt Yet by David whom his History shews not to have been cruelly disposed nor revengeful this was thought necessary for preservation of his Government § XII NOW as Government can signify nothing without this reputation for the good of Subjects so neither can this reputation be preserved among them unless it may appear that they who obey the Authority do it not only to please themselves but him who has commanded the things to be performed by them and thereby signify their acknowledgment of his Authority and their own Subjection to him For what good can this reputation do unless it may appear to them who are to be edified by it And how can it appear to them that Subjects doing the commands of Authority have really that honour and respect for the Authority that commanded them unless this may also appear to them by their Practice conformable to such a respect which is indeed the only Prudent Argument for discovering what another does seriously believe And how can this appear by their Practice unless they see them do something at the command of the Authority which they may have reason to believe they would not have done if the Authority had not commanded it But in all things wherein themselves are gratified it may very justly be suspected whether they would not have done them though no Authority had required them and in all things wherein this gratification of themselves cannot be disproved it may be very probably be presumed § XIII NOR indeed is this appearance that Men do what is commanded by Authority only for the sake of the Authority only necessary as some may be inclinable to conceive for ostentation of the Power with which the Persons Authorized are invested nor only for edifying others with the goodness of the example but also for securing the performance of the Duties themselves Indeed if
are in describing our conversion to him as a conversion from b Act. xxvi 18 darkness unto Light as a c 1 Pet. ii 9 calling us out of darkness into this marvellous Light c. And what is Baptism else but the Solemnity of this conversion And why should we think it strange that they should use this word in the Mystical sense even in the Apostles times when we find them so constant to those Mystical Notions from whence it plainly came to be applyed to Baptism § V Besides as the Holy Ghost was given in Baptism so in the Apostles times it was usually given with a sensible signification and it was but necessary for the conviction of the Infidel beholders who might by this means be satisfied of the Divine Authority by which they preached when they saw their Promises of the Spirit so ratified by God in a way themselves were capable of judging of And among these sensible significations one of the most familiar and which the Jews had been most acquainted with was that of a Shechinah a visible glorious Light surrounding the faces of those Persons on whom the Holy Ghost was thus pleased to descend Thus it was with d Exod. xxxiv 30 Moses in the Mount and our Saviour at his Baptism and on his Transfiguration and it is most likely that the fiery cloven tongues which sate upon the Apostles on Pentecost were of this nature And even among the Heathens themselves the ignis lambens is taken notice of which appeared on some of their Heroes on a Virgil. Aen. 2. Ascanius and b Liv. L.i. c. 39. Servius Tullius and in the Samnite War on c Flor. and upon other d Vid. Appian Syriac p. 198. Ed. 1670. ib. not Tollii occasions this appearance of fire was counted lucky as signifying a propitious presence of the Deity And it was usual for them to picture them as we do our Saints with rays of Light And why might not this visible appearance of rays of Light on Persons newly Baptised be a very pobable occasion why Baptism it self was called Illumination Thence the Coronae radiatae on the first Emperours when they affected to be Gods If it was then it will be more likely that the name should have been taken up in the Apostles own times than afterwards when these Supernatural appearances began gradually to decay and to grow less familiar For though several other miracles continued to the second Century and downwards yet there is no reason to believe that this did at least we have no footsteps of its appearing ordinarily over Persons Baptized Heb. x. 32 Besides there is one place more wherein this same Author uses this same word of Illumination And whether it be necessary it should be understood so or not yet it cannot be denyed but that it is there also conveniently intelligible of Baptism And indeed the former days spoken thereof do most conveniently refer to their first initiation into the Christian Religion § VI I might have added further for shewing how very agreeable it was to the Notions of a Sacrament which then prevailed that Baptism should be called Illumination that Baptism was the lesser Mystery and the proper Office of such was understood to be Purgative rather than Perfective 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather than 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that was the Sacred Language And that the two Elements which were thought most Purgative were fire and water which were therefore generally used in these Purgative Mysteries Accordingly fire was used among the Purgative Rites of the Initiations of Mithras * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Porphyr Ep. ad Anebunt ap Euseb. Pr. Eu. L.iii. c. 4. and of the Egyptians and when Cores would purge a Child of its Mortality Nonn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Nazian Stel. 1. Apollodor Bibl. Selden de Diis Syr. she did it with fire and thus not only the modern Rabbins but even the LXXII themselves seem to have understood the Israelites making their Children pass through the fire of their initiatory Purgation when they express it by the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is the proper sacred term for that purpose which whether it were true in this case or not yet at least supposes that they who thus expounded these Texts did know that this was used in their initiations at least in those Eastern Countries which we have reason to expect to have most influence on our Christian Mysteries And the use of brimstone in these fiery Purgations was so very ordinary that it is conceived thence to have had the name of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is used for purging not only very frequently in the LXXII but also in prophane Authors And hence it was that the fire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Theocrit Eid 24. v. 9 even of Hell and of the general Conflagration were thought Purgative to the Souls who were to pass through them not only by the Philosophers but by many of the most antient Fathers As therefore the visible Element of Water was made use of for purging the Body which is the effect it is usually applyed to by the sacred Writers so it is also very probable that the Spirit when it descended upon them did descend in the likeness of fire as it did upon the Apostles at Pentecost that is that the Schechinah in which it appeared had the resemblance of Fire § VII This I therefore conjecture because as it is described by St. John Baptist as the Property of our Saviours Baptism Matt. iii. 11 Luk. iii. 16 that it gives the Holy Ghost so the Holy Ghost there given is peculiarly characterized under the resemblance of fire For so I understand this Baptizing with the Holy Ghost and with Fire to be a giving of the Holy Ghost with that external signification of a Glory which is called fire I confess this is peculiarly applied to the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the Apostles at Pentecost Act. i. 5 But when I consider it as opposed to St. John's Baptism I cannot but think it was also as ordinary then for Persons baptized by the Apostles to receive the Spirit with this external Symbol of fire as it was for them to want it in other Baptisms I need not also tell how very proper it was in the Mystical Language of those times to call the Spirit it self by the name of fire * The 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in the Chaldee Oracles the liquidus ignis in Virgil where see Servius And God is described as a Being whose Soul is Truth and his Body Fire See Boet. de cons. Phil. So Porphiry concerning the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 de Abstinent L.ii. ap Eus. Pr. Eu. i. 9 and that not only by them who thought it really so but by them who were more Orthodox in the Philosophy of it only because they could think of no sensible resemblance that held a nearer proportion
for it But he who receives from him what he had power to give him is not responsible for his Personal faults but has a just Title to the thing conferred by him and such as will be secured to him by the Law by which he is impowered to give it to him § III AND therefore by an invalid Administration I mean such a one only as is performed by him who has no Legal Power of administring the Sacraments From such a one the Communicant now described may indeed receive the external Symbols but God is not obliged by any act of his to confer the Spiritual benefits signified and intended to be Legally conveyed by those Symbols And it is from God that these Spiritual benefits are to be received if they be received at all § IV AND further yet by this validity I mean such a one as may be known and judged of by the Communicant That he who receives the Symbols from him whom he knows to have no Legal power of administring them or whom he might know not to have that power by such Rules as all Societies take care of for deriving Power to Succession and which withal they all take care that they should be notorious to all even the meanest capacities who use their diligence to know them as all are certainly obliged to do when their Practice is concerned in knowing them for the preventing Vsurpations of Power and all the consequent mischiefs which Societies must suffer from such Usurpations I mean that such a Communicant who by these means as they are contrived for the settlement of Christian Societies as Christians can know that he from whom he receives these Symbols was never Legally invested with a Power of administring them can never rationally expect that God should second such a Ministry by making good the Spiritual benefits which are Symbolically conveyed by this Ministry And that he who knows this or may know it by the means now mentioned cannot rationally look on it otherwise than as a perfect Nullity obliging God to nothing and therefore cannot enjoy any rational solid comfort from such Ordinances This I may therefore dispatch the more briefly now because several of the Principles requisite for proving it have been already discoursed on other occasions Such as those are I shall only lay together for clearing the present Consequence § V 1. THEREFORE the Spiritual advantages of the Sacraments are not immediately conveyed in the external participation of them And all Laws make a real difference between these two sorts of conveyances when the thing it self is immediately conveyed and when only a Right to it is conveyed by which the Receiver may recover it from him who has it in possession For example he who is actually put in possession of a piece of Land by him who has no Authority to give him possession does however continue in possession till he be again Legally dispossest And the Nullity of such a Givers act does not appear in the immediate effect but only in this that because he can confer no Legal Right therefore he cannot secure the Possession he has given whenever the Law shall take notice of what he has done But he who has the same Land conveyed to him only by promises before witnesses or by Instruments or even by earnest is not as yet put in Possession of the Land it self but is still left to the Law to recover the possession of the Land so conveyed from him who is as yet possessed of it And if the Promise or Instrument or Earnest be given by such a Person who has no Legal Power to give them the Nullity of such a grant is such as will never be likely so much as to gain him an actual Possession § VI THIS is exactly the Case of the Sacraments The Act of the Minister does not give possession of the Spiritual benefits of them but the giving of the Symbols by the Minister confers a Legal Right and obliges God to put well-disposed Communicants in actual possession of those Spiritual Graces where the Symbols themselves are validly administred that is where the Person who administers has received a Power from God of acting in his name in their administration But on the contrary where the Person who gives the Symbols is not empowered by God to act in his Name in giving them as they cannot convey the thing it self so neither can they any Right to it from God They cannot oblige God to perform what is further to be done by him but by Acting in his Name nor can any Acting in his Name oblige him but that which is by his own appointment So that such a Gift as this is can have no effect in Law seeing it confers neither the Right nor the Possâ—ssion of the thing designed by it Which is that I mean by a perfect Nullity § VII AND it is observable further 2. That the reason of this does hold not only in Acts of Authority that no Authority can be derived from God unless the Persons pretending in his name to give it be Authorized by him to give it 〈◊〉 but also in Deeds of Gifts None can oblige God in a Legal way to give that which it is only in his Power to give without Power received from him to Act in his Name in obliging him to such a Gift so that their Gift may in a Legal way of estimation be counted his and as his oblige him to performance This is no more in Gods Case than what is thought just and reasonable in the Gifts of the meanest private Persons Even such are not obliged by the Acts of others unless they have first Authorized them to Act in their name by express Procuration This I note that our Adversaries may see that our present reason will hold whether we do as yet suppose the Church to be a Body Politick or not and therefore though we should not suppose that God acted herein by way of Authority nor that the Persons empowered by him received any more Jurisdiction over the Church as a Society than those private Persons do receive when they are Authorized also by private Persons to make Legal conveyances and to undertake Legal obligations in their behalf and withal to let them see that though as yet they granted no more Authority in the Administrators of the Sacraments than what is necessary for a Legal conveyance of a Gift yet that will oblige others to depend on them in order to the obteining of that Gift which will easily infer an Authority of Jurisdiction § VIII AND 3. There is much less reason to expect that God should perform what is done in his Name by such unauthorized Persons than to expect it from ordinary Governours Ordinary Governours may be imposed on either to think they have made Promises where they have not or may be overswayed with kindness to the Usurpers Persons or to the Persons to whom the conveyance was made or by the exigency of their affairs or by some other
when all diligence is used in this way of securing Succession there may yet be real failures in it But as God only can know them so I cannot but think him obliged both by his Covenant for the Graces conveyed in the Sacraments and by his design of establishing Government through all Ages of Succession to supply those failures For I have shewn that in Covenanting he is in reason obliged to condescend to such Rules as may be equal between him and them with whom he is pleased to enter into Covenant But it is not equal that he should be disobliged when by all ways of tryal of which the Creatures are capable they have reason to think him obliged And besides the Person guilty of such a mistake as this is not guilty of any thing which it is the interest of Government in general that it should be punished He neither has any reason to make him suspect that he arrogates to himself any Power in Gods name which he has not reason to believe was given him by them who were by God himself intrusted to give it to him Nor in case he should prove mistaken can his mistake prove injurious to any other who cannot be supposed to be possessed of any other and therefore not of a better title than himself So that God cannot be obliged by the Principles of Government in general to vacate what he does in favour of a better title But where on the contrary the mistake must prove injurious to those who are at present possessed of the right of Government if they should prove mistaken which is plainly the Case of our Adversaries who separate Congregations in places which they found at first possessed by Episcopal Jurisdiction God is not only not obliged to ratifie what they do in his Name without Authority derived from him but he is also obliged by the fundamental Principles of Government to disanul it in favour to those who have really received Authority from him how good soever their meaning may have been and how far soever that may go to the excusing of their Persons § XXVI BUT supposing this want of evidence might go further than I have proved it can to the excusing of their Subjects from their Duty to them yet it had been well our Adversaries would have considered 2. How far this can go to excuse their own Sacriledg in usurping that Authority which on this account they have denied to their Superiors What if their Superiors had no just â—itle to it This might indeed excuse them from Subjection but certainly can never excuse them if they prove guilty of the same Vsurpation for which they blamed their present Superiors It might excuse them for separating but never could for erecting opposite Societies and for presuming to exercise a sacred Authority in them which never was given them It could neither secure such doings from a Nullity nor excuse their Persons from a very great Crime And the former consideration will free God from all obligation to second them but the later will oblige him to punish them and at least to disanul such proceedings § XXVII IT cannot secure their doings from a Nullity For what if their Superiors have no title Must it therefore follow that they have one What can they pretend to overthrow the Authority of their Superiors but will proceed more forcibly to overthrow their own Can they say they are not satisfied of the several stages by which Authority has been derived to their Superiors from those who were at first possessed of it And can they give others any better satisfaction concerning their own title to Authority Is a presumptive title fallible at last when it is to be conveyed through so many Ages before it can come at us And must not their title be much more unsatisfactory which as it must be derived through as many Ages as ours and is every way as liable to miscarriage so withal it wants this presumption in favour of it which I have shewn how obligatory it is to God himself to second it on the general Principles of Government And indeed on these Principles how can they derive any Divine Authority but from men whose title to give it them was justly questionable And if they thought these exceptions so considerable as to excuse themselves from Duty to their own Superiors why should they not be as considerable to excuse their own Subjects from Duty to themselves If to avoid this they pretend an immediate call from God the Question will not be whether such a Call might empower them but whether by the Principles of Government it be not absolutely necessary for them to produce their Credentials before others can in reason think themselves obliged in Conscience to submit to them or can have any reason to hope for any validity in what they do on pretence of that Authority And where are those Credentials They do not pretend to extraordinary ones And for ordinary ones to be derived by the Ministry of men and through many Successions they neither can shew them nor do they admit them to be satisfactory And it were then very fit to be considered whether pretending to be sent without Credentials where God is so obliged by the Principles of Government to give Credentials to those who are really sent by him it be not a very just and prudent suspicion that their pretence to a Mission is really false when it does not come confirmed with such Credentials § XXVIII BVT neither can this pretence excuse their Persons from a crime which may justly provoke God to take the uttermost advantage which the Legal invalidity of their proceedings might afford him nay such a crime as will oblige him by the Principles of Government actually to take that advantage As upon these Principles they overthrow all possibility of deriving a Legal title to themselves as well as others so for them to assume a title when they have no right to it is a crime punishable in the highest degree by the Principles of Government And yet there are peculiar aggravations in the Case of such Persons which must make them less excusable than others They are the introducers of a bad title and it is much harder for such to be mistaken than for them who only abet a bad title when it is introduced It is hardly possible for such to be ignorant of the means by which they come by it or of the insufficiency of those means for deriving it to them They make disorders and confound Discipline by the ways they use to set up their own ways which must needs make them the more responsible if they should prove mistaken Nay the sinfulness of usurping an Authority is a crime they charge others with and that upon such Principles as must not only overthrow their own Authority but let them see the Nullity of it if they did but act with that equity and impartiality which they pretend to And it was a particular aggravation of the sentence pronounced
against the Servant in the Gospel that he was condemned out of his own mouth And yet the Case of which I am speaking is such as needs not this way of defence Where only the offending Person is concerned in the Consequence of his offence God may be as indulgent as he pleases in yielding of his own right to punish him But where others also are wronged by it and especially his subordinate Governours though he may still pardon them the guilt yet to confirm their proceedings as valid would be injurious to those on whose Authority they have encroached and therefore is not fit to be granted them on any account by the Principles of Government § XXIX THIS will at least concern that assuming of Authority to administer the Sacraments which is practised in places which are already under a settled Jurisdiction If it be demanded further what is to be thought concerning the like assuming of Authority to administer Sacraments in places destitute of Government I must first warn our Brethren that this is none of their Case nor can it in the least contribute to excuse them that if in the Case it self they may think me severe they may yet see how little I am obliged to be so by any exigence of my Cause No doubt in a desolate Island men that were cast upon it might unite into a Body Politick and chuse their form of Government and their Governours because there is none who can pretend a present right over them none whom they may be in danger of injuring if they should prove mistaken But no pretence either of mal-administration or of a suspicious title where there were no visible Competitor who could pretend a better could excuse the same Persons if returning to a place already possessed they should attempt the same thing where it could not be attempted without certain disturbance and without danger of injuring others Nor would it be an irregularity only but a Nullity also if they should there presume it where though it were uncertain whose right it were to Govern yet withall this were certain that it was none of theirs And as in Seculars so in the Sacraments it might be also very possible that administrations of them might be valid there though they should prove perfect Nullities in the places where our dissenting Brethren are concerned for them § XXX TO speak therefore to the Case wherein it has thus appeared how little the interest of my Cause obliges me to be partial I confess I do not see how even in this Case they could excuse themselves from Vsurpation who should presume to administer the Sacraments without a lawful Call to administer them I do not think they would be guilty of any injury to men who had the lawful power of calling them nor do I think their Precedent in such a Case of any ill consequence to Government especially not to any visible Governour if it were only practised in such a Case as that were and were not persisted in when they might have opportunity of obteining a lawful Call from them who had a lawful power to call them nor consequently do I think God under the obligation now mentioned either to disanul their doings or to punish them for them for establishment of the Authority of any Superiors which had been invaded by them But in reference to God I do not really understand how to excuse their Persons from presumption or to secure their proceedings from a Legal Nullity § XXXI I DO not know how to excuse their Persons from presumption in presuming to act in his Name without any power received from him to do so to make Promises and enter into obligations wherein they will concern him as a Party and to think to oblige him without any leave received from him Nor can they really pretend themselves forced to use such means by any necessity whatsoever They may indeed be reduced to a necessity of wanting the Ordinances and they have reason to believe themselves actually reduced to that necessity when they cannot have them without the sin of Vsurpation But no necessity can oblige them to venture on the guilt of that or any other sin that they may obtein them And though such a necessity as this is when they cannot procure the Sacraments by any compliances whatsoever much less by unsinful ones may make their Case in equity relievable without the Sacraments if they do observe the moral Duties of Religion yet the presuming to assume an Authority without leave to do so is so far from gaining them the Legal advantage of Sacraments so administred as that it is the most likely way to forfeit their title to the equity of it when they use sinful means of coming by it I have elsewhere observed the example of Saul to this purpose who had certainly fared better if in the absence of Samuel he had only made use of those Moral Duties which even Laicks may use without danger of Vsurpation than he did by presuming to offer Sacrifice without a lawful Authority to do so § XXXII NOR do I see how even in that Case such Vsurpation can be secured from a Legal Nullity For as long as they have no Authority from God to act in his Name no Law whatsoever can oblige him to performance though there had otherwise no injury been offered to him by the usurping his Authority For freeing him from all obligation to performance it suffices that the Covenant and Promises made in his name were none of his acts and no Law will take them for his Acts if they were made without his Authority And this consideration might in prudence make it advisable in such a Case to forbear the Sacraments and only to practise the Moral Duties of Religion when besides the sin they would be in danger of in presuming to administer them without Authority they could expect in that Case no more of the benefit of them with them than without them Without them they might expect the benefit of the Covenant and Promises of them in equity And with them they could not strengthen their title to them by adding further a Legal obligation CHAP. XIX The Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God THE CONTENTS 3. NO other Ministers have this Authority of administring the Sacraments but only they who receive their Orders in the Episcopal Communion This proved by several degrees § I. 1. The Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God Explained § II. The importance of this Proposition § III. Though this were not proved yet our Adversaries Practices are unjustifiable by the Principles of Government in general § IV. As they were at first unjustifiable by the Principles of Government so they can plead nothing which may make that justifiable now which was then unjustifiable They cannot plead a lawful prescription § V. If they could yet this Proposition will cut them off from pleading it against God § VI VII VIII The Proposition proved 1. From the
that the Supreme Government can be any other than Democratical certainly the first dividers could have no pretence for legitimating their proceedings by any consent of the Multitude For the Multitude themselves had then done all they could do to divest themselves of this right if originally they had any They lived in a Peaceable Subjection to their Governours they challenged no Authority over them they had reserved no Power to themselves to meet together in any Assemblies that might be capable of exercising an external Jurisdiction and without this it is impossible to understand any limitation in their granted Submission As therefore in civil Government where there is greater probability for ascribing much to the Multitude in regard of their original dominion over themselves at least as to the first constitution of it yet where the Multitude have given this power out of their own hands whether to a Person or a Body they may certainly as well as others be obliged to stand to their compacts when they have once made them though they were not at first obliged to make them And if so it will not only be a Vsurpation for themselves to resume those rights which they are thus supposed to have disposed of but will also cause a Nullity in what is done by them pursuant to that Vsurpation and much rather it must have the same effects in them who challenge these rights only in the name of the Multitude § V BUT then it is to be observed that in Seculars and where this original right of the People may be more plausibly pretended that which originally was no right nay is still confessed to have been none may yet in process of time become one on account of that Prescription which by the Law of Nations and their common interest not to mention the tacite consent of the Parties concerned which usually accompanies Prescription ought to be allowed a Power to determine differences and especially concerning the Supreme Power which must otherwise become undeterminable because they are uncapable of a competent Judg that may determine them On which Principles though the first Dividers had been guilty of Schism yet it might have been possible that their present Successors might have been innocent of it supposing that their Prescription had been such as had been requisite by that Law which gives a Legal force to Prescription that is that it had been long enough and peaceable that is particularly with regard to those who were concerned in the injury which was done at the first Division that is that the Bishops had given some Argument if not of their approbation yet at least of their consent Though I cannot but withal warn that I do not know how to clear our dissenting Brethrens practices from the charge of Schism even by this Topick of Prescription it self For among us they never yet had that peaceableness of possession which might amount to a Legal Prescription The Bishops whose Authority they at first invaded have ever since asserted their own Authority against them and have continued their claim to the same Jurisdiction of which they found them at first possessed The Independents in America can only excuse themselves from any injury done to Governours in regard of the Jurisdiction of the place they live in But they themselves though they were on these Principles allowed a right to erect themselves into a Body Politick could not yet be excused for breaking off their correspondence with Episcopal Jurisdictions But this will concern Schism in another Notion from that of which I am at present discoursing § VI BUT if it should prove true that the Authority of administring the Sacraments must be derived from God this will exclude all pretence of Prescription in this Case By the Rules of all Politicks there lies no Prescription in favour of the Subject against the Supreme Government and though by the Law of Nations there may be Prescription for deciding the rights of several Independent Polities in regard of each other yet in reference to God they are all Subjects and so can never prescribe against his right by those Rules of equity which are the foundations of all Ecclesiastical Society These inferior rights are to be measured by the publick interest and it may be presumed to be the mind of God that lesser interests give way to greater whence it will follow that it is very fit and just that the interests of Subjects give way to the interest of Governours and that the interests of particular Governours give way to the common interests of mankind It is fit that particular Governours though absolute and independent should rather lose their real right than that mankind should perpetually be disturbed and the right of all Government exposed to perpetual uncertainties which must needs follow if Prescription may not be allowed a just right for determining differences of this nature Nay this is so very just and reasonable as that it is generally more for the interest than the prejudice even of those who suffer by it and therefore must in reason be acknowledged even by themselves for the most equal Rule of proceeding with Powers of an equal order Even they themselves would lose more by the weakening of their title to all the Authorities and Jurisdictions possessed by them if Prescription were not sufficient to legitimate a title otherwise not only bad but known to be so than they could reap advantage by their gains from others who can plead Prescription against them Without this very few if any titles could be thought secure And how great and perpetual a dissatisfaction must this be to the Possessors of any titles if they could never be secure of the right of their possessions § VII BUT none of all these reasons do hold in the deciding a divine title There can be no reason of publick interest so weighty as to make it fit that God should suffer the loss of any known right for it At least there can none appear so to us as that we can have reason to conclude that it is his will that his own interest should give way to it where he has not revealed it to be his pleasure to yield his interest to it And it cannot be right unless it be agreeable to the Divine will nor can we know it to be right unless we know it to be so agreeable Nor does he receive such advantages by this Rule of Prescription as might in any reason or equity oblige him to submit to the inconveniences of it Neither his title nor its evidence to us receives a right or confirmation from Prescription but as soon as we know any thing to be his right we cannot think it capable of being infringed by any whatsoever practices of his Creatures to the contrary Nor does he stand in any such need of any external assistance for the recovery of any of his rights as might oblige him to submit to any common Rules which might in any Case prove prejudicial to any of
People so it was plainly introduced by them whose right it was without any ratification of the People that might signifie any right they had in this matter by any positive gift Immediately on writing that first Epistle to the Corinthians the women that were Prophetesses were wholly forbid the publick use of their Talents in the Church and obliged to a modesty of learning from their Husbands at home notwithstanding their Divine Inspirations and notwithstanding that these Inspirations were given them rather for the publick than themselves And even the men were obliged to order in their exercise of those Divine Gifts And as soon as we certainly know that Government was settled in that very Church of Corinth we find withal that it was to the ordinary Governours that those extraordinary Persons were obliged to be subject That was their Case when St. Clement wrote his Epistle to them Clem. Ep. 1. ad Corinth §. i. 46 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rather 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as in Clem. Alexan. For the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 is mentioned as one of the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 §. 48. §. 3 4 5 6. §. 40. §. 42 43 44. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 §. 41. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 §. 57. Those two or three Persons who had occasioned the Schism then mentioned seem plainly to have been such as were puffed up on account of their extraordinary gifts This seems to have occasioned that part of his Discourse against Aemulation and in favour of Humility because those Persons taking themselves to equal their Superiors in gifts seems to have been encouraged on that account to do what they did in disparagement of the Ecclesiastical Authority and are therefore called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Ringleaders of Aemulation Yet even these he obliges to keep to their own station as severely as the several ranks of the Clergy were obliged to do so in the time of the Law Over these he asserts the rights of the then present Governours and that from the very Argument I am now insisting on of Succession and in regard of the Divinity of the Institution Nay he plainly tells even these Persons themselves that it were better for them to be small and of mean account in the flock of Christ than by seeming considerable to be cut off from the hope or fold of Christ. So dangerous he thought it even for such to be cast out of the Church and out of the Communion of the ordinary Governours of it how much milder soever the Notions are which our modern Brethren have entertained concerning it § XXXI BUT I shall hereafter have a fitter occasion in my Second Part to consider the Notion of Schism alluded to in this Epistle All that I shall further observe out of it at present is that the Apostles not the People took care of settling a Rule for preserving Succession §. 44. a sign that the Apostles never gave the Power out of their hands at least not so far as to deprive themselves of it The same might also have been proved from those Catalogues of Bishops in the Apostolical Sees which the Antients insist on in their first Disputes against Hereticks and which as it was a matter as notorious so is attested to us by the same Authority on whose credit we receive the Canon of the New Testament it self and attested with as much confidence as that Canon it self Yet this Argument would lose much of its force for proving that the then present Successors of the Apostles must have taught the same Doctrine with the Apostles if the Peoples interest in the Government had been then so considerable as that it had been in their Power to have obtruded a Succession different from the sentiments of his Predecessors And though the reasons now given to shew that the Authority it self did exceed all inherent right of the People yet still the prudential reasons might hold that they should not have any particular Person obtruded on them without their own consent Which as it will not suffice to justifie any orders or Sacraments derived only from the People so I am confident that it is the uttermost that can be pretended from these Primitive Ages § XXXII NOR was this agreeable only to the nature of the Power here conveyed that it should be conveyed by these Divinely Authorized Persons who alone had power to convey it but also to the precedent imitated herein I have already observed that the assemblies of Christians were taken from the Schools and that succession was the same way pleaded in the School and Chair of Christ as it was usually made use of for mainteining the Schools of the Masters and Doctrines where they had settlements We know the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the Platonists at Athens were continued till later Ages and we have Catalogues of the severa◠Masters which supplied that Chair like those of the Primitive Bishops from the Apostles And as the deserting these and setting up new Schools in opposition to them was the introducing new Heresies among the Philosophers from whom that term was taken so to desert Apostolical Chairs and to follow new ones was the same thing among the Christians who derived that term from them Now among the Philosophers the empowering of Successors was either performed by the Predecessors or at least by the Scholars of their own rank not by the promiscuous Multitude And there was other reason why it should be so besides the nature of the Power conveyed to them For when they contrived their Philosophy by way of Mystery their Acroamaticks the Mysterious part of it were committed only to these Superiour Scholars of the greatest proficiency And therefore their Master himself and their Symmystae must needs have been taken for the most competent Judges of their ability to succeed them who they were that understood them best and who were most likely to prove faithful in the trust committed to them For the terms of a St. Luk. i. 2 Jud. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and b 1 Tim. vi 20 2 Tim. i. 14 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in deriving the succession of the Christian Doctrine seem to have been derived from the Philosophers as well as others § XXXIII AND if we may believe the modern Rabbins the Judges of the Sanhedrim themseves were they who had the Power of admitting Successors Vid. Selden Not. in Eutych de Syn. But these seem to have been Ecclesiastical Judges no otherwise than as the constitution of their Secular Government it self being Theocratical it took in Ecclesiastical affairs as a principal ingredient in it As for the administration of their Sacred Offices the Succession was a thing certain and confined to a certain Family and all that men could do in the Case was not to chuse any new one in but only to exclude those who were uncapable according to the qualifications prescribed by the Law But whatever was done was either done by God himself or the Supreme
qualifications whatever proportion be requisite for publick service they must admit all those whom they judg qualified and admit none but such if the qualifications alone be supposed to intitle to the Authority But if any may be rejected whom they think qualified or any admitted whom they do not judg qualified either of these are sufficient to shew that qualifications alone cannot be conceived sufficient to intitle to Authority And yet this is all that can be thought of how the Scriptures can be thought to design particular Persons for Authority that they may indeed describe and particularize those qualifications which may fit a Person when he is known to have them for Authority CHAP. XXI Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived to this Age without a continued Succession THE CONTENTS 3. This Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived from those men to whom it was at first committed to the age we live in without a continued Succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them § I. 1. This Authority could not be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own time Neither by them in their own Persons nor by their Deed of Gift nor by their Writings § II. 2. It hence follows that the only way they could use for conveying this Authority to others after their decease must be by appointing sufficient substitutes who might act for them after their departure § III. 3. The same reasons which prove it impossible for the Apostles to convey this Power to any who did not live in their own Age do also prove it impossible for any of their Successors to do so § IV V. 4. This Negative Argument will only hold concerning the only substitutes of the Apostles and concerning them it will hold That they who have not received Power from them who are alone substituted by the Apostles to convey their Power to others cannot at all receive any Power from the Apostles § VI VII VIII IX 5. That this Negative Argument applied to any particular Age will hold concerning the only substitutes remaining in that particular Age. Bishops were the only substitutes of the Apostles then remaining when our Brethren began their innovations § X. § I 3. THIS Ecclesiastical Authority cannot be derived in this Age we live in from those men to whom it was at first committed that is from the Apostles without a continued succession of Persons orderly receiving Authority from those who had Authority to give it them from those first times of the Apostles to ours at present § II FOR it is plain 1. That this Authority cannot be derived from the Apostles themselves to any beyond their own time There are but three ways conceivable how this might be possible that they themselves might convey Authority to others either by their Persons or by their Deed of Gift or by their Writings But by none of these means are they capable of receiving Authority from them who did not live in their time Not from them in their own Persons because they were dead before the Persons of whom we speak were born or were capable of receiving Authority from them For it is impossible to understand by the nature of any Humane contracts how a personal right can be devolved to another without a personal act or how any personal act can be between Persons who are not supposed coexistent at the same time Not by their Deed of Gift because this also could only convey their Power to Persons of their own Age. Especially considering that Power is that which is the original security of all other Gifts Indeed where a standing Power is supposed and a constant orderly Succession into that Power there a Gift may be made to future Persons which may both be determined by Persons so empowered and the Gift secured to Persons so determined by them But all are so sensible of the unpracticableness of a Gift to future Persons without a Power both to determine the Persons and secure the Gift to them as that it is ordinary in Wills to appoint Executors who may secure the performance where the standing Power cannot descend minutely to take care of the performance in particular cases And it were certainly in vain to make Testaments if none were empowered to determine the Controversies which rise in execution of them and if the publick Authority did not confirm the Act of the Testator in nominating an Executor and the Power of the Executor for performing the trust committed to him It is therefore absolutely necessary that a Power be first established by which the Will may be performed and a Succession in that Power ascertained for so long at least as any particular of the will remains unperformed before any one can in prudence think such a will performable And therefore the Power of the Apostles being the Supreme and only Power by which the Church as a Body Politick does subsist must be first secured and secured in a regular constant Succession so that none ought to be supposed in future Ages to receive any Power from them but they who receive it in that Succession by the hands of Persons empowered to give it them And because their Legacies are not confined to any certain Age therefore the Power of their Executors must not expire for ever and so much the rather because there is no superior Power to take care of the execution in case the Persons should fail who are immediately intrusted with the Execution Not by their Writings though they indeed continued extant after the decease of the Writers for what has been said in the future Chapter § III HENCE it follows 2. That if they would convey any Power to Persons not living in their own Age seeing they could not do it by themselves they must do it by appointing sufficient substitutes to act in their name after their decease that is they must give such Persons whom they would substitute the same Power themselves had received from Christ I mean as to these ordinary exercises of Power for which I am at present concerned and not only so but the same Power also which themselves had received of communicating this Power to others Where both of these were present the act of such substitutes was to be taken for the Act of the Apostles themselves and as validly obliging them as if it had been performed by themselves in their own Persons by all the Laws then received concerning Delegation and substitution And the want of either of them was sufficient by the same Laws to invalidate a conveyance from the Apostles by so imperfectly-Authorized substitutes And I have already shewn that the Laws then received were punctually observed by the Apostles in these their Legal conveyances I cannot foresee what other means our Adversaries can think of to avoid this consequence Chap. iii. §. 5 6 7 8. When they shall think of any it will then be time enough to consider it § IV AND 3. The very same reasons
which he is known to believe as a condition necessary in his circumstances to his being a Bishop he must think himself obliged to intend This observation will prevent all the Arguments by which themselves are perswaded that the Power of Ordination ought to be given to every Presbyter which they think the Bishop ought to will also and therefore that he ought to be presumed to will it if he be presumed to will as he ought It is his actual good intention that we are concerned for at present And that must not be presumed from Principles disputed but from Principles already and notoriously granted by him § VIII 4. THEREFORE in this way of judging of the actual intention of those Bishops who ordeined the first Separatists there can be no more prudent and secure measure than to consider the Notions then prevailing concerning the power of Presbyters especially those which were fundamental to all the Canons that were then in force as the Rules of Practice of this power These are most likely to have been taken by them for the measures of their Conscience And indeed the Canons were introduced into practice by a universal consent either when they were made or when they were received And they who received power yet were obliged to those Canons as to the exercise of it and therefore if they were either perswaded of the truth of the prevailing Opinion or were true to the obligations they had taken for the observance of the Canons these we have reason to presume to have been the measures of their consciences and therefore we have also reason further to suppose their practices such as might agree with these on supposition that they acted conscientiously And though possibly some particular persons might have entertained singular Opinions yet it is not so secure to presume his conveyance of Orders to have been fitted to his singular Opinions not only because it is not so easie to presume that any particular Person did follow a singular Opinion when the generality were so agreed in another nor only in regard of that resignation of Judgment which in those Ages was thought excellent in point of conscience on which account many thought themselves obliged to follow the sentiments of their Superiors in contradiction to their own but also because the validity of Succession depends on the practice and sense of the Generality of all places and Ages but especially of all Ages And though a particular person might intend differently from the rest of his Brethren yet he could give no more than himself had received and what that was depended on the intention of his Ordeiner which again will be best presumed from the sense of the Generality Only the supreme power is that which can never be presumed to have been confined At least this is a presumption that the Bishops then acted according to the Opinions and Canons then generally received unless they expresly declared themselves to the contrary Their silence is so far from being an Argument of their being of another mind as that it is indeed a very strong presumption in this case if in any of their consent If they continued silent when it so much concerned them to speak their minds that people might know the power they intended to give the Persons ordeined by them they must expect that people would understand them according to the received Opinions and therefore we have reason to presume that they themselves were desirous to be so understood § IX BUT whatever were the sentiments of the primitive Church concerning the Identity of Bishops and Presbyters originally whatever also they thought concerning the fitness that the power of Ordination should be given to bare Presbyters yet it is notorious that the contrary Opinion and Practice prevailed in the Church universally when the first dividing Presbyters whoever they were were ordeined and for many hundred years before even very near the times of the Apostles if we may believe the concurrent suffrages of the most learned Antiquaries of our Adversaries They do not deny and indeed the matter of Fact is too notorious to be denied by men of any ingenuity that whether they ought to be so or not yet actually Bishops were then distinguished from Presbyters and distinguished in this very particular that the power of Ordination was reserved as a Prerogative of the Bishop and never communicated to simple Presbyters Nor was it only their practice to do so but their Judgment that they ought to do so on account of Conscience It is very notorious that at least a little before the Reformation Aerius and the Waldenses Vid. Alphons à Castr. adv Haeres verb. Episcop and Marsilius of Padua and Wiclef were condemned for Hereticks for asserting the Parity of Bishops and Presbyters And it is withal as notorious that every Bishop was then obliged to condemn all Heresies that is all those Doctrines which were then censured as Heretical by that Church by which they were admitted to be Bishops and how odious also the name of Heresie was then even on account of Conscience I mention even these because whatever their Doctrines were in other things and how far soever they might go to justifie a separation from them who taught those Doctrines yet our Protestants themselves do not pretend to any Succession in these Western parts where themselves received their Orders but what was conveyed to them even by such Bishops as these were nor do I use their Authority for proving the Truth of their Doctrine in their censure of this particular Heresie but only to clear what their actual intention was in the Orders given by them for which it is sufficient that they themselves thought them true whether they were mistaken or not in thinking so However this is so acknowledged to have been believed and practised in the Ages we are speaking of as that the very Presbyterians themselves do charge them with differing herein from the sense of the first times because the Bishops had and exercised a Superiority over Presbyters which they conceive they had not in the Apostolical times They therefore call them Humane Bishops in opposition to the Scripture Bishops whom they conceive not to have been distinct from Presbyters And could the Bishops be no Scripture-Bishops because they were distinct from Presbyters And were not their Presbyters as much distinct for the same reason from Scripture-Presbyters because they were distinct from Bishops If this consequence hold why do they challenge the power and priviledges of those Scripture-Presbyters when they are so different from them If it do not why do they asperse the sacred Order of Episcopacy in modern Ages with such a deviation from the Primitive Rule § X HOWEVER this being notorious that the Bishops of the later Ages did actually think they ought to be distinct and distinct in this very particular of Ordination how is it probable that they would give all that power to Presbyters that should leave no distinction between them that
must be a right of the Presbytery in common according to our Adversaries Principles who conceive Government to be a right common to them I do not know whether our Adversaries themselves will think it necessary for me to prove If the supreme visible Government of the Church be the right of such Presbyteries in common not of particular Presbyters singly considered I cannot conceive how such a Government can be practicable unless the valid investiture of subordinate Governours be also appropriated to them § XVII I AM not concerned whether they will here allow the power given at the Ordination of a Presbyter to be a proper power of Government It suffices at present that the power given to particular Presbyters is as properly a power of Government as that is of the whole Presbyteries The power of the whole Presbyteries is only an Aggregate resulting from the valid Succession of the particular Presbyters whereof it consists And the power of Administring the Sacraments which is given to particular Presbyters at their Ordination is that on which their power of Government is grounded That is the reason which obliges all private Persons to submit to the Presbyteries and to all their lawful impositions because God has put it in their power to exclude refractory Persons from the ordinary means of Salvation And as far as this power of administring the Sacraments is granted to particular Presbyters when they are ordeined Presbyters so far also it is put in their power to exclude private Persons from the Sacraments by refusing to perform their Office to them Only because this exclusion by a particular Presbyter does not hinder other Presbyters who have as great a power as himself who should exclude one from performing their duty to a Person so excluded and the exclusion does oblige the Person excluded to submission no further than as he cannot hope for the benefit of the Sacraments without the consent of his excluder therefore it can only be to the whole Presbytery that every Member of a Church can be obliged to submit because it is the Presbytery alone that can oblige all to ratifie their censures so that the Sacraments cannot at all be gotten without their consent They can â—â—lige their own Members to ratifie them by vertue of the Subjection which each of them owes to the whole Community And they can oblige all other Churches and Presbyteries to ratifie their censures by vertue of that correspondence which all Churches and Presbyteries are obliged to maintein with each other on account of their common interest But still this does not hinder but that the power of particular Presbyters must be of the same kind with the power of the whole Presbyteries though it be not of the same extent which on the Principles now mentioned is sufficient to appropriate the disposal of it to the common right of Government § XVIII AND as by the former Argument it has appeared that de facto no such power was actually designed for them by their first Ordeiners as is at present exercised by our Brethren in their separation so by this later Topick it appears that it does not de jure belong to them by vertue of any thing given them by the Episcopal Presbyteries though we consider them as our Brethren are willing to consider them in this act of Ordination only as Presbyteries or at the utmost only as Presbyteries with a President which cannot make any substantial difference much less can the honour of presiding lose the President any of that honour which belongs to him as a single Presbyter Which I therefore observe that our Brethren may see how unjustifiable their Ordinations are upon any terms Though this power had been designed for them by their Ordeiners or though their being made Presbyters by their Ordeiners did as they think confer this power upon them really how little soever it was designed for them yet neither of these pretences can be available if their acts were not valid acts of the Presbyteries If they were not they could not give what they did intend to give them because they could not confer a valid legal title to that which was not their own to give So far must they be in such a case as this from giving really more than they intended to give If they think it usurpation for the Bishops and the Presbyters who adhere to them to act in the name of the whole Presbyteries how much greater Vsurpation must it be for a smaller over-voted number of Presbyters to attempt the same without the Bishop Certainly his presence though only as a first Presbyter must add great Authority to the legitimating their Assemblies as that must also do to the validity of their actings in them § XIX NAY on the contrary as they cannot either by any precedent or any reason defend the validity of such acts of a smaller part of the Presbyters without the Bishops so I do not understand how they can avoid the owning the validity even of the acts of a smaller number of Presbyters in conjunction with the Bishops if they will consider their own interest in them The Presbyters who assisted the Bishops in the solemnities of ordeining their first Predecessors were much the smaller part of the Presbyteries As for the rest their consent was not so much as required neither by any express act of their own nor by any delegation of their power to those who were present nor presumed from their absence after a Canonical summons And yet if these acts were not valid our Brethren cannot possibly defend the validity of their own Ordinations But if they be I might then shew how impossible it is that the validity of such acts can be derived from the power of the Presbytery and how necessary it is that they be resolved into an absolute power of the Bishop and therefore how much they will be obliged to own the power of the Bishops that they may defend the validity of their own Orders And considering that the Bishops and Presbyters make up one Government it is impossible if he be absolute that they can be so too And therefore if he can validly dispose of the common right without their consent they cannot possibly dispose of it without his which will again invalidate the acts of those Presbyteries for which our Brethren are concerned And if this power of ordeining others was never given to our Brethren de facto and if withal the validity of the conveyance fail by which they may pretend to it de jure beside the intention of their Ordeiners I do not understand what more can be requisite for overthrowing the validity of their Ordinations § XX THAT which they are apt to object after all is that they are made Presbyters and were designed to be made so and to be made so in the Scripture Notion of that word and that Ordination is a right belonging to a Scripture Presbyter But why should they presume that their design was to make Presbyters in
respectively related And then as it is in the power of the Governours of particular Churches to deprive them at least of the Communion of their own particular Churches and so to cut them off from their being Members of them it must also consequently be in their power to cut them off from their Communion with the Catholick Church to which they have no other title but that Membership This therefore I shall endeavour to prove from the Principles which I intend to make use of for proving this present Particular § XXII IN order hereunto I desire it may be observed 1. That the nature of the inconvenience incurred by this deprivation of Communion in their own particular Churches is such as that it is impossible that the censure can be valid in their own Churches unless it be valid in others The design of the suspending from the Sacraments is for so long to deprive the Person of the benefit of the Sacraments till he yield to the thing required from him by the Authority by which he is suspended Either therefore he has still a title to the benefit of the Sacraments from which he is suspended or he has not If he have still as good a Covenant-title to the benefits of the Sacrament as before and can as well assure himself of his title what loss can it be for him to be deprived of the Sacramental Elements How can it ever oblige him in conscience to submit to that Authority which can inflict no greater punishment than this deprivation If therefore God himself be obliged to ratifie the censures of particular Churches in order to the preservation of their Government then it must follow that the Person so deprived must lose his interest in the New-Covenant of the Gospel and all the priviledges consequent to that interest And he who has lost his interest in the Covenant cannot retrieve it by a bare change of the place and Jurisdiction He that has no interest in the Gospel-Covenant cannot possibly continue a Member of the Catholick Church whose Vnion consists in their confederation in the same Covenant And considering that the Covenant is the same by which they are united to God and to each other nay indeed that their Vnion to each other is grounded on their Vnion with Christ they are therefore Fellow-Members of each other Eph. iv 25 1 Cor. v◠17 because they are all Members of the same Mystical Body of Christ they are made one Spirit by partaking of that one Spirit which is also his therefore it is impossible that they can be separated from this Mystical Vnion with one another unless they be both or one of them at least disunited from Christ which they who are must by necessary consequence be disunited from all the Members of that Mystical Body And however that Vnion with other Members could afford little comfort to a Person concerned in it which were consistent with their separation from Christ their common Head So also they who are deprived of the title the Covenant is capable of giving them to remission of sins in one Church cannot at the same time be judged to be free from their sins in the other even on performance of the Moral Duties and he who is not so cannot be judged to be in a present capacity of being a Church-Member This proves at least that the Church which thinks the censure pronounced against any Person to have been pronounced validly and to have cut him off from the Church wherein he was censured cannot at the same time think him united to themselves in the bond of Catholick Vnity if they think the Church from whence he is divided to be Catholick And the case is the same whether the Person so divided have divided himself by separation or have been divided from them by the censures of a Lawful Authority Still so long as he is divided from any one Church that is Catholick he cannot continue his Vnity with them if they continue theirs with the Church from which he is divided § XXIII HENCE it follows 2. That if such a Person be received to the Sacraments in another Church without as good an Authority for uniting him to the Vnity of the Catholick Church as that was by which he was deprived only on supposition of the continuance of his invisible Vnity with the Catholick Church notwithstanding his visible separation from a part of it such Sacraments must as to him be perfect Nullities and cannot convey to him the proper benefits of Sacraments even on the performance of the general Moral conditions of Faith and Repentance For the Sacraments cannot convey the merits and influences of Christ to any but those who are united in his Mystical Body by the same proportion of reasoning as the Vessels by which the vital influences are conveyed in the Natural Body can convey them to none but those who are parts of the Body to which they are supposed to belong The strength of this Mystical reasoning I have elsewhere proved Seeing therefore that the Sacraments can convey no influences but unto them who are united to Christ and on the supposition I am now speaking of the Persons thus received to the Sacrament cannot be supposed thus united to him therefore such a Communicant could not expect any benefit from such Sacraments not only in regard of his want of those moral dispositions but also in regard of his incapacity though he had them This therefore will be the case where the reception to Communion is only granted as a Testimony of the Vnity which the Person so received is supposed to have invisibly even antecedently to such reception But if it be designed further not to testifie that Catholick Vnity which he is supposed to retain but to restore it to him who is supposed to have lost it by his separation from his own Church this is another case And concerning it I say § XXIV 3. THAT no particular Church whatsoever can by its Authority alone restore any to Catholick Vnity who has been separated from it by another without the consent of the Church by which he was at first separated This is plain from what has been said before because this is impossible to be done without disanulling the Authority by which he was at first separated from the Church For if this later Church can restore such a Person to Catholick Vnity then it may also restore him to Vnity with that Church by which he was at first separated And if so then he may have a right to the Communion even of his own Church even whilest he is actually separated from them And then what effect can such an Authority have whereby it may appear to be Authority if it cannot deprive him of so much as the right to that Communion from which he is so separated Seeing therefore both these exercises of Authority cannot be supposed valid at the same time and seeing therefore that God is obliged to disanul the one if he will ratifie the